CTCM is intended for use with a Plug and Play BIOS. There is no such thing as a 286 with a Plug and Play BIOS, as the 286 was obsolete long before that technology was developed.

If it is at all possible to get this card working with a 286, you will probably need different drivers.

CTCM readme file states the following:

If you use a non-PnP operating system like DOS/Windows 3.1x and do not have a PnP BIOS or ICM, your PnP card works like a software-configurable card.

In such an environment, CTCM needs to know which resources have been reserved by all the legacy and PnP cards, and system devices in your system before it can allocate conflict-free resources to your new Creative PnP card. CTCM can get the resource settings of PnP cards and system devices from the PnP cards and BIOS. But you need to use CTCU to enter the resource settings of all the legacy cards in your PC, and then run CTCM to configure your Creative PnP card.

You may still encounter hardware conflicts if the resource settings specified through CTCU are incomplete or wrong. If this happens, use CTCU to select a different group of resources for the Creative PnP card that caused the conflict. You may need to try a few combinations until you find one that works. This can be tedious, but it is easier than the legacy way of changing dip switches or jumpers.

Either my understanding of English is much worse than I thought or this means that you can actually use a PnP sound card in a non-PnP PC...

Here's the link to the complete file:
http://files.mpoli.fi/pub/drivers_1/SND/AWE64 … CTCM/README.TXT

I stand corrected. Humblest apologies.

So... Like it says, have you used CTCU to select appropriate resource settings? And have you tried selecting different ones? While it shouldn't be causing any conflicts, evidently it is.

Also, which model of Vibra 16 are you using? Does it have an IDE interface on the card? Is that the interface you are using?

It's CT4180 - no IDE interface, just a plain Vibra 16c 😀

I haven't done anything with CTCU because it doesn't even see the card and I don't know what to enter for VGA/IDE controller...

I have one more idea for tomorrow so stay tuned.

If you're using MS-DOS 6.x, you should have MSD.EXE, which will tell you what resources are currently in use.

Also, do you have a SET CTCM line in your autoexec.bat ?

Yes, I have SET CTCM in autoexec.

My idea of setting the blaster environment manually didn't do anything. MSD.EXE does tell me a lot but what should I enter in CTCU? EVerything including COM ports? I'm not very good at this anymore 😁

Well, here's the solution 😀

I installed EMU386 and ran the installer for both PnP Creative Configuration Manager (CTCM) and Audio Software. This got sound working - tested in Leisure Suit Larry 3.

Now I was curious... could I make it work without CTCM? So I restarted with F8 and chose not to run CTCM or CTCU during startup. Guess what? Sound works anyway!

There you have it. PnP cards can work on a 286.

EDIT: As kixs pointed out, this stops working after a hard reset. So, you do need CTCM for it to work but at least it works 😁

Half-Saint wrote:

My idea of setting the blaster environment manually didn't do anything.

That is to be expected. The BLASTER environment variable needs to match the CTCU settings.

Half-Saint wrote:

EVerything including COM ports?

If you're not using them, you might as well disable your ports in your BIOS (if you have that option).

Half-Saint wrote:

I installed EMU386 and ran the installer for both PnP Creative Configuration Manager (CTCM) and Audio Software. This got sound working - tested in Leisure Suit Larry 3.

This is unclear. Does CTCM work when you run its installer but not when you reboot your system?

CTCM works every time as long as EMU386 is loaded first.