I have just put a couple of noname sound cards in 486 machines. They were
claimed to be plug and play, and this turned out to be true. The 486's
didn't have pnp bios-es, but you can search the internet for the 'ISAPnP'
tools (an intel utility) which are bundled with older creative cards. This
allows you to set the irq, io ports and dma address for the cards, and will
discover free settings for you to use.
Then, I found the only drivers were win95 , and one of the machines was to
run 3.11 / DOS.
A quick search turned up standard creative labs drivers for the SB16. I
tried these and after matching the settings to the card setup, had a lot of
success (:-o) - many cheapo sound cards seem to emulate the soundblaster 16
card one way or another.
Most of the functions I was interested in worked - wave audio, CD audio
link, FM / midi synth, but didn't bother with the joystick or recording
functions - guess they should work ok with these generic drivers. Sound
quality was crappy, but you get what you pay for! (In this case, £5 each
reduced from £15 cause nobody wants em any more!)
The main gripe I had was finding a proper free 'mixer' and volume control
for win 3.1, something which is included in 95.Cant have everything I
suppose.
>If I need to know the brand of the card to find the driver, it does n
>not seem easy to discover the brand from inspecting the card.
Look up the FCC identification number on the "FCC online database" - that'll
list the manufacturer if it was made in the last 5-10 years.
PS - been a while since I posted so happy new year to all of you on the
list.
Bye,
Neil Smith.
>Date: Sat, 6 Jan 01 10:03:01
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Howard Schwartz)
>Subject: Re: Requirements for Internet Radio
> old isa soundcards are really cheap ....
>I tried to find one for my 486 75Mhz, 28 Megs of ram, PC with a
>Vesa Local Bus. There were problems: You need a driver for the
>cards, and the flea market type cards did not have the software
>driver. I do not know if these drivers are generic or card specific,
>like video drivers. Also, the sellers were not sure if the cards
>that had were plug and play or not. In one case he looked for
>dip switches that allowed one to select the IRG, found none, and
>concluded ``must be a plug and play''.
In an online world without walls, who needs Gates and Windows?
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