In theory the config should work perfectly. Did you try updating/reflashing the BIOS? Maybe using a different GPU? (agp if using pci, pci if using agp)

Ha, seems just like the experience I had when I switched from a FIC PA-2012 to an Abit VH6T.

The Abit board is so much more stable than the FIC one. I recapped both of them and tried various 4in1 drivers on the FIC, it would never run as well as the Abit. Occasional hangs and bluescreens, massive performance issues...I threw it into the trash last week, that board was absolutely unuseable.

Maybe it had a difficult hardware problem I was unable to solve.

I have an old Sound Blaster Live CT4760 with gold connectors, the sound card looks good, I can't see any problems on the board, and I got it pretty cheap and was said to be working, but it just will not work for me, wont work with the DOS drivers, and wont work with any Windows drivers I have tried, I tried 5 different drivers yesterday, I will try it in another computer today, I have some Sound Blaster Live CT4670 and a few other Sound Blaster Live cards with the "EMU10K1-ECF" chip and they seem to work fine with the correct driver, but this Sound Blaster Live CT4760 with gold connectors has a "EMU1OK1-NEF" chip, so I am thinking about getting or making a chip programmer and seeing if the card has a damaged EEPROM and / or reprogramming the EEPROM to something a driver will work with, there seems to be a good "how to" over at:

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles/livetolive51/index.html

If an EEPROM reprogram does not work the Sound Blaster Live CT4760 goes into a parts bin.

I had a lot of trouble with Windows 95 when it first came out, I had so many problems that it took me the better part of a week before it ran "acceptably" and even then it had a lot of BSODs,crashes and lock-ups, Norton used to sell a software called "Norton Crash Guard" just because crashes were so common, and there were a lot other companies out there selling software just like it, "Fix-It" was another, "WINProbe" I think was another, "First Aid" was another, crashes were common, and I remember most of my problems seem to come from "VXD" drivers, Windows 98SE was far more stable on my hardware than Windows 95, but I still had my fair amount of crashes with it, "most" of the problems went away with Windows XP.

will1384 wrote on 2020-06-16, 23:14:

I have an old Sound Blaster Live CT4760 with gold connectors, the sound card looks good, I can't see any problems on the board, […]
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I have an old Sound Blaster Live CT4760 with gold connectors, the sound card looks good, I can't see any problems on the board, and I got it pretty cheap and was said to be working, but it just will not work for me, wont work with the DOS drivers, and wont work with any Windows drivers I have tried, I tried 5 different drivers yesterday, I will try it in another computer today, I have some Sound Blaster Live CT4670 and a few other Sound Blaster Live cards with the "EMU10K1-ECF" chip and they seem to work fine with the correct driver, but this Sound Blaster Live CT4760 with gold connectors has a "EMU1OK1-NEF" chip, so I am thinking about getting or making a chip programmer and seeing if the card has a damaged EEPROM and / or reprogramming the EEPROM to something a driver will work with, there seems to be a good "how to" over at:

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles/livetolive51/index.html

If an EEPROM reprogram does not work the Sound Blaster Live CT4760 goes into a parts bin.

I had a lot of trouble with Windows 95 when it first came out, I had so many problems that it took me the better part of a week before it ran "acceptably" and even then it had a lot of BSODs,crashes and lock-ups, Norton used to sell a software called "Norton Crash Guard" just because crashes were so common, and there were a lot other companies out there selling software just like it, "Fix-It" was another, "WINProbe" I think was another, "First Aid" was another, crashes were common, and I remember most of my problems seem to come from "VXD" drivers, Windows 98SE was far more stable on my hardware than Windows 95, but I still had my fair amount of crashes with it, "most" of the problems went away with Windows XP.

I wonder if you could wire an Xbox 360 rom programmer to do this without removing it.

will1384 wrote on 2020-06-16, 23:14:

I have an old Sound Blaster Live CT4760 with gold connectors, the sound card looks good, I can't see any problems on the board, and I got it pretty cheap and was said to be working, but it just will not work for me, wont work with the DOS drivers, and wont work with any Windows drivers I have tried

If all else fails, try using Audigy drivers and see if they detect the card: Guide: Installing Windows 9x and DOS drivers on Sound Blaster Live! cards (version 3.1)

Another user got his CT4830 working using that method, while all the regular Live drivers that he tried had failed.

brian105 wrote on 2020-06-16, 22:46:

In theory the config should work perfectly. Did you try updating/reflashing the BIOS? Maybe using a different GPU? (agp if using pci, pci if using agp)

Here's a high level recap:
1. re-flashed 4333 and tried 4330 to 4333, no difference except large HDD detection
2. tried the following 4 in 1's 4.25, .35 and .36, even tried what is on the CD that came with the board. 4.35 seemed to work best, however there was a time with no 4 in 1 drivers installed it seemed stable.
3. tried several NVIDIA drivers, 2.08, 3.68, 5.32, 6.26 and 36, 30.82, 44.03. Found 44.03 to work consistently and some, don't remember which would black screen with the blinking cursor.
4 Old Jayton PCI 4MB card worked fine.

What I found is it's really a 3d issue. When it locked, I could launch Quake II and hit enter to get the menu, but when I hit the console key it would lock, or if I let it run out to the demo playback it would lock. Software render was fine. I also found that with the 4 in 1's that if I disabled turbo (AGP x2) or if I didn't use the 4 in 1's and disabled it in the bios it was far more stable. Last thing I did was run it for over an hour with crusher and massive demos looped in QII and it was fine. this was with no sound card, I then installed a sb live value (CT4670) and the drivers from the CD and I wound up with a beeeeeeeeep in when it locked up consistently, in different PCI slots. It's now all put away.

I'm sure there's more, it's been a trip down memory lane for sure.

zPacKRat wrote on 2020-06-17, 00:07:

I wonder if you could wire an Xbox 360 rom programmer to do this without removing it.

I am thinking about trying to use a chip programming clip if I can, or maybe removing and replacing the chip and putting some sort of chip and socket combo on the sound card, I will have to look into it more.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-06-17, 00:12:

will1384 wrote on 2020-06-16, 23:14:

I have an old Sound Blaster Live CT4760 with gold connectors, the sound card looks good, I can't see any problems on the board, and I got it pretty cheap and was said to be working, but it just will not work for me, wont work with the DOS drivers, and wont work with any Windows drivers I have tried

If all else fails, try using Audigy drivers and see if they detect the card: Guide: Installing Windows 9x and DOS drivers on Sound Blaster Live! cards (version 3.1)

Another user got his CT4830 working using that method, while all the regular Live drivers that he tried had failed.

Unfortunately I tried the Audigy drivers yesterday and they did not work.

i throw towel when:

1) old 486 motherboard with green barrel battery leaked, eaten traces all over, and eaten bias. I am not going to invest time on trying to repair such a mess, and i just remove bios, remove cache an throw it.
2) when the motherboard just doesn´t power on, and the psu fan does not spin.

2) may be a big loss with older mobos as it might be a tantalum capacitor problem which can easily be solved

When the pcb or GPU are too damaged to repair.

My "throw in the towel" point is when something just will not work no matter what I try and then I find it on eBay for a low price/less than I paid for the non-working one.

When in anger I've thrown it against the wall

EvieSigma wrote on 2020-06-17, 01:59:

My "throw in the towel" point is when something just will not work no matter what I try and then I find it on eBay for a low price/less than I paid for the non-working one.

This ^^

I've been working on a 286 laptop for a year. I have thrown in the towel at least a half-dozen times, boxed it up, put it away. Then thought about something I hadn't tried while laying in bed and opened it back up the next day. I can't help but keep going back to it because I love the look of it, the keyboard, the orange display. I would have gutted it and put in a 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 as a "sleeper" if it weren't for that orange monochrome display that I really want to preserve.

If I haven't figured out what's wrong with something within about 6hrs in to the parts box it goes.

When building a new rig which turns out to behave improperly, I'll just start the troubleshooting process till the problem gets eliminated. So sometimes I'll end up with other parts than I had originally intended to use but that's fine for me, it just comes with the territory.
Depending on whether the part is suspected to be defective or not, I'll put it in my parts box of parts that may need to be looked at more closely at some later moment (I label many items that I use but will definitely label if I had some issues with it so I don't end up accidentally spening a second batch of hours troubleshooting the same item over again 🤣).

I tend to throw in the towel when I've pretty much exhausted everything I can do.

For example on an old 8088 motherboard I have, from my first PC, it doesn't POST and had numerous issues that I was able to fix such as a broken BIOS chip & a snapped off tantalum. But then there were more trickier issues, such as a pin stuck inside a SIPP slot in the first slot and also not having any SIPP RAM in my collection, plus a socketed chip with visible scorch marks that seems difficult to source a replacement (hadn't checked aliexpress). Those issues might be fixable, but then I'd be unsure if the board had other further issues so I've given up for now and stored the board away.

I gave up on a Macintosh Performa 400 that had a leaky battery, the motherboard was just obliterated by the acid. to the recycling container it goes, I got that mac for free anyway, the damage was too much, It couldn't be fixed since the acid ate many of the traces and the ICs were corroded to hell. Those lithium 3.6V batteries, especially the Maxell branded ones in those old Macs are ticking timebombs. I kept the case since it just had minimal yellowing and a couple scuffs. I'll throw in a LC II or III motherboard into it in the future to revive it. The PSU looked fine though, and even outputted the correct voltages, and the HDD spun up and was recognized when i plugged it into my Mac IIci, it has System 7.1 on it.

I'm too stubborn to give up on anything. So I start messing around until I fck something else up and realize that it's trash now. Into the hopeless pile it goes! (not the actual trash, my mental block prevents that)
A few months pass and I start tinkering with them again... I love hopeless cases.