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SoundBlaster onboard interfaces and jumper and wavetable and other questions ...

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First post, by mombarak

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Hi everyone,

I got 5 questions which bother me since a while but I was not able to find an answer in this nice forum or in search machines.

1) Whenever I search for sound cards on Ebay or here on Vogons I see that some have SCSI or IDE interfaces. What were these for? I would imagine if you connect a disk or two behind a sound card, there would be performance issues for at least the disk's data rate.

2) Is there a way to disable the PnP component on a Sound Blaster 16 PnP? I would like to use it with classic drivers and fixed values.

3) I have a wavetable interface on the card and would like to add a wavetable. Which one would you recommend in terms of simply good quality. I am thinking the DreamBlaster X16GS could be a good choice because it could be close to a Roland MT-32. Or is this wrong thinking?

4) Is there any difference which ISA slot to use? One could say the distance is closest (fastest?) on the upper ISA slot. The same I would assume for the PCI slots. But if there is no difference, would be good to know. Modern PCs have these limitations where the second PCI-X Slot is slower.

5) Is it possible that a Soundblaster 16 PnP can have influence on PC-Speaker games? When I run Lotus 2 Turbo Challenge and I select PCI speaker, I have microfreezes in the game. The picture suddently stops and continues after 2 seconds. This does not happen when I select Soundblaster. I have not seen this in other games. I tried Cosmos Cosmic Adventures and it worked although it had a weird mix of PC Speaker Soundeffects and Soundblaster background music.

Thanks in advance,
MomBarak

Reply 1 of 2, by DEAT

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mombarak wrote on 2024-04-15, 20:46:

1) Whenever I search for sound cards on Ebay or here on Vogons I see that some have SCSI or IDE interfaces. What were these for? I would imagine if you connect a disk or two behind a sound card, there would be performance issues for at least the disk's data rate.

They're for CD-ROM drives - all sound cards will run on an 8-bit ISA slot without issues with the exception that 16-bit output on the CMI8330 will not work, but SBPro is perfectly fine with that chipset. I haven't tested WSS on any cards for whether that makes a difference. SB16s can use 16-bit output without any issues on an 8-bit slot and can use the same DMA port as 8-bit output. Generally speaking, the 16-bit ISA pins on sound cards are primarily used for CD-ROM support and will see no practical difference if sound output is being used at the same time, given period-correct CD-ROM drive speeds.

mombarak wrote on 2024-04-15, 20:46:

4) Is there any difference which ISA slot to use? One could say the distance is closest (fastest?) on the upper ISA slot. The same I would assume for the PCI slots. But if there is no difference, would be good to know. Modern PCs have these limitations where the second PCI-X Slot is slower.

The slot furthest away from the power socket is always recommended for reduced noise output.

mombarak wrote on 2024-04-15, 20:46:

5) Is it possible that a Soundblaster 16 PnP can have influence on PC-Speaker games? When I run Lotus 2 Turbo Challenge and I select PCI speaker, I have microfreezes in the game. The picture suddently stops and continues after 2 seconds. This does not happen when I select Soundblaster. I have not seen this in other games. I tried Cosmos Cosmic Adventures and it worked although it had a weird mix of PC Speaker Soundeffects and Soundblaster background music.

I've never seen any slowdown issues with PC speaker input on my CT2290 or my CT4180.

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