In a 386 SX? Personally I would use a Sound Blaster 1.5 with the CMS upgrade chips 😀

And a MPU401 card with a Roland MT-32 for those awesome Sierra, Lucasarts and Origin games.

The oldest machine that I have in use, are my Unisys PW/2 Series 300. As I don't have any Creative cards that are older than my SB16's (possible my AWE32 CT-3900), I have installed a YMF-718 in that machine.

The specifications on that machine are:

- 80286 8 or 10 mhz (selectable in BIOS or selectable through keyboard during boot)
- 640kb of Ram
- Cirrus Logic 5426 ISA card
- ISA IDE controller and 640mb HDD
- Running MS Dos 6.22 (need to downgrade to 5.0 in future)

Need to rearrange some stuff and possible move my 40mb SCSI-II system from my 386sx33 to this machine.

I recommended a SB Pro 2 for the 386SX.

The oldest sound card that sees use from time to time is possibly some Yamaha PCI sound card (can't remember the name) or a Live!
The oldest sound card that made it into a working rig, but either has some problem now that would need fixing or its running state is unknown due to not having used the particular rig for a long while now, is probably either a SB16 or an AWE64 (non-gold).

The oldest Creative sound card I own is a 1350? I think? I'm not sure it is my overall oldest sound card, but it probably is.

I never build anything slower than a 486DX4, but I'd probably use something roughly period-correct and see how it works out.

Assuming that ISA clones count - my super-7 machine currently has a Reveal SC400 in it, which is a rebranded Aztech Nova 16. I don't remember if it's an SBPro compatible or SB16 compatible, I haven't used that machine in a while. I wanted to just try that card out, but I ran into some weirdness with it. Biggest problem is that it seems to be completely broken in Ultima 6. Long term I'll switch it out with a real Sound Blaster. Which one will depend what I want to play at that point.

Generally speaking, whenever I have a suitable machine running I like to use an AWE32 CT2760 (1994 model). It's been my most used Sound Blaster ever since I got it on eBay ~15 years ago. Most recently it was installed in a P3 machine, but I removed it when there was a threat of a forest fire last summer and I still haven't put it back.

SB Pro 2 is super solid. Good sound quality although distinctly old-school SB sounding filtering/distortion, very free of any issues, includes CD audio support unlike SB 1.0-2.0, no PnP & TSR junk as many clones or late SB16's+ have.

CT1690 in Magnavox 386SX-16

CT 3790 in a 486-DX4-100 @120 Mhz

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Personally I would use a Sound Blaster 1.5 with the CMS upgrade chips

That's what I have in my 286 but I confess that I don't actually use it much - nothing older than my P166 stays plugged in for long. The magic starts for me when stereo and MIDI became a thing - back in the day I couldn't replace my SB2.0 fast enough 😵