Posted by Watchdog on 1, 2002 at 12:07 PM:
In Reply to: the best soundcard (in quality sound and compatibility)for mame (boot in dos mode in w98se) posted by tommycoins on 31, 2001 at 1:38 AM:
For running in real DOS or DOS mode under win9x an ISA soundcard is definitely better since virtually all DOS programs will support the SoundBlaster and most ISA soundcards will be hardware compatible with at least the SoundBlaster 2.0 spec which is enough for many arcade games in MAME. No non Creative Labs soundcard supports SoundBlaster 4.0 (SB16) because of legalites, the most they will support is the SoundBlaster 3.0 spec (SBPro) which adds stereo sound. The problem is that most systems don't have ISA slots any more. PCI soundcards generally support PC 97 sound and usually don't support the original SoundBlaster hardware spec (port 220h). They will either use a driver to emulate the SoundBlaster for DOS games compatibility or not support it all and therefore won't be recognized in DOS.
Any Creative Labs ISA SoundBlaster card will be excellent for DOS emulators though some other older soundcards like the Pro Audio Spectrum are directly supported by most emulators and will work fine as well.