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The Legacy Card of Choice...?

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First post, by WIN-Jiggi

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Well I'm getting real into the vintage gaming again, (hey the sound and music is the half of it!) and I've been doing some research...

I just pulled out a CT4170 outta this broken machine and it's running in my other dos box, haven't really tried it in DOS gaming yet, still configuring the os' for the system.

But I've been looking at the wiki and some sb16 museums and even read a thread here on which Sound card to use for the old dos vintage gaming.

Here's the thread to be exact: Click Here

So I got a big idea on how the best type of sound card would work for the legacy dos games. Which sounds like the Sound Blaster 16 of course, but also too bad that the awe64 wasn't going to work, cuz it sounded quite nice.

But anywho.. There are several different sb16 models, in which case there is a CT2980 that someone mentioned in the thread above. Then I have a spare CT2504 card that worked pretty nice (Although it did lag up the memory just slightly) and now I have this CT4170 card that has a VibraXV chipset on it or something.

So do these models actually differ in overall performance and quality of the actuall technology of the sound produce in these applications? specifically in games???

Your input would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Win-Jiggi

Reply 1 of 23, by 5u3

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Couldn't find much about that Vibra16s (CT2504), but the other two seem to be quite good for oldskool DOS sound. Most likely they're OEM cards for brand manufacturers (since their numbers don't show up on Creative's product list), basically they should be the same as the regular SB16PnP cards. If you have the possibility to post pictures of your cards, we probably could tell you more about their features.

Reply 2 of 23, by WIN-Jiggi

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I'm not sure exactly where the system came from that had the CT4170, but it did have an HP Floppy drive and the case did kinda look like it was HP material.. but there's no logos or labels on the case itself.

Other than that. I know that sb16 model is hopping on eBay auctions. Here's a close up pic of one of em. Looks exactly like the card I pulled out:

69_1.JPG

The CT2504 is really old. It came out of my very first PC; a Acer Aspire series.. had a Cryix 60MHz processor with 16mb of SIMM RAM, onboard vga AT style without the AT keyboard but PS/2. It was a green mofo... very pretty back in it's day. Stood out nicely. Nowhere on this card has a big creative logo on it.. I actually pulled the number off the chipset.

The other one I got off the thread of course (the CT2980), and that's also hopping on eBay:

10_1_b.JPG

The thread I referenced did mention an ESS1668 sb16 compatible sound card.. which I do have an integrated one on one of these PC's laying around here but although it was nice in memory, I thought the sound was kind of weak.. the sound in Wolfenstein 3D sounded kind of distorded or high pitched frequency.. any thoughts?

Thanks for your help!

Win-Jiggi

Reply 4 of 23, by 5u3

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Guess what I just found among abandoned hardware? A CT4170 🤣 I couldn't resist comparing it to my other SoundBlasters. The result: works, but is not great. Like all SB ISA cards it's compatible to AdLib, SoundBlaster and SB16. The line-out is rather weak and although it is less noisy than my old SB16 ASP, it sounds cheesy, like a cheap transistor radio. I don't know whether this is because of the Vibra chipset or the amplifier on my CT4170 is somehow defective.
The CT2980 should perform better than that (I can't see much on the photo, but it seems to have a decent chipset with real Yamaha OPL3 and a WaveBlaster connector).

In general, it's not easy to find a SB that does well in all the old games. No SB card offers decent General MIDI sound without adding extra hardware. I would choose an AWE64 card in your situation, because it is the most versatile one and offers the best DAC sound quality.

Reply 5 of 23, by swaaye

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SB16 + daughtercard. Preferably a non-PNP SB16 to get rid of the need to work with Creative's DOS software. This would get you SB digital audio compatibility along with excellent MIDI if you can find a Roland (SCD10 or SCD15) or Yamaha DB. This was really the ultimate combo back in the day. It's single slot too, which is nice, and u don't have to configure anything for the DB cuz it works off the SB16's MPU-401 port.

Other nice way to go is just use DOSBOX or VDMSound and get a good softsynth, such as Yamaha SYXG50 or Roland Virtual Sound Canvas, or use a Creative card and play around with soundfonts.

Reply 6 of 23, by 5u3

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A classic SB16 + Roland/Yamaha wavetable daughterboard IS the ultimate solution, agreed, but getting hold of these for an acceptable price will be difficult.
Besides, the sound quality of the early "jumpered" SB16 cards is rather moderate. On my CT1750 the DAC lacks resolution and the mixer introduces all kinds of static noise, even with all the inputs and the onboard amplifier turned off.

Reply 7 of 23, by WIN-Jiggi

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5u3 wrote:

The line-out is rather weak and although it is less noisy than my old SB16 ASP, it sounds cheesy, like a cheap transistor radio

Well I'm kind of understanding what you're getting at here. Not for the same reason but at the same time I'm having difficulties managing this ... umm PnP I guess CT4170 card's IRQ's and DMA's. I cannot set these values on my own unless I force it somehow (which i don't know how) or if I reset the CMOS on the board for it to get a different IRQ and DMA.

I had to disable the parallel and Serial ports just to get the IRQ for the card at 5; it was on 9. But now I'm having a DMA conflict, the low and high channels are somehow sharing the ... Same Channel! Both at 1, even the high. Some games can't configure!!

5u3 wrote:

The CT2980 should perform better than that (I can't see much on the photo, but it seems to have a decent chipset with real Yamaha OPL3 and a WaveBlaster connector).

Ooh! See I didn't know that a certain chipset had to do with the best quality of sound for DOS, maybe even compatibility. Someone told me earlier in another forum off from this website about the Yamaha OPL3 card for DOS gaming, but I was kind of ... ummh not sure at the time because I thought SB16 was the major dos sound card!

5u3 wrote:

I would choose an AWE64 card in your situation, because it is the most versatile one and offers the best DAC sound quality

.

In the other thread that I posted on top of this thread by swaaye, who I see here posted on this thread as well, said that card is .. uhmm, not good, hehe. Because of setting up the ports and IRQ's. Is there perhaps a AWE64 that is not PnP?

swaaye wrote:

This would get you SB digital audio compatibility along with excellent MIDI if you can find a Roland (SCD10 or SCD15) or Yamaha DB. This was really the ultimate combo back in the day. It's single slot too, which is nice

Single Slot? Are you talking about having the game port on the same face plate of the card?

See I had no idea that the Yamahaa OPL3 or the Roland SCD10/15 was the sh*t back in them dos gaming days. Didn't have a clue. I've always used Creative products for my sound, even today. I have an Audigy 2 Platinum for my main system. Just thought everything was or had to be "Sound Blaster 16 Compatible" because that's what all the games look for pretty much...

Reply 8 of 23, by 5u3

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WIN-Jiggi wrote:

Well I'm kind of understanding what you're getting at here. Not for the same reason but at the same time I'm having difficulties managing this ... umm PnP I guess CT4170 card's IRQ's and DMA's. I cannot set these values on my own unless I force it somehow (which i don't know how) or if I reset the CMOS on the board for it to get a different IRQ and DMA.

Forcing the resources on a PnP SoundBlaster is possible and not really hard to do, but a somewhat long-winded operation: First make sure the BIOS assigns the right resources to the cards, then you'll have to do the same in Windows (rearrange resources so you'll get the standard values free for the SoundBlaster card). After that the Creative configuration program should pick the correct values itself. If it doesn't, they can be forced by editing the CTPNP.INI file.

WIN-Jiggi wrote:

But now I'm having a DMA conflict, the low and high channels are somehow sharing the ... Same Channel! Both at 1, even the high. Some games can't configure!!

I know that problem with the CT4170. For some reason it doesn't want to use high DMA channels, only 0, 1 and 3 are possible. Another reason why this card is not the best choice.

WIN-Jiggi wrote:

Ooh! See I didn't know that a certain chipset had to do with the best quality of sound for DOS, maybe even compatibility. Someone told me earlier in another forum off from this website about the Yamaha OPL3 card for DOS gaming, but I was kind of ... ummh not sure at the time because I thought SB16 was the major dos sound card!

Well, not all SB16 models are equal, Creative created some low-cost models that don't perform that well.
The OPL2/3 chips are only for the AdLib sound (FM synthesis), which is supported by the majority of the DOS games. Most newer SoundBlaster compatible cards do not use the original Yamaha OPL chips, but have the functionality integrated into the main chip, which may sound different than the original (usually not so good).

WIN-Jiggi wrote:

In the other thread that I posted on top of this thread by swaaye, who I see here posted on this thread as well, said that card is .. uhmm, not good, hehe. Because of setting up the ports and IRQ's. Is there perhaps a AWE64 that is not PnP?

No, all AWE64 models are PnP cards. Early AWE32 models still have jumpers, but are not so easy to find nowadays, like the non-PnP SB16 cards. If you are not comfortable with using the PnP cards, try getting one of those.

Reply 9 of 23, by WIN-Jiggi

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Hmm.. interesting stuff. It seems they manufactured sound cards for uhmm .. specific sound devices like the Adlib and such. I know myself that Adlib is older than SB16, since Wolfenstein 3D and Blakestone have an Adlib sound option in the sounds option menu.

My concern is that with the OPL3 card, will it support the golden age of dos games(Duke3d, Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage, Chasm, Quake, etc.)?? Just because you said the chips are only for the Adlib sound.

I tried looking up a Waveblaster connector but couldn't find any pics of it. I guess this card is required for Sound Blaster compatibility?

Ok, I definately know now not to stock up on CT4170's!! This card is driving crazy! I just need to either look for a good PnP card with a wider range in addresses like the AWE64??? or just get a non-PnP Sound Blaster Card.

swaaye wrote:

SB16 + daughtercard. Preferably a non-PNP SB16 to get rid of the need to work with Creative's DOS software. This would get you SB digital audio compatibility along with excellent MIDI if you can find a Roland (SCD10 or SCD15) or Yamaha DB. This was really the ultimate combo back in the day

So there was actually 3 devices for just sound? That's what I'm kinda getting at here. Hehe how much memory did all that take up?

Thanks for your help guys! Feel free to keep posting!

Reply 11 of 23, by 5u3

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It seems you're really interested in getting a good DOS-game sound experience 😁
Here is an article which gives a good overview about all aspects of old soundcards. It's a long read, but a very good one (including photos and even recorded samples from the cards, so you can hear what they sound like). It also will answer some of your questions better than I could do 😉

Reply 12 of 23, by swaaye

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As long as you have a good MIDI card, OPL3 is only a concern for games that don't support General MIDI. And those games are rare.

Duke 3D definitely supports General MIDI, among a ton of other options. Many games used common game libraries that had support for damn near every sound card made back then. That was one of the big exciting thing for Windows 95 and games, devs didn't need to worry about how to support every single possible card.

On the sound quality note, there are some really nice PCI sound cards with waveblaster headers. I have a old Turtle Beach A3Dxstream (Aureal Vortex 1) that has a WB header. This card has excellent audio quality, and the DOS audio emulation driver works very well (not perfect).

It is very true that AWE32s and SB16s often have some very poor digital audio quality. I have a SB16, SB32, AWE32, AWE64 Gold. All of them except maybe the AWE64 have pops and static in the audio, but they are still the most compatible so it's a trade off. The AWE cards are somewhat useless IMO cuz they have very poor MPU-401 support thru a huge TSR that doesn't work with many games. I can't even get soundfonts working in TIE Fighter for example, only the horrid ROM on the board. And many AWE cards lack WB headers (all AWE64s). So I really don't like them much. SB16 is the way to go.

There are also Ensoniq Soundscape cards that are very compatible and have high audio quality. The Elite is probably the best all-in-one card out there honestly. Excellent MIDI, almost on par with SCD15, high quality digital audio, and fantastic compatibility because it supports tons of standards fairly well AND almost all games 1994 onwards support it natively. And, they don't use TSRs at all. They load up some firmware on boot to the processor on the board, but then that quits entirely and uses zero memory. They are non-PNP and mostly software configured very easily. Driver support works up to WinME prolly. Only issue is if the game doesn't support the digital audio natively you are stuck with mono SB2.0.

Let me also suggest you check out some of the Wikipedia pages on these cards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Labs_Model_Numbers (good for looking up specific models on eBay)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoniq

ebay:
Ensoniq Soundscape S-2000
Creative SB16s CT17* I don't THINK these are PnP.

You could even potentially pick up an external MIDI module. There are a few on eBay. I don't know anything about how to hook one of these up though. I'm fairly sure you can jack them into the Gameport on SB cards though, but you may need a special cable.

Reply 13 of 23, by WIN-Jiggi

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5u3 wrote:

Here is an article which gives a good overview about all aspects of old soundcards

Wow awesome link! I was checking out the sounds of the older cards and I rather like the distinct older sound of the Adlib card. Even though it rated the Descent sound clip as bad, I liked it. I especially liked the Tempest 2000 track, sounded really good on an Adlib (might even get one of these!)

It's pretty cool because some of the steriod versions of the PC speaker, the Tandy and PCJr... And even the Game Blaster, sounded like the sound system from the 8-bit Nintendo Gaming Console! I thought that was pretty cool. Great tunes too, (might have to get one of these too!, 4dboxing music was bumpin' on my 4.1 speaker system!)

I do think as far as 16-bit goes that the Roland SCC-1 sounded the best, and it states that it's also emulated. Very nice clear tones!

I tried reading the articles of this link but I can't really understand what he's talking about. I'll have to read up on it more later. But the Wiki Sound Blaster article helped me a lot with understanding the history of SB cards and the model numbers and such. Now I know to pretty much stay away for all AWE and later cards for dos gaming! It was fun checking out all those older card sounds and seeing the pictures and seeing how advanced expansion cards have become over the years...

swaaye wrote:

As long as you have a good MIDI card, OPL3 is only a concern for games that don't support General MIDI. And those games are rare.

Well I just picked up one of the Yamaha OPL3 sound cards. I should be getting it here within a couple of days. But sounds like you're saying I need a MIDI card to not worry too much on general midi?

swaaye wrote:

SB16 is the way to go

As I learn more about the Sound Blasters, I find this very true!

swaaye wrote:

here are also Ensoniq Soundscape cards that are very compatible and have high audio quality. The Elite is probably the best all-in-one card out there honestly. Excellent MIDI, almost on par with SCD15, high quality digital audio, and fantastic compatibility because it supports tons of standards fairly well AND almost all games 1994 onwards support it natively

OK, now you got me going on this Ensoniq Sounscape Card! I just checked out the wiki on Soundscape series and see that these cards ain't messin around.

Even though you posted an eBay auction for the S-2000, the Elite blows away the S-2000 obviously, and my hands must get on one of these great artifacts in the silicon world...

And I also noticed that you helped provide information and pics for Wikipedia and that Doom127 gave you an award! hehe. Good info I must agree.

swaaye wrote:

Creative SB16s CT17* I don't THINK these are PnP.

Well I was checking out the Sound Blaster Number list, and it seems that Sound Blaster number's CT2771 to CT2840 are pretty safe from beign PnP (Plus some of the CT17* SB models have a SCSI interface? What's up w/ that? hehe). What do you think?

Thanks for your help, guys! I learned a lot about the history of sound cards and how they work in a matter of a day. And I also learned about selecting the best overall sound card for vintage dos gaming. I'm really intrigued with the Ensoniq Elite Soundscape Card!

Thanks again!

Reply 14 of 23, by swaaye

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I have run into a Soundscape Elite on ebay once. It was a mislabeled auction (they were selling it as a IDE card 🤣). Best bet is to try searching for "Ensoniq ISA" weekly. Elite is probably the best of their entire line-up. I've listened to all of them and it is the best IMO, but S-2000 has some different sounds that people like (it doesn't have any effects though cuz of no DSP). The percussion is quite different. Both have a 2MB ROM. Heck they are both almost identical, but Elite has that ESP board and the revised ROM.

About that SCSI port on the SB16, well that tells ya it's an oldie. The original SB16 came in a few varieties, including one with SCSI-2 onboard for old CDROMs of the day. There's also one called Multi-CD that has like IDE, Panasonic, Mitsumi, and Sony interfaces (heh heh). Those are the oldest SB16s out there and should definitely be non-PnP.

BTW I've seen lots of old Roland boards go on eBay over the past 6 months. I've seen some MT32s, a couple of SCC1s, and I bought a SCD15 off there. So Rolands do show up on there somewhat often. There are tons of Ensoniq things on there but Elite is very rare.

I can't find a picture of CT2771, nor good info on it, so I don't know. It sounds like a plain SB16. Not even Google Groups has info! (btw, GG is a good place for info on this old stuff).

OPL3 is just a FM synthesis chip. It's probably the most supported music hardware for old games bar-none. Adlib and the original SB used OPL chips and OPL3 is backwards compatible with them. You select Adlib, SB, or "4-op FM" for music and you will hear the OPL chip's music. But, games that support it usually also support General MIDI and that is infinitely superior. Even the worst General MIDI is better than FM. 😀

And, I've heard that ESS boards are quite compatible with at least SBPRO. That's more than good enough for almost all DOS games, and those cards may be less noisy than a SB16. If you can find one with a waveblaster connector it might be just the way to go.

Reply 15 of 23, by WIN-Jiggi

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swaaye wrote:

Heck they are both almost identical, but Elite has that ESP board and the revised ROM.

Well you've convinced me to get one! I think I'm going to get both, since each of these legacy cards have their own unique cool sound. Definately have to go get an adlib.

swaaye wrote:

BTW I've seen lots of old Roland boards go on eBay over the past 6 months. I've seen some MT32s, a couple of SCC1s, and I bought a SCD15 off there. So Rolands do show up on there somewhat often

Ok, I'll keep checking up on the Roland Sound Cards too. But for right now they ain't nothin on eBay for Roland Sound Cards. Just have to play the waiting game.

To think about it I better get some more old dos games, because it seems that these cards have a major effect on specific older games like Monkey Island and others and I've never played Monkey Island before! 😁

swaaye wrote:

I can't find a picture of CT2771, nor good info on it, so I don't know. It sounds like a plain SB16. Not even Google Groups has info! (btw, GG is a good place for info on this old stuff

Well I just basically got CT2771 from the list that didn't have any kind of "PnP" or "SCSI", or even "Value" near the name of it and there's a whole list of them.

I did find that the CT2800 is not a PnP card from the groups that you mentioned above from some guy needing more info on the card. Although this CT2800 is a Vibra16S Chip (Like my CT2504 card). Here's the link to that group message: Click Here

I just configured the CT2504 into a machine and I was able to configure the irq's and dma's manually through the Creative diagnose program. But I wasn't able to do that on the CT4170, which automatically assigned the values for me without really asking if it was alright with me! Even though it's a good thing in a way cuz now I can see how PnP Cards work.

But just to reconsile that you said you didn't like the Vibra Chipset's? My CT2504 sounds pretty decent (Since it's working with all programs!) and it's also a Vibra16S.

swaaye wrote:

Even the worst General MIDI is better than FM

I'm kind of lost on this General Midi thing. That must be what you're talking about with the daughter card's and the Wave Blaster cards?

swaaye wrote:

And, I've heard that ESS boards are quite compatible with at least SBPRO. That's more than good enough for almost all DOS games, and those cards may be less noisy than a SB16. If you can find one with a waveblaster connector it might be just the way to go

Well I just configured a system that has an onboard ESS 1869f chipset. I was going to test it out again since it's been some years now since I've actually heard the performance of this sound card(It came from a Packard Bell 607G Computer system with a SiS 5589 chipset, but couldn't find anything on the 607G computer, and neither much info on the SiS 5589 chipset). When i was installing the necessary software for the sound card, it only prompt me 1 to 3 for the HIGH DMA channels.

So I basically changed the High DMA in the software loader in the autoexec and I got Duke Nukem 3D running with sound, but some of the later games like Quake and Chasm that just autodetect sound couldn't detect anything!

So then I tried using the good ol SET BLASTER command for autoexec and I get hardware conflicts in Chasm... Just can't win with this chip!

But the ESS chip does rather sound original. it's good for some use, more than the CT4170!

Reply 16 of 23, by Cloudschatze

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swaaye wrote:

There are tons of Ensoniq things on there but Elite is very rare.

There was an auction for a NIB Elite that ended a week-or-so ago for ~$10. I've managed to get two of them on other occasions, so keep an eye out - they do show up.

If you're looking for a wavetable comparison, including an example from the Elite, check here:

http://queststudios.com/digital/compare2005/compare2005.html

Reply 17 of 23, by swaaye

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General MIDI is a standard for the wavetable boards to conform to so that they all can work with the generic General MIDI settings in games. It defines what instruments go where and some other details.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_MIDI

Actually I've heard Vibra is not bad at all. It's a "value" chip, but it apparently can have better sound quality than the full-blown chips cuz Vibra is newer, cleaner tech. They don't have treble/bass controls though like the "real" SB16s.

I think ESS has some special FM synthesis that's better than OPL. I'm not where what it was called anymore, and I don't know if it was actually "better". But I've had a laptop with a old ESS688 chip and another with a 1688. I think the older one was SB2.0 compatible while the 1688 was SBPRO compatible, and they worked for things like Dark Forces and Descent pretty good. I don't remember needing any software to get them to work. They just worked. Those were old chips though (1996 and older), and I guess they could've borked their compatiblity later on.

This stuff is really complicated, that's for sure. You are probably seeing just why gaming wasn't very popular back in the mid-'90s, compared to today. It was very complicated to figure out how to get things working, let alone what to buy in the first place. Nobody even knows what memory port addresses, IRQs, or DMA channels even are anymore. 😀

Oh, and here check out this link I found for your old SB16. The Internet Archive is magic. Sounds like it's both non-PNP and has a waveblaster header. Goodness. Click

Check out Cloudschatze's link for examples. I also recorded some examples of my cards later in this thread

Reply 18 of 23, by elianda

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I had to do alot of fiddling around with PnP and it goes like this:
Lets take a SB 32 PnP or AWE 32 PnP or AWE 64 PnP, which is PnP wise the same.
Set Bios to PnP OS - YES.
So the Bios will only initialize resources for devices needed for boot, like IDE and Graphics. If you set it to no it will try to configure all cards, that will make problems later cause additional resources get in use.

Something about PnP configs. The Card has an EEPROM with different saved configurations. Typically Bios will go through them if you set it to PnP OS NO until a working is found. But Bios shall not do it here.

Start the dos creative PnP Manager. The trick is - you cannot change the very first config for each PnP subdevice, but the second. Enter your desired (and not conflicting) settings there and save it.
Check the CFG File and set it Read Only, because the creative pnp program seems to like sometimes to change it to own settings. Now if you run the command line based settings program it should work.
If not there is some conflicting resource.

I have also tried isapnp that comes from Linux, but the point is - the typically DOS PnP program for a soundcard is not only PnP but also initialization stuff. Like Line-In enable a.s.o.
So isapnp will work, but in most cases you will have a not initialized soundcard. I have put this together for isapnp, but its in german, sorry.

Reply 19 of 23, by 5u3

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Funny, I configure it just the other way around 😁

- PNP OS = No
- Assign IRQ for every PCI card that needs one

Usually after this step every card gets the desired resources. If not, then force them under Windows or edit ctpnp.cfg (useful with more than one Creative PnP card installed). I found this way more convenient with multiboot systems, as every OS gets the same settings from the BIOS.
Creative PnP cards are fairly easy to configure compared to such monsters as the GUS PnP or those horrible all-in-one sound+video+framegrabber+3D-glasses+coffeemachine devices of yore 🙄