Uncreative Labs

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Lately I have been picking up some Soundblaster 16's and 32's from the local recycler. What I want to know is which models (creative made a million models) are the best to keep, and why?

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

some of the early soundblaster cards had an ide or even scsi interface for a cd rom
and had jumpers to set port adresses.
this was desirable from a DOS poinjt of view as the install was straight forward. these were 16 bit cards.
Most had a wheel ( volume control) on the back and
needed to be set so you coyuld hear the sound. ( caused head scratching)

later similar cards were jumperless or almost jumperless. and neded intel PNP extension disk to wpork in DOS or windows 3.1. The 2 disks were also useful to run other pnp cards under dos or win 3.1.
Both kinmds were automatically detected and installed by win 98. maybe even win 95.

THAT is my definition of the best card.
one that has a trouble-free install.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

best ones to keep, ones that work, i got a box of 10 sb16's and 36 sb64's, most are new, card only, personally, i think the sb64 drivers use alot of mem, altho, there the same drivers used on the pnp sb16/32, since im gona have to use pnp drivers, might aswell stick the newest bestest card in. personally, i only got 1 sb16 that uses a volume knob with jumpers, but im not sure if its workin, cause its suffering corrosion too, i think my bro found this some were, probly outside in the city. anyways, a workin soundblaster is one worth keepin.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

The question is if you can pick and chose, which ones would you want.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

This seems to be the question of the century. Unfortunately there is no good answer. Each SB card has its strengths and weaknesses, and you will have to decide which ones to keep based on your needs.

If you are aiming for DOS compatibility, it's best to get a non-PNP card (no VIBRA chipset).
If you want to be able to use midi daugherboards without the having "hanging notes", you'll need a card with DSP 4.05. These are usually the very first cards with the volume dials. Sadly they are quite noisy.
For people who want cards with good SNR, the Vibra and AWE64 cards are the way to go, but they work much better in Windows than in DOS.

I am personally considering using an SB Pro 2, because it has by far the best DOS compatibility of any SB card, unfortunately it's only 8-bit 22khz and quite noisy at that.

Now rumour has it that Crystal Semiconductor CS4232 based cards with real OPL3 is a good card to have as they have good SNR, good SB Pro compatibility and a functional wave blaster connector. I would consider one of those (I haven't yet been able to find one).

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

The SBPro 2.0 is a decent stereo sound card, but it is a bit noisy (kind of retro sounding). I have a few of those cards and they are great in a 386 for DOS games.

That Crystal Semiconductor chip is found in some Thinkpads (380 series which I have a few of).

For DOS I don't even bother with the AWE64 cards.

Where did you get the information on the DSP 4.05 and waveblasters?

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

My only gripe about SB Pro 2 is that it's not going to sound very good when plugged in through an AV Receiver. As far as I know, there's no way to disable the internal amplifier on that card.

If you want to find out more about the hanging note bug on SB16s, VOGONS and Quest Studio are both good places to look. I believe DSP 4.05 and possibly 4.11 are the only two that don't have the bug. DSP 4.05 is usually easier to find though, because it's quite common on the first SB16s, which are easy to spot because of their volume control knobs.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

i like the sb64 sb16vibras, they are easy to come by and dont got alot of the staticy noises, i use an sb64 on a 386 with dos, and it works great, never need a secondary ide controller cause ive switched to scsi hdd and i use the single ide port on the mobo for cd-rom as it cant read hard drives larger than 635 mb, scsi is the way to go for 286-486 class machine as it frees up cpu speed

on a side note, i made a score of 75-100 5.25 floppies Smile

sad thing is i have to move to arkansas from cali soon, so ima have to lighten my load of stuff Sad

probly gona ditch cables/dead hard drives/ strip clone cases of mobos, and other worthless brocken junk. mabey i'll have to list some my stuff see if its got vaule

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Do you want some 4X Pioneer SCSI CD-ROM drives?

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

How much for the SCSI CDROMs?

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

All four of them for free. Just pay postage.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Now rumour has it that Crystal Semiconductor CS4232 based cards with real OPL3 is a good card to have as they have good SNR, good SB Pro compatibility and a functional wave blaster connector. I would consider one of those (I haven't yet been able to find one).

Look in old Packard bells and you will find one, they are rare though as they were optional in the years you would find them, needless to say most PBs didn't come with one.

I had 3 of those cards all ISA and all dead as a doornail. One had a proprietary CD-rom interface on it. The rest were plain.

The proprietary CD-rom portion worked but I could never get the rest of the card to function. Ah well.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

packard bells had modem/soundcard ones, another PB odity, i got one, never tried it tho, its got an aztech chipset

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

386er wrote:

packard bells had modem/soundcard ones, another PB odity, i got one, never tried it tho, its got an aztech chipset

Some older high end Packard Bells (The Legend 843+ is one of them) used REVEAL Sound cards. I had one of those, it was pretty nice, but you did have to tweak the left channel a little to get the sound output balanced between the two speakers correctly.

I use sound cards according to machine...

8088 = CT1600 SoundBlaster Pro II
80286 = SoundBlaster 16
80486 = SoundBlaster AWE32 with 2MB of Waveblaster RAM

I also redirect my internal speaker into the cards, so I can control the bleeper output. Most, if not all SoundBlasters have this option (look for a 2 prong connector marked SPKR).

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

creepingnet wrote:

386er wrote:

packard bells had modem/soundcard ones, another PB odity, i got one, never tried it tho, its got an aztech chipset

Some older high end Packard Bells (The Legend 843+ is one of them) used REVEAL Sound cards. I had one of those, it was pretty nice, but you did have to tweak the left channel a little to get the sound output balanced between the two speakers correctly.

I use sound cards according to machine...

8088 = CT1600 SoundBlaster Pro II
80286 = SoundBlaster 16
80486 = SoundBlaster AWE32 with 2MB of Waveblaster RAM

I also redirect my internal speaker into the cards, so I can control the bleeper output. Most, if not all SoundBlasters have this option (look for a 2 prong connector marked SPKR).

Nothing for a 386?