SB16 IDE CD in Windows 98SE \ VOGONS

SB16 IDE CD in Windows 98SE

Topic actions

First post, by Andy1979

Posted on 2017-08-08, 23:03

Andy1979 Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 78
Joined: 2017-07-25, 08:01

Today I received a "Soundblaster 16 Pro Value" ISA card, marked CT2910 on the board, but CT2911 on the sticker on the back of the board. It's a long, non-PNP board with an IDE interface. This has been installed in a P133 system, using an Intel 'Marl' motherboard (430HX chipset). I have set the jumpers and established that there are no IRQ/DMA conflicts (it's set up at IRQ10 and as the tertiary IDE controller).

I found the 'SBIDE' driver (version 2.05) on Vogons Drivers and have managed to get the CD drive to work in Windows 95, so I know that the card is working.

However, under my existing installation of Windows 98SE I cannot get the CD drive to show up. If I use the built-in Windows drivers (dated 1999) then the IDE interface is visible with the correct IRQ and DMA settings, but no drives are detected. If I use the Win95 drivers then I get an exclamation mark in device manager, stating that there is a problem with the device. Under both scenarios the drive isn't seen by MSCDEX when I exit into MS DOS mode. The NT4 installer also doesn't detect the CD drive.

Does anyone know of working CD interface drivers for this card under Windows 98SE / NT4?

Appreciate it would be easier just to use the on-board secondary IDE controller (which works) but I have other plans for that.

Apologies if this is already covered somewhere but I couldn't find the answer on the forum.

My Retro systems:
1. Pentium 200, 64mb EDO RAM, Matrox Millennium 2mb, 3DFX Voodoo 4mb, DOS6.22 / Win95 / Win98SE
2. Compaq Armada M700 laptop, PIII-450, Win98SE
3. Core2Duo E6600, ATI Radeon 4850, Win XP

Reply 1 of 3, by Andy1979

Posted on 2017-08-09, 12:12

Andy1979 Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 78
Joined: 2017-07-25, 08:01

Having done some more research into this it looks like NT4 drivers for the IDE interface may not exist. Still not clear why the Windows 95 drivers won't work in 98SE though.

The reason for me doing this is that I want to use a CF card for the main drive (swapping out the cards so I can also use DOS/3.1, 95 or NT4), with an SD to IDE adapter as the easiest way to transfer files to the machine without disturbing the OS drive. The SD to IDE adapter I bought does not have master/slave jumpers and the CF to IDE adapter I have does not support Cable Select (I tried anyway, with the correct cable, but the SD adapter always ends up as Master). I therefore thought that using separate IDE controllers for CF (Primary), SD (Secondary) and CD (Tertiary) would be the easiest solution, but hadn't banked on needing special Creative drivers.

Might try another CF adapter that supports cable select, or putting the SD adapter on the soundcard IDE - if that only works in DOS/95 and not in 98/NT4 it isn't the end of the world. Failing that I could always give up on the SD adapter and either use a network drive or a second CF adapter instead. I have quite a few spare SD cards though.

Reply 2 of 3, by chinny22

Posted on 2017-08-26, 14:32

chinny22 Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 5925
Joined: 2011-08-26, 12:02
Location: Australian but living in the UK for now

Couldn't you jumper the CD drive as slave on either the primary or secondary channel?
Then it may all just work anyway? especially the SD card reader looks like its hard wired to master.

Otherwise I'd just get a CF card reader that lest you select Master or slave, I know they work for sure.
Haven't played with SD to IDE card readers so cant Comment how well that works.

Reply 3 of 3, by Andy1979

Posted on 2017-08-27, 22:17

Andy1979 Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 78
Joined: 2017-07-25, 08:01

chinny22 wrote:
Couldn't you jumper the CD drive as slave on either the primary or secondary channel? Then it may all just work anyway? especial […]
Show full quote
Couldn't you jumper the CD drive as slave on either the primary or secondary channel?
Then it may all just work anyway? especially the SD card reader looks like its hard wired to master.

Otherwise I'd just get a CF card reader that lest you select Master or slave, I know they work for sure.
Haven't played with SD to IDE card readers so cant Comment how well that works.

Thanks for the response.

After using the system some more I found that the SD adapter didn't agree with my system - lots of random disk corruption, regardless of the size or make of the SD card.

Also discovered that the SB16 has a problem with its OPL3 audio - it is badly distorted to the point that it's barely audible most of the time.

Have since replaced the SB16 with an Audician 32 plus and am using a CF to IDE adapter with some Transcend Industrial SD cards. This works fine and serves my purpose.

Still getting more page fault errors in Win 95 than I'd like, but no more disk corruption and the audio is great with the Audician card.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to General Old Hardware