Question Windows 98SE Soundmax audio crashing

[win9883483483]

I've recently installed Windows 98SE on an asus P4P800-vm board with an intel 865 chipset. The processor is a pentium 4.
Everything works fine, except I've installed an audio driver (the only one I could find for this board/chipset).
The driver is located here under "Audio":
https://www.asus.com/supportonly/P4P800VM/HelpDesk_Download/

Version 5.12.01.3538 2004/04/1323.47 MBytes
SoundMAX Audio Driver version 5.12.01.3538 WHQL-Complete audio driver package.

The driver successfully installs and gives me sound which works for hearing generic windows sounds and for a few DOS games. However attempting to run games like Diablo 2 will crash. I have deduced the sound driver as the problem because if I disable it in device manager the game will instantly run without issues. Also, if I open the Soundmax GUI and attempt to click "play test sound" it instantly crashes the computer.

I've tried reinstalling the driver multiple times and have not had any luck fixing this issue. I can't find any other audio driver that will work for this boards onboard audio.
Does anyone know anything I could try to fix this? or is there any other driver that I could try?

Hope someone can help, thanks.

 

[velocityg4]

Sounds like the chipset might be faulty. Not sure how much time you want to spend on it. I'd just spend $10 on a used PCI Creative Sound Blaster 16 or Live audio card. They'll probably produce better audio than whatever is built in. Creative was the must have audio card for the 90's. Their support site still offers the drivers for Windows 98. Just check whatever variant you try to buy first has Windows 98SE drivers. Also make sure it is PCI not ISA.

Also they have a game port for era appropriate joysticks. Flight sims were quite popular.

 

[win9883483483]

Sounds like the chipset might be faulty. Not sure how much time you want to spend on it. I'd just spend $10 on a used PCI Creative Sound Blaster 16 or Live audio card. They'll probably produce better audio than whatever is built in. Creative was the must have audio card for the 90's. Their support site still offers the drivers for Windows 98. Just check whatever variant you try to buy first has Windows 98SE drivers. Also make sure it is PCI not ISA.

Also they have a game port for era appropriate joysticks. Flight sims were quite popular.

I don't think I could get that part anywhere for $10. I live in a small city. No local classifieds are going to have it, and everything on ebay is overpriced and sold as "vintage". Cheapest I could find would be around $40. I'm not against ultimately buying a dedicated sound card but I'm looking to avoid it if possible.

I've ordered a cheap $5 usb sound adapter which says it supports 98SE but it'll take over a week to get here so in the mean time I'm trying to fix this problem.

I'm not particularly looking to hulk out on this build. It's just something I scrounged up to relive some nostalgia. I personally couldn't care less what the audio sounds like just as long as it works.

 

[velocityg4]

This was the second listing on my first search. $10 shipped. There are a few other CT4780 for $10. There are a few Sound Blaster 16's for under $10 but they appear to be inferior models.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-L...227258&hash=item445614965b:g:rSoAAOSwJItcXebP

 

[win9883483483]

This was the second listing on my first search. $10 shipped. There are a few other CT4780 for $10. There are a few Sound Blaster 16's for under $10 but they appear to be inferior models.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-L...227258&hash=item445614965b:g:rSoAAOSwJItcXebP

This was the second listing on my first search. $10 shipped. There are a few other CT4780 for $10. There are a few Sound Blaster 16's for under $10 but they appear to be inferior models.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-L...227258&hash=item445614965b:g:rSoAAOSwJItcXebP

As I said, I live in a small city. That listing is for ebay.com which is the USA and as such all prices are in USD with added USD shipping to my city. For me, that price is $35(+tax). It's not particularly "expensive" but I'm also not trying to sink a bunch of money into this build and am looking to fix the issue at hand before moving onto buying parts.

 

[velocityg4]

As I said, I live in a small city. That listing is for ebay.com which is the USA and as such all prices are in USD with added USD shipping to my city. For me, that price is $35(+tax). It's not particularly "expensive" but I'm also not trying to sink a bunch of money into this build and am looking to fix the issue at hand before moving onto buying parts.

Okay, didn't know you weren't in the USA. Did you mean small country?

All else I could suggest is uninstall the Soundmax software and audio driver. Then unpack the source for the driver with a program like winrar. Then install the driver directly through Device Manager. To see if the Soundmax utility they included is causing the issue.
https://www.pctechguide.com/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-win98/win98-driver-installation

 

[win9883483483]

Okay, didn't know you weren't in the USA. Did you mean small country?

All else I could suggest is uninstall the Soundmax software and audio driver. Then unpack the source for the driver with a program like winrar. Then install the driver directly through Device Manager. To see if the Soundmax utility they included is causing the issue.
https://www.pctechguide.com/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-win98/win98-driver-installation

I don't think there's a .inf file for this driver. It's just the utility.