HELP with sound card \ VOGONS

HELP with sound card

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First post, by ncmark

Posted on 2012-06-29, 22:16

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I could seriously use some help on this sound card... (PLEASE?)

The sound card is CT4520. Goggle says it is AWE64 value PNP (even though it doesn't SAY AWE64 on it, which is odd).

So I said great - I have the install CD for AWE64 (from a retail board I bought when AWE64 was new).

The board is for a DOS/Win3.1 machine (mostly for DOS). Iran the install CD from inside WIN 3.1, and it set up the DOS and WIN drivers.

From DOS games, the wave part of the card works perfectly. But I cannot get MIDI to work. I tried recconfiguring with CTCU and tested the card with their utility; it tests fine. I tried several DOS games and several configurations (selecting SB16, AWE32, even general MIDI from the list). No go.

The funny thing is - MIDI seems to work just fine within windows.

Granted that CD did not come with this card in particular- the CD is actually older, 1997 CD, 1999 card, but I have used that same CD with several AWE 64 card, including the gold versions.

Am I overlooking something? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Reply 1 of 14, by gerwin

Posted on 2012-06-29, 23:07

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does it have all chips soldered on?, I have seen an AWE64 board without Sample ROM once.

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 2 of 14, by ncmark

Posted on 2012-06-29, 23:21

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Actually it DOES look like there are two missing chips on the board....??

Reply 3 of 14, by Old Thrashbarg

Posted on 2012-06-29, 23:39

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Sounds like you have one of the oddball OEM cards.

I've never used one of those, so I'm not sure how it's supposed to be set up... but knowing Creative, I'd suspect it might require some OEM-specific software.

Reply 4 of 14, by gerwin

Posted on 2012-06-29, 23:44

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Funny. It is an AWE64 without the Midi Part, which leaves you with a SB16.

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 5 of 14, by ncmark

Posted on 2012-06-30, 00:17

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But what I don't get is that MIDI worked in Windows......

Reply 6 of 14, by RacoonRider

Posted on 2012-06-30, 00:27

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Could you show us your autoexec.bat?

Reply 7 of 14, by Old Thrashbarg

Posted on 2012-06-30, 00:33

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@ncmark
Looks like you edited the post, but your original assertion was about right. It's not too hard to get ahold of the disks for the common retail versions of their cards, but they made a whole bunch of unusual cards too, including crippled cards that shared model numbers with 'real' versions, and finding the software for those can be rather challenging. Hell, even figuring out what software you need for some of their OEM cards can be a pain in the ass by itself.

Reply 8 of 14, by 5u3

Posted on 2012-06-30, 00:51

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ncmark wrote:
But what I don't get is that MIDI worked in Windows......

Software emulation perhaps? Even on fully equipped AWE64 cards, half of the proclaimed "64 voices" are faked by a software synth.

Reply 9 of 14, by ncmark

Posted on 2012-06-30, 02:22

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Old Thrashbarg wrote:
@ncmark
Looks like you edited the post, but your original assertion was about right. It's not too hard to get ahold of the disks for the common retail versions of their cards, but they made a whole bunch of unusual cards too, including crippled cards that shared model numbers with 'real' versions, and finding the software for those can be rather challenging. Hell, even figuring out what software you need for some of their OEM cards can be a pain in the ass by itself.

Yeah my original post was that you pretty much need the original install disks or forget it.

I am going through the same thing with an VIBRA 16. I got DOS working, but not Win 3.1. And with all due respect to creative, the stuff I downloaded from their site does NOT work. You download a disk that is supposed to be win 3.1 software - and there is no install, no COM file, no EXE file. What the **** are you supposed to do with that? Don't they check this stuff before they post it?

Reply 10 of 14, by ncmark

Posted on 2012-06-30, 02:27

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5u3 wrote:
ncmark wrote:
But what I don't get is that MIDI worked in Windows......

Software emulation perhaps? Even on fully equipped AWE64 cards, half of the proclaimed "64 voices" are faked by a software synth.

Would they really do that? Software emulation? The funny thing is though, it passed all the "tests" from the CTCU program DMA 0 and 5, IRQ5 I/O 220, no problem.......

Reply 11 of 14, by Mau1wurf1977

Posted on 2012-06-30, 02:27

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For windows drivers maybe you just point the device manager to the drivers. Often you don't need an installer in this case.

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Reply 12 of 14, by ncmark

Posted on 2012-06-30, 02:36

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Mau1wurf1977 wrote:
For windows drivers maybe you just point the device manager to the drivers. Often you don't need an installer in this case.

I tried that - it found two drivers, but they didn't work....

I am out of ideas.....

Reply 13 of 14, by Mau1wurf1977

Posted on 2012-06-30, 02:58

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The good thing is that Creative cards are cheap and plentiful. Might sound harsh but it might be easier to just a few new ones 😀

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Reply 14 of 14, by ncmark

Posted on 2012-06-30, 03:28

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I don't think that's harsh at all - I think that's realistic.

I would really like to get an AWE 64 Gold. I already have those on three computers, and I like them. 😀

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