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Ensoniq/Creative PCI 64/128 Confusion

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First post, by Anonymoose

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Heyo!
To my surprise I've found audio drivers to be the hardest part of my recent project.

I'm installing a fresh Win 98SE on my Dell Dimension L600R (600Mhz PIII, 192mb, etc.) and it has a card labeled "CT5803" in it. I'm aware that this is some sort of Ensoniq/Creative PCI 64/128 but (to me) it seems ambiguous. Wikipedia says it's a SB 16 PCI, RetroNet and support.creative.com say it's a PCI 64 Dell/Gateway (which seems to be correct), and some Internet forums say it's a 128.

In terms of drivers, RetroNet has one that works and even the Dell website still hosts a L600R driver. I've since found a driver on Vogons that is so far the most recent (dxdiag says 1/31/2002) but it says it's for "64/128".

Ultimately, does it matter? I don't plan on using it for DOS games, but I'd like to find an up to date driver. Any help?

Reply 1 of 4, by BitWrangler

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Which particular commercial DOS games released after 31st January 2002 are you having enough problems with to need a new driver?

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 2 of 4, by Anonymoose

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Ah, I see what you mean. I wasn’t planning on using DOS on the computer, I was just curious about which driver to use.

Reply 3 of 4, by swaaye

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The differences between the AudioPCI cards are software based for the most part. Instead of the typical 32 voice software wavetable, the others have 64 or 128 voices. This is not of any benefit really. The drivers might vary in A3D 1.0 /EAX 1.0 support (software based). Again not super interesting as you would get more from a Live/Audigy for EAX and a Vortex 2 for A3D.

Some of the chips are designed around AC97 and as such are designed for 48 kHz and hardware resampling instead of being fixed to the previously common 11.025/22.05/44.1 kHz rates. This is not of much consequence.

Reply 4 of 4, by fosterwj03

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There's another subtle difference between the Ensoniq and Creative cards; they have different PCI IDs (VEN and DEV). Some drivers ignore the PCI ID, others will refuse to install unless you have a matching card.

You could use a DOS tool like PCI Info to see your card's PCI ID and then see if the driver . INF file has a matching ID.

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