zconnect wrote on 2022-08-23, 02:08:

I've been trying for weeks to get this working in pure DOS. I followed many guides, read many threads on here and tried many drivers, but absolutely none have worked. The closest I get is with these drivers. They're the only one that actually appear to fully work, sbeset and all, but when I run the sbego.exe diagnostics it says "is sb16 emulation enabled ???" and quits out, and all games I try just act like it doesn't exist.
sbeinit is loaded and says it's working fine, the set command shows the proper parameters I need, but when I put them in games I get... nothing. I've tried setting the IRQs it uses to legacy ISA in the bios, but it doesn't appear to do anything. My motherboard is an AOpen AX6BC with a 440BX chipset, and I use this DOS mode setup (I have also tried it in vanilla DOS mode from the shutdown menu, it gives me the exact same problem) and it works perfectly fine in Windows. Normally I'd just use an ISA card but I also have a PAS16 in this system and that as well as its voltage blaster takes up both ISA slots, and I wanted to have midi as well. The PAS16 is disabled in Windows so it doesn't take up any resources and it has no driver installed in DOS so it's not taking any resources there either. Autoexec at https://pastebin.com/tVXGRRVm

Have you tried with the PAS16 physically removed from the system (you can probably leave the voltage blaster in) ?

Additionally, wouldn't it be more practical to replace the PAS16 with an SB16 (or AWE32/SB32//AWE64), foregoing the need for both the voltage blaster and the SB Live's SB16 emulation ?

darry wrote on 2022-08-23, 02:29:

zconnect wrote on 2022-08-23, 02:08:

I've been trying for weeks to get this working in pure DOS. I followed many guides, read many threads on here and tried many drivers, but absolutely none have worked. The closest I get is with these drivers. They're the only one that actually appear to fully work, sbeset and all, but when I run the sbego.exe diagnostics it says "is sb16 emulation enabled ???" and quits out, and all games I try just act like it doesn't exist.
sbeinit is loaded and says it's working fine, the set command shows the proper parameters I need, but when I put them in games I get... nothing. I've tried setting the IRQs it uses to legacy ISA in the bios, but it doesn't appear to do anything. My motherboard is an AOpen AX6BC with a 440BX chipset, and I use this DOS mode setup (I have also tried it in vanilla DOS mode from the shutdown menu, it gives me the exact same problem) and it works perfectly fine in Windows. Normally I'd just use an ISA card but I also have a PAS16 in this system and that as well as its voltage blaster takes up both ISA slots, and I wanted to have midi as well. The PAS16 is disabled in Windows so it doesn't take up any resources and it has no driver installed in DOS so it's not taking any resources there either. Autoexec at https://pastebin.com/tVXGRRVm

Have you tried with the PAS16 physically removed from the system (you can probably leave the voltage blaster in) ?

Additionally, wouldn't it be more practical to replace the PAS16 with an SB16 (or AWE32/SB32//AWE64), foregoing the need for both the voltage blaster and the SB Live's SB16 emulation ?

I don't really like all the bugs in the soundblaster stuff such as hanging note bugs, etc, and awe32s go for over $220 CAD here, same with awe64 golds, though awe64 values are pretty cheap I hear bad things about them. Pretty much any ISA sound blaster with the least bugs goes for crazy prices. The PAS16 is just really good at pretty much everything I need, without any of the bugs.

Removing the PAS16 provides no changes.

Do you have another ISA sound card? Also, if you still want to run the PAS16 and another ISA card, you could rather splice in the the -5V at the ATX power connector to get rid of the voltage blaster.

Do you know the real IRQ your motherboard is assigning to your SB Live?

If you do check if your CTSYN.ini file has the appropriate value in the line PCIIRQ

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-08-23, 03:02:

Do you have another ISA sound card? Also, if you still want to run the PAS16 and another ISA card, you could rather splice in the the -5V at the ATX power connector to get rid of the voltage blaster.

The only adapter I can get that does this is only compatible with AT boards.

zconnect wrote on 2022-08-23, 02:58:

I don't really like all the bugs in the soundblaster stuff such as hanging note bugs, etc, and awe32s go for over $220 CAD here, same with awe64 golds, though awe64 values are pretty cheap I hear bad things about them. Pretty much any ISA sound blaster with the least bugs goes for crazy prices. The PAS16 is just really good at pretty much everything I need, without any of the bugs.

Removing the PAS16 provides no changes.

AWE64 cards doesn't have the infamous hanging note bug nor the single-cycle DMA clicking bug. I have the CT4520 and works quite well despite having a lot of integration, the things that I didn't like were CQM FM synth and MPU-401 stuttering with some titles (especially Build-based games), but I pair it with another ISA sound card that has real OPL3 chip as a workaround.

More info here: Sound Blaster 16 Bugs and Deficiencies Summary

Also, from what I read, the PAS16 also suffers from the hanging note bug.

zconnect wrote on 2022-12-23, 07:34:

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-08-23, 03:02:

Do you have another ISA sound card? Also, if you still want to run the PAS16 and another ISA card, you could rather splice in the the -5V at the ATX power connector to get rid of the voltage blaster.

The only adapter I can get that does this is only compatible with AT boards.

I remember someone on eBay selling a 24-pin to 20-pin adapter with -12v to -5v converter years ago, but the seller eventually disappeared.

Perhaps this could help once it's available: New ATX negative 5v (-5v) solution just dropped