If it's ES1370, try the drivers for Ensoniq AudioPCI. The "upgrade to PCI 64" pack.
http://www.emu.com/support/files/download2.as … cy=0&Platform=1

That was fast. Thanks! Will try them out and see if they work.

if you search the creative download section for es1371 you should find the drivers. I couldn't find anything earlier though, like sb16 and such.

ratfink wrote:

if you search the creative download section for es1371 you should find the drivers. I couldn't find anything earlier though, like sb16 and such.

I did go to the creative site and tried all possible drivers incl es1371. Didn't work though...maybe I'm doing something wrong?

SB16/32/64 and variants are not a prob as PNP drivers are already incl in win98se. That's my current onboard sound card (sb16 on a cu430hx).

This is the driver package I had stored for the SB PCI128:
Sb128_win9x.zip

hmphh. no luck at all... I think I'll get another card- something not by creative this time. maybe a c-media 8738.

sgt76 wrote:

hmphh. no luck at all... I think I'll get another card- something not by creative this time. maybe a c-media 8738.

Have you tried driverguide.com? I just looked on that website for CT4700, and DL'd a package called SOUND_BLASTER_PCi_128_CT-4700. You might want to give that a try.

retro games 100 wrote:

sgt76 wrote:

hmphh. no luck at all... I think I'll get another card- something not by creative this time. maybe a c-media 8738.

Have you tried driverguide.com? I just looked on that website for CT4700, and DL'd a package called SOUND_BLASTER_PCi_128_CT-4700. You might want to give that a try.

Thanks! Downloading now...

wish I'd known about that earlier, but I'm totally noobish about soundcards 🙁

sgt76 wrote:

hmphh. no luck at all... I think I'll get another card- something not by creative this time. maybe a c-media 8738.

Okay so some 128PCI cards, like yours, require another type of windows driver... now that is convenient.

Creative has a few old cards like this with hard to find drivers because they couldn't be bothered to put together an all inclusive package for every card revision.

swaaye wrote:

Creative has a few old cards like this with hard to find drivers because they couldn't be bothered to put together an all inclusive package for every card revision.

...which in turn is because most of those cards are simply relabeled cards made by companies that Creative bought out, with re-branded drivers...

Which of course is ridiculous because they produced products based on the tech for years. There are about 6 different sound cards and there are also motherboards with the chips.

Can't remember what the model numbers were for my SB PCI128. I liked that it could do EAX and 4-speaker positional sound, but its DOS support and wavetable MIDI were pretty awful.

@ retrogames- I downloaded the entire install cd. The drivers sort of work in that there is now sound, but unfortunately that sound happens to be mixed with a lot of screeching/static. Maybe my card is shot?

This is turning out to be very time consuming. I'm inclined at this point to exchange this card for a c-media or anything non- Creative for that matter.

sgt76 wrote:

@ retrogames- I downloaded the entire install cd. The drivers sort of work in that there is now sound, but unfortunately that sound happens to be mixed with a lot of screeching/static. Maybe my card is shot?

This is turning out to be very time consuming. I'm inclined at this point to exchange this card for a c-media or anything non- Creative for that matter.

I think this is a fairly common problem with early Creative PCI sound cards. Some things to consider -

-If you installed from a (downloaded) CD, then there's probably a downloadable driver update.

-There may be a resource problem. The IRQ assigned to the card may be inappropriate, or it may be better to put the card in another PCI slot. Edit: I think this problem can be caused by an AGP graphics card hogging the system's resources.

What are the PC components you're using? Also, it may be quicker to try another card - there's still quite a few win9x cards available cheaply on ebay.

sgt76 wrote:

This is turning out to be very time consuming. I'm inclined at this point to exchange this card for a c-media or anything non- Creative for that matter.

Do yourself a favor and get a Vortex 2 soundcard. Or when DOS does not matter to you a Santa Cruz soundcard instead.

OK, here's the setup that I'm trying to use this card on:
Pentium 233MMX
Intel CU430HX motherboard - 2 PCI, 2 ISA slots
128mb ram
1x Voodoo 2
3com 905b ISA ethernet card
Win 98SE

So, no question of there being AGP related issues. And I've set IRQ assignment at automatic. Otherwise if left to manual, I got blue screens complaining that the IRQ assignments were off.

gerwin wrote:

sgt76 wrote:

This is turning out to be very time consuming. I'm inclined at this point to exchange this card for a c-media or anything non- Creative for that matter.

Do yourself a favor and get a Vortex 2 soundcard. Or when DOS does not matter to you a Santa Cruz soundcard instead.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to see what I can get my hands on. This time though, I'll make sure to go for something with (easily) available drivers

Creative's PCI sound cards are notorious for screeching and popping, especially on VIA motherboard chipsets. The reason is that Creative bought their way into the PCI sound card market and didn't really understand how it worked for a long time...

Make sure to install the newest applicable motherboard chipset drivers you can find, and maybe look for PCI timing settings in your BIOS.

Some mobos have absolutely horrible PCI implementations. A combination of shoddy chipset design, board design and poorly programmed BIOSs. You just don't notice this with anything other than RAID and sound cards because most PCI cards don't need lots of bandwidth or tight latency. And sound cards give you nice audio feedback to let you know that things aren't pretty. 😁

I've run into problems with Vortex 2 and AudioPCI pops/clicks. Some video cards crank their PCI latency time to the max so they can hog the bus and this can cause problems for sound cards. I think that sound cards that process many channels in hardware are even more sensitive to it.

And yes AGP card latency affects the PCI bus.