Sound blaster 2 IMO.

Can you name a few of the games you want to play?

Phil,

Its hard to say as I was a huge fan of the Sierra Games back when I had a 486 originally, but now I am really looking something that can work the best overall as I tend to search through lists of games to find something that tickles my fancy and then check it out..For example, I never played Wing Commander as a kid / teen, but want to check it out now...

And my hope is to get one into the 486 and then another into the Pentium II I am going to build....

Then, if possible, looking at doing a 386 down the line, just because I have never built a 386....

That's the thing, "best overall" is not easy to answer.

Just pick a few games.

You mentioned Wing Commander and Sierra games: Roland MT-32 is what you want for those 😀

Sadly I once had an MT-32 and an MPU-IPC-T card but had to sell it to pay bills about 9 months ago...
So without one, I am relying on what I have for now...

Some Games for the 486:

Star Control Series
Police Quest Series
Dune II
Wing Commander
Starflight 1 and 2
Quest for Glory Series
Star Wars Tie Fighter

I think most of these game support MIDI, be it Roland MT-32 or General MIDI.

Starflight sounds old, not sure if it supports anything beyond the PC speaker. Routed through a Sound Blaster 16 could be considered an improvement.

Starflight is pretty old, 1986....but a cool game nonetheless I played when I was 9 but couldnt get anywhere!

I would say a Sound Blaster 16 (CSP or not doesn't matter since nothing uses it) simply because when 486 were the dominant CPUs those were also the dominant sound cards so most games will almost certainly work well with it. This is assuming you won't be using any external MIDI synths or daughterboards.

Your best bet would be the CT2740 SB16, it has the CT1747 Bus Controller with OPL3 integrated, and no hanging note bugs if you eventually decide to use the MPU-401 interface.
But, it is a noisy card because of the old CT1701 codec chip and the volume control.
Make sure you set the mixer with Voice and Midi to full and Master once click below full, this will maximize signal to noise ratio.

If I go that route, the 2740, would you recommend I put the other SB16 in the PII (DOS / Win 95/98) machine or the SB32?

Well, if you're going for somewhat period correctness the SB32 would make more sense. You wouldn't typically equip a PII with a SB16 CT2830 since there were newer and cheaper cards at the time that would offer better or equal sound quality for the same feature set. There's nothing wrong with that pairing though, but a wavetable capable sound card would make more sense to me in a PII.

Thanks for all the advice....will give it a shot with the 2740 and go from there for the 486...

For the PII, I will try out both the SB16 (2830) and the SB32 (3930)

Anyone know the usefulness / non-usefullness of these:

Media Magic ISP-16
Diamond K2Y-PRO16
Crystal Audio 7268vPE-a

All have the Yamaha OPL chip on them and look OK....just not sure of any of their reputations....

What codec/mixer/bus chips do they use? That will tell you something of their capabilities, although performance is governed by the implementation somewhat.

Edit: Found some info, opinions in the post below.

Pentium II pairs best with an AWE64. In fact my dads OEM dell came with one. I suggest picking one up, they're relatively cheap.
DX2-66 pairs well a Soundblaster Pro/2 or an SB16 if you don't have one. Finding something off-brand with an OPL3 or good SBpro emulation might even be better than an SB16.

The ISP16 uses a CS4248 codec which has some good specs. Not too surprising, as Crystal Semi tended to make good codecs. As it comes with a true YMF-262 OPL3 chip, it would be worth trying (in my opinion). Not too sure about the bus chip, though. Can't find a board shot with the sticker peeled.

The K2Y-PRO16 uses a CS4231 codec, so it's more or less the same idea as the ISP, but a little bit older in terms of silicon. The bus chip is branded as a Reveal, but is likely a relabeled off the shelf solution from a company like Opti.

Can't find any board shots of the 7268vPE, so I can't help you too much there.

Unfortunately, the codecs from Crystal Semi require the bus chips to enable many of the nice features (like digital filtering). It would require testing to determine exactly what each card can do.

Had a question about one thing...the Soundblaster 2

How do you get CD Audio using a SB2 or cant you? There is no input on my CT1350B card for it....

Also going to try out the ISP16 card first to see how things sound...

No CD support in the CT1350B, and it's pretty ancient digital sound quality wise.

There are better cards out there, but out of those I'd pick the CT3930 as the starting point. Sound should be decent with the Vibra chipset (despite ringing issues, and clipping in some games) and it's got the YMF262 for FM. The others are older noisier SB16 designs with CT1701 codecs.

The CT3930 is a good match for a Win95/98 machine. If that's what you're going to run, go for it. Otherwise you might want to look at one of the SB16s, or even one of the clones. The EMU8k chip didn't have great support amongst DOS titles especially compared to something like the GUS.

I would use the SB32 over the SB16, somewhere. According to the below it has OPL chip,
AWE32 with RAM and OPL?
SB32,AWE32,64's are for the most part act like a SB16, (digital sound) so why limit yourself unnecessary?
I agree the P2 Duel boot PC is the better choice.

SB16 is more era correct for a DX2 and games realised round that time, and is 99% backward compatible.
I would only use the SB Pro if you ran into any compatibility problems with a game
You don't have an external Midi device so hanging note bug is a non issue for you.

The non creative cards I don't know anything about, Could be fun to find out for yourself and post back? had a few people here in the last year or 2 rediscovering unknown gems