I think the same and agree with the others here.
That card is an 8-bit Sound Blaster compatible, really.
The Toptek chip in the upper left corner is just an 8051 compatible or similar microcontroller, as used by the real Sound Blaster 2 or some Aztech cards.
The reason it has a 16-Bit ISA connector is probably to allow for higher value IRQ/DMA numbers (AT PCs and up) and/or for that Mitsumi (?) CD-ROM interface (not IDE compatible, different pinout).
If you need drivers, you can download the Creative ones at Vogons drivers site.
I did this with my clone cards and it worked fine.
Just keep in mind that these drivers are rarely needed.
The most important one is an alternative to sound.com, which was part of the AdLib diskette.
A few games uses this as some sort of MIDI driver, to get music out of the OPL2 (YM3812).
Other than that, there's no real drivers needed. It's fully 8-Bit Sound Blaster compatible and games know to handle that one all on their own.
The advantage of SB 2.x compatibles is, that they support all the awkward DMA modes and compression types of the original Sound Blaster 1.0.
They also support auto-init DMA, as introduced by the firmware of the Sound Blaster 1.5.
The latter was so popular, I believe, that Creative sold an 1.5 firmware upgrade to 1.0 owners for a short moment in time (= new microcontroller or re-flashing of old one).
What SB 2.0 introduced over 1.5 was a better PCB design (less noise) and a higher sampling rate (44100 mono).
So unless 44,1 KHz sampling rate are needed, Windows 3.1x's Sound Blaster 1.5 driver will do fine.
It also is a bit less strict/more generic than Creative's official SB 2.0 driver, maybe.
Btw, the highest evolved 8-Bit model was the MediaVision Thunderboard, maybe. It also had clean audio.
It was *merely *SB 1.5 compatible, but did hide its real DSP revision behind the official one.
If the DSP was checked twice in a row, the Thunderboard mentioned its real version number, if I remember correctly.
So Thunderboard aware applications could make use of extra features (44,1 KHz samoling rate, some new compression types etc).
Anyway, I'm getting a bit off-topic again. 😅
Another program to test is PC GEOS 2.0 or higher (Geoworks Ensemble, Breadbox Ensemble etc).
It also supports 8-Bit soundcards..
PS: There also was a Sound Blaster 2.5 and a Sound Blaster Pro 4.0. 😋
- Both sold by CPS under agreement with Creative.
They were an rebadged Aztech SoundGalaxy NX II and Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro Extra, respectively.
Edit: Please don't get me wrong. I didn't mean to say the card is unspectacular or whatsoever. Rather the contrary.
An 8-Bit Sound Blaster is very compatible to classic games and doesn't cause nearly as much trouble as newer models.
Sounds effects used to be recorded at 11 KHz or 22 KHz, anyway, which the card can handle perfectly fine.
It also doesn't have "clicking sound" issues, like SB16 era cards often have.
Then, there's the volume balance between DAC/OPL chip.
8-Bit Sound Blasters had a different balance compared to later models.
It could be that this card is faithful here (if not, some games allow setting a volume for music/sfx).
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