The joys of DOS 😀

Look for AUTOEXEC.BAK or some other renamed files. The Sound Blaster setup usually creates backups before applying changes.

Well the serial ports are listed and the mouse driver detects a mouse that uses the "Mouse Systems" protocol. Do you know if you have this kind of mouse, or "Microsoft" protocol mouse? Sometimes they are referred as 3-button and 2-button modes.

Try to get COM port work with another PC somehow, with two terminal programs and null modem cable for example.

It's also possible you have wrong kind of motherboard-to-DE9 adapter so the signals are on wrong pins.
If you have a multimeter, there should be either +12V or -12V on DE9 connector pins 3,4 and 7, while pin 5 is ground, and the rest are inputs.

I have to echo Jepael's voltage testing. My 386/486 motherboard had issues with a corroded AT power pin and it made the MOUSE not work (serial ports) until I fixed the corroded power pin.

The external COM connectors are standardized (DB9 or DB25). The internal end of the ribbon cable which connects to the host card or motherboard is not. We used to call the older internal connectors "386 COM connector" and "Pentium style" the newer ones which were attached directly to motherboard sockets. I think several proprietary cables for different motherboards existed.

You need to run some diagnostic utils and the above mentioned null modem test is a good idea. If those are successful, try different mouse drivers from MS, Logitech or Cutemouse etc.

On the other hand, if you are not against case modding, I strongly suggest cutting a hole for the PS/2 connector - it is vastly superior and one of the main strengths of this motherboard.

Well ground was going to pin 3 so, I swapped them from ones that came with my PIO3 board and now they work! Looks like the ones I was using were probably for Pentium boards.

Is there anything I should be doing to optimize DOS? and is there anything I am supposed to do to use the AWE32 to it's fullest features? I've never owned one before and I don't know a whole lot about setting these up. What is the SPDIF for? Is there a cable I am supposed to use for it? I have a AWE64 Gold but I decided to go the AWE32 instead. And it's not possible for me to drill a whole in the case for the PS2 port, it's right between the thick metal part for the cards and keyboard jack so, it would be a big mess trying to do it. I'll have to find a new case one of these days since this one also only has 2 digit LED for the MHZ.

Glad to hear you managed to sort this out.

Optimizing DOS environment is a vast topic, but we do have a few nice threads here, you might wish to start here
Dos 6 conventional memory tricks

externally, one of the greatest external resources on the web:
http://www.mdgx.com

My first idea is to remove CTMM.SYS or CTSB16.SYS or CSP.SYS completely (it is for low level SB 1.5 or 2.0 compatibility which is hardly ever needed) and the OAK CD driver as well (replace it with something more modern, half/third size one like QCDROM.SYS, VIDE-CDD.SYS, XCDROM.SYS ... find something which plays nice on your system. For DOS 7.1 you can also add MSCDEX replacements from Freedos projects that allows long file names on the Joliet system (CD/DVD)
Later you might also want to make a boot menu, so this config you presented /made by memmaker (I suppose)/ will be one of them. Others include no memory management at all, pure XMS in real mode only...

Search our forums for information on your specific AWE32 model. The DSP reported by diagnose.exe version might help to recognise (before testing) whether it has the hanging note bug (many Blasters hang MIDI playback when playing DIGI simultaneously)

The SPDIF connector is not by todays standards, you want to search our forums again on how to hack your own connector for it.

On case modding> yes, sometimes changing the case is the better way.