Soundblaster Audigy Compatibility

[Scipio]

I have a Sound Blaster Audigy. I installed an old game and I chose Sound Blaster 16 as my sound hardware. Unfortunately it did not work. Neither when I tried the auto detect mode nor when I tried to configure the sound manually. I just received the following error message:
"Digital sound hardware not found. Check driver type and configuration."

What can I do?

Thanks in advance

Scipio

 

[psyclone]

To put it bluntly theres not much that you really can do, with every new SB releases tey slowly move more and more away from the typical SB16/32/AWE32 designs of old.

<b>What was that!</b> 😱

 

[ritesh_laud]

The Audigy is a PCI card and as such is not capable of hardware compatibility with the ISA SB16 (PCI cards share interrupts and don't use the old DMA channels). However, I believe it comes with an SB16 emulation driver for Windows (the Live! did). Look on the installation CD, you may find it on there somewhere. When I was using the Live!'s emulation, it fooled perhaps 70% of my DOS games into thinking that I had a real SB16.

Do you have an ISA slot? If so, you can go on Ebay and try to get a real SB16 or AWE32. That would almost certainly solve your problem (the only games you'll have issues with are those that can't deal with today's fast machines).

If neither of the above options work, I think you're SOL. 🙁

Ritesh

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by ritesh_laud on 05/10/02 07:42 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[juicebykurt]

If you REALLY want to play old games and you are somewhat hardware savy, you could even setup an old rig for next to nothing. that way you wouldnt have to tweak out your main pc just to make it backwards compatible.

 

[Scipio]

Thanks for your help!

I located a folder named Dosdrv on my Audigy CD. I tried to install these drivers but I recieved a message "SB16 Emulation can only be run on Win95 or Win98 with VXD drivers installed".
Altough I have Win ME I still think it will work if I only knew what those VXD drivers are.

Any1 knows?

Scipio

 

[slickstaa]

Just out of curiosity is the game you are trying to play warcraft 2?

 

[ritesh_laud]

Altough I have Win ME I still think it will work if I only knew what those VXD drivers are.

There are two kinds of drivers available for Win Me: WDM and VXD. The WDM (Windows Driver Model) drivers do not use direct hardware access but the VXD drivers do. The VXD drivers are somewhat faster but can lead to instability. I thought that the Audigy setup program installs the VXD drivers on Win Me by default (it did on mine), but it may have installed the WDM drivers on yours. I'm not sure how to force it to use the VXD, but try searching on Usenet (groups.google.com).

Ritesh

 

[Scipio]

It works now! Ive read about an interesting way to emulate a SB16:

Open regedit in Start->Run and go to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Creative Tech\Emu10kx\Emulation

If this key dont exist, go to one level higher

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Creative Tech\Emu10kx

here you create a FOLDER named "Emulation" (without the ")

In that folder you should create a DWORD-Value:

EnableSB16Emulation

and set it to "1".

@ slickstaa

No .... I tried to play Bud Tucker .... it's an old adventure game.

Scipio