Why no love for the Sound Blaster PCI 128?

[@jonnyhopkins610]

I had 8 of these listed for $6 OBO and took the listing down because they get no love whatsoever even as a cheap card.

[@jonnyhopkins610]

This was the first card I had in a DOS / Win98 build and I had no complaints. I still use it in an XP machine I built for cheap and easy sound. It's not TOTL but that doesn't mean it won't get the job done on a budget.

[@johannes914]

Top technology of today is your garbage of tomorrow...

[@dikbozo]

I too still have my 128 and my 512 as there was zero interest over a 6 month span.

[@testingchannel5440]

After Phil mentioned it, you can now list them for $60 and they will be sold in minutes.

[@jonnyhopkins610]

@@testingchannel5440 brb putting them up for $100.

[@EthanAQueen]

One fun fact about the PCI 128 is that is is the same exact card as the PCI 64, except that Creative stuck an ID chip on the 128 which the drivers would detect and thus the PCI 128 got the "upgraded" 128 voice driver. After figuring this out, I cobbled together a driver pack for the PCI 64 to upgrade it to the 128 and posted about it on the Creative Labs tech support forum. Shortly after this, Creative "decided" to be generous and released a "new" driver for the PCI 64 that upgraded it to have the same 128 voices of the PCI 128.

[@philscomputerlab]

@@EthanAQueen wow what a cool story! Thank you for sharing 😊🙏

[@GGigabiteM]

Really weird that they'd do something like that when they've been hostile to modders and threatened them with C&D in the past. There was the whole Daniel-K fiasco which put into the public spotlight how terrible Creative is as a company. They purposefully introduced bugs and removed advertised features between Windows versions (in this mentioned case, Vista drivers were purposefully crippled over XP drivers to get people to buy newer Creative products.)

[@elektronischermeister]

Your review of vintage Sound Cards is AWEsome!

[@philscomputerlab]

😊😊❤❤

[@xBruceLee88x]

I see what you did there 😅

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

And now, these will get listed for $100 within a week. Thanks, Phil.

[@NSHG]

Everything will, sooner or later. Even the crappiest MX4000.

[@SOWA85]

I have three of those, want one? 🙂One comes with original diver CD, $200 and it's yours!

[@masterkamen371]

@@SOWA85 Wow, I should sell my AWE64 Gold with all the documentation for $10000 then. And standard AWE64, $5k a piece.

[@SOWA85]

@@masterkamen371 I was joking, relax.

[@masterkamen371]

@@SOWA85 I know. The money people ask for this crap is insane. Seems like the less they sell, the more they will ask.

[@dougjohnson4266]

I have at least 2 of these cards and have never been able to get them to work with just DOS. Now I will need to try them again.

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you 🙏😊

[@dougjohnson4266]

One of my CT4810 cards is dead, and of course, it​ was the card I was using. Your DOS setup bat also works with the CT5803 card. Tyank you sir.@philscomputerlab

[@shiva_MMIV]

A tip if you allow me: in the BIOS asign the interrupt you're going to use for the SB emulation (usually 5) to the PCI port you have installed the card in, it will save you many headaches, hangs and reboots (don't ask me how I know 😂). Applies also to Live and Audigy.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes!

[@AncapDude]

The same IRQ for Emulation and Real is good?

[@lucasrem]

The week before i found old AMD system, Audigy 32 in, on a double board, many firewire ports on it too. driver issues, LOL ! was it any good ?

[@zarkeh3013]

and Vortex and PCI Yamahahahaha uh, cards!

[@CaptainDangeax]

Hi Phil. Just opened my drawer and installed a PCI128 in my Pentium4 retrogaming PC. SB16 and general midi work great for dos games, and it was far easier than trying to make Sis7012 AC97 emulate sbpro under DOS. Thank you for the driver I found on your website

[@philscomputerlab]

@@CaptainDangeax Awesome 💯

[@Kumimono]

Today I learned, what the "TAD" stands for.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

I never ever seen one attached to a soundcard. Did they really exist? 🤔😄

[@AncapDude]

Hahaha same

@@pc-sound-legacy if I have to guess, some voice modems had this kind of connector and then you can patch the two cards with a cable.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Cause it needs the Phil Treatment.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Excellent review, and explanation how to set it up in DOS, thanks Phil! I always had the horrible FM emulation in mind but the sbpci really has some cool features like GM wavetavle in DOS! And I neither knew it could stream cdaudio over IDE nor did I knew it could output digital audio over 3.5mm audio out. (I could have known better if I had read the help files🫥)

[@mesterak]

Thank you Phil. I have a good collection of the Ensoniq and Creative rebrand of AudioPCI cards. I really like the cards and have had no issue using them in DOS and Win9x.

[@philscomputerlab]

@@mesterak Wonderful 😊

[@philscomputerlab]

Do you remember what drivers you used?

[@mesterak]

@@philscomputerlab no I don’t unfortunately. Whatever I used I pulled it off a site like softpedia or cnet if I recall. In a couple cases drivers from Dell.

[@lvl90dru1d]

great video! i found this exact card (rev. 2) in a trash can on the street in early 2023, ant it was fully working! still installed in my windows xp machine somewhere

[@the_beefy1986]

This was one of my go to cards for the late PCI years. The university i went to used to build PCs with them and was selling them off for cheap when i started building my own PCs in the early 2000s

[@Blackadder75]

I have 50 of these, indeed also from some education organisation, they were throwing them into the recycling, when I saved them from destruction long ago. I have never found a use for them, but since they only take up 1 crate of space they are still in my posession.

[@lucasrem]

My last system had one PCI slot too, old intel 1700 server ish board still support it. only my Gaming PC is a new Prebuild.

[@techdistractions]

Always great to see a new video from you Phil and it’s even better when you’re shining the light on underrated and unloved hardware 🎉

[@nicholsliwilson]

You’ve come a long way since that first face reveal haven’t you, @PhilsComputerLab with your lab setup studio. You now look at the camera like a man who knows what he’s doing, not a deer in the headlights. 😄 Well done. Honestly whilst drivers can be a bit fiddly these cheap Creative cards are great for Win9x & up to early XP but they can be even more fiddly in DOS, so you making it easy to get them working in DOS is really handy, thanks.

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you 😊😊

[@Grus0]

What a gem of a video! I already had 'some' appreciation for these cards, as I had used them to get sound (any sound!) going on some quick and dirty W98 builds. But even then I was ignorant to a lot of their features. Thanks for the awesome deep dive.

[@GYTCommnts]

Yeah! More sound cards content! 🎉 I avoided these back then because the lack of capabilities I like and use, but they really make sense as a """cheap""" (for now) 😅 retro sound card!

[@xBruceLee88x]

Another advantage of these and their ensoniq brothers, is that if you don't have drivers, you can just use the generic sound blaster 16 driver in 98se and up

[@nm0490]

It is a little bit sad, that this card got it's chance to truly shine 25 years later, that is when Phil got his hands on it.

[@philscomputerlab]

😂😂

[@matusmitana8406]

again very nice review Phil. thank you. with one comment, that in original SB PCI128 help file, in section "selecting the best option for games", it is written LAPC-1 :-) ; actually it is LAPC-I as I stands for IBM PC version ; LAPC-N stands for NEC PC version (mostly used in Japan)

[@philscomputerlab]

Wow, there you go, nicely spotted 😊😊

[@rjazz1]

Great video Phil, packed with solid info..thank you so much!!!

[@erikhicks07]

I grew up with PC speaker sound to Tandy 3-voice sound to all the SB cards. The only thing I miss is the Yamaha OPL-3 MIDI sound. All the DMA/IRQ/CONFIG.SYS stuff, I'm so glad that's passed. Amazing nowadays how we have HDMI which handles clean 5.1 surround, with extremely easy setup.

[@arizonapalms]

These and similar Ensoniq cards were really popular in prebuilt systems in the late 90's, probably a good cheap way of getting sound. I think they dont get much love nowadays when cards like SB Live! are still fairly cheap on eBay if you are patient

[@treahblade]

Yeah exactly and the live is a much better card to boot. That is if you get the right one and don't get the crappy dell ones that wont work in anything DOS or 9x.. They are still good cards but the drivers are NT only for some reason.

[@Luke-rr9po]

Thank you Phil, I found this very educational, I have a few older PC's using this same card and I will be checking them out again now. 😊👍

[@morohekim9896]

I used it for a very long time without any problem it was the best one I have ever used.

[@ndaniel80]

Fortunately I bought 2 of these one year before Phil shoot this video 😅 Anyway now it is a time to get them a try 😊

[@SUCRA]

Great video. I was wondering if the sb0200 did the same, but you answered that in the end. Congrats on the new setup, it's looking better everyday.

[@DavidRickard1]

Thanks Phil! I've had a few of these cards kicking around, and honestly had no idea they were quite so capable. I've been assembling a retro machine with my Son and was wondering about getting something more interesting for it. But I won't bother now!

[@BsktImp]

Ah, man! I had a Sound Blaster PCI 128 and then felt I'd caught up when I belatedly upgraded to a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS 7.1 in my new self-build. Ha ha!

[@RootiferasRetroGameplay]

I love sound cards like this one. It doesn't do an amazing job but it is decent enough to cover a lot of bases. Also generally quite robust so they are more likely to survive longer period of time. I have some similar cards to that but I think I'll get one of these before they become £200 on ebay hah.

[@Jdvc-yd5tx]

For anyone interested in FM synthesis, sound cards and computer sound chips in general I recommend Furnace Tracker, which physically models the chips much the same way VST instruments model original hardware. 🖋

[@Birdman_in_CLE]

I buy them all the time for retro builds. They are great. Good driver support and stable. I have 5 of them in my soundcard box right now.

[@myleft9397]

Yeah, I'm not sure I understand retro KZbinrs going wild over specific cards unless they're pre-Soundblasters. Some of the utilities were a bit strange to me and I never used them back in the day. Also, I always configured them as IRQ 7 or 5. Great video!

[@geremychubbuck3730]

Great video and great advice. Well done as usual. Keep up the great work 👍

[@adiarka4543]

I have one of these cards! Bought it a few years ago because it was cheap and I’ve never owned a sound card before. It’s useful for testing some older motherboards that I had.

[@Gledster]

Great video. An old pc of mine had a 128 card. I must not have used it to its fullest. Thanks for giving a detailed guide to the drivers.

[@Constantin314]

i have this SC, i knew it's a special one, thanks for confirming, Phil :)

[@mc42d0]

Phil gets a video out and these things start to sell. Prices get inPhilated 😂

[@philscomputerlab]

@@mc42d0 😂

[@branscombe_]

this is the exact sound blaster I put in my windows 98 machine recently, it does the trick, I’m not trying to blow anything out of the water here with it or do any production.

[@Curtaku]

What a coincidence, I got one of these sound cards yesterday ^^ video could not have been timed better.

[@chrisrudi7162]

I also have several of these cards. You often see offers where someone offers three or four pieces for just 10 euros. I have one of these in my fastest 98 PC, the Core2Duo E8600, because it caused the least problems. And in my Slot A PC with Athlon Classic 900 it is firmly soldered to the mainboard. I already told you that. You save a PCI slot if you only have a MicroATX board and need the other slots. But I'm very pleased that you took a look at these cards.

[@mrnmrn1]

I had a version of this from 2001 which had no place for the power amp. Be careful with those, as they are also missing the buffer amp on the line out, and they have 10uF output coupling capacitors, making it unusable with headphones. You need at least 330, but rather 470uF coupling capacitors for good bass response on headphones down to 16ohms. And even if you replace the caps, the signal comes directly from the DAC, which is a bit weak to properly drive headphones. The version shown in this video has an OCL output driver, which is the best option, especially for headphones.

[@pvc988]

One of the very few sound cards my homebrew OS supports (ES1370/1/3 variants; don't have EV1938 for testing but might work as well). Other being, of course, Sound Blaster 16 (and compatibles), and CMI8738.

[@WaldemarKasprzyk]

Hi Phil… as usual great Video explaining set ups and use of this simple Audio card… it give me a nudge to try to solve a problem with one of my P3 systems with build in PCI 128 onboard (Medion 2001 aka Asus CUV4X-CM) … as I already tried before using it in DOS but without a success… the FM music was distorted and jerky, and hanging. After watching your video I give it another try… never would guess that the culprit in my case was too law PCI Latency Timer in BIOS after changing it to 64 - onboard PCI 128 works in pure DOS wonderfully… Again TX and take care!

[@philscomputerlab]

Beautiful 🎉 Yes best to avoid FM only games in this card. General MIDI is what this card does well...

[@CharlesOttman]

MM Keyboard Enable maybe for enabling the use of the extra "multi media" keys on some keyboards in DOS?

[@white_mage]

22:05 multimedia keyboards are keyboards with multimedia keys like play/pause, stop and volume. i've been using the same multimedia keyboard for 10 years because i can't find a decent replacement that also has multimedia keys :c

[@rstebnicki]

Once upon a time I install this SB128 in my Pentium MMX, computer got so slow...

[@zsnowball]

Ahhh, I remember these times I had fun with my sb128, lets say around 1996. Someday my card suddenly stopped working, flashing the bios helped. Nice video, thanks!

[@50shadesofbeige88]

Happy Philday!

[@InsaneWayne355]

The MM Keyboard is setting is probably for "multimedia" keyboards that were popular at the time, to allow you to control the soundcard master volume with the keyboard volume controls.

[@sebastian19745]

This is a very good card. Being with the Ensoniq chip or the rebranded creative one, it just works. I had this card in my computers since late 2000's and I found it everywhere, from office PCs to dumpsters; at a point I had 6-7 of them around nad even I remember seeing it integrated on some OEM (HP or Intel?) motherboard. Unless Creative Live! , any driver works, being it the Ensoniq original one or the Creative SB 128 PCI. Hey, I remember once trying to use the SB 64 PCI driver with it and it worked. Anyway, thanks Phil for the review and for the undocumented and unknown features that I never knew about.

[@garchamp9844]

I have a great big pile of those Ensoniq cards that I have picked up for no money at all. People practically throw them at you because they ‘are not even real Sound Blasters’, and honestly I haven’t given them a second look for the same reason. Perhaps I should.

[@mc42d0]

I tried this card on my retro system, does sound nice and clean.

[@retrokvlt]

I really like this card. I got mine from my Gateway ES-450. The drivers from the restore disc are different than what I've found on Vogons.

[@lazibayer]

My 3rd sound card was a Vibra128. Loved it for years.

[@kirusyaga]

For some reason it is more noisy than an onboard AC97 sound card on 7N400 from Gigabyte.

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

Finally these get the love they deserve

[@philscomputerlab]

❤

[@jenzGuitarist]

Thats the best thing/advice i have heard recently, Phil! Yes, sit down and actually play games on your machine(s)! I‘ve done/learned that recently… with a few important games for me, and it is quite relaxing and absolutely amazing! Actually enjoy your heartful put together retro machine(s) and not always be on the hunt for the next (probably expensive) piece of hardware (that you may even won‘t need) Everything is most probably already there, maybe even more… 😀 As for the AudioPCI: i have the Ensoniq, pre-Creative, one in my Voodoo Banshee Build (IBM NetVista/PCI-only board) and for that it is really good. Thanks for the video and greetings, 🤘jenzGuitarist 🤘

[@philscomputerlab]

Yesss!

[@revelationnow]

My 386DX40 has a ballin AWE32. If that's the era you roll, that's the best card in my opinion. But any Creative card is kick ass. I'd love a Mt32 plug in ISA card. Its fun to watch a 386 load a PnP driver and have it 'just work' for the advanced wavetable features. Also, Win 3.1 wavetable support

[@TheYuppiejr]

I disagree strongly on the AWE32 being anywhere near "the best" option particularly with a 386... the 40 mhz variant landed around 1989 and was more or less replaced by the 486sx by 1992 in budget systems. The Gravis Ultrasound landed in 1992 and brought the first really affordable Wavetable synthesis option to PC's with hardware offload/acceleration that helped stretch the useful life of lower end processors like the late 386 and lower end 486 class CPU's of the era. The AWE32 didn't come out until '94 when the 486 DX/2 was king, and is really just an Ensoniq wavetable synth engine bolted onto the notoriously buggy SB16 design. it offered no such HW offload benefit like the Gravis and required more host CPU cycles for audio work, thus requiring a faster CPU to function optimally.... The AWE32 also requires explicit driver support for wavetable support in most games (AWEUTIL is terrible in a pure DOS environment and doesn't work with most popular "real mode" game engines of the time) which only uses the 1 MB Ensoniq derived wavetable soundfont on the chip ROM, the RAM based wavetable was really a Windows only trick. It's wavetable/MPU401 support is also buggy thanks to the SB16 DNA it carries forward, so it's terrible for using external or wavetable header MIDI devices if the card has the header. I put a PicoGUS (GUS, SB 2.0, CMS, Tandy 3-voice + smart MPU401) and a WavetablePi (MT32/GM support) in most 386/486 class retro machines i build, sometimes paired with a Yamaha YMF-7xx series or ESS 186x ISA PnP card if I want GUS and SB support at the same time. It's a pretty versatile set of options for around $100 all in.

[@AncapDude]

​@@TheYuppiejrI just built an AWE64 based System with SIMMconn 32mb and this AWEUTIL thing really messed me up. It's absolutely useless in plain dos 😢

[@SimonBannow]

what a blast from the past

[@krzbrew]

I bought one in the early 2000-ies and never really got to use it as integrated audio started to appear. So I have to use it for games from earlier period, thanks.

[@zord0nTV]

Have a great day Phil! ❤

[@philscomputerlab]

You too!

[@nick.lee93]

Awesome video man :)

[@mark_mcnaughton]

Thanks for the video Phil! As always . I grabbed one of these up a while ago for like a dollar or something. I must give it a try after seeing this. By the way, there is a patch on vogons, so you can run Monkey Island on faster machines. Runs fine after patching in DOS 7.1 on my Pentium 3.

[@TheLionAndTheLamb777]

I usually pick up sound cards used. I did buy a SB 128 new for $22 bucks way back when, it was miles better than the onboard Crystal audio chip. I replaced it with a SB 512 which was basically a stereo only version of a SB Live! card.

[@223_Wylde]

Picked up an old Aopen system with one of these cards (has the amp chip on it). Looking forward to playing around with it and testing some of the things out you covered in this vid!

[@whiskeyjuliet]

MM KBD enable, multi media keyboard functions like play and pause keys for cd control possibly volume control too.

[@Trick-Framed]

7:45 I have always loved that startup sound. It is one of my favorites. My all-time favorite being the Windows 95 "The Microsoft Sound".

[@dikbozo]

The 98SE sound. Awesome in its depth and range.

[@Trick-Framed]

@@dikbozo Much fuller than 95, yes. But the original Microsoft Sound from 95 remains my favorite just the same.

[@lucasrem]

It's still easy to find soundblaster cards on ISA and PCi ! We sold too many of them, any old PC you find has some soundblaster 16 in it, FM midi wave table port too. Why the crab ????????

[@Schule04]

Here are some reasons: - No 44.1KHz mode, only 48KHz. So pretty much everything gets resampled, and not very well. - Some variants of the card aren't supported by most driver versions. - The MIDI synth is just a softsynth and often doesn't sound much better than the Microsoft GS wavetable. - No FM synth so it's useless for a lot of DOS games. - It's a common and cheap budget card so there is no hype about it. - In DOS you can get the same result with a SB Live or Audigy. Let's not overhype this card, it's nothing special. If you want good DOS game support on a PCI card, instead get an ESS Solo-1 or even a C-Media card (those are still sold new on ebay from china and contain a real OPL3)

[@DaiAtlus79]

i got the version with the black gameport given to me a while back, was originally in a PC used at an old radio station. i put it in my Pentium II and it's delivering, even being able to run in DOS as you showed. it isnt a bad card, im happy enough with it, and newer games especially sound great (got lost in a session of Starcraft the other week and even on those authentic late 90s pc speaker, they work great).

[@sakitoshi]

i haven't tried myself. but this card seems to be supported by SBEMU. so, you could have good FM sound. though it might conflict with the built-in TSR.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea it initialises just fine, but no audio comes out. I'm having the same issue with my Live cards. But the plain Audigy works.

[@sakitoshi]

@@philscomputerlab that's a shame. my retro pc is on storage, so i can't test. i couldn't make it work on pcem, no sound. i have a different pci128 model than you, it has a separate jack for the rear speakers. i'll remember to test when i can.

[@F1nalspace]

I had a PCI 128 in my K6-II machine back in the days, but i had no idea that is has that many features. I had no idea you can switch the midi table file and that you have CDDA / red book support. Curious if i can get this to work in 86Box as well...

[@appwraith]

A few years ago I bought a Sound Blaster 128 just for the memes (we used to joke around how bad it sounded in FM synth games) - and I got it for literal pennies. I had no idea it is such a capable little card. Thanks for the video.

[@herdware]

I like these cards. Got one after I no longer had an ISA-slot for my AWE64. Nothing spectacular but decent enough. For those interested the joystick port is a bit quirky. Here is a quote from the NetBSD man-page: "The joystick port hardware works by emulating a legacy isa(4) joystick port, bypassing the pci(4) bus method for address allocation. This is unlikely to work on PCI busses other than the primary one. There is also a possibility for conflicts with real ISA devices because the PCI bus is probed before ISA." Don't know how Windows probes things, but hey.

[@SireSquish]

I have 2 of these sitting on my desk right now, labelled SB Vibra 128. One of these was my primary sound card back in the day, when I no longer had ISA slots for my beloved AWE64Gold and before I got an Audigy 1.

[@matepora]

Hi. I have the CT4700 version of the SB 128. Is it possible that this method works? Thanks a lot.

[@SleeperJohns]

I think it works pretty good for The Day The World Broke game. I haven't found anything that would improve any of the background static in that game though, but for me, this was the perfect option. It's like Pre-Sound Blaster Live.

[@JoshuaRenoe]

I like it. Simple and straight forward.

[@JustsomebodyWatchingurvids]

I just got the SB Vibra 16 CT4170 for my win98 build. Works great so I'm happy.

[@walterp8945]

Dang, surrounding Y2K, we must have slotted in at least a thousand in the small computer shop that I worked (was the basic soundcard for us at that time). Their support and driver for Windows was OK and DOS compatibility worked.

[@IOSam]

Love your comment about using the gear you already have (or getting cheap alternatives) and find the games that work well with them and then just play those through to completion! One thing I admire in your channel, is that we can clearly see that you actually play through the games you show on your channel (we can see you capture scenes that are often deep into the game's progression). I guess we can all agree that there are far more games (retro or otherwise) in this world than we will ever be able to play through in a lifetime... So, we might as well focus on those that work well with the gear we already have. It's kinda ironic to see the retro gear "price creep" we have today, and think that the whole point of the retro gaming scene was the desire to play good games on the cheap... Games that could run on obsolete gear that you could get for close to nothing on charity shops and car-boot/yard sales... Good games that are timeless for their story and gameplay, and not simply because they are the latest shiny new AAA stuff that can only run on the latest million dollars PCs... I guess a lot of this price creep has to do with the dreadful Fear Of Missing Out that is so prevalent in the world we live in today. People go crazy every time they find out that there are a handful of old games that might work slightly better with gear they don't own yet (and which might be a rare item with finite quantities out there). Coming from other hobbies fueled by FOMO (such as the custom keyboards one), I know how irrational and dangerous this mindset can be! So, thank you for bringing some common sense into this matter!

[@philscomputerlab]

Good comment! I like to show cheap, but of course also, desirable stuff on the channel. And there is always emulation if you're on a real budget. In fact, if I was to recommend someone what to do, if they just want to play DOSBox games without much fuss, just use DOSBox Staging. With the CRT shaders, Roland emulation, it's at such a high level...

[@orgulltradicional]

Amazing. Thank you!

[@drewnewby]

I never had one, so a bit curious. It was SB Pro, SB 16, then Live!, even today in the retro builds I do. The OPL cards are all picked over, and rare to find a deal. I think I usually get Live! (not 0200) for $10 USD.

[@drzeissler]

Though it's a really nice card but I could not manage to get it working in dos with AlladinIV Chipset.

[@jediknight2350]

thats great i got loads of them thankfully.

[@bdhale34]

Because it's not a Sound Blaster, they did work in Dos if I remember correctly though, they didn't sound the best but it was better than silence. I Still have one of these cards somewhere but no board that could use it currently.

[@RuruFIN]

I remember using one in the mid-2000s since the integrated sound on my S939 platform simply sucked. :(

[@Azuris190]

About 2001 i got an old PC from my Dads Job for about 25 €, it had no soundcard so i got a similiar like that and it was a pretty neat device, not kidding. I still have it :)

[@prozzac85]

I got one of those in my w98 pc, and it works great with everything i`ve tried. I use that pc for gamers from 1997 and onwards, and I use my DOS pc for games older than that. It does have a proper oldschool soundblaster, because I want a good FM chip for those games.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Edit I may have found the answer. I've done some digging and discovered the Live Vaule card I have is one of the Dell OEM verent CT4780 cards with a different EMU10K1 chip the (-SFF in this case) So is that why it's not working? The official Creative Labs drivers from there site are not compatible? Hi phil could use some pro help. I'm putting together a Slot 1 Pentium III maching for my 9x games and ran into a snag. The SB Live Vaule card (model ct4780) isn't working. Windows says everything is fine and the volume metter next to the master volume control in volume control is showing something is playing but there isn't any sound not even static or a hum from the cards output. I've tried different drivers and two other pci slots and changing the IRQ but nothing has worked. At this point I have no idea if its the card the windows 98se or something to do with the configuration of the motherboard. Edit 8:39 when you had the resources window open I saw something diffrent from mine. Mine only shows the I/O range and IRQ no memory access etc

[@sandplasma]

Make sure you disable any onboard sound in the Bios

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

@@sandplasma No onboard sound

[@Tretus]

finally, someone said it. i have one of these and it sounds great! i've heard more hate thrown towards the "live!" series cards than the 128, though. i have a few of those too but i haven't yet tested DOS gaming with em.

[@shmehfleh3115]

I worked at a major PC vendor in the late 90s, and we were putting these cards in everything we sold. High end, entry-level, they all got this little sucker. It's a perfectly cromulent card to use if your old PC already has one in it, especially for Win9x games. But like you said, an SB Live can do everything this card can and more, including better DOS compatibility. (Although it still sucks compared to most ISA cards.) They're dirt-cheap, too.

[@splitprissm9339]

Linux users back then also found these underwhelming because unlike the SB Live!, they lacked a hardware mixer (and linux sound drivers back then had trouble dealing with multiple programs trying to output sound on a card with no hardware mixer).

[@vulturius7664]

Just to be sure, the DOS Setup @17:55, is only under DOS Windows 98? Can I get these card to work under pure MS DOS 6.22?

[@philscomputerlab]

Absolutely they will also work in DOS 6.22!

[@buffalodebill1976]

I had the PCI 64 model and loved it, despite some issues setting it up to work correctly with a few DOS applications & games. But I primarily used it with the (Windows) Melody Assistant application to create music, where it delivered flawlessly.

[@Lady_Zenith]

I always had bad compatibility issues with PCI128. Those just do not tend to work for me. Especially on the " bleeding edge" motherboards, aka the last and fastest where you can get SB16 emulation working on SBlive, like the I865 boards for Core2, or SIS645, or VIA K8 motherboards, I often fail there (and so do with audigy) but the bloody live works there. Also, those SB128-ish cards have pretty terrible XP drivers, EAX is buggy and you sometimes have to disable directsound acceleration to the second lowest to prevent issues. I generally do not like them, even tho I had one back in the day. Another problem is is EMM386. Only live can somehow get by with working SB16 under windows when EMM386 fails to load. The SB128 or later audigy hard needs it. If EMM386 fails (can easily happen on many system, usually all it takes is loading some raid/drive controller bios during boot).

[@crtified1001]

Out of the 3 available sound banks, the modest 2MB sound bank is actually the closest to the way that Descent music sounds on a Roland Sound Canvas, in terms of instrument balance and sounds used. In the opinion of my subjective ears. :)

[@scherge]

Very interesting video. Thanks! :)

[@stevencamp6824]

I love em

[@GearSeekers]

I have one in my Amiga 1200 tower that I built. Really good card for that use

[@philscomputerlab]

In an Amiga? Wow, I had no idea they take PCI sound cards, let alone this one...