Hvae you enabled the OPL Routing through the EMU8000 with aweutil /s ?
Have you set the Mixer with Mixerset accordingly?

elianda wrote:

Hvae you enabled the OPL Routing through the EMU8000 with aweutil /s ?
Have you set the Mixer with Mixerset accordingly?

I think that answers my question, kinda. I was curious if the DOS software needed to be installed for it to work (where the Non-PnP SB16's can work simply with a SET BLASTER string). It sounds like it does.

So the OPL needs to be routed through the EMU8000 before it can be used? To be honest, I've never used one of these before.

Anyone know if the AWE32 drivers on Vogons Drivers work with the Non-PnP AWE32s?

No the OPL on the AWE32 is always routed through the EMU8K and takes up always 2 voices, so it's basically an AWE30.

maddmaxstar wrote:

Anyone know if the AWE32 drivers on Vogons Drivers work with the Non-PnP AWE32s?

You don't need to load the low level drivers in config.sys.

All you need are the following lines in the autoexec.bat (or any other batch file that is called or executed on demand.)

1SET SOUND=C:\SBAWE32
2SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
3SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
4C:\SBAWE32\DIAGNOSE /S
5C:\SBAWE32\AWEUTIL /S
6C:\SBAWE32\SB16SET /P /Q

(*Of course, the drive and directory name can differ according to your config.)

Absolute minimum are the SET BLASTER and AWEUTIL (and preferably the DIAGNOSE too) lines for a non-PnP card, but better run them all for proper workings.

Basically you still need the AWEUTIL to initialize the FM/AWE synthesis for a non-PnP AWE/32 card.

Oooh, this is sounding better already. Do any of those startup items have TSR's that use up conventional memory? Just curious, I'm barely able to run Tie Fighter as is (I need to find a copy of QEMM...)

maddmaxstar wrote:

Do any of those startup items have TSR's that use up conventional memory?

Nope. AWEUTIL only installs as a TSR when you use the /EM switch to emulate GS/GM/MT32 on the EMU8K synth.

Ok, so I located the basic DOS drivers for the AWE32 from Vogons drivers and configured them as Malik specified. After configuration, the AWEUTIL /S command errors out saying the following:

ERR012: AWE32 Initialization Failed

Everything else appears to have run normally.
I found the images for the Floppy disk set, and did a full install, and came up with the same issue. However, when I run the DIAGNOSE program, the card is detected OK, and can test OPL2/3, and AWE32 music OK. After running Diagnose, I can get AWE32 sound under Tie Fighter Soundboard test and in Duke 3D. Without running it, nothing happens and OPL2/3 doesn't work either, however Sound Blaster sound effects seem to work OK.

Also, when I run Doom 1/2 or Heretic using AWE32 extensions, I get a loud noise of what sounds like a stuck note that doesn't go away until I hit restart. The DSP on the CT3910 appears to be 4.13 if that's any relevance.

So, one thing of note, the drivers appear to be date stamped (C)1994, the PCB is marked 1994, the chips appear to be made around Mid-95. Is it possible I'm using too old of an AWEUTIL? Or is there a specific utility I should be using for the AWE32 Value over the AWE32 standard?

maddmaxstar wrote:

Also, when I run Doom 1/2 or Heretic using AWE32 extensions, I get a loud noise of what sounds like a stuck note that doesn't go away until I hit restart. The DSP on the CT3910 appears to be 4.13 if that's any relevance.

Is this the same thing that happens on my AWE64 CT4520s, my AWE64 CT4500(when it was working) and my SoundBlaster 32 PnP CT3600 where after using the AWE synth once, the second time it's used, it just produces a REALLY loud noise? If that's the case, then it seems to be a bug present either in the EMU8000 or in Creative's software. I have yet to find out why this happens.

What kind of computer do you have it in?
Try to reduce the ISA bus clock and/or add I/O waitstates.

Seeing that your DIAGNOSE works well, I guess the SET BLASTER settings correspond to your jumper settings on the non-PnP card. (Sometimes, even if the set blaster is set wrong, the diagnose may pick up that irq or dma, if these are not used at that time.)

Secondly, I've noticed such anomalies before - where sound effects work ok, but the FM and/or AWE synth does not play as it's supposed to or completely absent - the elusive -5v rail of the PSU. If the PSU does not have a -5v rail or if it's faulty, I've noticed this peculiar behaviour.

When I checked my rail in the BIOS screen, the -5v reading was 0.0 - must be a faulty -5 rail. But this is easier to check only if the bios supports the display of the PSU's voltage.

Last night, I checked the CT1740's DIAGNOSE on the system which has this -5v deficient PSU - I noted the 2-voice FM sounds were corrupted and terribly noisy. But the 4-voice FM, 8-bit and 16-bit sounds worked well.

And oh yes, I haven't tried this on a Sound Blaster card yet, but as h-a-l-9000 mentioned above, I remembered that if the BIOS has support for "8-bit I/O Recovery Time", setting it to 8 helped my LAPC-I produce the appropriate sounds in my faster Pentium machines.

And regarding the -5v or faulty -5v rail of the PSU, I need others who can confirm that this a problem. And I also have noticed that not all cards are affected from this deficiency. - My CT3980 (AWE32 PnP) had occassional problems but my CT2760 (non-PnP AWE32) didn't.

It is interesting you bring up this - 5 volt sound issue. This is actually a issue that plagues a lot of arcade game pcbs also, where if -5 volt is not present, there will be no audio. In some cases, like with Atari game pcbs like Primal Rage, or stuff from Strata like Time Killers, it will cause the games to reboot or crap out. This was mainly a issue for really old and some early Jamma boards, and a lot of the American produced Jamma boards and stuff.

I got the AWE32 working. I did a bit of research on the issue and found references to folks using a newer version of AWEUTIL. The install software I was using provided AWEUTIL 1.00, and Creative released an updated 1.20 version later on (Maybe for the PnP cards, I'm speculating).

So I downloaded and ran AWEUTIL 1.20, it initialized the AWE and seems to be working OK. I tested it in AWE mode on Doom 1, 2, Heretic, Duke 3D, Tie Fighter's setup sound test (not enough Conventional to run it, I'm working on it) and was able to use the AWE's emulated MT-32 in Monkey Island. So far so good, though the Emulated MT32 sound came out very quiet, and gets the occasional stuck note, but I think the low volume issue may be that I Rem'd the drivers in Config.sys and SB16SET in autoexec in an effort to get more Conventional Memory. Also trying to use the emulated General MIDI mode caused Duke3D to lock up, and all sound to fail in Doom 2 after a few bars...

It's not perfect, but it's working so far for AWE32 sound anyway.

SB16SET won't take up any memory space. Initializing it will help to bring back the volume to the "normal" level. Just make sure to actually run the SB16SET first, without any parameters, to set the volume settings as preferred. Then, it can be initialized at each boot via the autoexec.bat line SB16SET /P /Q. (/P uses the Parameters saved in the cfg file in the awe32's installation directory. /Q set it to run quietly without any output to the screen. Removing the /Q parameter will display the current settings of the mixer.

Running SB16SET returns the error "MIX0014: Low level driver error". I figured that was because I REM'd out the CTMMSYS.SYS and CTSB16.SYS in the Config.sys file. It appeared to load fine before I took them out. I'm gonna try tinkering.

Low level drivers are not required for it actually. I'm using CT2760 - a non-PnP card currently.

To initialize it without taking up any memory space, you just have to invoke the autoexec's lines :

SET BLASTER=(your settings)
SET SOUND=(your path)
( yourpath)\DIAGNOSE /S
( yourpath)\AWEUTIL /S
( yourpath)\SB16SET /P /Q

Calling the DIAGNOSE /S command beforehand will "establish" the card for the SB16SET to make use of, iirc.

AWEUTIL /S on the otherhand, will initialize the FM/AWE synthesis without the need to load SB16SET, but then the card will play sounds at default mixer values. (Hence the low volume sounds if SB16SET is not called.)

EDIT : The only main difference between a PnP AWE32 and non-PnP AWE32, is the manual jumper selection in the non-PnP version. In the PnP version, the CTCM comes into play, instead of the manual jumper setting.

And hence, you can even load the low level drivers for a PnP card without using CTCM. (But you can't use CTCM (actively) with the non-PnP cards, since the non-PnP cards do not "broadcast" it's hardware information for the CTCM to pick up. - the same reason why Windows95 doesn't pick up these cards too.)

So is SB16SET identical to MIXERSET ?

Ok, so I set it up so the CTMMSYS and CTSB16 are REM'd out in Config.sys, and set DIAGNOSE /S to run in Autoexec.bat before SB16SET /P /Q. It's still coming up with the Low Level Driver error message. When running, the SB16SET identifies itself as v2.00. Given that I needed a newer version of AWEUTIL to get this to work, is there a newer version (or older) of SB16SET that would work? Or is something misconfigured?

It would be as big of deal if I could get both the DOS system and CTMMSYS/CTSB16 to load properly into the high memory area. If I REM out the drivers, and using DOS=HIGH,UMB, the System loads into the High memory fine. If I take out the REM's and run the drivers, the CTMMSYS/CTSB16 drivers load into High memory OK, but DOS drops down to Conventional Memory. The big difference being: without the drivers, I have 610k left of Conventional, but load the Creative drivers and I'm left with 571k conventional, which drops further to 547k when I enable MT32 emulation.

Here's a look at my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files:

CONFIG.SYS
=========================================
DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM 8192
DEVICEHIGH=MTMCDAI.SYS /D:CDROM1
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILES=30
BUFFERS=30
LASTDRIVE=Z
REM DEVICEHIGH=C:\SB16\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5 D:1 H:5
REM DEVICEHIGH=C:\SB16\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS
=========================================

AUTOEXEC.BAT
=========================================
LH /L:1,5000 CTMOUSE
LH C:\WINDOWS\MSCDEX.EXE /E /D:CDROM1 /L:D

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
SET SOUND=C:\SB16
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
C:\SB16\DIAGNOSE /S
C:\SB16\AWEUTIL /S
C:\SB16\SB16SET /P /Q
PATH=C:\WINDOWS\;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\;C:\SB16\
=========================================

I should also mention that this is all being run on:
Enhanced Am486X4 120, overclocked to 133(4x33). Identifies as a 5x86-P75
Arstoria AS496 Motherboard (SiS 496/497 486PCI with 256k L2)
32mb EDO RAM
4mb ATI 3DXpression+ PC2TV PCI
DOS 7.1 (Windows 95C is installed on the machine, but MSDOS.SYS has been modified to start straight into DOS mode)

So, it it possible I have something misconfigured, or is there another version of SB16SET I could try?

As far as I can tell, SB16SET seems to be an older version of Mixerset. They both have P and Q switches, and I have software for the Vibra16 and the AWE64 Gold, and neither have a SB16SET, but they do have a mixerset. It's possible your SB16SET doesn't recognise your AWE32 (I once had a similar problem with the 3D stereo enhancement driver: I needed a newer version of it for the CT4540, while it worked for the CT4390). I'd try using mixerset instead.

As for General Midi not working, I think it's worth mentioning that it won't work properly for protected mode games in DOS mode. It should however, work in a Windows Dosbox. If it still doesn't work, it's likely your motherboard doesn't support NMI.

Yes, you can use SB16SET and MIXERSET interchangably. MIXERSET is the newer form of SB16SET. Later Creative ISA cards came with MIXERSET.