Hi, I've been lurking on the forum for half a year or so, this is my first longer post.

I have a card with a somewhat odd issue. It's a Sound Blaster 16 CT2230 Non-PnP (specifically the version with only Creative/Panasonic drive header - some sources refer to it as CT2239C)

The issue is pretty much the same as discussed here: Faulty Sound Blaster 16?, although another SB16 model was affected for those users. Basically, when the card is inserted into the system, it is not detected by any initializing method that I know and I don't get PCM sounds, while FM synthesized music just works. For example, in DOOM, after running SETUP.EXE with proper I/O address, a default IRQ etc I'm getting music, but no gunshots or menu navigation sounds. What I tried:

• DOS 7 - DIAGNOSE.EXE setup using this pack: https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=630, DOS entered via Phil's restart_to_dos.pif. The program fails at the very first stage of selecting base I/O address, none of those options work no matter how I set the jumpers on the card
• DOS 7 - Unisound using various options (none, /CS, /NOPNP etc), nothing is detected. It can successfully detect and set up some OPTI sound card I had laying around, all sounds work on that one, and I set it up using the same resources I'm trying to get the Sound Blaster 16 to use
• DOS 6.22 ran directly from floppy - Unisound using various options (none, /CS, /NOPNP etc)
• Windows 98 - Installed Sound blaster win 9x drivers, tried the "Add new hardware" wizard - Windows detected Adlib Gold card (or something with similar name) and MPU-401 compatible interface. When I tried manually adding "Sound Blaster 16 or AWE32" and setting resources accordingly, the Windows doesn't detect the card

In the BIOS settings, I tried to delegate the appropriate IRQs and DMAs to "Legacy ISA", but it seems the initialization process fails before those are even needed. So at this point I suspect hardware failure somewhere on the card, possibly the 24Mhz crystal as mentioned in the thread linked above. But I could really use some sort of a sanity check from someone more knowledgeable about this hardware era - this is the first time I'm even using an ISA card.

Can I do something more to confirm that the 24Mhz crystal is to blame? I don't have an oscilloscope unfortunately. I poked around a bit with a multi meter checking continuity, the ISA connector is fine and the crystal has a connection to the DSP chip. Did some visual inspection looking for broken traces or solder joints, but everything seems fine. Help please I'd really like to fix this card 😁

My setup:
VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2GHz
512MB RAM PC133 set to CL2
Gigabyte GA-6BXC with Powerleap3 BIOS
Windows 98 SE/bundled MS-DOS mode or DOS 6.22 boot from floppy
Another PCI sound card already present with drivers installed: SB Live CT4670 - however, I specifically didn't install SB16 emulation drivers and when I take the card out, the CT2230 behavior is the same