Ensoniq AudioPCI (and later Creative ones) need MS EMM386 to work under DOS (other EMM386 may not work correctly with it).
There's actually another hidden requirement for AudioPCI's DOS TSR, that your system must have enough free area in the first 4MB of system memory.
When I tried using an ES1370 on a newer board running MS-DOS 7.1, with MS EMM386 loaded, it complained about that and refused to load, much to my surprise.
But I think if you're running games from a Windows 9x DOS box it should work regardless provided the Legacy part of the VxD driver is installed correctly.
I think both Ensoniq and Creative DOS TSR should work with these sound cards. I also had an ES1371 that worked with both TSRs, on an old compatible system. Should note that:
- Ensoniq TSR only supports up to SBPro. Creative TSR supports SB16.
- Not thoroughly tested but according to some info, only Ensoniq TSR is SoundScape compatible. Creative TSR does not support SoundScape.
- FM/Midi both behave similarly with Ensoniq and Creative TSR. FM is emulated from ECW wavetable which sounds very different.