Yes I can confirm that the CT2230 doesn't have the hanging note bug, based on the hexen test and several hours of DOOM, etc. It does of course have the problem that all creative cards have when playing midi and FX in some games (Duke3d for example), which causes some stuttering. Lowering the sample rate fixes that though from what I've read.

I think it's a great card though, the CT2230.

The thing to look out for is the CT1747 chip. It provides a real OPL3 and cards equipped with it (e.g.: CT2230, CT2290, CT2760, CT3900 and CT3980, there might be more...) don't suffer from the "hexen type" hanging note bug.

vetz wrote:

borgie83 wrote:

I've also heard that I'd suffer the daughterboard bug with some of the later sound blaster like the CT2230.

The funny thing is that people who don't own the card keep reporting this, but several users (including myself) here on Vogons have not been able to get any hanging notes on this card/version. Badmojo can confirm.

Well, give the CD-ROM version of X-Wing a spin for at least an hour (I've gone two without a hung note), and with "Sound Blaster 16" selected for the digital effects.

The CT1747-based cards are definitely more tolerant, but the SB16 architecture is still such that MIDI data can get "lost" during PCM playback.

I made the statement a few years back that, depending on the games you play, you may never experience any MIDI anomalies with a CT1747-based card. The inconsistency with which problems can occur with these cards, per my own testing, is such that I wouldn't worry about it, personally, and I've certainly said as much.

Hey guys, just thought I'd let you know that I decided to go with the Awe32 with DB50XG and the GUS. I wasn't gonna let the case beat me so I drilled out some pivots and removed the hard drive cage and then relocated the hard drive between the dvd and floppy drives. That way I could fit the super long isa cards in 😀

You can see my rig on this thread:

Share your retro rig!

I'll let you guys know how I go regarding using the choice command and also if I suffer from any hanging notes using the awe32 once I get it round to testing it. Had a bit of driver issues as the awe32 drivers I downloaded wernt in English and the English ones I found just kept crashing the pc when I typed "install" from the dos prompt. Admittably, I've only tried installing the drivers from the hard drive. Haven't tried copying them to a floppy disk and trying to install them from there. Will see how we go either tomorrow or the next day.

Btw, does anyone know why the pc would freeze upon typing "install" for the drivers? It did this to me when trying to install the Gus drivers as well.

Try a cold boot, always helps

If you have a GUS in the system you use the GUS for digital anyway if possible. So digital and MPU401 runs only in rare cases at the same time on the SB.

borgie83 wrote:

Btw, does anyone know why the pc would freeze upon typing "install" for the drivers? It did this to me when trying to install the Gus drivers as well.

I'd try a barebones boot with no config.sys or autoexec.bat and see if that helps. If it doesn't, you might have an irq or io address conflict.

I decided to just run with the AWE32 CT3900 with a DB50XG attached to the waveblaster header. I believe there was a conflict somewhere because as soon as I removed the 2nd ISA sound card everything began to run fine. Sound is now working perfect in DOS. My issue now is that I am only able to get sound in Dos (or run anything in Dos for that matter) if I boot directly to Dos via the F8 menu on boot up. If I boot into windows 98 se and then restart into dos mode I run into the same issues. Really annoying! I've only got my sound blaster loading through Autoexec.bat and Config.sys at this stage. Not even the CD-Rom or mouse driver is loaded yet. Any opinions on why I need to boot directly to Dos, bypassing windows altogether, for everything to work fine?