I don't know what year that card was designed but I suspect it's a fairly recent one. If so then likely DOS drivers don't exist.

In any case PCI and DOS, while they can function together, generally don't gel very well where sound cards are concerned. The general wisdom is try to get a motherboard with an ISA slot and get an ISA sound card.

As for the best, it depends what you want to do. If you're aiming for pre-3D games, SB16 should be fine. If you're looking for late-DOS ones (say 1994-7), SB AWE 32 or 64. The ISA models, specifically.

If you're looking to play games which are designed with Windows in mind first and foremost, you can probably get away with a PCI sound card.

Someone's likely going to correct me in some detail but that's broadly the rule - ISA rules for DOS.

the CMI one is on a Pentium 4 board. searching for a ISA manboard is not an option.

Maybe there you know which PCI cards support win98?

Just looked on ebay, the prices for SB cards are unreal...

atom1kk wrote on 2022-01-24, 13:26:

the CMI one is on a Pentium 4 board. searching for a ISA manboard is not an option.

Maybe there you know which PCI cards support win98?

Just looked on ebay, the prices for SB cards are unreal...

Yeah ISA SB cards are very popular because of their better sound with DOS, sadly.

I had a Soundblaster Live! in my Windows 98 machine a few years back until I managed to find an AWE64. That should manage DOS adequately but not accurately, if that makes sense.

I found an interesting quote while searching

The Live! implemented DOS legacy support via Ensoniq's AudioPCI DOS TSR program. Creative acquired Ensoniq in 1998 and, as part of the deal, made use of this highly-compatible ISA sound card emulator with their newer cards. In fact, the Live! uses ".ecw" (Ensoniq Concert Wavetable) files for the wavetable emulation in DOS. The program enables support for many standards, such as Sound Blaster 16, General MIDI, AdLib, among others

so it seems that the early cards could work with DOS

I found many SB live CT4830 on ebay. any experience whith that?

I can't remember if I had the specific model but it should run fine on *most* apps. Some very old DOS games may still give you grief - I remember Contraption Zack an old 286 game refused to run on it.

For many others it will be fine but if you're looking for it to sound precisely how it was meant to sound, you'll be disappointed.

I like to use Yamaha-based PCI sound cards in DOS. Such as YMF724 or YMF744 cards. They have good Soundblaster compatibility, and real OPL3 sound. Drivers are available on vogonsdrivers.

im looking for dos games from around 1992, not much older.

@stamasd could you give me some popular models so i can look for? as i remember in my time SB was the card which nearly everybody was using

Here's a writeup by Phil on a Yamaha XG sound card https://www.philscomputerlab.com/yamaha-ymf74 … sound-card.html

There are many ones to choose from, and usually they're not expensive in places like ebay even in this age of inflated prices.

YMF744 cards usually look like this: https://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTE0OFgxMjgw/z/aAc … 5ZNFXw/$_57.JPG
YMF724 cards usually look like this: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/262860341321-0-1/s-l1000.jpg (notice the larger main chip)
Most of them function exactly the same.

Search for "yamaha pci" on ebay, you'll see many of them for sale.

(edit) personally, even for ISA machines I prefer Yamaha sound cards, such as the OPL3-SAx (YMF718, YMF719 chipsets).

THX for the hint. but while i can get a SB for 5€ the yamaha start from 50€ and upwards. so i think i will stick to the SB.

Technically speaking, the Solo-1 is better, and at least one model exists with both a wavetable header and SB-Link.

Unfortunately, the Solo-1 drivers aren't very intuitive, and SB-Link with this card does not function on later machines.

The Yamaha cards OTOH work very well with SB-Link, even on modern platforms, and the DOS setup is pretty intuitive. So a Yamaha PCI card, SB-Link, and something like a Dreamblaster wavetable connected to the game port. The Yamaha cards are not perfect when it comes to sound effects, but someone else on here could probably better explain that caveat to you. Though I wouldn't worry about it.

for dos gaming the Yamaha YMFxxx cards are better, €50 is wayyy to much though!

You also have Creative SB-Live though to Audigy 1 with official drivers or Audigy 2ZS with modified driver.
This will emulate a SB16 in dos... with mixed results
Great card for Windows, A3D 1.0/EAX3+ in Windows, better then nothing for dos.

You also have the Ensonic AudioPCi aka Soundblaster PCI64/128
This uses the same drivers as the Live/Audigy range but emulates a SB Pro.
Average card for Windows , No A3D/EAX, better then nothing for dos. (Budget option)

Aural Vortex also have good dos support and a midi header.
Vortex 1 is good card for Windows with A3D 1.0/EAX2, good dos drivers
Vortex 2 is great card for Windows with EAX2/A3D 2.0 good dos drivers

the problem is, that all other cards except SB is really hard to get or are comperably not cheap. I am just looking at aSB live for 7€ and will try it out and experiment a bit with it. I mean the audio quality is not that important to me, i just need a sound which is not faulty and works. ATM i dont have any sound at DOS 😁

I havve 3 different version to choose from

4670, 4780 and 4830 (this one is the majority at ebay), which is the better choice to choose from?

4670 Live Value, no Digital out
4780 Dell OEM
4830 Live Value, with Digital Out

All are basically the same functionally. The Dell one doesn't use standard drivers but you can find the correct ones here.

ok, thx than i stick to the 4830