Was adjusting the sound setup in my 486 last night. I have a SB Pro 2 and a Gravis Ultrasound Classic and didn't really ever get around to doing a "proper" setup so I could use both simultaneously since I got the GUS... just tested it out to verify it worked when it arrived originally and then decided I would "get back to it later."
When I first got the card, I remember running CARDCHK which found the card fine, and then running CONSCAN from the installer files and finding that port 210, 250 and 260 were all clear for use according to the scan results. I set it for 210 and did the install. All worked fine, games sounded great. Woot.
Anyway, last night I decided I would finally properly connect the SB Pro 2 to the GUS via the GUS's line in and then connect my speakers to the GUS so that I could use both cards if needed. Eventually I intend to get an external mixer, but for now figured this would be fine. Wired everything up, and tried it out. No sound from anything when set to use the Sound Blaster, but setting things to use the GUS still sounded fine. Ok, I guess the line in must be muted. Run ULTRAMIX and notice it by default set all the different volume settings to 0. Bah! What kind of terrible default behaviour is that!? Read the help screen in ULTRAMIX and eventually set everything up to make sound again... or so I thought. Tried once again to test the GUS sound and now that wasn't even making any sound. Argh! Futzed about with ULTRAMIX, configs and stuff for the next 20-30 minutes and getting increasingly annoyed and started thinking that maybe I somehow killed the GUS? Seemed unlikely, but I was at the point where nothing seemed to make sense with what was happening. Decided that maybe I would try reinstalling the GUS files. Run the installer and it now says it cannot find the card! What!? Run CARDCHK separately and sure enough it says it cannot find the card. Running CONSCAN though says it found the card configured on port 210.
Spent the next while Googling around and not finding much. I did find some post eventually from someone who mentioned after running ULTRAMIX that they had to add "-eo" to the ULTRINIT in their autoexec.bat to get it making sounds again. Weird, but sure I'll try it. And yep, that seemed to do the trick. Though CARDCHK still says it could not find the card! But everything else worked. I didn't like that CARDCHK was having problems finding the GUS, so I decided I would try changing the port to one of the other options that CONSCAN said was available (260). Once I made the change, that seemed to do the trick! *Phew!* CARDCHK once again detects the card, CONSCAN reports no issues either, and routing the SB through the GUS via it's line in allowed me to hear audio from both cards simultaneously if I so desired.
That whole exercise did leave me wondering if my GUS card is on it's way out... unsure really. It's possible I made some other change somewhere in there that affected things and just am not remembering correctly, but I'm 95% certain that's not the case. *shrug* It works now again so I'm happy! 😀