WIN98SE + Sound Blaster Live

[DAW]

Building a nice little retro PC for some vintage DOS gaming.  I have what appears to be a Sound Blaster Live (Value?) non 5.1 card.  Every time i install some iteration of W98SE drivers, I get "Set up can not find hardware installed on your computer" (or something to that extent).  The Sound Blaster is identified in the Control Panel as being a PCI Multimedia Card with the little exclamation mark.

Anyhow, i have tried a dozen or more drivers, i know its been covered on the web with Creative having horrible drivers and what not, but i cant understand why the OS always aborts the install of any driver i try.

My only thought is that it is perhaps an OEM version of this card?  I would take a guess that it might be a DELL??  Again, just guessing.  Therefore, do i need to find an OEM driver that supports it?

Shoot me any thoughts or driver links you may have.  The card worked wonderfully under XP, so i know its not a dude.  Just needing an appropriate working set of drivers at this point.

[submix8c]

On 8/2/2016 at 10:16 AM, DAW said:

The card worked wonderfully under XP, so i know its not a dud

If you'd have gotten the Ven/Dev for it, we could have pointed you at it. AFAIK, I have all the "Live" drivers and may be able to pount you to where you can get them.

Run from MS-DOS Prompt -or- from "Run" in Start Menu "REGEDIT.EXE".
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\PCI and you'll see the VEN/DEV and under that will be BUS/DEV with descriptions (etc)..

VEN is the Vendor and DEV is the Device. Look for "PCI Multimedia card" and the corresponding VEN/DEV will (should)  be the value above it.

According to this, the VEN value should be 1102 (e.g. VEN_1102&DEV_nnnn). Confirmed (looked in a Creative INF) so we just need the DEV part.

http://pcidatabase.com/vendors.php?sort=id

HTH

[DAW]

Thanks for the step-by-step concrete instructions.  I found the "PCI Multimedia Card" subset.  Within that folder, under Hardware ID I see:

"PCI/VEN_1106&DEV_3059"....followed by a bunch of other numbers and symbols.

Im not sure if this is helpful or not??

If there's any other info i can try to provide, please let me know.

[DAW]

Quick google, this appears to point to the onboard Realtek AC97??????  Maybe i looked in the wrong area.

The sound card is a Sound Blaster Live Value, CT4830 ( Sound Blaster Live! by Compaq, Intel, IBM and NEC.).  Ive tried a few variants that claim to be the Compaq, IBM NEC drivers, but still to no avail.

The card is found under the device manager, but installing any variant of creative drivers, i get the following message:

"Windows was unable to locate a driver for this device, if you dont want to install a driver now, click Next.  To search again, click Back"

[Tommy]

Try Everest Home Edition, that will probably help you out. Since it's not made anymore and superseded by something else, you might have to do a little Google searching. But generally it's pretty good at telling you what you have even if you don't have drivers installed.

[DAW]

Everest Home Ed: Device ID 1102-0002 

If that's of anymore help.  The software finds the Blaster easily listed, an EMU10K1 porcessor etc, etc, etc,.

I guess its still a particular driver issue at this point, as no matter what driver i have tried thus far, i keep coming back to the same message.

""Windows was unable to locate a driver for this device, if you dont want to install a driver now, click Next.  To search again, click Back"

[submix8c]

? Was there any *other* specs listed from Everest (the SUBSYSTEM-ID part defines EXACTLY what it is)? There are several variations of EMU10K1 (etc etc). I found this - http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=43433&p=422042

that references CT4830/CT4832. There's one set "EMU10K1.INF (uses VXD's not, WDM) I have and the mentioned in link one uses a different one WSII10K1.INF (uses WDM) that I also have.  Hang loose - still digging. But seriously, the FULL Ven/Dev info would have made it easier *and* any OTHER markings other than just what you gave. *** I'll note that the on linked to in the above link is NEWER and does NOT apply, so don't bother downloading (as I already did).

OK!!! I found what MAY be yours. There's even a file inside called "CTCQ10K1.INF" with the following inside of it (note that I'm assuming that the CQ part stands for "Compaq").

; Description
;  This inf file contains the following device for installation
;  a. CT4830 - SBLive! Value        (PCI\VEN_1102&DEV_0002&SUBSYS_80261102)

; Date     : 7 Oct '99
; Revision : 1.05.000

Note the SUBSYS value. Go back into Everest and see if it matches. If so, then that's the one you want. Be aware that the download is 30.2mb and is from DriverGuide. A "downloader" will be given - go ahead and download it and RUN IT, and DECLINE any extra "junk" it asks you if you want (DUH, nope, just the Driver, Dude!). It's a self-extracting WinZip and you'll find it in your UserProfile's "Download" folder (or maybe the ROOT, e.g. C-Driver Download folder).

http://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=119014

If that's the one, we're done. If not, back to the drawing board.

Edited August 5, 2016 by submix8c

[DAW]

Incredible!  The driver above worked!  Thanks for your input.  Now that i have the Blaster working, this opened up a whole new set of issues.  When i installed the Blaster pci card into the mobo, i now have Primary and Secondary IDE Controller (dual Fifo) issues.  Geesh, if its not one thing, another can of worms opens.  If i remove the Blaster PCI sound card, then the Dual Fifo in device manager goes away on reboot.  I have moved the Blaster to different PCI slots and that didnt fix the fifo issue. This may beyond the scope of the users in this forum, so i will use google and see what the heck this dual fifo is now.  Interesting as well, if i boot in SAFE MODE with the Blaster still installed and then go to Device Manager, everything is fine, the dual fifo errors are gone, so there's something strange going on here on a normal boot.  All mobo drivers (Abit Kv-7) are installed and updated.  I dont know if a reinstall of 98SE might help or not, now that i have the Blaster situation figured out.  Fun times.

[JaKSLaP]

On 07/08/2016 at 2:48 AM, DAW said:

Incredible!  The driver above worked!  Thanks for your input.  Now that i have the Blaster working, this opened up a whole new set of issues.  When i installed the Blaster pci card into the mobo, i now have Primary and Secondary IDE Controller (dual Fifo) issues.  Geesh, if its not one thing, another can of worms opens.  If i remove the Blaster PCI sound card, then the Dual Fifo in device manager goes away on reboot.  I have moved the Blaster to different PCI slots and that didnt fix the fifo issue. This may beyond the scope of the users in this forum, so i will use google and see what the heck this dual fifo is now.  Interesting as well, if i boot in SAFE MODE with the Blaster still installed and then go to Device Manager, everything is fine, the dual fifo errors are gone, so there's something strange going on here on a normal boot.  All mobo drivers (Abit Kv-7) are installed and updated.  I dont know if a reinstall of 98SE might help or not, now that i have the Blaster situation figured out.  Fun times.

it might be faster and easy to do a re-install of Windows 98. i find very difficult to troubleshoot windows98 issues. But if you dont want to format your machine i will suggest to start looking into the IRQ Channels of your devices.