I remember having the same problem in the past. It turned out to be my motherboard.

One limitation other than the settings can also be your motherboard configuration and compatibility. You will need to check with the motherboard manufacturer and ask them does their motherboard fully support NMI (Non Maskable Interrupts) and if it does how to enable them. Some manufacturers of motherboards state that they do support NMI but when tested and used (like with the SB128/Live) they don't work.

http://www.mameworld.info/net/emuadvice/sound.html

The SB16 emulation of the Sound Blaster Live! requires your motherboard to support NMI (Non-Maskable Interrupt) in order to work […]
Show full quote

The SB16 emulation of the Sound Blaster Live! requires your motherboard
to support NMI (Non-Maskable Interrupt) in order to work. Check with your
manufacturer or look at your motherboard documentation to determine
whether your motherboard supports it.

http://forums.3drealms.com/vb/showthread.php?t=3229

I see, thanks for the tip, btw3d! At least I think it supports NMI, because, as I said in the previous post, before installing Win98, I tried to run Rayman Designer on WinME - and it worked with default settings (SBPro, 220, I5, D1). Well, I'll try to fiddle with the BIOS settings and the driver config.

And one more question - if the PCI cards are making so much troubles, and I won't be able to make it work, will buying an ISA card help? This motherboard actually features two ISA (16bit) slots, and I just happened to find SoundBlaster AWE64 (CT4520 model), SB Vibra 16C (CT4180) and SB CT 4170. If everything else fails - which one of them you guys recommend? It would be nice, if it worked without any problems, under both DOS and Windows.

Have you tried other drivers, those seem altered for emulators

Yes, I managed to get a complete CD with SBPCI128 drivers and utils. Completely removed old drivers and autoexec information, and installed the official, CD ones. And well... still the same thing. This time, however, autodetect finds a SoundBlaster 16 (hooray!) card, on A220, I7, D7. But the end result is the same - freeze during sound test, "no response from card" or "sound device init failed!" message.

If your motherboard has ISA slots, it probably supports whatever it is exactly that is required by the SB PCI drivers.

You can try disabling your onboard serial and parallel ports in the motherboard BIOS and see if that makes a difference.

You have a lot of odd-looking stuff in your config.sys. It's unlikely that there's some kind of conflict going on, but it might be worth disabling everything all the other drivers to see if that makes a difference too. (By the way, DOS=HIGH,UMB should be on the second line, before EMM386.)

Did you run SBCONFIG in DOS? As I recall, there's an INI file in the SB driver directory that is used for configuration data.

P.S. Your English is nearly flawless. Good job. 😎

Jorpho wrote:

P.S. Your English is nearly flawless. Good job. 😎

Haha, thanks. 😁

Well, did, what you suggested, turned off parallel and serial ports in BIOS, but this didn't really help anything. Running SBTEST results in "Could not reset SB16" error message, and SBLEGACY returns a "PCI device detect failed; Device not found".

The board's BIOS is bvd2a Award bios, tried looking there for any clue regarding NMI, but found nothing. Is there an other name for this? One manual (I don't have mine anymore) said something about a "IRQ[3,7,9,15] NMI" option, but this BIOS lacks such thing.

Are you sure it's an SB 128PCI? What number is written on the edge of the card? It should say something like CT4xxx .

Did you run SBCFG.EXE? (I got the name wrong before.) Do the contents of SBPCI.INI match what you are putting in your BLASTER environment variable?

Kurasiu wrote:

The board's BIOS is bvd2a Award bios, tried looking there for any clue regarding NMI, but found nothing. Is there an other name for this? One manual (I don't have mine anymore) said something about a "IRQ[3,7,9,15] NMI" option, but this BIOS lacks such thing.

I think technically the required connection is "NMI to SERR#", but I'm not sure. In any case, it depends at least as much on the physical model of the motherboard as it does on the specific BIOS, as there doesn't seem to be any established standard.

Hmmm, to tell the truth - there's a SBCFG *.ini file, but not an executable. Yes, the variables section matches the blaster variables in the autoexec.

And regarding the card - it's the CT4810 model, this one, to be exact.

Maybe a silly suggestion, but have you tried the card in a different PCI slot?

Also, have you configured the BIOS to assign IRQs to Plug-n-Play devices?

Yes, I literally tried everything, changing the slot, manually assigning all available IRQ/DMA resources to PCI PnP devices - and still nothing. My only guess is that the card became self-aware and simply does not want to work under DOS. 😜 So generally - thanks for the tips and infos, guys, but this is the point where I reached my limits.

So anyway, I have several question to the experts here: will buying an ISA sound card help my situation? As I'm an ISA newbie, and have two ISA slots onboard:
a.) will ISA cards work under Windows?
b.) any DOS drivers for them? Will they handle config/autoexec configuration?
c.) I managed to find four different, cheap ISA cards: Sound Blaster AWE64 (CT4520 model), Sound Blaster (CT4520), Sound Blaster Vibra 16C (CT4180) and Sound Blaster (CT 4170). Which one is the "best", for both Windows and DOS games? I don't need any 5.1 amazing sound quality, just a basic card, that will work.

a.) Almost all of the ISA cards have drivers for Windows 9X.
b.) Almost all of the ISA cards have drivers for DOS.
c.) Of the four cards you list, two are the same, and they are all very similar. being late Soundblaster 16 versions, some with AWE64 music synth (not that easy to work with). Their SB16 digital sound FX part is pretty good, their OPL3 FM is poor.

a) yes.
b) depends on the card. Some are configured by jumpers on the card itself, while the later ones were often software/PnP configurable. Drivers are usually only needed for cards that have features beyond those of the SB16, as SB16 and older have direct support in most games.
c) I would suggest getting a non-PnP ISA SB16 if you can find one. All of the models you listed lack true OPL chips, so will have suboptimal OPL/Adlib music compatibility. You listed CT4520 twice, BTW.

Kurasiu wrote:

Hmmm, to tell the truth - there's a SBCFG *.ini file, but not an executable.

What files do you have in your DOSDRV directory, exactly?

Are you sure the drivers you obtained are for a 128PCI and not, say, an SB Live?

HunterZ wrote:

You listed CT4520 twice, BTW.

Oh, sorry. 😜 I meant CT4170, CT4180, AWE64 CT4520 and AWE CT4380.

HunterZ wrote:

will have suboptimal OPL/Adlib music compatibility.

Suboptimal in sense of poor/bad quality or hard to even make it work?

Jorpho wrote:

What files do you have in your DOSDRV directory, exactly?

Are you sure the drivers you obtained are for a 128PCI and not, say, an SB Live?

Ah, apologies mate, I screwed this up - Mt32.exe, Sbcfg.exe, Sbinit.com, Sblegacy.exe, Sbload.exe, Sbmixer.exem Sbpci.bin, Sbpci.ini and Sbtest.exe

And the CD reads "Sound Blaster PCI128 Software and Drivers", and the card works fine under Windows, so I guess they are correct.

Kurasiu wrote:

HunterZ wrote:

will have suboptimal OPL/Adlib music compatibility.

Suboptimal in sense of poor/bad quality or hard to even make it work?

Poor quality from what I understand.

Plug-N-Play may make it harder to get a card working in DOS, although it should still be less troublesome than PCI (which is guaranteed to require drivers rather than just boot-time BIOS and/or software configuration).

So basically:

OPL chip = good Adlib OPL music.
No OPL chip = dodgy emulation of OPL music, or no OPL music.

Non-PnP ISA = configured by jumpers, no software or BIOS hacks or drivers needed.
PnP ISA = configured by BIOS and/or software, should not need drivers.
PCI = drivers required for DOS support, and may still have problems due to motherboard compatibility issues or poor drivers.

I see, thanks! In other words getting a SB16 CT4170/4180 would be a fine choice? I'm putting all my faith in you, mate. 😁 Will buy the card, along with CD-Audio cable, when I return from spring break holidays.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_16

According to the wikipedia article, the 4170 uses some kind of wavetable synthesizer, which may be problematic under DOS (I have no idea) and may cost you OPL/Adlib capability (which is bad).

The 4180 apparently has some kind of OPL/Adlib compatibility without a true OPL chip, so you'll get OPL/Adlib music but it may not sound as good as it would with an older card.

The ISA Sound Blaster 16 does not contain Midi Synthesizer hardware, and can at best be supplied with a software synthesizer. I am pretty sure it won't give midi music in pure DOS.

Getting sound for DOS games is about:
1-Digitized sound
2-FM Music
3-Midi Music

The cards you mention cover Digitized sound well. FM in poor quality, and Midi Music requires additional hardware or fiddling with an AWE synth.
There is no soundcard that is both easy to work with and still covers all three points optimally. You have read about soundcards or just try one or more soundcards and see if it is good enough for you.

For the record, I for one have never thought that OPL synthesis was worth quibbling over. But maybe that just means I've never known how good (or how bad) it can get.

And to make things even more complicated, more modern cards (including those of the PCI variety) may have improved signal-to-noise ratios due to newer, improved designs.

I for one think it is best to stick with whatever works. Like DOSBox.