Don't they both have a CT1747? I can't make it out on my monitor.

It looks more like "CT1343" or "CT1242" to me, though the main cause of concern is the lack of the distinct OPL logo. Not that the low resolution is helping matters any...

Now that I think about it, if one's willing to break out the soldering equipment, would it be feasible to just replace a non-OPL FM synth chip with a genuine OPL chip sourced from another SB16/AWE32 card?

Got the card today; I can stop freaking out now, as it does have a CT1747 and the OPL logo on it. Also, scrutinizing the box art shows a CT1747 that doesn't have the OPL logo. Typical Creative inconsistency, I suppose.

I even figured out some tricks to discerning whether the given chip on an AWE32 is genuine OPL or not, even with low-resolution eBay pictures; if you know where it's located on that board revision, just look carefully at the bottom white text and see if it ends roughly around the middle of the chip, or extends a bit past the middle. In the latter case, it probably has the OPL logo.

Anyway, what I just noticed about the CT2760 cards is that the lower-linked one is actually a "Revision 3" CT2760, also sometimes termed the CT2760A in some circles. Some seem to think it's slightly improved, but I don't feel the need to bother hunting down yet another AWE32 variant.

I'd replace my AWE64 Gold with it immediately, except for one small problem...it's blocked off by my current case's hard drive cage. I need a new case, one with a lot of room in that lower area for lengthy expansion cards, and better airflow to boot.

I've mentioned this a fair number of times, but all CT1747 chips contain Yamaha's OPL3 core. The chips lacking the OPL logo were simply produced before Yamaha registered the trademark.

Someone had a utility not too long ago (Cloudschatze?) which scanned your system and told you everything you wanted to know about your Sound Blaster card. Sounded cool. Can't remember where the thread is or if it were public. If no longer, it would be nice if it were reposted 😀

Cloudschatze wrote:

I've mentioned this a fair number of times, but all CT1747 chips contain Yamaha's OPL3 core. The chips lacking the OPL logo were simply produced before Yamaha registered the trademark.

Ah, gotcha. Would've been nice to know that earlier...

Come to think of it, are there any CT2760s or other early-revision AWE32s that are highly likely but NOT guaranteed to contain a genuine OPL3 core? I'm still trying to figure out when the approximate switchover from OPL to CQM happened among the revisions. It doesn't quite correlate to the switch to ISA PnP, as some PnP AWE32s do have CT1747 OPL3s.

Stiletto wrote:

Someone had a utility not too long ago (Cloudschatze?) which scanned your system and told you everything you wanted to know about your Sound Blaster card. Sounded cool. Can't remember where the thread is or if it were public. If no longer, it would be nice if it were reposted 😀

That would be incredibly convenient in analyzing Sound Blaster cards of all models and revisions. Too bad I don't know where to get this utility myself...

You're lucky to have been looking for one of the more readily available variants of the AWE32. I was looking for the longest time for a CT3980. I found a box with the manuals, drivers, software, and all the other little cables and parts that came with it but WITHOUT the card for sale on ebay once and was trying to find a matching card and soon discovered why the seller didn't have the card that went with it. They are extremely hard to find. I suppose it was because CT3980 was a top of the line card when it was new and was expensive so not many sold compared to the cheaper versions. There was also a CT3990 that slotted in above it in the heirarchy but that card doesn't have an OPL chip at all. It has Creative's proprietary replacement for OPL that appeared later in the AWE64 line, which sucks.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

Stiletto wrote:

Someone had a utility not too long ago (Cloudschatze?) which scanned your system and told you everything you wanted to know about your Sound Blaster card. Sounded cool. Can't remember where the thread is or if it were public. If no longer, it would be nice if it were reposted 😀

That would be incredibly convenient in analyzing Sound Blaster cards of all models and revisions. Too bad I don't know where to get this utility myself...

Found the thread where I'd heard about it. It was made by NewRisingSun.
http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php?topic=2421.0

It doesn't seem to be online anymore...

In other news, I'm trying to test the AWE32 CT2760. Problem is, the drivers off the floppy disks don't really get along with Win98SE that well.

Also weirdly enough, the Device Manager shows that it has defaulted to IRQ 10 for whatever dumb reason. I know this isn't a PnP revision, but I didn't see any jumpers pertaining to IRQ and DMA settings for the sound card itself, just the Mitsumi CD-ROM controller. I suppose that's what SET BLASTER is for, but changing that didn't change what Win98SE saw.

I guess it's just because I don't have the right drivers...I'll try the ones on that CD image uploaded on the VOGONS Drivers site, even though they're meant for PnP AWE32s. Only thing is, I don't want these drivers being the too-recent sort that break the QSound functionality...

EDIT: I think I'm getting the hang of this. Change the resources manually in the Device Manager, disable anything else that causes conflicts (thankfully just the printer port that I never use), and that should do it nicely.

Also, this CT2760 has DSP 4.12, so the wavetable header's probably bugged. I suppose I can find a way to make an Aureal card's SB Pro emulation co-exist with an AWE32 and use its wavetable header instead, if I ever decide to get into daughterboards.