Hello. I have a Dell OptiPlex GX110 in the small form factor variety. I picked it up for $30 at a thrift store, which isn't a bad price considering how much any GX110 goes for on fleaBay. The specs I got are a 667MHz Coppermine Pentium III for Socket 370, 256MB of PC-100 memory, an 8GB hard drive (I swapped out for an 80GB), onboard Intel 810E graphics, and a Sound Blaster AudioPCI CT5807 for the sound card. Now, that sound card is really important and leads to my question.

My particular GX110 does not have onboard audio. While onboard audio is frowned upon for DOS and vintage computers in general, this is a downside for me as I have to use a PCI card. However, I cannot get sound out of the AudioPCI, or my other sound card I bought for it, a Sound Blaster Live CT4780. I know both cards work because I tested them in another system and I can get sound out of the cards. But in this particular system, I can't get sound out of them.

I've tried a bunch of things. Tried the sound drivers in Windows 98, it constantly froze up, installed Windows 2000, unbearably slow, installed XP, it installs all the drivers but get no sound from the AudioPCI, tried a few different drivers for the card, still get no sound. The problems are even worse with the CT4780: it doesn't show up in the BIOS at all, and if I'm lucky, it will show as an (unknown manufacturer) comm. adapter and Windows will try to pick it up. That gets no sound out of it, and trying to install the Creative drivers tells me I have no Creative hardware in my system. Shutting down after the card is picked up will lead to the system freezing up on "Windows is shutting down..."

I've tried changing the IRQ assignment and the sound card, along with the onboard video, seem to have and switch to the same IRQ number. I don't know anything about IRQs, but I've heard that having the same number for two devices causes an IRQ conflict, and I can't seem to get the video and sound card on seperate IRQs unless they are supposed to be the same.

When I got my GX110, I noticed it had a pretty hacked up install of XP, which gets me thinking the BIOS may have gotten a little bit messed up.

Anybody with a GX110 just like this or similar system with no onboard audio, do you know what could be causing this? At this point, I can only think I have a bad riser card (I'm having a heck of a time finding one) or a bad motherboard (which cost a fortune and basically do not exist online). I really want to get this computer's sound working, it would seem like a decent computer for old games and I don't have a lot of room or money for something bigger/nicer.