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I'm having problems with an SB16 card I got off ebay. I'm trying to get it to work on a Pentium MMX 233mhz with Dos 6.22.
The card went in without a hitch and the drivers I downloaded from Creative installed fine. Despite this, the card will work neither in the provided diagnostic checker nor any of the dos games I've installed.
If my speakers are plugged into the Speaker plug, it plays no sound at all. If plugged into the line out, it plays garbled sound.
Any idea what gives? I've considered that the plug-ins in the back of the card are shot... may need to order another card?
Thanks
'Line out' is for powered speakers. 'Speaker out' is for non-powered speakers. The 'speaker out' relies on an on-board amplifier. If that amplifier is bad then you'll get no output.
Also, make sure you're plugging into the right jacks. The one directly above the joystick port is 'speaker out'. The one above that is 'line out'. Sometimes from the angle you're viewing the card it's easy to use the wrong port and end up plugging into the 'mic in' port.
The card may have jumpers to configure the port and IRQ. Did you get a manual with the card?
If your cmos/bios setup has an option for 'PnP OS' or 'Win95 OS' make sure that's disabled. That can interfere with sound card setup in dos.
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Are you sure you downloaded *ALL* the required drivers.
Previously, my experience of the Creative Technology Website was that they provided only updated items for downloading, rather than complete sets. These were then used to update (not replace) the driver/program libraries on ones hdd.
At the time I felt this to be rather sad from a market leader with such brilliant products.
Good Luck - Keep us posted.
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The Creative PCI "drivers" have two parts.
The PCI Card sits on IRQ10 and the drivers emulate IRQ5, therefore it is not a driver par-se but emulation software.
If the "drivers" install AOK, then you need to ensure the Sound Blaster variable is added to AUTOEXEC.BAT
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1
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ok, been tinkering and still no luck.
I forgot to mention, this is an ISA model of sound blaster.
"The card may have jumpers to configure the port and IRQ. Did you get a manual with the card?"
No manual but I have been using this page as a reference: http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/sound-c...
I can configure the port but not the IRQ. It's set to 220, which is where it is detected.
"If your cmos/bios setup has an option for 'PnP OS' or 'Win95 OS' make sure that's disabled. That can interfere with sound card setup in dos."
Turned PnP off, still no luck.
"SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1"
It's in my autoexec.bat just like that.
Strangely enough, the card plays MIDI fine... it's everything else that doesn't work.
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Here are my autoexec.bat and config.sys.
Autoexec.bat
@ECHO OFF
SET SOUND=C:\DRIVERS\SB16
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E
LH /L:0;1,45456 /S C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.exe /X
LH /L:1,36224 C:\DOS\MSCDEX.exe /D:MSCD001 /M:10 /L:D
LH /L:0;1,3552 /S c:\drivers\mouse\ctmouse.exe
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\DOS
SET temp=C:\tempConfig.sys
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.exe RAM
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DRIVERS\SB16\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5 D:1 H:5
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DRIVERS\SB16\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS
BUFFERS=20,0
FILES=40
DOS=UMB
LASTDRIVE=E
FCBS=4,0
DEVICEHIGH /L:1,12048 =C:\DOS\SETVER.exe
DEVICEHIGH C:\DRIVERS\CDROM\NEC_IDE.SYS /D:MSCD001 /N:1 / M:S /P:1F0S /I:15
DOS=HIGH
SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS\ /p
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Remove the Sound Blaster Drivers, an ISA Card usually should work with the Standard Parameters without Drivers:
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1
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"Remove the Sound Blaster Drivers, an ISA Card usually should work with the Standard Parameters without Drivers:
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1"
No change. In Wolfenstein 3d, the background music plays fine but the sound effects are totally garbled. Conquest of the New World detects the device as some Roland-10 Sound system. I'm beginning to think its a bad card.
I discovered the CT2230 is designed to slave a CD Rom... don't have a CD drive attached to it though.
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It doesn't need the cdrom attached in order for the sound to work.
Generally you do need a file loaded for dos sound to work. Let me see if I can verify you're using the right one.
Of course, as you say, it could be bad. I've got a boatload of old sound cards if you should need another.
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It looks like the creative lines in config.sys and autoexec.bat are correct for that card except this line in autoexec.bat:
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330
should be:
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
The T6 specifies an SB16 card.
The basic setup file (the one you probably used) is SBBASIC.exe. The update to that, which isn't a full install, is S16DW3UP.exe. The first is on creative's site and the update probably is too. They're also here:
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Your DMA numbers might be wrong, for the low DMA (D) you could try 0, 1 or 3, for example.
Try removing all the SB lines from your autoexec.bat and config.sys, and then try using something like MpxPlay (I think it doesn't need the BLASTER variable, it detects the port/irq/etc.) and play a sound file. If it works, then the environment variable is wrong, and you'll just have to modify it (running "mpxplay.exe -sct" should give you the correct numbers)
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