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.
One fun fact about the PCI 128 is that is is the same exact card as the PCI 64, except that Creative stuck an ID chip on the 128 which the drivers would detect and thus the PCI 128 got the "upgraded" 128 voice driver. After figuring this out, I cobbled together a driver pack for the PCI 64 to upgrade it to the 128 and posted about it on the Creative Labs tech support forum. Shortly after this, Creative "decided" to be generous and released a "new" driver for the PCI 64 that upgraded it to have the same 128 voices of the PCI 128.
Really weird that they'd do something like that when they've been hostile to modders and threatened them with C&D in the past. There was the whole Daniel-K fiasco which put into the public spotlight how terrible Creative is as a company. They purposefully introduced bugs and removed advertised features between Windows versions (in this mentioned case, Vista drivers were purposefully crippled over XP drivers to get people to buy newer Creative products.)
@GGigabiteM Not only were the Vista drivers crap, but they also did not even publish them for years, basically taking the company into oblivion. Microsoft killed off hardware sound with Vista, then Creative poured salt on their own wound. Even their latest sound cards suffer from broken drivers, where you will lose all sound after a few minutes and won't get it back until you restart the system. Creative blamed this on AMD and overclocking, but in reality it's their drivers that are terrible (the issue appeared even on Intel systems, and non-overclocked AMD systems). I did get this issue with an Audigy RX 7.1 on my undervolted AMD system with overclocked RAM, thankfully I was able to fix it. Here I would put a warning not to buy from Creative, if not for the fact that they have just about no competition for high end audio in the sub-$100 segment. But if you are considering anything higher end, just get a USB audio interface instead, it will sound better, you will not need to mess with Creative's amateurish drivers and will be plug and play on near everything that supports USB, including retro machines.
Found one and bought it! 👍 Will use it on my 'newly' bought socket 370 project. It's so much fun to watch your older videos and think of new projects. Same happend with the Sound Blaster Audigy, Sound Blaster Live and Yamaha Audician 32 Plus. Have and use them all. Same goes for many different mainboards. Thanks to you I have a nice collection of retro hardware to enjoy.
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.
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🫥)
Hi Phil. Just opened my drawer and installed a PCI128 in my Pentium4 retrogaming PC. SB16 and general midi work great for dos games, and it was far easier than trying to make Sis7012 AC97 emulate sbpro under DOS. Thank you for the driver I found on your website
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.
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.
One of my CT4810 cards is dead, and of course, it was the card I was using. Your DOS setup bat also works with the CT5803 card. Tyank you sir.@philscomputerlab
great video! i found this exact card (rev. 2) in a trash can on the street in early 2023, ant it was fully working! still installed in my windows xp machine somewhere
I worked in a computer store for a few years that had in-house computers that we assembled. We used a lot of these cars in our computers and never had a problem. I still have a couple one of these in my Windows 98/DOS machine and a spare, just in case. I have a SB Live, which is better, but truth be told, can't tell the difference in use. Thanks again for the video - very entertaining!
For anyone interested in FM synthesis, sound cards and computer sound chips in general I recommend Furnace Tracker, which physically models the chips much the same way VST instruments model original hardware. 🖋
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 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.
What a gem of a video! I already had 'some' appreciation for these cards, as I had used them to get sound (any sound!) going on some quick and dirty W98 builds. But even then I was ignorant to a lot of their features. Thanks for the awesome deep dive.
I grew up with PC speaker sound to Tandy 3-voice sound to all the SB cards. The only thing I miss is the Yamaha OPL-3 MIDI sound. All the DMA/IRQ/CONFIG.SYS stuff, I'm so glad that's passed. Amazing nowadays how we have HDMI which handles clean 5.1 surround, with extremely easy setup.
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.
These and similar Ensoniq cards were really popular in prebuilt systems in the late 90's, probably a good cheap way of getting sound. I think they dont get much love nowadays when cards like SB Live! are still fairly cheap on eBay if you are patient
Yeah exactly and the live is a much better card to boot. That is if you get the right one and don't get the crappy dell ones that wont work in anything DOS or 9x.. They are still good cards but the drivers are NT only for some reason.
You’ve come a long way since that first face reveal haven’t you, @PhilsComputerLab with your lab setup studio. You now look at the camera like a man who knows what he’s doing, not a deer in the headlights. 😄 Well done. Honestly whilst drivers can be a bit fiddly these cheap Creative cards are great for Win9x & up to early XP but they can be even more fiddly in DOS, so you making it easy to get them working in DOS is really handy, thanks.
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.
Thanks Phil! I've had a few of these cards kicking around, and honestly had no idea they were quite so capable. I've been assembling a retro machine with my Son and was wondering about getting something more interesting for it. But I won't bother now!
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.
Another advantage of these and their ensoniq brothers, is that if you don't have drivers, you can just use the generic sound blaster 16 driver in 98se and up
Haven't used one but I've had one in its original box for years sitting on a shelf with all the packaging and such. I may need to pull it out sometime and give it a whirl.
One of the very few sound cards my homebrew OS supports (ES1370/1/3 variants; don't have EV1938 for testing but might work as well). Other being, of course, Sound Blaster 16 (and compatibles), and CMI8738.
Hi Phil… as usual great Video explaining set ups and use of this simple Audio card… it give me a nudge to try to solve a problem with one of my P3 systems with build in PCI 128 onboard (Medion 2001 aka Asus CUV4X-CM) … as I already tried before using it in DOS but without a success… the FM music was distorted and jerky, and hanging. After watching your video I give it another try… never would guess that the culprit in my case was too law PCI Latency Timer in BIOS after changing it to 64 - onboard PCI 128 works in pure DOS wonderfully… Again TX and take care!
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).
Yeah! More sound cards content! 🎉 I avoided these back then because the lack of capabilities I like and use, but they really make sense as a """cheap""" (for now) 😅 retro sound card!
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 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.
Yeah, I'm not sure I understand retro RUclipsrs 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!
Ah, man! I had a Sound Blaster PCI 128 and then felt I'd caught up when I belatedly upgraded to a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS 7.1 in my new self-build. Ha ha!
I had the PCI 64 model and loved it, despite some issues setting it up to work correctly with a few DOS applications & games. But I primarily used it with the (Windows) Melody Assistant application to create music, where it delivered flawlessly.
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.
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 haven't tried myself. but this card seems to be supported by SBEMU. so, you could have good FM sound. though it might conflict with the built-in TSR.
@@philscomputerlab that's a shame. my retro pc is on storage, so i can't test. i couldn't make it work on pcem, no sound. i have a different pci128 model than you, it has a separate jack for the rear speakers. i'll remember to test when i can.
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.
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 usually pick up sound cards used. I did buy a SB 128 new for $22 bucks way back when, it was miles better than the onboard Crystal audio chip. I replaced it with a SB 512 which was basically a stereo only version of a SB Live! card.
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.
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 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.)
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.
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.
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.
Dang, surrounding Y2K, we must have slotted in at least a thousand in the small computer shop that I worked (was the basic soundcard for us at that time). Their support and driver for Windows was OK and DOS compatibility worked.
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!
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)
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 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.
It's still easy to find soundblaster cards on ISA and PCi ! We sold too many of them, any old PC you find has some soundblaster 16 in it, FM midi wave table port too. Why the crab ????????
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
Out of the 3 available sound banks, the modest 2MB sound bank is actually the closest to the way that Descent music sounds on a Roland Sound Canvas, in terms of instrument balance and sounds used. In the opinion of my subjective ears. :)
Ahhh, I remember these times I had fun with my sb128, lets say around 1996. Someday my card suddenly stopped working, flashing the bios helped. Nice video, thanks!
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.
I had one of these back in the day but it had a strange incompatibility with my motherboard. Caused display noise (white random pixels) whenever playing audio. Mobo was a cheap SiS 530 based thing.
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.
finally, someone said it. i have one of these and it sounds great! i've heard more hate thrown towards the "live!" series cards than the 128, though. i have a few of those too but i haven't yet tested DOS gaming with em.
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.
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.
Do the newer drivers for the SB Live/Audigy support switching the MPU-401 emulation from the internal synth to the MIDI port? I bought a Live! card new in 1998 and the DOS drivers were terrible. Even the 2.0 drivers were pretty bad (although they had actual FM synth emulation), they STILL didn't allow you to route to an external MIDI device in DOS (ECW Ensoniq wavetable only) or Windows DOS boxes (internal SoundFont GM only). By 2000 I was running Win2k so I don't know if the DOS drivers evolved at that point. Once VDMSound showed up, I never looked back!
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.
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.
Thanks Phil, I'm impressed how your were able to get so much from that sound card! I tested it a few years ago and I felt like it was trash. Back then (in 2020) it was available for 1€ (1.08 USD / 1.63 AUD) in France. The driver has an emulated FM Synth that is absolutely horrible and sounds like a joke. The General MIDI works but I had issues like music crackling on Duke Nukem 3D on my Pentium 120 MHz build. I think this is a better idea to buy either a Vibra16 ISA (cheaper than SB16 and underrated) or a SB Live! PCI.
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 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...
Found one on my pile of parts a few weeks ago. Couldn't get it to work in several retro PCs, switching PCI slots, etc. Some won't see the card at all (not even in the POST screen), when Windows can see it it won't start after installing the drivers twice, Or drivers said to be for the wrong card, or th dxdiag said is isn't there, or the sound is distorted beyond recognition, Never had a card this picky. I switched it out for a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz...
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.
One fun fact about the PCI 128 is that is is the same exact card as the PCI 64, except that Creative stuck an ID chip on the 128 which the drivers would detect and thus the PCI 128 got the "upgraded" 128 voice driver. After figuring this out, I cobbled together a driver pack for the PCI 64 to upgrade it to the 128 and posted about it on the Creative Labs tech support forum. Shortly after this, Creative "decided" to be generous and released a "new" driver for the PCI 64 that upgraded it to have the same 128 voices of the PCI 128.
@@EthanAQueen wow what a cool story! Thank you for sharing 😊🙏
Really weird that they'd do something like that when they've been hostile to modders and threatened them with C&D in the past. There was the whole Daniel-K fiasco which put into the public spotlight how terrible Creative is as a company. They purposefully introduced bugs and removed advertised features between Windows versions (in this mentioned case, Vista drivers were purposefully crippled over XP drivers to get people to buy newer Creative products.)
@GGigabiteM Not only were the Vista drivers crap, but they also did not even publish them for years, basically taking the company into oblivion. Microsoft killed off hardware sound with Vista, then Creative poured salt on their own wound.
Even their latest sound cards suffer from broken drivers, where you will lose all sound after a few minutes and won't get it back until you restart the system. Creative blamed this on AMD and overclocking, but in reality it's their drivers that are terrible (the issue appeared even on Intel systems, and non-overclocked AMD systems). I did get this issue with an Audigy RX 7.1 on my undervolted AMD system with overclocked RAM, thankfully I was able to fix it.
Here I would put a warning not to buy from Creative, if not for the fact that they have just about no competition for high end audio in the sub-$100 segment. But if you are considering anything higher end, just get a USB audio interface instead, it will sound better, you will not need to mess with Creative's amateurish drivers and will be plug and play on near everything that supports USB, including retro machines.
Your review of vintage Sound Cards is AWEsome!
😊😊❤❤
I see what you did there 😅
Found one and bought it! 👍 Will use it on my 'newly' bought socket 370 project.
It's so much fun to watch your older videos and think of new projects. Same happend with the Sound Blaster Audigy, Sound Blaster Live and Yamaha Audician 32 Plus. Have and use them all. Same goes for many different mainboards. Thanks to you I have a nice collection of retro hardware to enjoy.
Awesome 😊
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.
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!
The same IRQ for Emulation and Real is good?
The week before i found old AMD system, Audigy 32 in, on a double board, many firewire ports on it too.
driver issues, LOL !
was it any good ?
and Vortex and PCI Yamahahahaha uh, cards!
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🫥)
Hi Phil. Just opened my drawer and installed a PCI128 in my Pentium4 retrogaming PC. SB16 and general midi work great for dos games, and it was far easier than trying to make Sis7012 AC97 emulate sbpro under DOS. Thank you for the driver I found on your website
@@CaptainDangeax Awesome 💯
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.
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.
My last system had one PCI slot too, old intel 1700 server ish board still support it.
only my Gaming PC is a new Prebuild.
I have at least 2 of these cards and have never been able to get them to work with just DOS. Now I will need to try them again.
Thank you 🙏😊
One of my CT4810 cards is dead, and of course, it was the card I was using. Your DOS setup bat also works with the CT5803 card. Tyank you sir.@philscomputerlab
great video! i found this exact card (rev. 2) in a trash can on the street in early 2023, ant it was fully working! still installed in my windows xp machine somewhere
I worked in a computer store for a few years that had in-house computers that we assembled. We used a lot of these cars in our computers and never had a problem. I still have a couple one of these in my Windows 98/DOS machine and a spare, just in case.
I have a SB Live, which is better, but truth be told, can't tell the difference in use.
Thanks again for the video - very entertaining!
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.
For anyone interested in FM synthesis, sound cards and computer sound chips in general I recommend Furnace Tracker, which physically models the chips much the same way VST instruments model original hardware. 🖋
Is it something we can use in games or is it just for creating music?
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 😊😊
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.
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 🎉
What a gem of a video! I already had 'some' appreciation for these cards, as I had used them to get sound (any sound!) going on some quick and dirty W98 builds. But even then I was ignorant to a lot of their features. Thanks for the awesome deep dive.
I grew up with PC speaker sound to Tandy 3-voice sound to all the SB cards. The only thing I miss is the Yamaha OPL-3 MIDI sound. All the DMA/IRQ/CONFIG.SYS stuff, I'm so glad that's passed. Amazing nowadays how we have HDMI which handles clean 5.1 surround, with extremely easy setup.
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.
Today I learned, what the "TAD" stands for.
I never ever seen one attached to a soundcard. Did they really exist? 🤔😄
Hahaha same
@@pc-sound-legacy if I have to guess, some voice modems had this kind of connector and then you can patch the two cards with a cable.
These and similar Ensoniq cards were really popular in prebuilt systems in the late 90's, probably a good cheap way of getting sound. I think they dont get much love nowadays when cards like SB Live! are still fairly cheap on eBay if you are patient
Yeah exactly and the live is a much better card to boot. That is if you get the right one and don't get the crappy dell ones that wont work in anything DOS or 9x.. They are still good cards but the drivers are NT only for some reason.
MM Keyboard Enable maybe for enabling the use of the extra "multi media" keys on some keyboards in DOS?
You’ve come a long way since that first face reveal haven’t you, @PhilsComputerLab with your lab setup studio. You now look at the camera like a man who knows what he’s doing, not a deer in the headlights. 😄 Well done.
Honestly whilst drivers can be a bit fiddly these cheap Creative cards are great for Win9x & up to early XP but they can be even more fiddly in DOS, so you making it easy to get them working in DOS is really handy, thanks.
Thank you 😊😊
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.
Cause it needs the Phil Treatment.
MM KBD enable, multi media keyboard functions like play and pause keys for cd control possibly volume control too.
Happy to own 4 or 5 of these little guys. One of them, which I've had forever, has quad-channel. That was life-changing in 2000 or so. Fun times.
Thanks Phil! I've had a few of these cards kicking around, and honestly had no idea they were quite so capable. I've been assembling a retro machine with my Son and was wondering about getting something more interesting for it. But I won't bother now!
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.
Another advantage of these and their ensoniq brothers, is that if you don't have drivers, you can just use the generic sound blaster 16 driver in 98se and up
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.
@@dikbozo Much fuller than 95, yes. But the original Microsoft Sound from 95 remains my favorite just the same.
Haven't used one but I've had one in its original box for years sitting on a shelf with all the packaging and such. I may need to pull it out sometime and give it a whirl.
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. 😊👍
One of the very few sound cards my homebrew OS supports (ES1370/1/3 variants; don't have EV1938 for testing but might work as well). Other being, of course, Sound Blaster 16 (and compatibles), and CMI8738.
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.
Hi Phil… as usual great Video explaining set ups and use of this simple Audio card… it give me a nudge to try to solve a problem with one of my P3 systems with build in PCI 128 onboard (Medion 2001 aka Asus CUV4X-CM) … as I already tried before using it in DOS but without a success… the FM music was distorted and jerky, and hanging. After watching your video I give it another try… never would guess that the culprit in my case was too law PCI Latency Timer in BIOS after changing it to 64 - onboard PCI 128 works in pure DOS wonderfully… Again TX and take care!
Beautiful 🎉 Yes best to avoid FM only games in this card. General MIDI is what this card does well...
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).
Yeah! More sound cards content! 🎉
I avoided these back then because the lack of capabilities I like and use, but they really make sense as a """cheap""" (for now) 😅 retro sound card!
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.
i have this SC, i knew it's a special one, thanks for confirming, Phil :)
The KBEnable switch probably controls whether the volume up/down keys on a multimedia keyboard can be used
Happy Philday!
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.
Yeah, I'm not sure I understand retro RUclipsrs 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!
Fortunately I bought 2 of these one year before Phil shoot this video 😅 Anyway now it is a time to get them a try 😊
Ah, man! I had a Sound Blaster PCI 128 and then felt I'd caught up when I belatedly upgraded to a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS 7.1 in my new self-build. Ha ha!
Great video Phil, packed with solid info..thank you so much!!!
I really like this card. I got mine from my Gateway ES-450. The drivers from the restore disc are different than what I've found on Vogons.
I had the PCI 64 model and loved it, despite some issues setting it up to work correctly with a few DOS applications & games. But I primarily used it with the (Windows) Melody Assistant application to create music, where it delivered flawlessly.
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.
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!
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.
i haven't tried myself. but this card seems to be supported by SBEMU.
so, you could have good FM sound. though it might conflict with the built-in TSR.
Yea it initialises just fine, but no audio comes out. I'm having the same issue with my Live cards. But the plain Audigy works.
@@philscomputerlab that's a shame.
my retro pc is on storage, so i can't test. i couldn't make it work on pcem, no sound.
i have a different pci128 model than you, it has a separate jack for the rear speakers. i'll remember to test when i can.
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.
@@TheYuppiejrI just built an AWE64 based System with SIMMconn 32mb and this AWEUTIL thing really messed me up. It's absolutely useless in plain dos 😢
I buy them all the time for retro builds. They are great. Good driver support and stable. I have 5 of them in my soundcard box right now.
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 usually pick up sound cards used. I did buy a SB 128 new for $22 bucks way back when, it was miles better than the onboard Crystal audio chip. I replaced it with a SB 512 which was basically a stereo only version of a SB Live! card.
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.
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.
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.
😂😂
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.)
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.
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.
What a coincidence, I got one of these sound cards yesterday ^^ video could not have been timed better.
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.
Dang, surrounding Y2K, we must have slotted in at least a thousand in the small computer shop that I worked (was the basic soundcard for us at that time). Their support and driver for Windows was OK and DOS compatibility worked.
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!
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)
I used it for a very long time without any problem it was the best one I have ever used.
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.
In DOS you can use more to paginate any output, you don’t have to write to a file and then edit. Like „pcicfg | more”.
Neat!
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.
I had a Avance Logic.
That's had a very clean sound for microphone.
It's still easy to find soundblaster cards on ISA and PCi !
We sold too many of them, any old PC you find has some soundblaster 16 in it, FM midi wave table port too.
Why the crab ????????
Native support in AMITHLON with original kernel! for versions higher ES1370 so 1371/1373 will work.
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
Out of the 3 available sound banks, the modest 2MB sound bank is actually the closest to the way that Descent music sounds on a Roland Sound Canvas, in terms of instrument balance and sounds used. In the opinion of my subjective ears. :)
Ahhh, I remember these times I had fun with my sb128, lets say around 1996. Someday my card suddenly stopped working, flashing the bios helped. Nice video, thanks!
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.
I had one of these back in the day but it had a strange incompatibility with my motherboard. Caused display noise (white random pixels) whenever playing audio. Mobo was a cheap SiS 530 based thing.
Phil gets a video out and these things start to sell. Prices get inPhilated 😂
@@mc42d0 😂
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.
finally, someone said it. i have one of these and it sounds great! i've heard more hate thrown towards the "live!" series cards than the 128, though. i have a few of those too but i haven't yet tested DOS gaming with em.
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.
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 like those because of the onboard amp I use with speakers and a little break out box I made.
Do the newer drivers for the SB Live/Audigy support switching the MPU-401 emulation from the internal synth to the MIDI port? I bought a Live! card new in 1998 and the DOS drivers were terrible. Even the 2.0 drivers were pretty bad (although they had actual FM synth emulation), they STILL didn't allow you to route to an external MIDI device in DOS (ECW Ensoniq wavetable only) or Windows DOS boxes (internal SoundFont GM only). By 2000 I was running Win2k so I don't know if the DOS drivers evolved at that point. Once VDMSound showed up, I never looked back!
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...
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!
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.
Hi. I have the CT4700 version of the SB 128. Is it possible that this method works? Thanks a lot.
Thanks Phil, I'm impressed how your were able to get so much from that sound card! I tested it a few years ago and I felt like it was trash. Back then (in 2020) it was available for 1€ (1.08 USD / 1.63 AUD) in France. The driver has an emulated FM Synth that is absolutely horrible and sounds like a joke. The General MIDI works but I had issues like music crackling on Duke Nukem 3D on my Pentium 120 MHz build. I think this is a better idea to buy either a Vibra16 ISA (cheaper than SB16 and underrated) or a SB Live! PCI.
I just got the SB Vibra 16 CT4170 for my win98 build. Works great so I'm happy.
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 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...
Found one on my pile of parts a few weeks ago.
Couldn't get it to work in several retro PCs, switching PCI slots, etc.
Some won't see the card at all (not even in the POST screen), when Windows can see it it won't start after installing the drivers twice, Or drivers said to be for the wrong card, or th dxdiag said is isn't there, or the sound is distorted beyond recognition, Never had a card this picky. I switched it out for a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz...
Great video and great advice. Well done as usual. Keep up the great work 👍
Though it's a really nice card but I could not manage to get it working in dos with AlladinIV Chipset.