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Sound card in a 286 machine... SB 16 or SB Vibra 16?

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BGoins12

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Looking to install a sound card in my 286 machine. Would it be better to use a regular CT2230 Sound Blaster 16 or a Vibra 16? I know the SB 16 will work with a 286, but I am not sure about the Vibra.

Thanks!
 
Personally I think somthing like a sound blaster or a sound blaster pro would be best for a 286 based on the games it will probibly be playing. The sb16 isn't 100% SB pro compatible AFIK and its FM sounds worse on older games compaired to a SB and SB pro. I have a SB with the CMS chips in my 286. If all you have though is a sb16 or a vibra either should work. I think in general the vibra chips are less "noisy".
 
I have a Vibra 16 installed in my 286. Yes it will work but there are some catches:

  • You need to use the Vibra 16 dos driver to set the port and interrupt. This will not happen automatically and the card does not store this information once the power is switched off.
  • The Vibra 16 dos driver assumes you have at least 386 architecture (not necessarily a deal breaker - see below)
  • Just to confirm you cannot cheat and just use the SET BLASTER = ...... environment variable. If you do this without the driver loaded the card will not work.

If you try to run the driver you will get the message "This requires at least a 386". To cheat you need to use a 386 extension emulator such as EMU386. Once loaded the driver will successfully run and find the Vibra card - part of the arguments when loading the driver will set its port and interrupt. Provided you have some extended memory you can load both of these drivers into Highmem with minimal impact on memory.

I haven't had any compatibility issues with the Vibra running older games - yes it sounds slightly different (better in most respects) than the old 8 bit cards.

The older (jumpered) soundblasters are much easier (I run these in my XT's). All you need is a SET BLASTER = .... environment variable in the autoexec.bat. No drivers etc required.
 
I'd like to second the notion that you should put an SB or SBPro in the system. Most games that will run on a 286 won't take advantage of 16-bit audio. In fact, none will take advantage of stereo audio either, except for Wolfentstein 3D which can play digitized sound in stereo on a Sound Blaster Pro (by using the Pro's hardware volume mixer).
 
Trixter said:
I'd like to second the notion that you should put an SB or SBPro in the system. Most games that will run on a 286 won't take advantage of 16-bit audio. In fact, none will take advantage of stereo audio either, except for Wolfentstein 3D which can play digitized sound in stereo on a Sound Blaster Pro (by using the Pro's hardware volume mixer).
Click to expand...

Also, I don't know about the Vibra, but the regular SB16 only emulates the original Sound Blaster; it does not correctly emulate the SB Pro. You can play SB Pro audio on an SB16, but it will be only heard in mono, and may have some distortion.

And as for Wolfenstein 3D, as explained on Vogons: "Wolf3D doesn't use the usual SB Pro stereo mode. The game simply positions (mono) samples with the help of the mixer, which saves a bit of CPU time and is quite effective as long as only one sample is played at a time."
 
Thanks guys! I'll probably just use the SB16 then. I only have those 2 cards, an AWE64, a few generic ones with ESS or Crystal chips and some Packard Bell ones. I certainly wish I had an original SB or SB Pro... that would be perfect for it.
 
One most likey will turn up eventually. My first 286 had a Media Vision Thunderboard card in it which did a pretty good job.
 
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Yhea, SB cards and SB pro 2 cards aren't very rare and sometimes if your patient you can score them for less then $25. I in the other hand am on the lookout for a SB pro 1 with the duel opl chips as well as a MCA SB which I dont hold up much hope of finding cheap.
 
Sorry for the bump but I'm having an issue with my Sound Blaster CT3600 in a 286 system (Mylex motherboard/Award BIOS). The CTCM.exe or CTCU.exe or DIAGNOSE.exe don't appear to auto-detect the card. Do I have to manually define the SET BLASTER parameters in the AUTOEXEC.bat file? Also, does this Plug and Play software even work on a 286 machine?
 
my 286 locked up on boot when I tried to use the CTCM program and a sb16.

I just replaced it with a jumpered model and stuck this in the Autoexec.bat file SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6

worked fine after that
 
more or less what I meant. everything I've read states the sb16's in general are noticeably more "noisy" then the sb pro cards. with the Vibra cards being the least "noisy"
 
Scali said:
This I don't think. Both cards use the exact same Yamaha OPL3 FM chip, so it should sound pretty much the same, give or take some minor differences in the amplifier circuitry.
Click to expand...

It's not that the OPL3 chip sounds different, but the circuitry in various versions of the sound blaster 16 are very "dirty" or noisy. I have 4 different versions of the Sound Blaster 16 as well as the Sound Blaster AWE 32, AWE 64, and AWE 64 Gold, and they are all noisy to some level. Even though the Sound Blaster Pro is only 8-bit on the audio resolution, overall the sound seems cleaner, even if this isn't actually correct. All of my sound blaster cards have noise of some sort. My Pro Audio Spectrum and PAS 16 sound much cleaner signal wise, but they aren't always supported well and the SB compatible doesn't always work right for me for some reason.

-Edit- On Topic - As with what others are recommending, use what you have that works that sounds like what you want. There are so many options available that should work since you have a 16-bit ISA bus.
 
fallemarg said:
It's not that the OPL3 chip sounds different, but the circuitry in various versions of the sound blaster 16 are very "dirty" or noisy.
Click to expand...

Yes, but if you phrase it like "FM sounds worse", it sounds like the problem is only with FM, while the same applies to ALL sound passing through the card, including the DAC and even the CD input on the mixer.

Anyway, yes, Creative cards are notoriously bad quality, and suffer from a lot of electrical noise through the output. The amplifiers are also of poor quality and don't have a very flat frequency response, poor dynamic range and poor stereo separation.
The thing is though, early games were designed for these cards, it seems. The Doom sound effects for example, they sound nice and fat on an SB Pro, but if you listen to them on a 'quality' card such as an ESS, a PAS or a GUS, they sound very sterile and lacking bass and depth.
 
I have a 286/8 A2286 Bridgeboard in my A2000. Only 3 ISA-Slots available.
I thought about pulling out the CT1350b to put a MPU-401i Card in it and using a DAC behind an LPT-Zipdrive.
But as I startet GLX /oCO2 I recognized that the DAC demands LOTS of more CPU Power for the 22khz Mixing :(
It is by far better with a CT1350b, but I think the MPU-401 is the better choice for playing the old adventures.
 
Caluser2000 said:
I use CT 1740 sound card in my 286. Seems to work ok.
Click to expand...

May I ask what you did to get the card to work? Do you set the resource parameters in the Autoexec.bat manually? Also are you running this in DOS or Windows 3.1?

I need some guidance on getting my CT3600 working at a basic level at least. I have a 286w/287XL on a Mylex motherboard running DOS 6.22 and 640Kb of RAM. I'm below the minimum requirements but the thing should initialize I would think.
 
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6 the same as oblivions. I use Dos mainly on it so haven't bothered trying to set it up in MS Windows 3.1. It's a few years since I set it up though. I think I just found a old guide in text format and just had a read through that to come up with the settings.

Reading the system requirement on the SB page is a hoot http://support.creative.com/kb/ShowArticle.aspx?sid=5800 maybe they need to amend it. It states a 386 is required so I must be imagining things with it working on a Zenith z268LP Plus.
 

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