There are two possibilities:

1. The CPU is too fast. Sometimes the game's sound detection relies on slower CPU and refuses to work on speedy machines.
2. Check if you have the SETBLASTER variable right in autoexec.bat. Some games look for it.

Yamaha 719 is very compatible so I assume it should work. If you can get your hands on some ESS sound card (1688 and 1868 variants are very common) I can recommend it as it's very cheap and even more compatible than Yamaha.

The Celeron 300A CPU with disabled L1/L2 caches is definitely not fast (I would say that its below a 386). I also have the correct SETBLASTER variable in autoexec.bat.
I have the ESS Solo 1 sound card, and that one works OK. Also have others, like a Creative Live 5.1 with SB16 emulation which also works very well.
I'm just wondering why these two Yamaha boards (one on PCI, the other on ISA), don't 😀 Maybe someone else had the same problem with them...

Just tried an ESS AudioDrive ES1869f ISA sound card - same thing. Adlib is working, but SoundBlaster still not detected... For other games the SB works perfectly. I'm pretty sure I'm missing something but can't put my finger on what that might be.

Try making your sound card use IRQ=7.

I'm not familiar with Prehistorik, but I know that some older games expect IRQ7 from a Sound Blaster.

Thanks, Joseph, but I actually tried this with the ESS AudioDrive card, without success. 🙁
For now I have only one card that is compatible with SB in this game (and it's a PCI card): Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1 SB0100. This one works on any IRQ including 5 and 7.

Just checking, do you have CT-VOICE.DRV along the rest of the files of PREHISTORIK? Without it the game will refuse to identify the Sound Blaster.

wbahnassi wrote on 2020-06-03, 13:02:

Just checking, do you have CT-VOICE.DRV along the rest of the files of PREHISTORIK? Without it the game will refuse to identify the Sound Blaster.

Give that man a prize, solves the problem with his first post 😁

Not in my case, I already had CT-VOICE.DRV (the game complains about it if you don't have it)....
For some reason, at least in my case, it only works with Sound Blaster 16 (or compatible) cards. Doesn't work with Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 (or other SB Pro 2.0 compatible cards)...
If somebody has another clue, I'm listening. This thing has been bugging me for months 😁
It's not a big issue, the game works fine with Adlib on SB Pro 2.0, Yamaha YMF718/719/724/754, but I still don't understand why SB works with a newer card like SB16, yet refuses to work on a card that should be more compatible, like the SB Pro 2.0.

Actually, come to think about it, CT-VOICE.DRV is directly related to SB16. So this might be the actual clue: it will not work with other cards (or maybe a different driver is needed?)

Edit: found another CT-VOICE.DRV, which apparently is shipped with SoundBlaster Pro cards.... Interesting! Will test this ASAP 😀

bloodem wrote on 2020-06-03, 15:29:

Actually, come to think about it, CT-VOICE.DRV is directly related to SB16. So this might be the actual clue: it will not work with other cards (or maybe a different driver is needed?)

Edit: found another CT-VOICE.DRV, which apparently is shipped with SoundBlaster Pro cards.... Interesting! Will test this ASAP 😀

Correct, I tried that sb16 too but failed.
Here's a couple you can test:

SB10\CT-VOICE.DRV
SB15\CT-VOICE.DRV
SB20\CT-VOICE.DRV
SBPRO\1992\CT-VOICE.DRV
SBPRO\1993\CT-VOICE.DRV

Indeed! It works perfectly! Tested with Sound Blaster Pro 2.0, Yamaha YMF719 and ESS AudioDrive ES1868.
Thank you, Akuma, I also tested the SBPRO CT-VOICE.DRV files from your archive and they also work.

A couple of things I noticed:
- some of the cards are more speed sensitive than others when trying to enable SB on Prehistorik - not something new, I've seen it in the past with other cards/games (the champion is the ESS AudioDrive, which can run up to 400 MHz on my K6-2+ and the game will still detect the SB)
- some of the CT-VOICE drivers are also more speed sensitive than others (the best seems to be the SBPRO\1992\CT-VOICE.DRV in Akuma's archive - which is the one that works @ 400 MHz with the ESS Audiodrive). The SBPro CT-VOICE from the vogons driver archive only works at 200 MHz with the same card!
- the sound is noticeably better with the SBPRO 1992 version, when compared with the 1993 version - quite interesting and unexpected.

Anyway, bottom line, if you want SB to work with Prehistorik you need two things:
- the correct CT-VOICE.DRV file for your sound card (which must be present in the game's folder)
- the correct CPU speed for your PC / sound card / CT-VOICE.DRV combination (I tested it on one of my K6-2+ PCs and the needed CPU speed varies between 200 - 400 MHz, depending on the card & CT-VOICE.DRV file - on such a system there's no need to disable the CPU L1/L2 cache or the external cache for this game)

Another update: also tested two PCI sound cards: the Yamaha YMF724 and YMF754 (Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 compatible as well).
They too work great with the SBPRO CT-VOICE.DRV file, however the K6-2+ needs to run at 200 MHz ("setmul 2.0" command) in order for the game to detect the SB . (L1/L2/external cache can remain enabled).

Great, nice to know its working for you 😁

(...6 months later...) In my case I run Prehistorik on YMF-744 with a Xeon W3520 @2.678GHz (HP Z400) without any under-clocking nor disabling CPU features. I get proper SB output (music+digital SFX). So probably my CT-VOICE is one of them speed-insensitive versions.

I want to share my experience with this game and my CT4170 sound card, changing the CT-VOICE.DRV file did not work for me to set Sound Blaster as the game sound, but in the Total DOS Collection files I found "Prehistorik (En)(De )(Fr)(It)(Es) (1991)(Titus Interactive S.A.) [Action]" and "Prehistorik (En)(De)(Fr)(It)(Es) [a1] (1991)(Titus Interactive S.A. ) [Action]", I tried both and it worked with the first one.