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.
I would love that I have a large crate full of these, saved from a recycling bin many years ago.. They are all packed in ESD bags, but nothing else no documentation or anything, just bare cards
@@Blackadder75 Well, the drivers for W98 or so are still around. you might have to look over at Vogons but they are around and work quite well. It can't hurt to get them and make them available should someone want to go this way. I have several old CDs that are still usable for this sort of thing, also several old small USB drives that would do. You might well have something like this to assist in this same manner.
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.
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.
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
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.
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🫥)
There is a very good reason why these cards are not popular. You can get an OEM Sound Blaster Live! card (CT4780, CT4830 etc) for almost the same price (probably less than $5 price difference) at this point of time - which will be a MUCH better card. Most computers that this card would go into should already have a "basic" sound card. If you are upgrading an onboard sound card, you might as well spend a couple $ more to get a card that will do better both in early DOS and EAX.
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.
I had one in every PC I built for well over fifteen years. I only stopped owning one when I sold the PC my last one I owned was in and used an external sound setup with the next one I built. That computer is still in my office.
Yeah, I'm not sure I understand retro TH-camrs 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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
This sound card doesn't have any hardware acceleration. This card is just a AC'97 digital controller which is a common feature inside the south bridge IC post-440BX chipset era.
Back in the day I had the original Ensoniq AudioPCI and remember having so much fun with that 8mb waveset. I spent many hours creating a CD of Monkey Island 1/2 midi tracks from this waveset and got some really good results.
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!
I bought a PCI X-Fi XtremeMusic soundcard with drive bay front panel and that soundcard had a pretty thorough documentation as well in this same format.
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.
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)
I'd argue that you should never ever buy any of the Ensoniq ES1370 or related cards such as the SB PCI 128. However if you get one for free, and if you're into retro computing you will, then might as well use it somewhere. If you're buying a card even the basic generic Yamaha YMF724 cards are superior in pretty much every way in comparison and aren't any more expensive. Under DOS the Yamaha outshines even the fancier Creative PCI cards such as Live! if you've got a motherboard with SBLINK support.
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.
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 :)
I have this on at least two famous MSI boards - a 6168 w/ OC'd Voodoo 3 2000 onboard and a 6163 ver 1. They're the best integrated audio solution you could get at the time without breaking the bank (and by this I'm specifically looking at Freeway/ATrend who slammed a Yamaha soundchip in a similar kind of board as the MS-6168.). Speaking of which, Phil, a review for the MSI MS-6168 in the future? I'd love to see that board covered. (dw everyone, it's already expensive now anyways due to 3dfx GPU onboard.)
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.
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.
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...
The Ensoniq AudioPCI is the sound card that I threw away, before upgrading to AWE64. AudioPCI came out at a time when people still ran DOS games, wanted support for Adlib music, and software emulation of Adlib did not yet exist. The AudioPCI tried to simulate Adlib with wavetable instruments, and did not work well. Later on, motherboards integrating AC97 audio would kill off all demand for sound cards.
I got a SoundBlaster Live card for £7 a few years ago, so with that in mind, it's hardly a surprise that these little buggers aren't really worth a whole lot.
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).
Wow, I didn't know that pci 128 was capable of alla this, I have two Yamaha XG pci sound cards, one with YMF724E-V chip and one with YMF724F-V chip. The YMF724E-V card has a connector called "AC3 module" I've never heard of this before. According to wikipedia, it supports OPL3. The cards belongs to the Yamaha YMF7xx series which has a dedicated wikipedia page where u can read more about it.
If I didn't have a few of these from back in the day, my XP machines would have no sound for their retro games.....the SoundBlaster LIVE 5.1 is still one of the best cards ever made.
I had an SB PCI 128 (CT4730) in an MSI slim Celeron (PIII era) system that I used to use exclusively for the X-Wing games as my main system didn't have a game port or PS/2 and the joystick and throttle devices I had required both. Sadly, it didn't get any use over the last decade and a half, I threw the joystick/throttle out (I now regret that) and pulled out the MSI system to make it a retro Win98 system earlier this year. It died 3 weeks later, a motherboard issue I can't fix. I have since built another Win98 retro system, but I'm not using the SB PCI 128. I wanted a Win3.1/Win98/Win2K triple boot system and there aren't many PCI sound cards that have Win3.1 drivers. I ended up finding and using an Ensoniq AudioPCI 3000 which is what the SB PCI 128 chipset is based on!
MM KeyBd enable is likely related to controlling hotkeys from multimedia keyboards, those with volume controls, play and pause buttons etc. That was the time when managing your music CDs playback from the keyboard was a thing!
I wish there was more information as to what that means. AFAIK Windows 98 SE supports the volume multimedia keys just fine, maybe others also. But that's OS specific, nothing to do with drivers...
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.
.. which doesn't have any effect as long as the LPT set to a different IRQ than the sound card. It only tries to share if you set it to the same. (if you turn this off in that case, the card will simply refuse to initialize and yield the IRQ to the LPT instead)
It looks to me that a lot of retro gamers are not really playing retro games. Instead they are more like collectors, they are having fun putting together systems that can play old games. Which is not a bad thing, but it can give an answer why certain hardware have less popularity than others.
Yes agreed! I'm also guilty of this. I love messing with the hardware. BUT, I do want to change. Time is an issue. But when y ou actually sit down, and play through a game just like that, it's beautiful!
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 🤘
Agree its a very interesting card with the VXD drivers and Quad with DS3D games, great if the games in DOS are using GM. I did think Quad mode only worked with the early versions with the AKM codec, but maybe it works with all still...I use the Vibra 128 in a few of my machines, others are ForteMedia FM801, YMF724, Live / Audigy / Vortex / 8738 / ThunderBird Avenger / TBSC.... Vibra 128 is generally very compatible, even quite good success in some Fast 98 builds with C2D (VIA chipset)
Because they were pretty much crap. At least in my experience. I think I was looking for a sound card for my new Kt266 build. First one was a Forte Media I think. No joy, brought it back to the shop, next up was this SB128. It was clicking, probably in combination with the Via chipset. Brought it back again and splurged on an SB Live Value (double the price of the 128). Best decision ever, I used it for about 10 years in 3 or 4 builds. Never upgraded to the Audigy.
Why no love for the SB PCI128? Because there are a lot of similarly cheap sound cards that do a better job. But that's the fate of retro hardware. As more desirable stuff gets less accessible, less desirable, but accessible stuff take their place and people overlook their shortcomings. Edit: So basically it's the sound card version TNT2 M64 or MX200. Yeah, they sort of do the job, but I don't see them ever becoming a go-to card unless someone has a strong nostalgia for them.
yea.. as long as you can get anything from the AWE or Live series for a few bucks, there's no point in grabbing one of these rebranded Ensoniqs instead.. you'll just get worse sound quality and more glitches.
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!
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...
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.
I bought one of these a few years ago when I upgraded my sound card from a SB Live to a Sound Blaster X-Fi, which lacked a gameport. I ended up installing the PCI 128 and disabled all of the drivers except for the gameport, but didn't really use its sound hardware since why would I need to? Years later I ended up with an extra Slot 1 440BX system that had a broken Vibra 16 sound card. I swapped in the PCI 128 and gave it to a friend who wanted to experience Half-Life and some late 90s DOS games, and so far he's been really happy with it!
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.
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.
I've got several of these - in both Soundblaster and Ensoniq versions. At the time, the were great for cheap upgrades (and putting in those SP97v boards) - but I think the advent of motherboard audio kind of spelled their demise...
I remember buying one of these in 1998, and for the price of £30-40 i thought it would be just like a bargain SB Live card. Before getting this card, I'd heard a friends AWE-32 and AWE64 Gold in action. I loved how they both sounded, around the same time I'd also grown fond of the Yamaha S-YXG70 and WinGroove SoftSynths as i didn't have a hardware wavetable board of my own, so i had raised expectations for this card, but was somewhat underwhelmed by the onboard synths of the PCI128. I think i also had trouble using this card with a Cyrix 6x86 166Mhz CPU for some reason, but luckily i got to use it fully with a Pentium 200. I don't dislike this card at all btw, it's just not my fave, especially as there's no way to install a Wavetable board to it, or the incentive to buy one for it. I never got an SB Live, but I do use either an AWE-32 ISA or Santa Cruz PCI card with a Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard, depending on what i'm doing with my retro rig.
Whoever wrote SBINIT must have been really good to get SB16 emulation working on a PCI card with EMM386. The basic problem is the SB16 API assumes you have access to ISA DMA and IRQs. So games would write directly to the ISA DMA registers and expect that to cause PCI DMA. Also they'd trap one of the ISA IRQs and expect that to work for a PCI IRQ. The IRQ issue isn't that bad - you just need to patch the I number in the BLASTER environmental variable A220 I7 D1 T6. You could probably do the same for the A bit, i.e. the IO address. DMA is a bit harder because you need to trap the IO writes to the ISA DMA controller on the motherboard and then emulate them by doing IO to the PCI bus master registers on the sound card. Now QEMM had an (undocumented!) API for this but EMM386 did not, at least not in versions most people actually used. Maybe there was a different undocuemented API or maybe SBINIT patched EMM386's IO Permissions Bitmap in the Task State Segment and then hacked it's own General Protect Fault handler in in front of EMMM386's. Doing this reliably on a variety of versions of EMM386 and a variety of different motherboard chipsets is non trivial though. It's actually much easier to write Windows VxD because 16 bit Windows is built on this sort of virtualisation technology.
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.
Not that same group of gamers who refuse to boot anything that isn't an original 3dfx card for £180 and an AWE ISA sound card for another £150????.....(Can't say I've ever run in to one of those on the internet (snarc, lol)
Man, this weekend i went for a walk and found a crushed old PC on the side of the road and there's one of these cards (is the model 4700) inside and a GeForce 2 GTS! I have also a CT4810, dont know the diferences uma is from 1998 other is from 2000.
those soundbanks, if im not mistaken are e-mu soundbanks, mostly indeed for creative cars, however you can convert the GM.DLS to a sf2 and load it up , it does play nice with creative cards, and it gives you reverb and chorus if you card support it, which is absent from the windows softsynthesizer.
I find it annoying that no one made proper Windows Vista and later drivers for these. I have a newer motherboard with a burnt out audio chip and had to use my Sound Blaster Live instead. Quite a shame considering that it would be the perfect thing to throw into a PC and forget about. Very much unlike the Live, which is basically the go-to Windows 98 card.
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.
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
It should be clarified that is not like if you would not get any sound if you try to use a game that uses OPL, the sound card will work but emulating the OPL sound with the wavetable, so the sound is a bit "strange" but works properly.
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.
Ahhh, the SBPCI128Setup Installer, that was something I've always used for 98 in VMWare in order to get sound. But Never went deeper, since I believe the VMWare SVGA doesn't let you play DOS Games anyway, so there's that. I like the 2 MB Wavetable and the 8 MB Wavetable, the 4 MB one kinda sounds weak IMO. I wonder if some people sell those PCI128 because they think that this model is just a Creative Version of Ensoniq's Sound Card. Or is it what you said in the video? Not sure how'd complain about this card, it's still like 100x better than a e.g. C-Media onboard Audio in some motherboard for Socket 370.
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.
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.
Just picked one of these up for £10 on eBay, could be cheaper ones in the UK if you scroll through listings without descriptions. I picked up a SoundblasterLive ct4830 last year for £14 and those prices are stable or have even dropped a little.
G'day Phil, WOOHOO! Excited for some Retro that WORKS after todays miserable videos about intel's Ultra release that Leo from KitGuru called a Fuster Cluck 😱😱😱😱😱
I had an SB128 PCI in the 90s. For when it was released it was awesome. It didn't look so good a couple of years later though. The sound quality just isn't there.
I have one, possibly two CT4810. Now I'm curious if they also have the amplifier chip. Any special reason why you changed IRQ 7 to 5? Is 5 more compatible with DOS games?
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.
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.
Top technology of today is your garbage of tomorrow...
I too still have my 128 and my 512 as there was zero interest over a 6 month span.
After Phil mentioned it, you can now list them for $60 and they will be sold in minutes.
@@testingchannel5440 brb putting them up for $100.
Sound Blaster PCI 128 prices on eBay are about to get the 'Phil Effect' 😅😅😅
perfect. I just sold of 12 of them over the last few months.
Did a quick check but it was $35 dollars
I would love that I have a large crate full of these, saved from a recycling bin many years ago.. They are all packed in ESD bags, but nothing else no documentation or anything, just bare cards
@@Blackadder75 Well, the drivers for W98 or so are still around. you might have to look over at Vogons but they are around and work quite well. It can't hurt to get them and make them available should someone want to go this way. I have several old CDs that are still usable for this sort of thing, also several old small USB drives that would do. You might well have something like this to assist in this same manner.
Your review of vintage Sound Cards is AWEsome!
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.
Yes!
And now, these will get listed for $100 within a week. Thanks, Phil.
Everything will, sooner or later. Even the crappiest MX4000.
I have three of those, want one? 🙂One comes with original diver CD, $200 and it's yours!
@@SOWA85 Wow, I should sell my AWE64 Gold with all the documentation for $10000 then. And standard AWE64, $5k a piece.
@@masterkamen371 I was joking, relax.
@@SOWA85 I know. The money people ask for this crap is insane. Seems like the less they sell, the more they will ask.
Today I learned, what the "TAD" stands for.
I never ever seen one attached to a soundcard. Did they really exist? 🤔😄
Cause it needs the Phil Treatment.
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".
The 98SE sound. Awesome in its depth and range.
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.
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. 😊👍
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
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.
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.
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 🎉
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🫥)
what a blast from the past
There is a very good reason why these cards are not popular. You can get an OEM Sound Blaster Live! card (CT4780, CT4830 etc) for almost the same price (probably less than $5 price difference) at this point of time - which will be a MUCH better card. Most computers that this card would go into should already have a "basic" sound card. If you are upgrading an onboard sound card, you might as well spend a couple $ more to get a card that will do better both in early DOS and EAX.
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.
I had one in every PC I built for well over fifteen years. I only stopped owning one when I sold the PC my last one I owned was in and used an external sound setup with the next one I built. That computer is still in my office.
Yeah, I'm not sure I understand retro TH-camrs 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!
i have this SC, i knew it's a special one, thanks for confirming, Phil :)
Awesome video man :)
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.
My 3rd sound card was a Vibra128. Loved it for years.
For some reason it is more noisy than an onboard AC97 sound card on 7N400 from Gigabyte.
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.
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
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.
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.
@@mesterak Wonderful 😊
Do you remember what drivers you used?
@@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.
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.
This sound card doesn't have any hardware acceleration. This card is just a AC'97 digital controller which is a common feature inside the south bridge IC post-440BX chipset era.
Back in the day I had the original Ensoniq AudioPCI and remember having so much fun with that 8mb waveset. I spent many hours creating a CD of Monkey Island 1/2 midi tracks from this waveset and got some really good results.
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!
Fortunately I bought 2 of these one year before Phil shoot this video 😅 Anyway now it is a time to get them a try 😊
I like it. Simple and straight forward.
What a coincidence, I got one of these sound cards yesterday ^^ video could not have been timed better.
I bought a PCI X-Fi XtremeMusic soundcard with drive bay front panel and that soundcard had a pretty thorough documentation as well in this same format.
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.
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)
Wow, there you go, nicely spotted 😊😊
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.
😂😂
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.
I'd argue that you should never ever buy any of the Ensoniq ES1370 or related cards such as the SB PCI 128. However if you get one for free, and if you're into retro computing you will, then might as well use it somewhere.
If you're buying a card even the basic generic Yamaha YMF724 cards are superior in pretty much every way in comparison and aren't any more expensive. Under DOS the Yamaha outshines even the fancier Creative PCI cards such as Live! if you've got a motherboard with SBLINK support.
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.
I have one in my Amiga 1200 tower that I built. Really good card for that use
In an Amiga? Wow, I had no idea they take PCI sound cards, let alone this one...
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 :)
I have this on at least two famous MSI boards - a 6168 w/ OC'd Voodoo 3 2000 onboard and a 6163 ver 1. They're the best integrated audio solution you could get at the time without breaking the bank (and by this I'm specifically looking at Freeway/ATrend who slammed a Yamaha soundchip in a similar kind of board as the MS-6168.).
Speaking of which, Phil, a review for the MSI MS-6168 in the future? I'd love to see that board covered. (dw everyone, it's already expensive now anyways due to 3dfx GPU onboard.)
Great video and great advice. Well done as usual. Keep up the great work 👍
Happy Philday!
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.
Hey! that was my original sound card!
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.
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...
The Ensoniq AudioPCI is the sound card that I threw away, before upgrading to AWE64. AudioPCI came out at a time when people still ran DOS games, wanted support for Adlib music, and software emulation of Adlib did not yet exist. The AudioPCI tried to simulate Adlib with wavetable instruments, and did not work well.
Later on, motherboards integrating AC97 audio would kill off all demand for sound cards.
If it was a real ensoniq i would keep it. But Creative version no thank you.
@@rallyscoot Yeah with the electrolytics this always felt like a cheapened version to me.
I got a SoundBlaster Live card for £7 a few years ago, so with that in mind, it's hardly a surprise that these little buggers aren't really worth a whole lot.
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).
Wow, I didn't know that pci 128 was capable of alla this, I have two Yamaha XG pci sound cards, one with YMF724E-V chip and one with YMF724F-V chip. The YMF724E-V card has a connector called "AC3 module" I've never heard of this before. According to wikipedia, it supports OPL3. The cards belongs to the Yamaha YMF7xx series which has a dedicated wikipedia page where u can read more about it.
If I didn't have a few of these from back in the day, my XP machines would have no sound for their retro games.....the SoundBlaster LIVE 5.1 is still one of the best cards ever made.
I had an SB PCI 128 (CT4730) in an MSI slim Celeron (PIII era) system that I used to use exclusively for the X-Wing games as my main system didn't have a game port or PS/2 and the joystick and throttle devices I had required both. Sadly, it didn't get any use over the last decade and a half, I threw the joystick/throttle out (I now regret that) and pulled out the MSI system to make it a retro Win98 system earlier this year. It died 3 weeks later, a motherboard issue I can't fix.
I have since built another Win98 retro system, but I'm not using the SB PCI 128. I wanted a Win3.1/Win98/Win2K triple boot system and there aren't many PCI sound cards that have Win3.1 drivers. I ended up finding and using an Ensoniq AudioPCI 3000 which is what the SB PCI 128 chipset is based on!
MM KeyBd enable is likely related to controlling hotkeys from multimedia keyboards, those with volume controls, play and pause buttons etc. That was the time when managing your music CDs playback from the keyboard was a thing!
I wish there was more information as to what that means. AFAIK Windows 98 SE supports the volume multimedia keys just fine, maybe others also. But that's OS specific, nothing to do with drivers...
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.
"I always make sure that the system is configured, without interupts being shared." - Leaves "Allow LPT Interrupt Sharing" turned on. :)
.. which doesn't have any effect as long as the LPT set to a different IRQ than the sound card. It only tries to share if you set it to the same. (if you turn this off in that case, the card will simply refuse to initialize and yield the IRQ to the LPT instead)
Yea the tick box is redundant because I've configured it already with that in mind :)
It looks to me that a lot of retro gamers are not really playing retro games. Instead they are more like collectors, they are having fun putting together systems that can play old games. Which is not a bad thing, but it can give an answer why certain hardware have less popularity than others.
Yes agreed! I'm also guilty of this. I love messing with the hardware. BUT, I do want to change. Time is an issue. But when y ou actually sit down, and play through a game just like that, it's beautiful!
It’s at least good for a laugh when playing DOS FM games
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 🤘
Yesss!
Agree its a very interesting card with the VXD drivers and Quad with DS3D games, great if the games in DOS are using GM. I did think Quad mode only worked with the early versions with the AKM codec, but maybe it works with all still...I use the Vibra 128 in a few of my machines, others are ForteMedia FM801, YMF724, Live / Audigy / Vortex / 8738 / ThunderBird Avenger / TBSC.... Vibra 128 is generally very compatible, even quite good success in some Fast 98 builds with C2D (VIA chipset)
Because they were pretty much crap. At least in my experience.
I think I was looking for a sound card for my new Kt266 build.
First one was a Forte Media I think. No joy, brought it back to the shop, next up was this SB128. It was clicking, probably in combination with the Via chipset.
Brought it back again and splurged on an SB Live Value (double the price of the 128). Best decision ever, I used it for about 10 years in 3 or 4 builds. Never upgraded to the Audigy.
Why no love for the SB PCI128? Because there are a lot of similarly cheap sound cards that do a better job.
But that's the fate of retro hardware. As more desirable stuff gets less accessible, less desirable, but accessible stuff take their place and people overlook their shortcomings.
Edit: So basically it's the sound card version TNT2 M64 or MX200. Yeah, they sort of do the job, but I don't see them ever becoming a go-to card unless someone has a strong nostalgia for them.
yea.. as long as you can get anything from the AWE or Live series for a few bucks, there's no point in grabbing one of these rebranded Ensoniqs instead.. you'll just get worse sound quality and more glitches.
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!
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...
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.
I bought one of these a few years ago when I upgraded my sound card from a SB Live to a Sound Blaster X-Fi, which lacked a gameport. I ended up installing the PCI 128 and disabled all of the drivers except for the gameport, but didn't really use its sound hardware since why would I need to?
Years later I ended up with an extra Slot 1 440BX system that had a broken Vibra 16 sound card. I swapped in the PCI 128 and gave it to a friend who wanted to experience Half-Life and some late 90s DOS games, and so far he's been really happy with it!
I love the cheesy MIDI sounds of this family of cards.
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.
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.
I've got several of these - in both Soundblaster and Ensoniq versions. At the time, the were great for cheap upgrades (and putting in those SP97v boards) - but I think the advent of motherboard audio kind of spelled their demise...
I remember buying one of these in 1998, and for the price of £30-40 i thought it would be just like a bargain SB Live card.
Before getting this card, I'd heard a friends AWE-32 and AWE64 Gold in action. I loved how they both sounded, around the same time I'd also grown fond of the Yamaha S-YXG70 and WinGroove SoftSynths as i didn't have a hardware wavetable board of my own, so i had raised expectations for this card, but was somewhat underwhelmed by the onboard synths of the PCI128. I think i also had trouble using this card with a Cyrix 6x86 166Mhz CPU for some reason, but luckily i got to use it fully with a Pentium 200.
I don't dislike this card at all btw, it's just not my fave, especially as there's no way to install a Wavetable board to it, or the incentive to buy one for it.
I never got an SB Live, but I do use either an AWE-32 ISA or Santa Cruz PCI card with a Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard, depending on what i'm doing with my retro rig.
25:10 The games I keep coming back to are Gar Grigsby's Pacific War, and his Carrier Strike. Neither have sound 🙂 So yes I hear you loud and clear!
thats great i got loads of them thankfully.
Whoever wrote SBINIT must have been really good to get SB16 emulation working on a PCI card with EMM386. The basic problem is the SB16 API assumes you have access to ISA DMA and IRQs. So games would write directly to the ISA DMA registers and expect that to cause PCI DMA. Also they'd trap one of the ISA IRQs and expect that to work for a PCI IRQ. The IRQ issue isn't that bad - you just need to patch the I number in the BLASTER environmental variable A220 I7 D1 T6. You could probably do the same for the A bit, i.e. the IO address. DMA is a bit harder because you need to trap the IO writes to the ISA DMA controller on the motherboard and then emulate them by doing IO to the PCI bus master registers on the sound card. Now QEMM had an (undocumented!) API for this but EMM386 did not, at least not in versions most people actually used. Maybe there was a different undocuemented API or maybe SBINIT patched EMM386's IO Permissions Bitmap in the Task State Segment and then hacked it's own General Protect Fault handler in in front of EMMM386's. Doing this reliably on a variety of versions of EMM386 and a variety of different motherboard chipsets is non trivial though. It's actually much easier to write Windows VxD because 16 bit Windows is built on this sort of virtualisation technology.
Rumours say that was one reason why Creative bought Ensoniq, to take their driver technology...
Native support in AMITHLON with original kernel! for versions higher ES1370 so 1371/1373 will work.
You really should try the older Ensoniq AudioPCI drivers, as they give SB Pro and Sound Canvas compatibility under DOS.
Very interesting video. Thanks! :)
Oh well now I need to go to my electronics recycler who has about 500 of these NOS and take advantage of the Phil price jump.
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.
I can see a battalion of furious hardcore retro-gamers with pitchforks coming for you!
Bring it 😂😂
Not that same group of gamers who refuse to boot anything that isn't an original 3dfx card for £180 and an AWE ISA sound card for another £150????.....(Can't say I've ever run in to one of those on the internet (snarc, lol)
Hahaha, so true! I can already read plenty of those funny comments 🤣
Man, this weekend i went for a walk and found a crushed old PC on the side of the road and there's one of these cards (is the model 4700) inside and a GeForce 2 GTS! I have also a CT4810, dont know the diferences uma is from 1998 other is from 2000.
Beauty!
those soundbanks, if im not mistaken are e-mu soundbanks, mostly indeed for creative cars, however you can convert the GM.DLS to a sf2 and load it up , it does play nice with creative cards, and it gives you reverb and chorus if you card support it, which is absent from the windows softsynthesizer.
I find it annoying that no one made proper Windows Vista and later drivers for these. I have a newer motherboard with a burnt out audio chip and had to use my Sound Blaster Live instead. Quite a shame considering that it would be the perfect thing to throw into a PC and forget about. Very much unlike the Live, which is basically the go-to Windows 98 card.
es1371 has vista drivers in windows update catalog
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.
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
I'm editing a project on video capture over M.2. It will be up tonight.
It should be clarified that is not like if you would not get any sound if you try to use a game that uses OPL, the sound card will work but emulating the OPL sound with the wavetable, so the sound is a bit "strange" but works properly.
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.
Thanks for this❤
Ahhh, the SBPCI128Setup Installer, that was something I've always used for 98 in VMWare in order to get sound. But Never went deeper, since I believe the VMWare SVGA doesn't let you play DOS Games anyway, so there's that.
I like the 2 MB Wavetable and the 8 MB Wavetable, the 4 MB one kinda sounds weak IMO.
I wonder if some people sell those PCI128 because they think that this model is just a Creative Version of Ensoniq's Sound Card. Or is it what you said in the video?
Not sure how'd complain about this card, it's still like 100x better than a e.g. C-Media onboard Audio in some motherboard for Socket 370.
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.
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.
Just picked one of these up for £10 on eBay, could be cheaper ones in the UK if you scroll through listings without descriptions. I picked up a SoundblasterLive ct4830 last year for £14 and those prices are stable or have even dropped a little.
yeah i have 3 of them and had a hell of a time to get that card working right under windows 98
and i had to do some of the stuff you had to do..
MM KBD enable, multi media keyboard functions like play and pause keys for cd control possibly volume control too.
G'day Phil,
WOOHOO! Excited for some Retro that WORKS after todays miserable videos about intel's Ultra release that Leo from KitGuru called a Fuster Cluck 😱😱😱😱😱
I had an SB128 PCI in the 90s. For when it was released it was awesome. It didn't look so good a couple of years later though. The sound quality just isn't there.
I have one, possibly two CT4810. Now I'm curious if they also have the amplifier chip.
Any special reason why you changed IRQ 7 to 5? Is 5 more compatible with DOS games?
I'd love to know what's needed to get that unpopulated PC Speaker input to work