Whats going on with SB16........?

[Robert_Ingleby]

Ok, Get this,

Ive got a SB16PCI and I cant get the sound to work on it via a DOS game.
Its a Legacy device and Ive set the DMA IRQ and ADDRESS up properly.

However it DOES work on a SB16ISA with the same IRQ DMA etc. Are the drivers for the two cards different? Can I access a PCI card via an ISA selection in the Sound Setup and see it working?

Whats interesting is if I use the sound card in an application and then try and run the program it says it wont start as the card is already in use. This means that it is at least trying to pump audio into the card via the bus.

I guess the question is this, Can anyone tell me if the drivers differ between SB16 PCI and SB16 ISA. Creative Labs sent me an updated driver for the PCI card, but it still dont work. Can a PCI audio card be accessed as easily as an ISA one?

[Justin W]

Is it an ISA slot or an EISA (longer) slot on your mother board? Some PCI cards can not be properly recognized on a mother board with unused ISA (older) slots due to a flaw. Filling them with cards (doesn't matter what kind or even if they work) will then allow the bus to access the PCI slot.

Then again, are you sure you have the sound blaster software running (from, say, your autoexec.bat) as well as any environment settings in place?

Do you just run DOS or Win9x with DOS games...?

[VirtualAce]

Unfortunately, no. PCI cards are accessed differently at a lower level than ISAs, although to a programmer or application, they are programmed the same way via ports and sometimes interrupts. The PCI driver should work with your card. However, some motherboards do not allow non-maskable interrupts which will cause your sound card not to work, mainly in DOS, but sometimes will even fail under Windows. ASUS motherboards, for instance, have a lot of trouble with NMIs since most do not support them. However, my SoundBlaster X-Gamer 5.1 does in fact work in DOS as well as in Windows, so the NMI issue may not be your problem.

Also, make sure the BIOS is picking up the card as PCI cards are first picked up in the BIOS on a plug and play system. You may have to set aside an IRQ in the BIOS for the sound card to work correctly.