I can't really provide any technical detail, but I've had some success running my older (late 1992 - early 1993ish) SB16 with much later SB Vibra drivers. I initially did this by accident after I swapped my Vibra 16 out for the older card and forgot to change the drivers. But everything kept working properly and I still haven't bothered to switch the drivers back. So at least in my congfig and with my games, newer drivers with older cards isn't a problem.

Interesting topic. Does anyone know of the original SB16 drivers for Windows from '92 ?
I'm looking for them. I hope that they also included normal *.DRV files and didn't depend on VXDs so much..
If so, they *may* also work in Win 3.1 Standard Mode or WIN-OS/2.

33mhz wrote:

I can't really provide any technical detail, but I've had some success running my older (late 1992 - early 1993ish) SB16 with much later SB Vibra drivers. I initially did this by accident after I swapped my Vibra 16 out for the older card and forgot to change the drivers. But everything kept working properly and I still haven't bothered to switch the drivers back. So at least in my congfig and with my games, newer drivers with older cards isn't a problem.

Thanks for the information. I suspected that later drivers would work with older cards. I generally like to use the driver set that is packaged with the card, but they are hard to identify unless you buy the card and disks as a set. Just a period-correct thing, although I assume that Creative released driver updates online.

Jo22 wrote:

Interesting topic. Does anyone know of the original SB16 drivers for Windows from '92 ?
I'm looking for them. I hope that they also included normal *.DRV files and didn't depend on VXDs so much..
If so, they *may* also work in Win 3.1 Standard Mode or WIN-OS/2.

I'd like to see those too. When I get a chance, I will add photos of the cards + disks for the CIB CT1730 I own.

The CD-ROM I have comes from a kit that included a SB16 (model unknown) and a quad-speed CD-ROM drive (I have the documentation and software but no hardware).

Would this work for you?
http://files.mpoli.fi/unpacked/hardware/sound … abs/sb16wu.zip/

If I recall, Creative's OS/2 driver bundle include the necessary Win-OS/2 drivers as well. They were pretty good with OS/2 support back in the ISA days. The only silly problem I had with them is the provided AWE Utility for OS/2 didn't support SoundFont 2 (*.sf2) format banks for some reason. It only supported the rarer *.sbk files.

gdjacobs wrote:

Would this work for you?
http://files.mpoli.fi/unpacked/hardware/sound … abs/sb16wu.zip/

Thank you. If the file was intended for me, I should clarify that I'm not searching for a SB16 driver but just wondering what happens when newer drivers are used with older cards and vice versa.

Also thought this might be a good thread for photos of the media accompanying specific SB16 models.

NJRoadfan wrote:

If I recall, Creative's OS/2 driver bundle include the necessary Win-OS/2 drivers as well. They were pretty good with OS/2 support back in the ISA days. The only silly problem I had with them is the provided AWE Utility for OS/2 didn't support SoundFont 2 (*.sf2) format banks for some reason. It only supported the rarer *.sbk files.

Thank you. I know that IBM itself included SB16 drivers for WIN-OS/2 on Warp 4, but for some reason they didn't work (as described here).
Are Creative's WIN-OS/2 drivers known to be more compatible ? Just asking. WIN-OS/2 isn't the best when it comes to VXDs (*.386) stuff.
As far as I can remember, back then IBM had a lot of stress to get WIn32s working because of these VXDs.
I think a version of 1.25a was also patched for WIN-OS/2 and worked fine, but later versions were a bit too tricky for WIN-OS/2 (see OS/2 Tips & Tricks).
Besides, it would be cool to get a SB16 fully working on a 286, as well.
At the moment, SB16 works fine with all DOS software, but in Windows 3.1 I'm limited to SB 1.5/2.0 drivers which sadly can't do stereo. 🙁
That's why I hope that the original drivers weren't so focused on VXDs (in '92 286's were still common).

Meant for Jo22.

boxpressed wrote:

I should clarify that I'm not searching for a SB16 driver but just wondering what happens when newer drivers are used with older cards and vice versa.

Also thought this might be a good thread for photos of the media accompanying specific SB16 models.

I see, sorry for my earlier post then. I didn't mean to hi-jack your thread for a driver discussing..
Btw, the photo thing is interestingl! I'm using CT17xx models, though, so I do have only a few drivers disks and can't serve with funny compatibility issues.
Any PnP users, here ? 😉

gdjacobs wrote:

Meant for Jo22.

Thank's a lot! Haven't seen that one before, but I'll try it soon.

Jo22 wrote:

I see, sorry for my earlier post then. I didn't mean to hi-jack your thread for a driver discussing..
Btw, the photo thing is interestingl! I'm using CT17xx models, though, so I do have only a few drivers disks and can't serve with funny compatibility issues.
Any PnP users, here ? 😉

Oh, no worries at all. Feel free to discuss drivers. I just didn't want people to think that I myself was looking for drivers.

This reminds me of an issue I went through back in January. I have a SB16 Vibra CT2800. I downloaded the Vibra drivers from Vogons driver archive and could not get the MPU-401 interface to detect. Long story short, after much troubleshooting and even getting the video card seller to refund me, I tried the SB16 (non-Vibra) drivers from Creative's site and the problem went away. I re-paid the seller. 😀 Here's the thread:
Which Sound Blaster drivers can I comment out?

clueless1 wrote:

This reminds me of an issue I went through back in January. I have a SB16 Vibra CT2800. I downloaded the Vibra drivers from Vogons driver archive and could not get the MPU-401 interface to detect. Long story short, after much troubleshooting and even getting the video card seller to refund me, I tried the SB16 (non-Vibra) drivers from Creative's site and the problem went away. I re-paid the seller. 😀 Here's the thread:
Which Sound Blaster drivers can I comment out?

Yes, Vogonsdrivers is a tremendous resource, but I'd love to have an additional resource that matches photos (and dumps) of the exact media that originally accompanied a specific card. Seems like we could make it happen given how many of us have a CIB example of a particular model.

Not entirely related, but one of my machines has an AWE32 installed in it, and yet the setup I used created a SB16 directory on the HDD. Works fine, has the AWEUTIL.EXE in it, DIAGNOSE detects that it is an AWE32 and has the AWE32 demo on it to... I just find it odd that it installed it all in a SB16 folder!