Pino wrote on 2022-08-23, 19:27:

For sound effects and General MIDI I select the Audigy SB16 emulation on 260/7/3/7/320.

Be advised that some games don't like the SB address being higher than 240 and the MPU-401 port being anything other than 330 (default) or 300.

Another thing I notice is that Line in on the Audigy doesn't seem to be working on DOS and you can't control it through SBEMIXER.

I haven't used Audigy cards in pure DOS much, so maybe someone else can chime in on that. You can check this mixer utility by @PARUS and see if that helps. I have never used it myself, so I can't offer any further guidance besides pointing you in its direction.

Minor update: I have added a "Disclaimer" section at the beginning of this guide as well.

In summary, if the guide works for someone, that's great. But if not, I want to make it clear that people shouldn't expect any further help or troubleshooting assistance from me. And while I may occasionally offer a few tips here and there, please do not assume that this guide has any level of technical support.

this has been a nightmare for me. firstly, created an account to thank you for this thread. very informative

i recently created a windows 98 machine. it's not the best, admittedly, but plays all the games i want to play. i have a few boxed dos games i wanted to try, and while i don't have the best hardware to do so, i did pick up an audigy 2 zs and followed this thread

my first issue was my card not being recognised, but after some reading it was clear i had a dell card. i eventually replaced it with a better card, correct serial number and all. now, my card is recognised but the issue is with installing the vxd drivers. i've tried so many different things. fresh installs, with and without unofficial service patches and chipset drivers. i've tried disabling everything in the bios and resetting options to default, different pci slots, and there's probably other things i've tried i'm forgetting right now

my card is now recognised by the install cd but my computer always freezes during installation of the vxd drivers. it either freezes or sometimes hard reboots. wdm drivers install just fine. i've tried installing from the disc and then swapping to vxd, i've also tried following this thread's instructions line by line. always freezes or reboots during the vxd process

any suggestions? i'm about to give up but i'm going to start removing gpu and cd drive and giving it one last shot

Vae wrote on 2022-11-28, 12:04:

any suggestions? i'm about to give up but i'm going to start removing gpu and cd drive and giving it one last shot

The issues you describe are sometimes caused by IRQ conflicts. Check step 1.4 to see if you have enough free resources.

Other than that, take a look at the back side of your card and see if it's by any chance a Dell OEM model (three white stickers) as described in the initial post. Those tend to be more picky with the drivers they accept and might not work with this guide.

Lastly, certain VIA chipsets have issues with SBLive and Audigy cards, and in such cases, it might be difficult to get things running with VxD drivers.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-11-28, 12:12:

The issues you describe are sometimes caused by IRQ conflicts

just checked, and i appear to have free resources unless "irq holder for pci steering" is an issue? not entirely sure what it means. definitely have the correct card. only one sticker and the serial number is correct. i do indeed have a via chipset and it's been a pain since day one. drivers barely install, and if i install the agp driver my gpu disappears? it's the via vt8237r plus chipset

removed gpu, stuck audigy 2 zs in the first pci slot and ran vdx drivers again. same issue: freeze at "window is installing the software for your new hardware" screen

Vae wrote on 2022-11-28, 12:34:

just checked, and i appear to have free resources unless "irq holder for pci steering" is an issue?

That's normal and shouldn't cause any issues.

i do indeed have a via chipset and it's been a pain since day one. drivers barely install, and if i install the agp driver my gpu disappears? it's the via vt8237r plus chipset

The disappearing GPU is not a good sign. I don't think the Audigy drivers will work correctly either unless you fully install the chipset drivers beforehand. Try using VIA HyperionPro 5.09A chipset drivers and see if that helps. Other than that, I'm out of ideas.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-11-28, 12:43:

The disappearing GPU is not a good sign. I don't think the Audigy drivers will work correctly either unless you fully install the chipset drivers beforehand. Try using VIA HyperionPro 5.09A chipset drivers and see if that helps. Other than that, I'm out of ideas.

gave those drivers a shot, they installed just fine but windows froze again, so i officially give up. i've been trying for about two weeks to get it to work and i think i'll swap to a new mainboard

Vae wrote on 2022-11-28, 13:07:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-11-28, 12:43:

The disappearing GPU is not a good sign. I don't think the Audigy drivers will work correctly either unless you fully install the chipset drivers beforehand. Try using VIA HyperionPro 5.09A chipset drivers and see if that helps. Other than that, I'm out of ideas.

gave those drivers a shot, they installed just fine but windows froze again, so i officially give up. i've been trying for about two weeks to get it to work and i think i'll swap to a new mainboard

Make a post on System Specs about your build or HW General about your issue, someone can probably help you. I have a VIA south bridge 8237S and PT880 north bridge and these drivers work for me.

The latest Hyperion drivers worked well for me. The chipset install will say it failed but after rebooting all the drivers will appear. Make sure the hardware you got is healthy too. Run some diagnostics and see if the RAM or storage is throwing any faults.

Vae, the SBLive/Audigy VxD driver in Win98 crashes for me at install, unless I leave the parallel port enabled in the BIOS. Or if I leave the parallel port disabled in the BIOS, I have to disable the SB16 emulation in the driver CTMISC.INF file.

VDNKh wrote on 2022-11-28, 18:09:

The latest Hyperion drivers worked well for me. The chipset install will say it failed but after rebooting all the drivers will appear. Make sure the hardware you got is healthy too. Run some diagnostics and see if the RAM or storage is throwing any faults.

Stretch wrote on 2022-11-29, 02:00:

Vae, the SBLive/Audigy VxD driver in Win98 crashes for me at install, unless I leave the parallel port enabled in the BIOS. Or if I leave the parallel port disabled in the BIOS, I have to disable the SB16 emulation in the driver CTMISC.INF file.

sorry. got a little sidetracked. the motherboard in the 98 machine is a jetway k8m8msr2 and it doesn't fill me with confidence. i found a .pdf manual for the board and spent a while reading through it, but nothing that would educate me on my issue. jetway is not a brand i've heard of and makes me think it's an industrial board but not entirely sure. i've replaced it with an asus board but not sure when it'll arrive

still, the above replies have inspired me to mess around a bit more so i'll try enabling the parallel port in the bios. failing that i'll try disabling sb16 emulation like stretch suggested. thanks for the tips! i think all the components are working fine. i've been going through a bunch of games and not had any issues. no illegal operations... yet

Works quite well. Only big downside for me is no CD-Audio in pure DOS.
Is there a way to make this work? Is only Solution to use a second Soundcard?
I also have an ESS Solo 1: Maybe connect Line-Out from Audigy 2 to Line-In Solo 1 and also connect CD-Drive Audio to Solo 1 and then Line-Out from Solo 1 to Speakers?

floppy9898 wrote on 2022-12-16, 09:19:

Works quite well. Only big downside for me is no CD-Audio in pure DOS.

Is that with a digital (SPDIF) CD audio cable or just the regular analog one? With SPDIF connections, it sometimes helps to start Windows first (which initializes the card), and then go to pure DOS via Start > Shutdown > Restart in MS-DOS mode.

I also have an ESS Solo 1: Maybe connect Line-Out from Audigy 2 to Line-In Solo 1 and also connect CD-Drive Audio to Solo 1 and then Line-Out from Solo 1 to Speakers?

That might work, but I'm not sure if Line In on the Audigy functions under pure DOS either. The Audigy DOS mixer utility is very limited from what I recall, and I don't think it covers all the inputs that its Windows counterpart does. But then again, I very rarely use the card in pure DOS, so maybe someone else can chime in and offer a solution.

I tried both CD-Audio connections, also Win98 restart to DOS - no luck 🙁
I would use Line-Out form Audigy 2 to Line-In on the ESS Solo 1 and hook up the Solo 1 to Speakers.

The CD-Audio connector is just mixed in, so you can use any card in the system for that. You could even make an adapter to feed it back through the Line-In, if you really wanted to.

You could probably use any of the inputs on the card, such as the AUX-In and Video-In connectors as well; I think they all just act as mixer inputs.

Hello and thank you Joseph for this excellent and well detailled guide.

I had a lot of trouble installing and I think my fourth clean reinstall of Win98 was finally the one.

The sound works perfectly in SB16 but for General Midi SC-55 Sound Font Installation don't work for Doom. Impossible to have music, except in Sound Blaster 16 while it works perfectly with Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition (This one sounds really better than SB16).

I had something weird things during the installation, IRQ 5 seemed to be occupied by lot of devices. Surely the ZS2 card so I still installed following all the steps.

No general midi working with Warcraft 2, card is detected in automatic settings but no music.

Everything about SB16 is working fine but unfortunately 6. SC-55 Sound Font Installation (optional) is not working for me I don't know why, followed every steps.

Edit : Don't know what I did but I forced config 0 in sound properties to use te good IRQ's and it's working in Doom... For Music 🤣 but no more sound effects. I got IRQ conflicts because of Via chips everywhere. Gonna use this card in another system an put a Live! instead I guess.

Edit 2 : Sorry I'm an idiot, answer was in the first posts. Basic Configuration 0002 🤣.

Guide updated to version 2.1.

This minor update slightly expands the "Disclaimer" section. No new features have been added.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-08-18, 15:27:

Quake, WarCraft and WarCraft 2 - digital audio crackles and cuts off occasionally. Tyrian - digital audio doesn't work, game han […]
Show full quote

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-08-18, 15:11:

Can you be more specific as to what the problems are for these games? I would like to familiarize myself with the problem use case. What would I look for, specifically? Is it digital sound, Redbook audio, Adlib, etc.

Quake, WarCraft and WarCraft 2 - digital audio crackles and cuts off occasionally.
Tyrian - digital audio doesn't work, game hangs if it is enabled.

BTW, I mostly tested DOS games from within Win9x on SBLive/Audigy cards since I wanted to make use of soundfonts. Some of this behavior might be different in pure DOS.

Great guide, have used the Audigy 2 ZS successfully from my slot 1, socket 478 all the way to my G31 775 system.

Observations from me -

Redook audio via mounting an image in Daemon tools and from the actual CD works fine overall.

CD audio, yes, I can't get that to work in Dos mode, audio cable, autoexec fine, CD gets read, just no audio, fine in Windows.

I can't comment on the other games, but as you correctly said, Quake does have audio issues for sound effects, static like sounds and sounds cutting off. This only occurs though when I'm running it within Windows 98. The issue does not occur when running in ms-dos mode.

DrLucienSanchez wrote on 2023-01-27, 10:52:

Great guide, have used the Audigy 2 ZS successfully from my slot 1, socket 478 all the way to my G31 775 system.

Cheers! I'm glad it was useful.

I can't comment on the other games, but as you correctly said, Quake does have audio issues for sound effects, static like sounds and sounds cutting off. This only occurs though when I'm running it within Windows 98. The issue does not occur when running in ms-dos mode.

Interesting observation. I rarely use Audigy cards in pure DOS (due to their inability to load .SF2 soundfonts in that environment) but it's good to know that at least some compatibility issues can be avoided that way.

Thanks, this guide worked perfectly for me setting up my (what I now know to be) Dell card on 98 SE. Everything is working in both Windows and DOS games. I did notice one part where my experience differed though, which is when I installed the DOS drivers. I simply didn't get the state where there was a non-working SB16 device in Device Manager. It was installed and reported working straight away after the restart. Not sure if that's due to it being a Dell version or some other combination of hardware (I'm using a Socket 939 setup with an ALi/ULi chipset) and/or software, but it didn't cause any problems. I just skipped the additional step and it's running fine, with no yellow exclamation mark to bug me either.

Narokath wrote on 2023-02-16, 10:42:

Thanks, this guide worked perfectly for me setting up my (what I now know to be) Dell card on 98 SE. Everything is working in both Windows and DOS games. I did notice one part where my experience differed though, which is when I installed the DOS drivers. I simply didn't get the state where there was a non-working SB16 device in Device Manager. It was installed and reported working straight away after the restart. Not sure if that's due to it being a Dell version or some other combination of hardware (I'm using a Socket 939 setup with an ALi/ULi chipset) and/or software, but it didn't cause any problems. I just skipped the additional step and it's running fine, with no yellow exclamation mark to bug me either.

Glad it worked well for you!

And yeah, I've seen some instances where that step isn't necessary. One example would be with a plain Audigy 1 card (model SB0090) and I think someone else mentioned that certain OEM Audigy 2 (non-ZS) cards don't need that step either. Basically, if you get that exclamation mark, you need to perform the extra step. Otherwise, it's fine to skip it.