Perhaps give Unisound a go.

kiacadp wrote on 2024-03-12, 02:00:

Perhaps give Unisound a go.

I might try that later, but that says it's for PnP cards, and according to this spreadsheet, the CT2800 isn't plug-and-play. Would that even work to begin with?

OpenRift wrote on 2024-03-12, 02:35:

kiacadp wrote on 2024-03-12, 02:00:

Perhaps give Unisound a go.

I might try that later, but that says it's for PnP cards, and according to this spreadsheet, the CT2800 isn't plug-and-play. Would that even work to begin with?

I've had great luck using Unisound on my CT2230, which is also a pre-PNP card. The Sound Blaster 16s can all be software configured, the older ones just don't conform to the PNP standard.

kiacadp wrote on 2024-03-12, 02:00:

Perhaps give Unisound a go.

Okay so I finally got around to testing Unisound, got it installed in my autoexec.bat. At first it was working fine, but then I went to reboot again after cleaning up my autoexec.bat some more, and it went right back to doing the same crap with Doom. Sound in Tyrian 2000 seems to work now, but for some reason it was starting to have slowdown, both with video and with the music, for some reason. So I guess that's not it, then?

Anyone got any other suggestions?

What are the other hw specs?
Any custom settings to memory timing or Isa bus clock?

Pickle wrote on 2024-03-19, 15:06:

What are the other hw specs?
Any custom settings to memory timing or Isa bus clock?

I haven't touched anything regarding memory timing or ISA bus clock.

Slot 1 Pentium 1000Mhz, 100MhzFSB
Sound Blaster Live! Value (for Windows games) + Sound Blaster Vibra16S CT2800 (for DOS games), connected together through line-out to line-in, works fine in Windows, configured to (otherwise) work in DOS via PARUS's MultiChannel DOS Mixer. And before you ask, yes, I tried using just the SBV16 without running the extra mixer and plugging my speakers directly into it, and it's still having the same problems.
128MB RAM
3dfx Velocity 100 (aka Voodoo 3 1000, second TMU enabled in the registry)
12GB HDD

Im wondering if your sb16 is sharing an irq. But still look around if there is an option for the isa bus the options look clk/4 and other numbers.
any other cards? maybe try with the live card removed. When booting on the second screen sometime (the more recent boards) display the cards and irq assigned. I would look for this and see if anything is sharing the irq.
Does the bios have a pnpos option? If set to yes it should let windows set the resources then in pure dos the set blaster/unisound should just have to match.
Does the bios have any options to reserve irq/dma for isa? I have a socket 7 that i reserve the irq/dma for my awe64. This should also prevent resource sharing.

Pickle wrote on 2024-03-20, 21:45:

Im wondering if your sb16 is sharing an irq. But still look around if there is an option for the isa bus the options look clk/4 […]
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Im wondering if your sb16 is sharing an irq. But still look around if there is an option for the isa bus the options look clk/4 and other numbers.
any other cards? maybe try with the live card removed. When booting on the second screen sometime (the more recent boards) display the cards and irq assigned. I would look for this and see if anything is sharing the irq.
Does the bios have a pnpos option? If set to yes it should let windows set the resources then in pure dos the set blaster/unisound should just have to match.
Does the bios have any options to reserve irq/dma for isa? I have a socket 7 that i reserve the irq/dma for my awe64. This should also prevent resource sharing.

So I did some messing around with the BIOS. I already had Plug & Play BIOS enabled, so that wasn't the problem. I do also have a Linksys LNE100TX ethernet card as well, if that matters.

I did go to the BIOS and enabled a reservation for IRQ5, which my SB16 uses, and noticed this:

Apparently it's in conflict with something? Windows doesn't seem to think so, as it doesn't report any conflicts for IRQ5 for the SB16 in the device manager. I set my Sound Blaster Live!'s SB16 emulation driver to run at IRQ7, in DOS mode, so I know it's not conflicting with that. Not really sure what else it would be. I also set it and tested it anyway just to see, and still got the same result.

Sadly the boot-up diagnostics screen doesn't show any info about cards and IRQs, just memory and storage devices. On occasion, I do get a beep code on start-up (before it even reaches the BIOS diagnostics screen), one long beep followed by three short beeps. Don't know if that's related or if it's something else.

is your parallel port enabled? thats the usual suspect using irq 5 or 7.
the other option is a device on the motherboard itself like the ide controller or builtin sound. You probably could boot into windows and look through device manager to find it.
another option is checkit or some other dos diagnotics software that list irq devices.

Pickle wrote on 2024-03-21, 00:09:

is your parallel port enabled? thats the usual suspect using irq 5 or 7.
the other option is a device on the motherboard itself like the ide controller or builtin sound. You probably could boot into windows and look through device manager to find it.
another option is checkit or some other dos diagnotics software that list irq devices.

I do have LPT1 set to IRQ 7 in the device manager, though I don't even know if it's being initialized in DOS mode (no mention of it in DOS mode's AUTOEXEC.BAT). Even then, that would be conflicting with the Sound Blaster Live!, so it's shouldn't be affecting the SB16, right?

I think the basic approach you need to take is try to disable or remove one thing at a time until its working, that might be mean you get all the way with just the video card and the sb16.
but then once it working you can bring each part back one at a time and hopefully in the end have everything happy with each other.