retrogamerguy1997 wrote on 2021-04-15, 11:54:

if that's the case, then I might as well start looking for other cards on ebay. There's a listing for the AOPEN AW744L II but I don't know what the "no GSP" in the title means. It's a tiny bit more than I want to spend on a sound card, but philscomputerlab says it's a good card. then again, it depends on the motherboard chipset (my motherboard has the 440BX).

That is my listing.

"no GSP" means no Global Shipping Program" as-in that listing is not using the eBay Global Shipping Program for international shipments.

440BX will support DDMA (second best option for those cards for DOS support) and if your board has the SB-Link / PC-PCI header that card can have the header added and then it can act just like an ISA card.

That being said, if your motherboard has the SB-Link / PC-PCI header and you don't feel confident soldering, then you can just get a different YMF7x4 (724, 744, or 754) based card that already includes the header.

There is also the option of me adding the header to an AOPEN card for a small upcharge.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-04-15, 14:07:

440BX will support DDMA (second best option for those cards for DOS support) and if your board has the SB-Link / PC-PCI header t […]
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retrogamerguy1997 wrote on 2021-04-15, 11:54:

if that's the case, then I might as well start looking for other cards on ebay. There's a listing for the AOPEN AW744L II but I don't know what the "no GSP" in the title means. It's a tiny bit more than I want to spend on a sound card, but philscomputerlab says it's a good card. then again, it depends on the motherboard chipset (my motherboard has the 440BX).

440BX will support DDMA (second best option for those cards for DOS support) and if your board has the SB-Link / PC-PCI header that card can have the header added and then it can act just like an ISA card.

That being said, if your motherboard has the SB-Link / PC-PCI header and you don't feel confident soldering, then you can just get a different YMF7x4 (724, 744, or 754) based card that already includes the header.

There is also the option of me adding the header to an AOPEN card for a small upcharge.

I don't think the Abit BH6 includes that header.

EDIT: nvm the bh6 does have it according to the manual, but I've already ordered the card. Should I just cancel it? how much extra would it cost?

Don't cancel the order. I have one that I already added the header to. I think I know where that specific card is. Not sure if I already made a cable for it or not.

It was the first one I modded and I accidentally touched the plastic on the one capcitor with my soldering iron so there is a tiny melted spot on the capacitor plastic. If that doesn't bother you, I'll send you that one. If so, I'll mod another one.

I'll test and make sure it works before I send it. Can you PM me your eBay username so I know who to send it to?

that sounds a little scary, but if the card works and the capacitor isn't actually damaged or effected then I'm okay with that. I pmed you my ebay name

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-04-15, 14:07:

That is my listing.

Well I'll be. Thanks for the card. If you don't mind me asking, what's the story behind the seemingly endless supply of them?

Pierre32 wrote on 2021-04-16, 02:06:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-04-15, 14:07:

That is my listing.

Well I'll be. Thanks for the card. If you don't mind me asking, what's the story behind the seemingly endless supply of them?

Thank you and you are very welcome!

I got them from a recycler that was selling them. Bought one large box to make sure they were what I thought they were and then purchased all the rest of them.

When the delivery truck came, it was completely stuffed with huge boxes filled with these cards. I had around 1,400 of them to start. Now I am down to around 150.

Wow, well done. A win for you and the retro scene!

Pierre32 wrote on 2021-04-16, 06:51:

Wow, well done. A win for you and the retro scene!

Thanks. It has been quite the ride, that is for sure.

I sent Phil the card he did a review on and then later on I sent him a care package after he did the review with a couple more cards and some other goodies as a thank you.

That first weekend after he did the review I sold almost 100 cards. I was scrambling for boxes and packing material. I had to get a large mail cart at the post office to take them all inside at once.

After a few weeks of rounding up random boxes, etc. I went looking for and started purchasing proper sized boxes so it would be a lot easier to ship them out.

this may help, i had trouble with the sound blaster live install on win98, i have a ct4620 and a ct4760 the problems you describe sound like an irq conflict,
after installing win drivers does it hang, or on reboot when installing dos/sb16 driver does it bsod, this is a problem i had at first,

i would suggest getting a liveware 3.0 disc to install if you dont already have.
ideally you want to set the irq's in your bios for which ever pci slot your card is in to irq5 or irq7 (if it lets you), these irq's may be used by other MB features such as usb, ide controller .etc, which is the problem i had, i had to change the irq address in win98(its not always possible), i'd also disable other things like parallel, serial,com,ethernet ports incase they conflict, just until you get things installed,

try installing just the windows drivers without dos/sb16 drivers and see how you go, if it works you know its the dos drivers/irq thats conflicting,
if you still get the problem with just windows drivers, something on your motherboard is using the same irq/ address, you will have to uninstall sound drivers,
go into device manager to see what is using the same irq/address as you sound card and change it in the settings for the sound card or conflicting device,
this should get you going in win98

but honestly for dos i think this is the wrong card for your MB, as i expect you will run into the same problems as me

i have an old socket 7 asus sp97-v from 1997/98, it has 4 pci slots and 2 isa, i have tried both my sound blaster live pci cards as well as a cmedia cmi8738 pci and managed to get them installed in win98 and dos, though i did have to change some irq addresses in win 98 as there were a couple of conflicts and the system would show flags in device manager or bsod and restart on installing sb16 dos drivers,

problem i have is that the irq's assigned to the pci slots are from irq11 upwards,
setup in dos games like doom/heretic dont allow you to select irq's that high (so no sound)
it seems the lower irqs like 3,5,7 .etc (which is ideally what you want to use), are reserved for the ISA slots,
meaning i need an ISA sound card to have working sound in dos games, since your board is from the same era when ISA sound cards were the standard, i suspect you will have the same problem, my live card works fine in 98 but for dos games on this motherboard its no good,

so dont rule your sound blaster out as broken, they can be a real faff to get working, i first gave up and went back to the cmi8738 which is less of a faff but still a faff nonetheless, problem with this card is i have about 6 or 7 different driver packages and only one works fully and installs all the drivers with working control panel ,
couldnt remember which one it was, gave up and went back to the sound blaster which i then got working!

im using my live cards (tried both) on a gigabyte g31m-es2l, i had to set the first pci slot (empty) to irq5 and the second pci slot (with SB live card)to irq 7 just to get drivers installed without getting a BSOD (some MB bios dont allow you to set irq's to pci slots, in this case dont expect it to work),
i'm pretty sure it bsod on this board when installing dos drivers even tho this ICH7 chipset doesnt support dos sound

you mentioned a cap that had been bent over, when this happens a connection is usually broken inside (best replace cap if you can) if the card was broken because of that, it would probably still install but just not play sound.

recently my dads old pc blew up, psu burnt out/surged and blew out a trace on the MB (foxconn G41+win7), it burnt the coating off the board and the copper trace underneath was gone? i'd never seen that before! i scratched it back and bridged it with a blob of solder and the pc powered up and was usable, tho the onboard sound was fried it did still install, (shows some parts are pretty resilient kind of)

i suggested a usb sound device, he picked up a startech icusbaudio7 which is also win98 compatible, i've found this partially works with a dos window in 98 you can get sound effects but no music, i wasnt expecting anything from actual dos but had to try, i thought i might at least get sound effects, maybe someone could get this fully working for
use on newer motherboards maybe not from dos but at least in win98. would be interesting!

I have the same card, it is a Dell OEM and finding VxD drivers for that is very hard. However, I will help you 😀

http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=7 … menustate=42,35

Download this image and burn it onto a CD or load it with Daemon Tools.

You can try to just run the setup program on the CD and it might just work (my memory fails me on this point) BUT if it does not install the drivers go to Control Panel, remove all the drivers for your card there, then do a scan and when it asks you for drivers point it to OEMEMU.INF on the CD.

Enjoy.