VOGONS


First post, by Divarin

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Hi guys I'm looking for some sound-card related help. I have a system with this motherboard: MSI K7T Pro2-A (https://soggi.org/motherboards/msi/K7T-Pro2-A.htm)

For reference I'm running Windows 98se

It has onboard sound which does okay but doesn't have adlib. So you can play midi music in windows fine but adlib sound in dos games does not work. The sound effects work but not the music (or no sound at all from adlib only games)

I purchased a used Sound Blaster Live CT4830 and tracked down the correct drivers for that card from the vogons driver library (https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=804).

I went into cmos setup and disabled the onboard sound.

If the onboard card is disabled in the bios but the windows driver for it is still in device manager (and enabled) then after installing the SB live's driver, the SB live card doesn't work (yellow ! in device manager)

If I then remove the onboard card's driver, on reboot windows detects the device (even though it's disabled in the bios) and reinstalls the driver.
If I disable the driver for the onboard card in windows then the system freezes (after reboot).

So what appears to be happening is that the onboard card is not really disabled.
I have confirmed this: With the SB live removed from the system, I disabled the onboard sound in cmos setup and booted windows, sound is still working and the device is *not* showing a yellow ! in device manager.

Two questions:
1) Is there maybe another driver for the on-board device that will enable adlib or is there another way to get adlib out of it
2) Is there a way to disable the on-board device so that it's not conflicting with the SB live

EDIT: I found another option in the cmos menus under advanced chipset features: OnChip Sound. Can be either "Auto" or "Disabled". After changing to disabled sound stopped working in windows and no longer shows up in device manager. However after re-installing the SB live it doesn't seem to be detected and even manually adding the driver it doesn't work.

Reply 2 of 14, by Divarin

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Are you talking about the "vdmsound" utility? I tried that and it doesn't work. Well okay it enabled some (choppy) music in wolfenstein 3d but then when I tried other dos games (such as doom) it just made loud noises.
Or are you talking about something else?

Reply 3 of 14, by Divarin

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I have been playing around more with the SB Live card now that I found the setting to disable "OnChip Sound". If I moved the card to a different PCI slot then windows detected it and installed drivers but as soon as the drivers install the system hangs. On reboot it's not working and if I try to reinstall drivers it hangs again.

Reply 4 of 14, by fjardest

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Divarin wrote on 2023-10-16, 10:02:

Are you talking about the "vdmsound" utility? I tried that and it doesn't work. Well okay it enabled some (choppy) music in wolfenstein 3d but then when I tried other dos games (such as doom) it just made loud noises.
Or are you talking about something else?

No, vxd drivers instead of wdm drivers.
From https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1363 in folder A1u370b\74\WIN9X

Reply 5 of 14, by Divarin

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fjardest wrote on 2023-10-16, 12:45:
Divarin wrote on 2023-10-16, 10:02:

Are you talking about the "vdmsound" utility? I tried that and it doesn't work. Well okay it enabled some (choppy) music in wolfenstein 3d but then when I tried other dos games (such as doom) it just made loud noises.
Or are you talking about something else?

No, vxd drivers instead of wdm drivers.
From https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1363 in folder A1u370b\74\WIN9X

Okay I'll give that a shot and let you know, thanks.

Reply 9 of 14, by Divarin

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fjardest wrote on 2023-10-16, 22:52:
Divarin wrote on 2023-10-16, 18:53:

nope unfortunately windows says that driver is not compatible with this card. (the on-board device)

Try with A1u370b/68/WIN9X

I tried that as well.

Reply 10 of 14, by Divarin

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Babasha wrote on 2023-10-16, 19:16:

There are two FM OPL3 “enablers” - vendor original VIAFMTSR and homebrew VIASBCFG. Did you try first and second?

I haven't come across either of those. What I found was VDMSOUND (Win9x + VDMSound **ALPHA**)

I just found and tried VIAFMTSR that didn't work.
Edit: Located and tried VIASBCFG that didn't work either.
Both did have the effect of freezing up the computer after a few minutes, but otherwise no FM sound.

Last edited by Divarin on 2023-10-17, 10:56. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 11 of 14, by Babasha

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Divarin wrote on 2023-10-17, 10:42:
Babasha wrote on 2023-10-16, 19:16:

There are two FM OPL3 “enablers” - vendor original VIAFMTSR and homebrew VIASBCFG. Did you try first and second?

I haven't come across either of those. What I found was VDMSOUND (Win9x + VDMSound **ALPHA**)

I just found and tried VIAFMTSR that didn't work. Will look for VIASBCFG.

VDMSOUND its a Win application
VIAFMTSR and VIASBCFG are DOS application - just try to enable OPL3 in (WIN)DOS and understand does it works?

Need help? Begin with photo and model of your hardware 😉

Reply 12 of 14, by fjardest

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Divarin wrote on 2023-10-17, 10:32:
fjardest wrote on 2023-10-16, 22:52:
Divarin wrote on 2023-10-16, 18:53:

nope unfortunately windows says that driver is not compatible with this card. (the on-board device)

Try with A1u370b/68/WIN9X

I tried that as well.

What are the PCI vendor and device ids ?

Reply 13 of 14, by Divarin

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Babasha wrote on 2023-10-17, 10:56:
Divarin wrote on 2023-10-17, 10:42:
Babasha wrote on 2023-10-16, 19:16:

There are two FM OPL3 “enablers” - vendor original VIAFMTSR and homebrew VIASBCFG. Did you try first and second?

I haven't come across either of those. What I found was VDMSOUND (Win9x + VDMSound **ALPHA**)

I just found and tried VIAFMTSR that didn't work. Will look for VIASBCFG.

VDMSOUND its a Win application
VIAFMTSR and VIASBCFG are DOS application - just try to enable OPL3 in (WIN)DOS and understand does it works?

Yeah that's what I just tried before seeing your response. I loaded the computer up in dos mode and tried VIAFMTSR and there is now fm sound!

Reply 14 of 14, by leonardo

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Divarin wrote on 2023-10-15, 10:58:
Hi guys I'm looking for some sound-card related help. I have a system with this motherboard: MSI K7T Pro2-A (https://soggi.org/ […]
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Hi guys I'm looking for some sound-card related help. I have a system with this motherboard: MSI K7T Pro2-A (https://soggi.org/motherboards/msi/K7T-Pro2-A.htm)

For reference I'm running Windows 98se

It has onboard sound which does okay but doesn't have adlib. So you can play midi music in windows fine but adlib sound in dos games does not work. The sound effects work but not the music (or no sound at all from adlib only games)

I purchased a used Sound Blaster Live CT4830 and tracked down the correct drivers for that card from the vogons driver library (https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=804).

I went into cmos setup and disabled the onboard sound.

If the onboard card is disabled in the bios but the windows driver for it is still in device manager (and enabled) then after installing the SB live's driver, the SB live card doesn't work (yellow ! in device manager)

If I then remove the onboard card's driver, on reboot windows detects the device (even though it's disabled in the bios) and reinstalls the driver.
If I disable the driver for the onboard card in windows then the system freezes (after reboot).

So what appears to be happening is that the onboard card is not really disabled.
I have confirmed this: With the SB live removed from the system, I disabled the onboard sound in cmos setup and booted windows, sound is still working and the device is *not* showing a yellow ! in device manager.

Two questions:
1) Is there maybe another driver for the on-board device that will enable adlib or is there another way to get adlib out of it
2) Is there a way to disable the on-board device so that it's not conflicting with the SB live

EDIT: I found another option in the cmos menus under advanced chipset features: OnChip Sound. Can be either "Auto" or "Disabled". After changing to disabled sound stopped working in windows and no longer shows up in device manager. However after re-installing the SB live it doesn't seem to be detected and even manually adding the driver it doesn't work.

I had a somewhat similar case to yours, where I would get this ghost- internal joystick device and conflict between it and the one for my actual sound card in Windows Device Manager. This was with Windows 95, though and the external sound card was not a SBLive!

What I found out I had to do was to apply different BIOS settings during installation (Plug & Play OS: Enabled/Disabled) and launch Windows installation with a special switch to prevent it from determining Plug&Play hardware. After installation was completed and no conflicting internal hardware was detected (but there would be problems with the installed hardware), I would swap the BIOS settings back again. This would allow the sound card to work, and Windows would not "find" the disabled hardware.

I don't remember if there is something equivalent to the /p-switch for set up with Win98SE, but I hope maybe there are some clues in there for you.

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.