You can add an expansion bay to the second one.

This is exactly why I find it very difficult to get rid of stuff sometimes...there are only just slight differences that may make cards like this important to you only later IF you end up getting a a Live! Drive expansion unit for a good deal and want to use it for example.

Well, I find that SB Live Cards are a dime a dozen and easy to find so it shouldn't matter too much in this case, which one you keep, but in other cases, it can be frustrating giving up something that is hard to find again.

Like Stojke said the second one allows for Live! Drive installation (with the proper cable or modified floppy cable) and the first one I can tell you has what Creative Labs calls it a "Creative Proprietary connector" (the small white connector at the top left of the card)...I believe you can wire this up to give you a mic and headphone, line out and in jacks if you get the proper cable with connector...but I am not too familiar with what exactly it is for.

The internal SPDIF I/O port of the first one can be handy though if you want to wire up a nice optical cable output (and maybe input too with this model I think)....you can use almost any motherboard brand rear optical out/in jack with bracket to accomplish this I believe, but to connect to the card you will need to maybe do some splicing to a 4 or 3 pin connector (whatever it is on the card) and check the pinouts online.

Assuming you have the drivers that originally came with the cards, you should find that the SB0220 model has very limited flexibility for resource assignment in Device Manager compared to the other model. I am usually willing to move heaven and earth in order to get "standard" (default) DOS port and IRQ assignments for DOS emulation with a Live! card, but the SB0220 won't permit it due to absurdly limited IRQs and ports.

I'd agree with the others - keep the one with the AUD_EXT headers. It can still do digital in/out, and you can also do all of the various features on the Live Drive or daughter-board (I believe the daughter-boards are rarer than the front bays though).

akula65 wrote:

Assuming you have the drivers that originally came with the cards, you should find that the SB0220 model has very limited flexibility for resource assignment in Device Manager compared to the other model. I am usually willing to move heaven and earth in order to get "standard" (default) DOS port and IRQ assignments for DOS emulation with a Live! card, but the SB0220 won't permit it due to absurdly limited IRQs and ports.

That's a very good point...

...if you are willing to move heaven and earth though, can't you just find the proper drivers online? And would that help? I thought that the way resources are assigned is mostly dependent on hardware (as you are implying), but you also mention that having the right drivers may make a difference. I'm not trying to call you out on what you say, I am just wondering if it would make a difference as I would like to maybe try a SB0220 I have with DOS and I wonder if I should bother looking for the proper drivers.

If you care about emulating SB in DOS at all, might as well skip the SB0220 and go straight to original (CT4620/4670) and 2nd gen Live! (CT4760/4830). Apart from the limited IRQ, the DOS driver might even have difficulty identifying the SB0220. 🙁

Thx for the info, i'm gona keep the second 1 then and maybe search for a live drive for it.
Dos it's not a concern,since the soundcard is beeing used on a windows 98se platform.