I would go ahead and pick out the card first and we'll narrow down the driver installation from there. It's not much of a hassle as long as the drivers are available. Options will be based on your budget.

I would think the GO TO card recommendation for your system via this forum is going to be the Sound Blaster Pro II CT1600. I don't think these are easy to find under 50 USD anymore though. Depending on your budget there are plenty of options ranging from the Sound Blaster 16 (including some vibra cards) and cards like Aztech Sound Galaxy (and other) with Crystal audio on them.

I tend to bias towards vibra 16 cards with the yamaha YMF262 (OPL3 - The "Sound Blaster" sound) chip for the nice output quality (low noise from the speakers) combined with genuine OPL3, but YMMV. My ears aren't keen enough to really care about the differences, but more passionate audio guys can really stress certain differences. I'd suggest letting a few other users dump in their thoughts, then you can go ahead and google search the cards and read up a bit.

Also: Look up the card models on YouTube, people make recordings of songs playing on them. Especially things like DOOM E1M1

How about this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Labs-16-bit … rd/232861053197
It's a Vibra 16C ISA, so it would fit in the Compaq.
From what I see on YouTube of DOOM E1M1 being played on it, it has that "sound" I want.

How about drivers for this thing though? Are they easy to find in the Vibra 16c series?
I can't seem to find them on the Creative web site. Although, I have found the Windows 3.x/DOS drivers for the regular SB16 on Creative's site, so that might be worth a spin.

Ultrax wrote:

How about this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Labs-16-bit … rd/232861053197 It's a Vibra 16C ISA, so it would fit in the Com […]
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How about this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Labs-16-bit … rd/232861053197
It's a Vibra 16C ISA, so it would fit in the Compaq.
From what I see on YouTube of DOOM E1M1 being played on it, it has that "sound" I want.

How about drivers for this thing though? Are they easy to find in the Vibra 16c series?
I can't seem to find them on the Creative web site. Although, I have found the Windows 3.x/DOS drivers for the regular SB16 on Creative's site, so that might be worth a spin.

Vibra 16 Drivers can be found right here on vogons: http://vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid=7&menustate=42,35 It *Should* be enough to get you started, just note that it is a PnP card (Plug and Play) and some users have reported headaches getting them going in DOS. It should be a start though if you're in a big hurry.

Personally, for Vibra cards I would be looking for a Vibra16S for the Yamaha chip or maybe even a full SB16 at that price, that's the one detail I can notice in certain sounds (CQM vs Yamaha OPL3). You can see a small chip labeled "Yamaha JAPAN YMF-262 OPL". Search eBay using model numbers e.g. CT2502 and sometimes you'll find cheap auctions. Read up on them at the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_16

With a budget of around $20 I would think you could get a Vibra16S easily, and there are definitely plenty of good Aztech cards that sell cheaper in the US if you really want to squeeze pennies because most people are afraid to go with anything but the creative cards, but they are good too.

Well, I searched eBay for Vibra16S, and found this beauty:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/CREATIVE-LABS-CT2800 … TY/112243327615

And yep, you're right about the budget! 🤣
However, it claims to be a Dell OEM card. Would this still work in a Compaq with the drivers found in the VOGONS database?

That Vibra16S was the card I started with when I got back into retro machines and you can't really go wrong - sounds great and easy to set up. The purists here will start banging on about hanging notes on the wavetable header and SB16 bugs but you can safely ignore them 😀 One day you might decide to go on the grand adventure of finding the holy grail of ISA sounds cards (from experience there's no such thing) but until you do then that card will do everything you need it to.

Ultrax wrote:

However, it claims to be a Dell OEM card. Would this still work in a Compaq with the drivers found in the VOGONS database?

I believe it should work. Dell wasn't known for making their expansion cards "proprietary" in a way that would prevent them from being used in another computer.

I just listened to a sample of the 16s and it sounds great - now THAT'S what I want in that Compaq!
My only concern though is the driver. Which one would I choose to put on a (series?) of floppy disks for the Dell OEM card to work?

And does anyone have a DELL or ASUS OEM Vibra16S card they can throw into their machine and test with certain driver floppy images? IF anyone can. 😜

That's just a plain old CT2800, it'll work fine with the standard drivers you can find any old where. VogonDrivers or the Creative site will have what you need.

badmojo wrote:

That's just a plain old CT2800, it'll work fine with the standard drivers you can find any old where. VogonDrivers or the Creative site will have what you need.

This. It's not a proprietary model. Its a ct2800 which i believe is exactly a ct2504 with the drive headers stripped out. The vibra16 drivers near the bottom of the driver page I linked should be fine, I'm pretty sure that's the driver I downloaded for mine. If not I'll check, but i have a few similar cards that all work in DOS no problems.

I'd hit the make an offer button and try to knock the price down a bit to offset that shipping :p

So basically, what kind of synthesis does the Vibra16S use? OPL3?

And if it's still there when I get the Compaq, I'll make an offer on it 😀

And I'm assuming I'll just throw the installer folder from http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=3 … menustate=42,35 onto a floppy, and run the installer.
Do I need the sound card installed in the computer while I install the drivers, or should I put it in afterwards?

EDIT: Also, I'm purchasing the floppies and sound card tonight. They should get here around the time the computer itself does. 😁

Yes, it uses OPL3 "FM Synthesis": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YMF262
All of the Sound Blaster 16 cards do OPL3, but it's integrated into the Creative chip on mostly all cards shipped after 1995 and hence is not "genuine OPL3". Most of us refer to that Yamaha chip when we speak of genuine. The differences are subtle in a lot of ways but some instruments can sound a bit different ("tinny" to me). They will ALL play your sound blaster compatible games audio, just with subtle differences in the sound quality and tone [ignoring a few other issues with SB Pro II compatibility]

If you read the page linked there, and the one on the SB16: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_16 , you'll learn some of the terminology you're going to face when talking about these cards here, e.g., MPU401, UART / dumb-mode, "wavetable header", "hanging note bug", and so forth.

Ultrax wrote:

And I'm assuming I'll just throw the installer folder from http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=3 … menustate=42,35 onto a floppy, and run the installer.
Do I need the sound card installed in the computer while I install the drivers, or should I put it in afterwards?

EDIT: Also, I'm purchasing the floppies and sound card tonight. They should get here around the time the computer itself does. 😁

I believe the CT2800 is a plug and play card, when you run the installer it's probably going to automatically search for the IRQ and DMA setting your card is set to. Without it installed, you'll probably just get a "Sound Blaster 16 not found" error, but when it is connected the CTCM.exe and DIAGNOSE.exe binaries should find it. I would make it easy on myself and run the installation files for the vibra16 after it's connected.

Alright, so that all sounds good. The Vibra16S is perfect for my needs, as it sounds great (the "non-genuine" OPL3 it uses is just fine, I don't have an ear for hanging notes and such 🤣 ). When I get the Compaq (on the 7th of August or earlier hopefully) I'll put the card in and run the driver installation under Windows 3.1.

I'll be sure to read those pages, too. In addition, do I need the "Sound Blaster Vibra 16 Accessories" folder also on the floppy disk, or do I just need the "Sound Blaster Vibra 16 Install" folder? If I do, it's not a biggie, I'll just use HJ-Split (as it runs on both Windows 7 and Windows 3.1).

Also, I don't think the subtle sound quality differences should hurt - at first, I'll be in it for CANYON.MID ( 😁 ), DOOM, Lemmings, Wolfenstein 3D, and Chip's Challenge - all of which seem to sound okay on the Vibra16S.

And thanks for your help, I appreciate it!

The vibra16S IS genuine OPL3 😀, see the Yamaha chip toward the bottom right of your card on ebay? That's why I pushed you towards the 16S instead of 16C. The C is the later model with the yamaha chip integrated into the Creative chip. I like the Vibra16S because it has low line noise (squealing from your speakers) as well as genuine OPL3 playback, which makes it my favorite card for general use especially with headphones.

It can all be a little confusing at first 😁.. There is plenty of small print I'm leaving out, but there is no perfect card no matter what.

I believe the accessories disk on that Vibra 16 package just contains a few audio sample files to show off WAV and FM playback. You should safely be able to skip it. To get the card up and running should be as simple as running INSTALL.EXE and it'll automagically make needed updates to your config.sys and autoexec.bat files for DOS and the win.ini for win 3.1

Oh! I didn't notice that - thanks for pointing that out, it makes it even better! 😁
And yeah, almost anything retro can be a bit confusing, but once it's all set up, it's so worth it. And of course there's no perfect card - the SB16 has capacitor issues, the Gravis Ultrasound has SoundBlaster/all OPL compatibility issues, the list goes on. But they're all good anyways - and this Vibra is pefect for me 😀

I wasn't alive back when this was all new - when I was born the latest sound card was the Audigy 2 ZS and shortly after the Audigy 4 Pro - and even then, external sound cards were being replaced by integrated audio very rapidly (thanks Realtek!) - so I wonder just how difficult it was back in the day when you didn't have communities like Vogons to provide drivers and such - and not being able to order a sound card from the comfort of your own computer 🤣

Holy cow, feels like I just bought my Audigy. It will be interesting to know what it's like for somebody born well after the DOS era ended to dive into a DOS machine head on. Most of us were using DOS when it was just the thing to have.

Actually, back in the day we had physical stores to go to and, at least for me, local user groups who helped out. Before the modern internet came around we had usenet, I would generally ask questions and get useful feedback within a few hours. Those were comp.os.linux.hardware and I believe comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.* 😜

As for drivers, of course they came in the box with our hardware.. Creative used to toss in software like Talking Parrot and Dr. Sbaitso and etc along with the drivers.

Today when you ask a question, especially on modern hardware forums, your response is 200 people fighting with each other about things you can't even understand, yielding no answers at all, so things were easier for me when I was young 😎

I've actually been highly interested in DOS stuff since I was 7 - back then, I didn't even know that Windows 9x ran on top of DOS so I rarely ever successfully installed 3.1, 95 or 98 🤣

Vogons is a good forum, I haven't seen the "snobbery arguments" here yet. Today's forum world is hectic, of course, so there have been forums in the not-so-distant past where people would literally cuss each other out and get banned, obviously yielding no answers - but I always got a good laugh out of it 😜

Also, speaking of usenet, Google Groups houses an archive of usenet discussions from back then. I found an argument over the SoundBlaster 16 and SoundBlaster Pro 2. 😜

As for what it's like for someone like me who was born long after the DOS era to get into a DOS machine - well, I imagine it would be great! Playing those vintage games and messing around in DOS certainly show me that the DOS era was a great time to grow up in.

Good news for me was there was no win 9x when I was 7 😜. I believe kids pick up DOS earlier and easier. My young nephew can navigate to a game and launch e.g. jazz jackrabbit on the dos computer but I'm just now showing him how to find files using the Windows GUI and he gets frustrated.

We can get snobby at vogons about things we're passionate about. Sound card guys can get snobby about sound cards. I get snobby when people pick on the poor Apple IIGS (my first "PC" teehee).

I know google groups very well 😜. Many posts I've made are on there, thankfully the only identifier is an email address nobody would know is me today, and I used a spamtrap email followed by my actual email written in a way only humans could understand.

DOS was a great era to grow up in. It was a completely open system. I wrote my own games and everything that made them work right down to the pixel plotter, keyboard driver, joy driver, etc. You could find big fat books teaching you all of that. Today you really can't understand much of anything besides APIs and blackboxes, and while they get the job done, it steals away much of the fun young hobbyists had back in the DOS times.