Sound Blaster MCV
@5084.ADF
- Creative Labs, Inc. - SOUND BLASTER/MCV
@5103.ADF -
Creative Labs SOUND BLASTER PRO MCV CT5330
sbpmwu.exe
Win
3.1 drivers for SB/SB Pro MCV
sbpmdu.exe
DOS Drivers for SB/SB Pro MCV
NT support- Creative's site sez
"NO" to NT 3.51 and NT 4.0
OS/2 No drivers at Creative Labs
Link to Creative Lab's Download site HERE
Use to find SB utilities
SBPro MCV
SB MCV (CT5320)
>Is the MCA Creative Soundblaster (Pro) a useble
soundcard, MIDI W95/98 e.g.?
From Peter
Yes - from the principle.
However the card technically bases
on the old 8-bit ISA (!!) card, roughly conversed to MCA and originally
designed for Stage I and II MCA (80286 and low-end 80386 machines). They
tend to cause bus timeout errors on faster machines ... and since you mentioned
Win98 (which won't work properly on most PS/2) these will be your prefered
machines I guess.
Best recommendation: do yourself
a favour, forget the SB MCV and buy a ChipChat or SoundPiper card. They
have been designed and tested to work with the better PS/2.
>My nephew has a Soundblaster Pro running in a
76 Lacuna with DX2/66, Win95 fat16. Clean sound. Can't think of a solution,
if timings is the problem.
Peter
opines:
I would guess that it is a problem
with the relatively low DMA clock on the "older designs" PS/2s. The Lacuna
supports synchro-stream and can run DMA at much higher rates for the individual
DMA-request - the 9595-xMx is an old planar with a 10MHz DMA IIRC - which
keeps the time-slices for the "lower" DMAs a bit short. The SB is known
for holding its IRQ and DMA for extended cycles - which ends in bus timeouts
(and error 107 or blue screens) or choppy sound. The "original Soundblaster"
use the old 8-bit ISA designs, which are not just racers from the bus interface
anyway. And -obviously- a bit off-MCA-standards in their circuit design.
I had that with the Pro MCV2 as
well ... until I decided to remove the card. The Reply Vibra suffers the
same symptom - if you run them with the original SB-drivers. With the updated
versions it runs much better. Have one in my 9595-S20 "aol-gate"
along with a Pentium-133 just now.
Nontheless the sound is a bit choppy when many
tasks run at the same time -
particularly at Windows startup. Sounds odd.
So it is a basic design problem of the SB-compatible cards based on ISA
technology. (As is the MCV2, Pro MCV/2 and the Reply Vibra-16 as well).
Hardware General Info
General Hardware
|
SB MCV (CT5320)
|
SB Pro MCV (CT5330)
|
General
|
|
|
FM Synthesis
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Digitized Sound
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Stereo Power Amplifier
|
No
|
Yes
|
Digital/Analog Mixer
|
No
|
Yes
|
Plug and Play
|
No
|
No
|
CD-ROM Interface
|
None
|
None
|
Hardware Settings
|
|
|
Interrupt (IRQ)
|
3, 5, 7
|
3, 5, 7
|
8-bit DMA Channel
|
1
|
0, 1, 3
|
16-bit DMA Channel
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
Joystick I/O Address
|
200
|
200
|
Audio I/O Address
|
210, 220, 230,
240, 250, 260
|
220, 240
|
FM Synthesizer I/O Address
|
388
|
388
|
External Connectors
|
|
|
Mic-In
|
X
|
X
|
Line In
|
X
|
X
|
Line-Out
|
|
X
|
Speaker Out
|
|
X
|
Game/Joystick Port
|
X
|
X
|
PC Speaker
|
|
X
|
CD-ROM Audio-In (SB Audio Socket)
|
|
X
|
9595 Main
Page
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