What happens in pure DOS and run Unisound?

Any FM (OPL) music in any particular game?
Digital sound?

You know I haven't even thought of checking to see how that works. I'm at work right now but when I get home I'll check it. I don't know how it'll react because I know I didn't install DOS drivers myself.

I won't be home until midnight so I probably won't be able to report back until sometime tomorrow. It's currently 5pm where I am now.

If push comes to shove:

Use Unisound to initialize and configure the hardware before windows starts.

Force windows to install the generic soundblaster 16 audio driver.

Force windows to install the 'Standard [speed] modem on [COM port]' driver.

Aztech DID provide windows drivers, but that's not explicitly necessary. At the end of the day, it's a clone of a soundblaster 16, with an integrated modem.

The integrated modem uses a Rockwell chipset, which means this is a real UART based modem. As long as it gets an IRQ and an IO address (and windows sees it as a com port), the 'generic modem' dtiver will work fine

Where can I find unisound. I'm not very experienced with older computers. I mean I've gotten several working but this is the first time I've ran into a problem I couldn't solve on my own.

I tend to do everything inside of Windows because I'm not experienced in doing things in pure DOS.

It has its own thread!

UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.82a

Thanks. I do remember when I set it up in windows it did install generic soundblaster clone drivers. Once it was done it had resource conflicts.

I fixed that and it had me restart then it said the hardware was not detected or the drivers weren't working. I update the drivers and it said the better driver was the sound galaxy Washington driver. I let it install it and got a blue screen of death.

Upon reboot it hanged on normal startup. Removing the drivers in safe mode let me back but of course the card still didn't work.

*back in

Just back on topic-- This appears to be your card.

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufacturer … diotel_2000.php

It was commonly found inside Packard Bell computers. For the audio side, the Washington 16 drivers will probably work.
https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufacturer … hp#Washington16

For the modem side-- again, as long as windows sees a COM port, just slap "Standard Modem" on the com port windows detects.

Yeah the Washington drivers will attempt to install but cause a blue screen. Any suggestions? I'm putting this in a Compaq Presario 5185. I don't know if that helps. The Bios is ridiculously cut back too.

From what I am reading, this particular aztech card emulates an SB Pro 2.0, not an SB16.

I'd try the win95 soundblaster pro drivers, with overriden/manual resource assignments.

It's worth a try.

There's a PB page on the WinDrivers archive that points to this file, if you want to try...

Thank you I'll give it a shot.

In DOS this card doesn't need any drivers or init, it's fully hardware SBPro2.0 compatible and it's not PnP (so Unisound is not needed). All you need to do is set the resources it uses in EEPROM. You're free to choose which, but DOS games generally like A220 I5 D1, and MPU401 UART on 330 and 2/9

Then you need to reserve those resources in BIOS as ISA non-PnP. Finally tell Windows you have a non-PnP ISA sound card (which supports WSS) and you should be good to go.

Much simpler and more reliable than messing around with software config.

I tried using it when the jumper setting was set to eeprom. When I tried to install drivers in Windows and it crashed and removing the drivers didn't allow me to get Windows to boot normally.

I'll keep tinkering with it.

jjspartan0 wrote on 2026-02-14, 14:23:

I tried using it when the jumper setting was set to eeprom. When I tried to install drivers in Windows and it crashed and removing the drivers didn't allow me to get Windows to boot normally.

I'll keep tinkering with it.

OK, but did you reserve the non-PnP resources in BIOS? If you didn't, PnP devices might get assigned the same resources and you'd get crashes when either of them are addressed.

The resources it auto assigned said it conflicted with my onboard sound chip and the parallel port. I disabled both then it forced me to reboot. Once I did that Windows claimed the hardware wasn't installed or that the driver wasn't working and I should try updating it.

I did just that and it said the Aztech Sound Galaxy Washington drivers were better. So I let it install it and it instantly blue screened. I'll attempt to disable those items in the Bios later I didn't get around to doing it since I got home late and didn't feel like diving into it right before work.

jjspartan0 wrote on 2026-02-14, 20:37:

The resources it auto assigned said it conflicted with my onboard sound chip and the parallel port. I disabled both then it forced me to reboot. Once I did that Windows claimed the hardware wasn't installed or that the driver wasn't working and I should try updating it.

I did just that and it said the Aztech Sound Galaxy Washington drivers were better. So I let it install it and it instantly blue screened. I'll attempt to disable those items in the Bios later I didn't get around to doing it since I got home late and didn't feel like diving into it right before work.

Don't rely on anything 'auto' with non-PnP cards. This really sounds like you didn't reserve anything in BIOS, which will lead to the conflicts you describe. You don't need to disable any components in BIOS, you just need to tell it not to allocate the resources the card needs to PnP.

I did disable everything that was conflicting. It even said no conflicts. Upon reboot it said the card wasn't even there. I suppose I can disable it again in the bios but it seems like that'd be redundant. The resources were free.