So what would you recommend? A Sound Blaster 16 or something?

SB16 is a good call. I like the older models that aren't PnP, such as the CT17xx cards.

There are also some nice 3rd party cards with SB16 support. Look at the sticky thread in Marvin for discussion of the options.

Can a sound blaster 16 produce the nice sound quality for later games though? I also want to play games like Earth 2140 on here and Close Combat 1 & 2. Earth 2140 uses CD Audio.

Also does the Sound Blaster 16 have all those annoying OEM versions? If so which is the retail version.
I have Windows 98SE installed at the moment so it would need to have windows 98 drivers.

You sound kind of new to the level of performance offered by a Pentium 100. I'm not sure Earth 2140 is going to be enjoyable on there..

But yes a Pentium 100, socket 5 system would have been equipped with an ISA sound card with 16bit 44.1kHz capability, like a SB16. This is 1995 hardware. Windows 95 isn't out for a year yet and then PCI sound cards start appearing. A PCI sound card isn't going to bring many benefits for the games that will run adequately on it, and a PCI sound card is always less desirable for DOS than an ISA card.

There are lots of SB16 cards. I have a CT1740. I don't remember all of the variants or which supposedly is the best and worst. You can search if you want to know everything. It has been discussed. The OEM vs retail problems started with PCI cards though.

You might enjoy paging through these magazines
http://www.cgwmuseum.org/index.php

🤣 I grew up using this exact machine, unfortunately my original one was tossed in a moment of stupidity 🙁 . Earth 2140 ran great, besides I already got it to run earlier with the original sound card. (although it was not the proper drivers so the sound was very very VERY quiet.)

Ok well I will probably buy a Sound Blaster 16 then. Good to know I don't have to watch out for those annoying OEM versions with the older cards.

My system is a Packard Bell Platinum 55 Pentium 1 133mhz, 16Mb RAM, 2 ISA slots, 3 PCI slots, 1.6GB HDD, and came default with windows 95. I've looked it up and the computer came out in 1996. I have reinstalled the OS though and now have Windows 98 SE on it and it runs great.
Also the original sound card was ISA but it's some strange Packard OEM card and I can't seem to get any drivers to work for it now that I have installed windows 98.

Thanks for the links also btw, I love looking through these old magazines. 😁

King_Corduroy wrote:

lol I grew up using this exact machine, unfortunately my original one was tossed in a moment of stupidity :( . Earth 2140 ran gr […]
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🤣 I grew up using this exact machine, unfortunately my original one was tossed in a moment of stupidity 🙁 . Earth 2140 ran great, besides I already got it to run earlier with the original sound card. (although it was not the proper drivers so the sound was very very VERY quiet.)

Ok well I will probably buy a Sound Blaster 16 then. Good to know I don't have to watch out for those annoying OEM versions with the older cards.

My system is a Packard Bell Platinum 55 Pentium 1 133mhz, 16Mb RAM, 2 ISA slots, 3 PCI slots, 1.6GB HDD, and came default with windows 95. I've looked it up and the computer came out in 1996. I have reinstalled the OS though and now have Windows 98 SE on it and it runs great.
Also the original sound card was ISA but it's some strange Packard OEM card and I can't seem to get any drivers to work for it now that I have installed windows 98.

Thanks for the links also btw, I love looking through these old magazines. 😁

I had 2 Packard Bell computers in the 90s and they both had Aztech Labs Sound Galaxy soundcards.

Yeah they are certainly nice looking computers albeit a bit finicky at times, it's a shame Packard Bell pulled out of the US market my nostalgia for the brand name would have probably made me buy a new computer with their logo on it. 😜

I have no idea why I can't get that card to work but rather than mess with something that will most likely have compatibility issues later I will just save some hassle and buy a sound blaster.

borgie83 wrote:

I now prefer to stick to slot 1 440BX chipset boards for my retro builds.

I use these and they work pretty well. ASUS P3B-F in my Win98 machine and an INTEL SE440BX-2 in my Win95/DOS rig. The 440BX chipset along with a Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (CT4540) ISA sound card plays quite well with DOS games dating as far back as 1990 which is as far back as I have tried so far.

Sometimes the games don't support Sound Blaster directly, but they will usually work by selecting a compatible alternative like the Adlib option during the games setup.

Hardware questions should be asked in Marvin. This forum is for DOS games. Perhaps a mod can move this thread to where it belongs.

@collector, normally I'd agree with you regarding hardware questions and the Marvin section but I originally made this thread to try get sound blaster dos emulation working in dos which is more suited to the dos section than in Marvin. Obviously givin the circumstances, hardware related posts are going to be brought up every now and then.

You can look at this thread: How to get Sound Blaster Emulation in Win9X/ME via live!5.1 with newer-current mobo's (no nmi-ddma). Only problem is you can't be in real-mode DOS but Win9X/ME only; I still don't see the big issue since you get native speed still. These wdm drivers do wonders for mobo's lacking DDMI-NMA. I'm currently playing vanilla DOS Doom and Blood with these drivers on an AM3 piledriver mobo with 98SE. No glitches, BSOD's or any problems whatsoever. They are rock solid. Nothing needed in autoexec.bat or config.sys either.

For the record I'm using a Value version (ct4780), and you got farther than me with the DOS-driver TSR. I managed to get SBEINIT.COM loaded successfully (with an audible hiss), but SBEGO.EXE would not detect any Sound Blaster card or resources (same with games); also made my sound mute in Windows (and BSOD with newest SB16 emulation VXD driver).

I'm pretty sure I already tried using the wdm drivers with no luck. I can't remember though so I'm a little intrigued but sceptical as to if this would actually work. Unfortunately I've since wiped windows 98 se from my pentium 4 rig and turned it into a dedicated windows xp rig.

Has anyone else had any luck running dos games in win9x using the wdm drivers?

In a Pentium 4 go with a Vortex 2 card. I tested this and it works really well. You can also drive a Sound Canvas and MT-32 if you want. But the machine might be too fast for old games like that.

@Mau1wurf1977, when you say you tested the vortex 2 card and that it worked really well, was this whilst playing dos games from within windows 98 or real mode dos? If you did manage to have dos sound working fine in real mode dos, did you try a midi daughterboard with the vortex card to test midi in dos? Lastly, what pentium 4 motherboard were you using?

Yes and yes. Motherboard was an Asrock and Abit with 865G Chipset.

I own a few diamond mx300 cards. Is this the card you used? If so, what drivers did you use as I tried the latest beta drivers which gave me problem after problem. Got a link?

borgie83 wrote:

I own a few diamond mx300 cards. Is this the card you used? If so, what drivers did you use as I tried the latest beta drivers which gave me problem after problem. Got a link?

I used a Turtle Beach and the drivers from the Turtle Beach website.

Might sound like a stupid question but do you believe it's possible to use the Turtle Beach drivers (or any other vortex 2 drivers for that matter) with the MX300 considering both cards use the same vortex 2 chipset? Just haven't had much luck using the diamond drivers unfortunately.

borgie83 wrote:

Might sound like a stupid question but do you believe it's possible to use the Turtle Beach drivers (or any other vortex 2 drivers for that matter) with the MX300 considering both cards use the same vortex 2 chipset? Just haven't had much luck using the diamond drivers unfortunately.

I would like to test with the reference drivers. If you can wait a week or so I will give it a go. Just waiting for a Voodoo card to start with the benchmarking, then I will revisit the whole thing.

Cool! I look forward to seeing your results 😀