There may be too many missing resources from the chipset for it to work on such a modern motherboard. Just a guess.

I should have clarified that I wondered if anyone had the Audigy 2ZS working on Widows 9x and a more modern platform for both general usage and/or Windows' DOS mode.

I consider DOS mode a nice bonus, but I'm mostly interested in getting Sound Fonts and EAX 3.0 working.

I also have a Sound Blaster Live! that works properly (Sounds Fonts and EAX 2.0) on this platform minus the DOS mode.

My fastest "retro" machine that runs DOS/98se is an Intel 945G with a Core 2 Duo. It works fine with any Creative PCI card, Aureal Vortex, and OPL3, but does not support DMA natively on the ISA bus (if you can find one with an ISA slot). I seem to recall that it did not work with any Yamaha XG or ESS Solo-1 PCI cards.

One major caveat is that these motherboards come with PCI-e instead of AGP, which rules out early GeForce on Windows 98.

fosterwj03 wrote on 2023-10-07, 01:01:

I should have clarified that I wondered if anyone had the Audigy 2ZS working on Widows 9x and a more modern platform for both general usage and/or Windows' DOS mode.

The latest platform where I was able to install VxD drivers with working DOS support was this LGA775 build which uses the P35 chipset.

Like Kahenraz said, it's possible that later chipsets lack some of the resources / functionality which is needed for this to work.

fosterwj03 wrote on 2023-10-07, 00:03:

I'm trying to use a Dell OEM Audigy 2 ZS with a Ivy Bridge / B75 motherboard for Windows 9x. The WDM driver from the CD does not work at all on this system (the driver installs, but the card produces no sound). The VXD drivers appear to work with the card (i.e. the card produces sound), but none of the Creative apps recognize the card. EAX also does not seem to work with the VXD drivers.

Did you modify the driver CD's contents in any way? Apart extracting the VxD cab I mean.

When I was playing with it I tried to trim extra fat off it so I could archive a smaller installer with only the needed driver + software, but I clearly missed something else they needed as the apps woudn't work right even though they installed fine. They work fine when installed from unmodified folder structure.

Thanks everyone for giving this some thought. It could just be a weird incompatibility among the Audigy, the motherboard, and the OS, but I didn't want to give up so fast.

If I install the WDM drivers from the Vogons CD (unmodified) in Windows 9x (I've tested both 98SE and Me so far), the drivers appear to have installed properly in Device Manager (no errors). The card just doesn't initialize to produce any sound. I can install all of the Creative apps from the CD, and the apps start with the WDM drivers. Again, no sound though (media players don't advance during playback).

If I install the VXD drivers per the guide, the drivers install properly in Device Manager with the card initializing at boot. I get stereo sound and software MIDI, but Audigy Synth does not appear as an option in the Multimedia settings. While I can install the Creative apps, they all give a "device not found" error when I try to run them. Games do not allow me to enable EAX support with the VXD drivers. DOS SB emulation also doesn't appear in the Device Manager even after modifying the registry and installing the emulation drivers per the guide.

I've tried moving the card to various slots (the motherboard has 4 PCI slots), and none of them improve the operation of the drivers. The slot closest to the CPU actually causes a conflict with the SATA/AHCI controller.

I'm frustrated because this card does work properly in Windows 2000 using the same installation CD, although I also upgraded the drivers using the most recent download from creative which provided "Digital CD" as an option in the Windows Mixer. I figured this card should work in Windows 9x.

I was wondering if someone out there could post the PCI ID string (including the subsystem ID) for a real SB0350. I looked through the registry, and it appears that the drivers assign "FEATURES" based on the card's PCI ID. Since I have an OEM card, it looks like the registry uses a "CTBAS2.DAT" file to assign features to a generic Audigy, whereas other cards have specific .DAT files. If I knew which .DAT file went to another SB0350 card, I could modify the registry to use the same .DAT file with my card. Just a guess, though.

fosterwj03 wrote on 2023-10-07, 14:22:

Since I have an OEM card, it looks like the registry uses a "CTBAS2.DAT" file to assign features to a generic Audigy, whereas other cards have specific .DAT files.

OEM cards (by Dell etc.) sometimes need specific drivers from their manufacturer.

I did mention in the first post that this guide is intended for retail Audigy cards made by Creative Labs. A few people have had success when using the guide with their OEM cards, but that should be considered as the exception, not the norm. Furthermore, OEM cards from different manufacturers might not behave the same way.

I found out, that using the slightly older Install CD ( https://archive.org/details/creativeaudigy2zs ) you won't have to deal with problems with the SB16 emulation driver, it will just install itself and work. This CD is from August 2003, just 3 months older than the one in the first post. It's the version that came in the box with my Audigy 2 ZS back then and I've always used it.

Someone asked about EAX4 support. It wasn't ready at launch and apparently the VXD drivers were never updated to support it. Haven't checked on 98, but on 2000 with the SBAX_WBUP2_LB_2_09_0016.exe update EAX4 works. It was not detected by RightMark with the drivers from the CD I've linked, so I guess the CD from the first post is the "EAX4 updated" one.

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-10-27, 21:49:

I found out, that using the slightly older Install CD ( https://archive.org/details/creativeaudigy2zs ) you won't have to deal with problems with the SB16 emulation driver, it will just install itself and work. This CD is from August 2003, just 3 months older than the one in the first post. It's the version that came in the box with my Audigy 2 ZS back then and I've always used it.

Interesting! Thanks for the link, I'll take a look at that driver CD and do some additional testing when time permits.

Someone asked about EAX4 support. It wasn't ready at launch and apparently the VXD drivers were never updated to support it. Haven't checked on 98, but on 2000 with the SBAX_WBUP2_LB_2_09_0016.exe update EAX4 works. It was not detected by RightMark with the drivers from the CD I've linked, so I guess the CD from the first post is the "EAX4 updated" one.

From my investigation here, it does seem that VxD drivers never got the EAX4 update, only the WDM version did. This guide relies on VxD drivers for DOS support and better EAX compatibility with Win9x games, so WDM drivers are a no go.

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-10-27, 21:49:

I found out, that using the slightly older Install CD ( https://archive.org/details/creativeaudigy2zs ) you won't have to deal with problems with the SB16 emulation driver, it will just install itself and work. This CD is from August 2003, just 3 months older than the one in the first post. It's the version that came in the box with my Audigy 2 ZS back then and I've always used it.

After a few preliminary tests, I can confirm that the VxD drivers from your CD work better with the Audigy DOS driver pack, and don't require creating a second SB16 emulation device. However, that CD also contains older versions of Creative's utilities, which are buggier than the ones from the newer disc that I'm currently using.

Specifically, the Creative Speaker Settings utility from your CD is unable to properly set a 5.1 speaker configuration. If that configuration is chosen, all sounds only play from the front speakers. The newer version of that utility (from my disc) doesn't have this problem. BTW, it might be possible to install the VxD drivers from your CD, while using the Creative utilities from the newer disc. I'll need to do some more testing with that, but it does look promising.

Now, if only someone could figure out a way to enable the "CD Digital" volume slider on Audigy 2 ZS cards, we would have a complete solution.

I'm about to update this guide to version 3.0. If anyone needs the old 2.1 version of the guide, it will be archived here.

1REGEDIT4
2
3[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Creative Tech\Emu10kx\Emulation]
4"EnableSB16Emulation"=dword:00000001

Guide updated to version 3.0. Changes in this release:

• It is no longer necessary to install a second SB16 emulation device on ZS (SB350) but it might still be needed on Audigy 2 cards (SB0240)
• The guide is now fully compatible with retail Audigy 1 (SB0090), Audigy 2 (SB0240) and Audigy 2 ZS (SB0350) cards
• The guide can now be used on Windows ME as well
• All drivers components have been combined into an ISO image, and can be installed directly from the CD
• Added a potential incompatibility warning for owners of motherboards which use an Nvidia nForce or Intel ICH10+ chipset

One last note, the new version of the guide uses a modified driver CD image, which I have temporarily uploaded here.

EDIT: the modified driver CD image is now available on VogonsDrivers as well.

For reference, the modified image combines the VxD drivers from GL1zdA's disc with Creatve's utilities from the newer disc (which was used in the previous versions of this guide) and the DOS drivers and utilities from the Audigy DOS driver pack.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-11-04, 16:42:

Guide updated to version 3.0.

Nice job as always! Just one thing I noticed;

"3.2 Run D:\DirectX\dxsetup.exe which will install DirectX 9.0a and restart your computer (if you already have a newer version installed, skip this step)"

This isn't necessarily required. I don't know what DirectX the driver/utilities need, or is there a minimum requirement at all, but it's not DX9. I'm running them with DirectX 8.1 installed, Creative just updated the DirectX redist to 9.0a on the ZS disc.

So it's not stricly required to update to DirectX 9 if someone would rather keep DX8.1 or possibly even earlier version for reason or another. Severance: Blade of Darkness behaves better with DirectX 8.1 than DX9 for example, I guess the engine is a bit quirky. Just don't know how to rephrase that part, something in the lines of "Tested to work with DirectX 8.1+, update if necessary" or something like that?

Sombrero wrote on 2023-11-04, 18:01:

"3.2 Run D:\DirectX\dxsetup.exe which will install DirectX 9.0a and restart your computer (if you already have a newer version installed, skip this step)"

This isn't necessarily required. I don't know what DirectX the driver/utilities need, or is there a minimum requirement at all, but it's not DX9. I'm running them with DirectX 8.1 installed, Creative just updated the DirectX redist to 9.0a on the ZS disc.

Cheers! 😀

I think I may have mentioned it before, but I'm only recommending the use of DX9 because that's what Creative shipped on the Audigy 2 ZS driver CD that this guide is based upon. It's entirely possible that DX9 is not really required by the drivers and/or utilities, but I wanted to play it safe. Of course, people are free to experiment with different DirectX versions based on their gaming needs.

Sweet 😀

For those who did the 2.1 version of the guide and works correctly, is there a real reason to clean everything out and do it the 3.0 way?

gen_angry wrote on 2023-11-05, 02:34:

Sweet 😀

For those who did the 2.1 version of the guide and works correctly, is there a real reason to clean everything out and do it the 3.0 way?

Not really. Functionally, there should be no differences between 2.1 and 3.0.

The main change in 3.0 is that you no longer need to add a second SB16 emulation device, so your Device Manager will look a bit cleaner (no exclamation marks). Also, the DOS driver pack now has CheckOS.exe renamed to CheckOS.bak which allows installation under WinME out of the box.

Small update: it appears that adding a second SB16 emulation device might still be needed on Audigy 2 cards (SB0240) but not on Audigy 2 ZS (SB0350).

I've re-added the steps for doing that, but marked them as optional for other Audigy models.

For anyone interested, I got SB0240 working using this guide on Asus P6X58D-E (X58 chipset) with 98SE.
DOS mode works fine as well.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-11-01, 11:17:

After a few preliminary tests, I can confirm that the VxD drivers from your CD work better with the Audigy DOS driver pack, and […]
Show full quote

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-10-27, 21:49:

I found out, that using the slightly older Install CD ( https://archive.org/details/creativeaudigy2zs ) you won't have to deal with problems with the SB16 emulation driver, it will just install itself and work. This CD is from August 2003, just 3 months older than the one in the first post. It's the version that came in the box with my Audigy 2 ZS back then and I've always used it.

After a few preliminary tests, I can confirm that the VxD drivers from your CD work better with the Audigy DOS driver pack, and don't require creating a second SB16 emulation device. However, that CD also contains older versions of Creative's utilities, which are buggier than the ones from the newer disc that I'm currently using.

Specifically, the Creative Speaker Settings utility from your CD is unable to properly set a 5.1 speaker configuration. If that configuration is chosen, all sounds only play from the front speakers. The newer version of that utility (from my disc) doesn't have this problem. BTW, it might be possible to install the VxD drivers from your CD, while using the Creative utilities from the newer disc. I'll need to do some more testing with that, but it does look promising.

Now, if only someone could figure out a way to enable the "CD Digital" volume slider on Audigy 2 ZS cards, we would have a complete solution.

The tools can usually be mixed and matched between CDs. I've recently worked a bit on a custom DanielK support pack for my X-Fi and it was relatively ease to add or update some tools as long as they've used the same "setup framework" (Creative changed this during the cards livetime). You can even download updates for the tools and unpack them and some will work without problems (no all unfortunately). I assume you can cook a similar CD for the Audigy, with all the versions you found working best on Windows 98.