- Sound blaster software dos install#
- Sound blaster software dos drivers#
- Sound blaster software dos driver#
- Sound blaster software dos archive#
- Sound blaster software dos Pc#
Just run C:\DRIVERS\SB16\MIXER without any parameters, then write down the settings it recommends, and edit the SET BLASTER line to match.".Īnother free Sound Blaster 16 mixer to try out if Magic Mixer isn't your thing, is Beva Mixer 4.1. You can use Magic Mixer to find free addresses and interrupts. If those lines don’t work, you have a hardware conflict. He says " The last line which runs Magic Mixer 5, claims to be enough on its own to configure and wake up a Sound Blaster 16, but I found I needed both lines. The files you need are SBPNPXT.EXE and MIXER.EXE - just unzip them to a directory such as C:\DRIVERS\SB16 on your DOS-based 8088/8086 or 286 computer.ĭavid then added these lines to his AUTOEXEC.BAT file: the ability to run a Sound Blaster 16 on an XT or 80286! The result? Yeah, we got there eventually. The trouble was, Creative's software was a bit bloated and never ran on an XT or a 286.Įnter some clever souls in the 90s, who reverse-engineered Creative's files to make them more efficient and flexible.
Sound blaster software dos Pc#
This took the pain out of understanding your PC and what all those other cards were doing that might prevent your flash new sound card from working.
Sound blaster software dos drivers#
He goes on to state that Creative made drivers and utilities that could help you find out what resources your computer had free and would configure the card accordingly, presumably storing values in an EEPROM. All cards that needed an IRQ and DMA channel got jumpers that you physically set before you installed the card, and it could get quite tricky if you had multiple cards to configure without resource conflicts arising. In his article, David talks about the fact that back in the days of the 286, and of course the XT before it, there was no such thing as Plug & Play.
Sound blaster software dos driver#
It is evident that at least some of the Creative Labs driver software is compiled to run on an 80386 or higher, and so won't work on anything lower than that. Sound Blaster 16s were produced in great quantities and today are so much cheaper to buy than, say, an Ad Lib card - even an Ad Lib clone costs $80! So why bother, I hear you ask? Why not just use a much older sound card that's "period correct" for the XT and 286 era? Well according to David it's simply a cost thing. His challenge wasn't so much about seeing if the hardware would function and more around getting the software drivers to work. I've tried a bunch of 16-bit video cards in 8-bit machines and certainly some DO work, but never a sound card. I've personally never even thought about trying to use a 16-bit sound card in an 8-bit machine, though his aim was less of a reach as he had a 286 system. ISBN 9781557551689.I came across this little article from last year from a guy called David L.
Of course it didn't work with Windows NT, it being a driver for the DOS-Windows platform. (Seeing someone give someone else the number of the BBS to dial brings back memories … of FREQs.
Sound blaster software dos archive#
It came in a self-extracting archive named speak.exe, and could be found on the companion discs for books, in the extra utilities discs from OEMs, on Microsoft's FTP site, and on BBSes. It turned off interrupts for significant periods of time, which caused I/O problems with other devices but which was inherent in the nature of the hardware. It was a driver named speaker.drv, written by Microsoft. It was a DOS-Windows 3.x and DOS-Windows 9x/ME thing. I would be interested to know the name, how it was installed, if it supported DOS and/or Windows, and any other history that might be available. It certainly worked well enough that Windows sounds were easily distinguishable.ĭoes anyone have any details for the audio driver I am referring to? I suspect there may be more than one, as it isn't a unique idea.
What I can't remember is what the driver was called, or if it was a DOS thing or a Windows 3.x thing.
It was tinny and scratchy, but I remember it most definitely worked.
Sound blaster software dos install#
This question Was it possible to listen to music and work on old PCs got me to thinking about how we frequently solved the problem of not having a sound card.Īs I remember it, there was some sort of driver we used to install that would play audio on the PC speaker. Obviously our jobs did not require sound cards, or fancy hardware of any kind, but as technically savvy users, we spent a lot of time trying to sneak a good video card or more memory into our systems. At the time, 386SX/25's were common for in-house technical support / customer service computers. Long ago in a galaxy far far away, back in the early 90's, I worked for a crappy clone company as a phone technician.
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