What motherboard do you have?

What slots do you have available?

Where are you located?

cyclone3d wrote:

What motherboard do you have?

What slots do you have available?

Where are you located?

Sorry! Its my first time actually working on this stuff so I got a bit carried away.
The motherboard is an Abit ab-bh6, but a resistor for the PS/2 ports blew up. It still works with USB (Even in DOS since I use the BIOS USB Driver)
It has 5 PCI slots and 2 16-bit ISA slots

The PC has a Pentium II-400Mhz 100Mhz FSB

I am in BC, Canada.

With ISA slots, you have immense choice. Have you got any ISA audio cards?

gdjacobs wrote:

With ISA slots, you have immense choice. Have you got any ISA audio cards?

I never had anything other than PC Speaker. I only have an ISA dial up modem which causes an IRQ conflict with the Sound Blaster Live! card 😒

I'm trying to see which sound cards would be my best option

I personally like a non-plug-and-play ISA sound card in my Win98 machine so that I can boot directly to DOS and do DOS games there. If you have a PnP card it's not a big deal, Win98 will detect it though so you either have to deal with conflicts with your PCI card or disable the ISA card in Windows.

Some ISA sound cards will have speed issues in that system - Crystal based cards come to mind. OPLSAx cards a good for Win98 though, and the Audiodrives. Some do decent soft synth so in theory you could ditch the Live! altogether and just have the ISA card for all games.

Oddly enough, my Jazz16 card doesn't have speed issues with my KT133 board.

If you want an AWE64, the best model is the CT3670. It was labeled as a SB32, but is really just an AWE64 with Simm slots for easy/cheap RAM upgrade.

None of the AWE64 cards have real OPL3.

My suggestion would be to get an AWE64 or a CT3670... my preference being towards the CT3670

If you want an AWE32 with real OPL3, be prepared to spend.

Much cheaper to get a different card with OPL3.

Since your motherboard has a SB_LINK/PC_PCI header (in between the PCI slots next to thew ISA slots) you can use a PCI Yamaha YMF 724 or similar based card. OPL3 is integrated and it has SB-Pro support. Just make sure if you get one of those cards that it has the header pins on it for the cable unless you are ok with soldering them yourself. Even without the cable, your motherboard supports DDMA so most everything should work just fine.

There are also ISA Yamaha based cards which are good... but there are also a huge number of other ISA cards that have real OPL3 on them.

The only thing you have to watch out for with ISA cards is speed sensitivity.

The thing that blew on your PS/2 ports is probably not a resistor, but a fuse. Is it the larger green flat thing? If so, it is a fuse.

cyclone3d wrote:

If you want an AWE64, the best model is the CT3670. It was labeled as a SB32, but is really just an AWE64 with Simm slots for ea […]
Show full quote

If you want an AWE64, the best model is the CT3670. It was labeled as a SB32, but is really just an AWE64 with Simm slots for easy/cheap RAM upgrade.

None of the AWE64 cards have real OPL3.

My suggestion would be to get an AWE64 or a CT3670... my preference being towards the CT3670

If you want an AWE32 with real OPL3, be prepared to spend.

Much cheaper to get a different card with OPL3.

Since your motherboard has a SB_LINK/PC_PCI header (in between the PCI slots next to thew ISA slots) you can use a PCI Yamaha YMF 724 or similar based card. OPL3 is integrated and it has SB-Pro support. Just make sure if you get one of those cards that it has the header pins on it for the cable unless you are ok with soldering them yourself. Even without the cable, your motherboard supports DDMA so most everything should work just fine.

There are also ISA Yamaha based cards which are good... but there are also a huge number of other ISA cards that have real OPL3 on them.

The only thing you have to watch out for with ISA cards is speed sensitivity.

The thing that blew on your PS/2 ports is probably not a resistor, but a fuse. Is it the larger green flat thing? If so, it is a fuse.

Re real OPL3 awe32, my solution was to get a Sound Blaster 32 (CT3600) [A240 I5 D3] with a SB Pro II (CT1600) [A220 I7 D1 - printer port disabled in win98]. You could go with a cheaper SB16 with OPL3 instead of a CT1600, I just had the Pro II on hand. Seems to be a nice setup for me, I play DOOM with midi out of the ct3600 and fx out of the ct1600.

If you're patient with ebay you can get a CT3600 for $20, I got 32MB 30 pin simms for another $12 or so from amazon (some of the big sound fonts like Masterpiece are AMAZING). I've had the CT1600 since I was a kid, but you can get SB16s relatively cheap if you hunt for them.

Just an option for a dual setup if you want to pinch pennies and do it one at a time. It's not the best solution but it works, especially if you're after EMU8000 + OPL3 which is my ideal setup.

cyclone3d wrote:

If you want an AWE64, the best model is the CT3670. It was labeled as a SB32, but is really just an AWE64 with Simm slots for ea […]
Show full quote

If you want an AWE64, the best model is the CT3670. It was labeled as a SB32, but is really just an AWE64 with Simm slots for easy/cheap RAM upgrade.

None of the AWE64 cards have real OPL3.

My suggestion would be to get an AWE64 or a CT3670... my preference being towards the CT3670

If you want an AWE32 with real OPL3, be prepared to spend.

Much cheaper to get a different card with OPL3.

Since your motherboard has a SB_LINK/PC_PCI header (in between the PCI slots next to thew ISA slots) you can use a PCI Yamaha YMF 724 or similar based card. OPL3 is integrated and it has SB-Pro support. Just make sure if you get one of those cards that it has the header pins on it for the cable unless you are ok with soldering them yourself. Even without the cable, your motherboard supports DDMA so most everything should work just fine.

There are also ISA Yamaha based cards which are good... but there are also a huge number of other ISA cards that have real OPL3 on them.

The only thing you have to watch out for with ISA cards is speed sensitivity.

The thing that blew on your PS/2 ports is probably not a resistor, but a fuse. Is it the larger green flat thing? If so, it is a fuse.

I'm not sure what cards have speed sensitivity. Is there an easy way to know?

Also, even if it was a fuse, it blew out a few resistors and left a large black spot. The motherboard still works fine funny enough

Thanks for the suggestions!