Connecting the PC Speaker from motherboard to Sound Blaster Live! CT4780 \ VOGONS

Connecting the PC Speaker from motherboard to Sound Blaster Live! CT4780

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First post, by Namrok

Posted on 2020-11-08, 04:14

Namrok Offline

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Title says it all really. I have two pins on my Sound Blaster Live! CT470 labeled PC SPK. I fashioned a dupont connector cable to carry pin 1 and 4 from the PC Speaker pins on my PC Partner MVP3 motherboard, labeled SPEAK and VCC, to the SBLive pins. The Livewire 3.0 CD's helpfile says connect VCC to Pin 1, and SPEAK to Pin 2. I believe I've done this. Even used a multimeter to make sure I didn't screw up fashioning the cable, and both wires appear to offer a continuous connection from one end to the other.

And yet I get no PC Speaker audio. In fact, the mixer bar for the PC Speaker is just greyed out and disabled in Windows mixer, and the Creative mixer sporadically recognizes that it appears to be totally disabled, although sometimes it pretends to let me mute/unmute it and adjust it's volume, before it re-asserts that it is in fact totally disabled.

I'm using Win98SE with the unofficial SP3. Only the core updates and the optimizations feature. I'm also using the Livewire 3.0 CD from the Vogon's Driver Library.

Any ideas? A registry setting? A hardware config setting I haven't found? Different drivers? Does the CT4780 just straight up not support that, despite having pins? I went through a ton of different drivers on this PC. Should I just go with a fresh install? Looking for any advice you may have.

Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 1 of 5, by Jo22

Posted on 2020-11-08, 06:05

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Funny, "Ton" means tone (sound) in German.. 😉
(I'm sorry, I don't know how to help here.
The speaker is a TTL device (5v DC output), it's part of the system timer..)

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 2 of 5, by Namrok

Posted on 2020-11-08, 06:13

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I guess I should be more clear.

I can, and have, hooked up the case's PC Speaker to the motherboard and get all the beeps and boops. But those wake up the baby. I'm hoping to route it through the Sound Blaster Live instead, so that it can actually be controlled by a mixer, and go through my headphones.

Reply 3 of 5, by Namrok

Posted on 2020-11-10, 01:08

Namrok Offline

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Well, doing all the research I can, I can't see that I'm doing anything obviously wrong. I may dick around with a clean install of Win98 and SBLive drivers at some point. Perhaps the CT 4780, being an OEM card just doesn't support it, despite having pins. For the time being, even though the PC I'm using is only powered by a K6-2+ 500, it can still muster the 2000-4000 cycles or so Dosbox needs for the average game so old it uses a PC Speaker. Like Might & Magic 1. So that's how I'm getting the "PC Speaker" to mix through my headphones.

Sort of defeats the purpose, but it's good enough to play the games I want to play for now.

Also, kind of incredible the latest Dosbox build still runs on Win98SE.

Reply 4 of 5, by PARUS

Posted on 2020-11-23, 06:29

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Namrok, firstly start OS in pure DOS mode and run this utility: Multichannel DOS mixer for DOS sound builds v0.49 for Live, v1.01 for Audigy - find there PC spk channel and enable it. If you'll get sound then insert another 'test' HDD, install fresh 98 system without any updates and try Creative's Windows driver(s) again. Try different versions.
You can also try to enable PC spk channel via DOS mixer utility in Windows environment. But for test only. It is not correct in fact and can corrupt Windows mixer's proper work.
If you don't get PC spk channel sound even in DOS mode then check pins, which are, polarity... try another Live! card.

Reply 5 of 5, by Namrok

Posted on 2020-12-03, 23:43

Namrok Offline

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PARUS, I almost missed your reply, but I saw it today, and tried your utility when I got home. Worked like a charm. Very easy to use. Added a line to my autoexec.cfg, after the sbeinit.com call, that loads the config file I dumped, and edited to have BEEP set to 50. Windows still has the PC Speaker disabled, but if I'm playing DOS games old enough to use it, I boot straight into DOS and it works fine there. One day when I have the time to spare, I may try a fresh Windows installation, set up your mixer, and then install all the drivers. But that day may be far off.

So thanks a ton.

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