VOGONS


First post, by CzarJK

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Hello,

I am looking for an external soundcard to work on a laptop without native Win98 compatibility. I mistakenly got another sound card (Live 24) after reading what was described as its user guide which mentioned Win98 compatibility and don't want to make the same mistake. It wasn't the right user guide, of course. All of the documentation that I have read states that the Creative Sound Blaster MP3+ 855216 has drivers for Win98. Can anyone confirm for me whether or not this means that its drivers or suite includes emulation for Soundblaster 16/Pro in Dos Mode.

Alternatively, I have been searching for the SoundMAX sound driver that works with the IBMT43 in Win 98. I've downloaded two or three different ones without success. I have video drivers already sorted externally. So that's Hardware ID PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_266E&SUBSYS_05671014 ( I think). I've found the XP drivers but numerous people have said the audio drivers are available. Maybe I'm missing them. Appreciate any help or insight!

Reply 1 of 5, by darry

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CzarJK wrote on 2021-04-05, 18:41:

Hello,

I am looking for an external soundcard to work on a laptop without native Win98 compatibility. I mistakenly got another sound card (Live 24) after reading what was described as its user guide which mentioned Win98 compatibility and don't want to make the same mistake. It wasn't the right user guide, of course. All of the documentation that I have read states that the Creative Sound Blaster MP3+ 855216 has drivers for Win98. Can anyone confirm for me whether or not this means that its drivers or suite includes emulation for Soundblaster 16/Pro in Dos Mode.

Alternatively, I have been searching for the SoundMAX sound driver that works with the IBMT43 in Win 98. I've downloaded two or three different ones without success. I have video drivers already sorted externally. So that's Hardware ID PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_266E&SUBSYS_05671014 ( I think). I've found the XP drivers but numerous people have said the audio drivers are available. Maybe I'm missing them. Appreciate any help or insight!

I have never heard of a USB sound card having any kind of emulation of ISA Sound Blaster cards in real-mode DOS . I doubt there ever were any that did. I can't speak for that specific USB card, but sound cards with WDM drivers do offer emulated SB Pro compatibility when running DOS games under Windows 98 . There is no OPL3 FM synth emulation however .

The T43 has AC97 audio running on on ICH6M southbridge. That does not offer any real-mode DOS compatibility either . Assuming you can get find a Windows 98 WDM driver for it, it will offer emulated SB Pro compatibility when running DOS games under Windows 98, but there will be no OPL3 FM synth emulation however .

Reply 3 of 5, by Warlord

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I have a t43 and installed 98se on it once. mine had the x300 ATI and I could never get that working. Sound I never tried to get working. If I was in your shoes I would pick another laptop to run 98se on. I ran XP on it for a long time and I have retried it. They have bad thermal problems and substandard cooling solution.

Reply 4 of 5, by CzarJK

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I wanted to thank everyone for replying.
As an update, I can say that I have not figured out how to enable Win 98 Ms Dos Mode emulation. Just as an example, when I run Red Alert in Win98 - Dos Mode the Soundblaster MP3+ remains lit - but the audio set-up program says none of the 3 available card choices say that they're compatible. Any thoughts on how to fix this? have good 32bit color using a Thinkdock II and an Nvidia MX4000.

Also I wanted to know if maybe there is a good ExpressCard which would be 100% sound blaster compatible?
i
Again I appreciate everyone's feedback. I am debating buying an older Thinkpad to put this issue to bed so if you have any suggestions for what I could select that would be compatible with ThinkDockII 2877 and a good choice for running dos games I'd like to hear about it. I originally got the Thinkpad T43 thinking I could install Linux and barely surf the modern web (including Youtube) and also dual boot into Win98/Dos 6.22 but I'm discovering that I should have known about VOGONS before pulling the trigger.

Time to write some poetry....

Reply 5 of 5, by cyclone3d

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No Express cards will have any sort of DOS compatibility

The specs say that that the T43 has a parallel port, so you could use an OPL3PT for OPL3 support.
https://www.serdashop.com/website/index.php?P … 8896355&Index=1

There are also a few other parallel port devices available there as well.

As far as full DOS support for sound, you don't really have a lot of options for that laptop besides some very hard to come by external units that hook up to the parallel port.

You could also always try VDMsound for getting sound for DOS games when run from Win98 but it is buggy and is not going to work with everything.

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