I guess this is the T5710 ? I was investigating this here Re: VIASBCFG - VIA SBPro configuration tool for VIA VT8231 & VT82C686/A/B chipsets (v0.12d)
Do you need VIASBCFG for DOS ? Or does your BIOS have options for SB emulation ?

I have "pure" WinME (without DOS mode) installed on my T5710 so I couldn't try this, but my impression is that the older .vxd drivers do utilize the "native" SB Pro compatibility rather than using Windows' builtin one (i.e. sbemul.sys which just doesn't have FM support, but does have MPU401 support ).

so:
1. Try to find the older Vinyl VXD drivers for Windows 95 -- I remember they were easy to find online. They should contain the file "VIAFM.DRV", VIAWAVE.DRV, etc. among others. Googling for that should help. If the driver you find doesn't contain these files but rather contains .sys files , it is a newer WDM driver which will not help.
2. If you have the option in the BIOS, enable the Sound Blaster Pro compatibility. If you don't have the option, you need to add VIASBCFG in your autoexec.bat
3. As far as I know, there is no need for the VIAFMTSR, since it is included in VIAFM.DRV .

Note: make a backup before trying the VxD drivers. My installation got corrupted thought it may have been my fault due to experimenting rather than the drivers.

Let me know how it goes!

Yes, it's the same thin client. Mine is the T5510 (800 Mhz Transmeta), but it's the same thing as the T5710. I spent the better part of a day sorting out all of the drivers and resources before I had a working system. Overall it's quite nice, albeit slightly underpowered. I wish I had the expansion bay for a better sound card.

I was hoping to use DOSBox to workaround the Adlib issue, but the CPU is way too slow for this. I also tried VDMSound with Adlib emulation at the lowest sample rate, but this too was too much for the CPU. I wish there was a better solution for basic Adlib OPL driver emulation in Windows 98 for slower CPUs.

I'll try the VXD drivers, thank you.

The latest 7.00b WDM drivers are crackly when the sound output is too loud (such as the Windows startup sound). I found version 5.80, which doesn't have this issue with the WDM driver. But the VXD driver causes the system to lock up after it boots into Windows. Is this the same problem you had?

I think it was bluescreening at startup, not freezing, and also it was not on the audio drivers.
But then I made the mistake of using system restore and completely destroyed it 😀
Note that I could not load VIASBCFG before WinME, so I didn't expect it to work in the first place. If at some point I reinstall Win9x I will try again.

I rebooted a couple of times and now the system boots, and the sound card is recognized, but there is no longer any sound in Windows. I'm not sure what's going on with this.

I also found that if I load the DOS drivers before Windows, then several other device drivers will load and I have full digital and FM sound for DOS games (within Windows), but there is still no sound from Windows programs.

This setup may not be correct, as the setup installed the WDM drivers automatically for Windows 98se, and I had to install the VXD drivers manually afterwards. Even though these appears to work with the DOS drivers as mentioned above (as it will then install additional drivers afterwards), installing the VXD driver in this way did not also install the DOS drivers. So something may be incomplete or missing when using this method.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-04-25, 16:09:

I also found that if I load the DOS drivers before Windows, then several other device drivers will load and I have full digital and FM sound for DOS games (within Windows), but there is still no sound from Windows programs.

Do you mean Viafmtsr too? Or just viasbcfg ?

Both are loadeded. Viasbcfg and then viafmtsr.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-04-25, 15:17:

The latest 7.00b WDM drivers are crackly when the sound output is too loud (such as the Windows startup sound). I found version 5.80, which doesn't have this issue with the WDM driver. But the VXD driver causes the system to lock up after it boots into Windows. Is this the same problem you had?

Same happened here with vxd drivers, it's a pitty that it works good in DOS, but no suitable driver for w9x.

Just now I managed to make the VxD drivers working in win98SE.

(TL DR)
I tried the legacy driver here https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.driver ... erid=22125

By inf installation, and with VIASBCFG and VIAFMTSR in autoexec.bat, I got BSOD on running DOS games.

Then I run setup in the driver, it will add VIAUDIO to the autoexec.bat, but the driver in win98 won't recognize the device. I install the driver again through inf, and both FM and digital works, in win98 and in DOS too.

Conclusion: use the VxD driver by installing the win9x inf, and add VIAUDIO (included in DOS folder in the driver) to the autoexec bat after the VIAFMTSR line.

More info: when VIAFMTSR is removed from autoexec, win98 still have sound, including FM and digital, but DOS have successful message but no sound. When VIAUDIO is not present in autoexec, DOS sound is working but you probably get a BSOD in win98.
VIAUDIO is essential for FM in win98 but it's useless in DOS. VIAFMTSR is essential in DOS but probably cleared out from memory after win98 boot. Just use them both.
VIASBCFG is always needed as a BIOS equivalent switch.

I've put away my HP T5710 for months because it has no FM in win98, but now I'm quite excited that it's finally working 😁

For some reason VxD sound stopped working for me completely, after futzing with the drivers. This is fine, since I could never seem to get them to be stable for me.

My best guess is that the BIOS is allocating an IRQ or DMA that is conflicting with the legacy sound card features. The BIOS on my thin client has no way of reserving these, so I have no way of knowing for sure.

About the IRQ, I choose only one IDE controller (primary, no secondary) to solve an IRQ conflict that I don't remember what. You may want try it too. It's in the settings tab of HDD controller, 'VIA bus master PCI ide controller', on device manager.

Also you may need totally uninstall previous sound drivers through the setup.exe and restart to try another. I found win98 sometimes has conflict of drivers, i.e. prompt for disk location for drv files that should be installed in Windows folder but actually not.

Bad news I just found the direct sound is broken, dxdiag shows no sound card and disables acceleration. The driver contains a direct sound emulation setting in device manager but already checked, has no effect by unchecking and checking again.
Now I have DOS FM and sound FX in win98, also system sound in 98, also 16bit win3.x games sound in 98 (simcity 2000 windows edition, the jungle book windows edition etc), but most games have no sound because they use direct sound (C&C95, RA95, Mame32plus etc.).
Guess there's still a long way to go then, I'll try more next time. It's put away again now. 🤣

I don't think I had an issue with DirectSound, but I didn't do a lot of testing, since it was generally unstable for me, before stopping altogether. I would need to reinstall Windows 98 to get it working again, I think. No amount of driver removal (even using Setup, which I agree is necessary), could make it work again after whatever I did broke it.

The thing that was most promising of all, if I remember correctly, was that I was able to get working Adlib sound working in a Windows 98 DOSbox. This is a very high bar, in my mind, for 9x driver compatibility. Because it allows not only games with Sound Blaster compatibility to work, but also those which only have exclusively Adlib sound.

I suspect that there is a way to make this card stable, with the proper configuration. I still think that it may require reserving resources at the BIOS level though. I wasn't able to achieve stability by simply reserving them from within the Windows Device Manager.

The direct sound worked when I use the WDM driver, it happened yesterday when I change the drivers.
Not sure about other things but I suggest to use the Symantec Ghost to backup your fresh win98 right after installation. I always did that for my laptops and rigs, and I'll backup another image when every driver is done.