@ssshake

Great research and finally a sufficiently detailed explanation. Since I am the one who suggested to run CTCM from AUTOEXEC, I must have contributed to the confusion.

I think you are correct that CTCM, when run from AUTOEXEC will autoconfigure the card, based on some PnP configuration, maybe from BIOS. This may be the configuration you want, or not. If it is the one you want - then all is good, otherwise you will have problems. I think I never had problems with running CTCM straight from AUTOEXEC, because the existing configuration it would apply was what I wanted.

Is it worth using the Creative drivers anymore? I have similar possibly the same model Vibra in my 486 I've been tinkering with over the past few months. Unisound works like magic, you just run a SET BLASTER with the settings you want and then execute Unisound and the PNP settings are configured on the card, and the program exits without leaving anything resident in memory.

It also has command line switches you can use to set the different mixer volume levels.

dr_st wrote on 2020-12-08, 18:04:

@ssshake

Great research and finally a sufficiently detailed explanation. Since I am the one who suggested to run CTCM from AUTOEXEC, I must have contributed to the confusion.

I think you are correct that CTCM, when run from AUTOEXEC will autoconfigure the card, based on some PnP configuration, maybe from BIOS. This may be the configuration you want, or not. If it is the one you want - then all is good, otherwise you will have problems. I think I never had problems with running CTCM straight from AUTOEXEC, because the existing configuration it would apply was what I wanted.

I think this is probably true. I tried this card in a different p166 yesterday and it automatically got assign 220 irq 5. On my preferred motherboard it gets 240 irq 9.

SScorpio wrote on 2020-12-08, 18:19:

Is it worth using the Creative drivers anymore? I have similar possibly the same model Vibra in my 486 I've been tinkering with over the past few months. Unisound works like magic, you just run a SET BLASTER with the settings you want and then execute Unisound and the PNP settings are configured on the card, and the program exits without leaving anything resident in memory.

It also has command line switches you can use to set the different mixer volume levels.

I don't think I've ever used unisound. I'll get it a shot.

ssshake wrote on 2020-12-08, 18:36:

dr_st wrote on 2020-12-08, 18:04:

@ssshake

Great research and finally a sufficiently detailed explanation. Since I am the one who suggested to run CTCM from AUTOEXEC, I must have contributed to the confusion.

I think you are correct that CTCM, when run from AUTOEXEC will autoconfigure the card, based on some PnP configuration, maybe from BIOS. This may be the configuration you want, or not. If it is the one you want - then all is good, otherwise you will have problems. I think I never had problems with running CTCM straight from AUTOEXEC, because the existing configuration it would apply was what I wanted.

I think this is probably true. I tried this card in a different p166 yesterday and it automatically got assign 220 irq 5. On my preferred motherboard it gets 240 irq 9.

The related questions I would ask here are:
1. If CTCM's default configuration is wrong and you need to run CTCU instead of CTCM from AUTOEXEC - do you still need to "load" CTCM from CONFIG.SYS to initialize the card? What happens if you don't?
2. If loaded from CONFIG.SYS - does CTCM stay resident and consume memory or does it initialize and exit?

Thank you, ssshake, you figured out what I had been struggling with for weeks.

One other issue that I have been experiencing is that CTCU will make changes to my config.sys where I have a very specific setting for my CD-ROM. As a result, if I run CTCU from autoexec, my CD-ROM driver doesn't load properly.

Sooo... now I'm not running CTCM or CTCU from autoexec at all. CTCM is still in config.sys of course, and at startup I get all the configuration messages and my pnp card works with the settings I want as well as my CD-ROM.

I would be curious to see if your card works without CTCU in autoexec; I think it's redundant.

Thanks to ssshake, your input puts a light into my tunnel.

It seems to me that the line that actually reads the config file (CTPNP.cfg) is DIAGNOSE.EXE/S
I had been scratching my head to get my CT2760 card working under pure DOS mode by forcing the software to read the config file. Problem is, which file do I use to read it? CTCM, CTCU, or DIAGNOSE?
I read a manual put together by Gerwin (http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=630) and saw the autoexec line DIAGNOSE.exe/S and gave it a go. And voila, it works like a charm. No more tinkering with CTCM or CTCU anymore. Just DIAGNOSE will do the job for me.

I tried to include CTCU.exe /S /W=C:\WINDOWS in my AUTOEXEC.BAT, only to be greeted with a complaint that it cannot be run under Win95 (I'm using Win98, btw). Well, I think I will remove this line for now.

I think CT2760 is non-PnP, so CTCM/CTCU are irrelevant to it, and indeed DIAGNOSE /S is what is required, as you've discovered.

ssshake wrote on 2020-12-08, 16:33:

I finally figured it out! I had given up months ago. I couldn't find any help other than this thread which died off. […]
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I finally figured it out! I had given up months ago. I couldn't find any help other than this thread which died off.

This is totally because of a misunderstanding of when to use CTCM and when to use CTCU. The readme that comes with the software is not clear at all.

The short answer is never run CTCM and always run CTCU at boot.

Here are my steps:

1) Remove all references to anything sound blaster from config.sys and autoexec.bat
2) Delete the SB16 and CTCM folder (when installing SB16 it will check for presence of the ctcm folder)
3) Install SBBASIC first, during the install it will tell you that you need a PNP config manager, it will then ask you to install CTCM
4) After all of this go into CTCU and set the configuration to config 0 which is 220, 330, 388, IRQ5, DMA 1, DMA3
5) Saving this gets written to c:\ctcm\ctpnp.cfg

In config.sys there should be

DEVICE=C:\CTCM\CTCM.EXE

In autoexec.bat there should be

SET SOUND=C:\SB16
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 P330 T6
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E
SET CTCM=C:\CTCM
C:\SB16\DIAGNOSE /S /W=C:\WINDOWS
C:\SB16\MIXERSET /P /Q
C:\CTCM\CTCU /S /W=C:\WINDOWS

All of this was auto configured. Do not copy/paste this. I wrote it out by hand so expect typos.

I do now know how this happened before but I had CTCM being run in autoexec. This IS the problem. It appears that when you run CTCM what it does it auto configure the card to whatever irq it deems desirable. In my case this is always irq 9 and address of 240 which is undesirable. I have no idea why the program picks this when irq 5 220 is available. Anyway what CTCM does is probe, then sets the card then write this information to the config file.

For some reason I thought CTCM would read the config file and respect what's in it. It does not. Its job is to write to that file not read it.

CTCU is the right program for the job. It will read that config file and apply it.

This isn't intuitive because a) it's not documented anywhere and b) running CTCU produces a user interface for changing the pnp settings and writing out to that config file. So both CTCU and CTCM write out to this config file. My assumption was one program reads in the config and the other writes out to it. This is a bad assumption.

CTCU does two jobs. 1) a UI for setting card settings and writing the config to a file 2) reading that file in from the command line and applying those settings to the card.

That's it. I had CTCM running at each boot which would pick the wrong settings and overwrite my good config.

Never run CTCM.exe from autoexec.bat or manually from the command prompt. Doing so will overwrite your ctpnp.cfg file. You will have to run CTCU.exe and reconfigure the card again to update ctpnp.cfg back to your good config.

I think CTCM.exe is supposed to be loaded as a device driver, hence why it's in config.sys. But if you run it from the command prompt it acts like "go to defaults" auto setup. Or maybe it's like "ask the PNP BIOS what settings I should use".

Where as CTCU is "tell the card/pnp bios what settings the users specified" and "let the user build a config file using a UI".

I am currently trying to get 2 soundcards running via selection on startup. However, even having the ctcm.exe in the config sys (and not in the autoexe.bat) actually changes the environment variable. And the problematic thing is: It changes all of them, in each boot option. So once this is run, it basically destroys all the other configs as well. But if I remove the line in config.sys, the soundcard doesnt work anymore. The Diagnose \s on boot will then say that the environment settings are invalid. So, I am not quite sure how to solve that.

Kordanor wrote on 2025-09-04, 21:29:

I am currently trying to get 2 soundcards running via selection on startup. However, even having the ctcm.exe in the config sys (and not in the autoexe.bat) actually changes the environment variable. And the problematic thing is: It changes all of them, in each boot option. So once this is run, it basically destroys all the other configs as well. But if I remove the line in config.sys, the soundcard doesnt work anymore. The Diagnose \s on boot will then say that the environment settings are invalid. So, I am not quite sure how to solve that.

I'm not sure I understand you correctly, but if you mean that CTCM will automatically edit all SET BLASTER lines in AUTOEXEC.BAT to match the PnP settings of your Creative sound card, try putting the SET BLASTER statement for the other soundcard into a separate batch file that you CALL from AUTOEXEC.BAT in case you don't want to use the Creative Labs card as primary Sound Blaster card.

Thank you. I guess that could have worked, but I still dislike the idea that some program is constantly editing the file.
I just tried using UNISOUND with that and well...it couldnt have been much easier...just
UNISOUND /C2
to initialize the card (c2 because it's my second plug and play card) and...finished. So I guess I will just use that for the SB16.