SOUND BLASTER PRO LATEST INFORMATION ==================================== This file contains information that is not available during the printing of the manual. Please read all the sections before you proceed with any installation procedure . This file contains the following sections: 1. Software installation 2. CD-ROM Device Drivers Installation 3. Software Package Listing 4. Features for Future Enhancement 5 MIDI Files 6. SBSIM Support for MIDI 7. New Commands for MMPLAY 8. Upgrading of Sound Blaster Pro Mixer for DOS 9. Trouble Shooting for Installing Windows 3.1 Drivers 1. SOFTWARE INSTALLATION The installation program, INST-HD.EXE, will modify your AUTOEXEC.BAT and rename your original file with a .B~K extension. This installation program will install ALL DOS and Windows applications to your hard disk. You then have to run WINSETUP.EXE in Windows to set up the Windows drivers and applications. The procedure for the installation is as follows. a. Test your Sound Blaster Pro card with the program TEST-SBP.EXE. This program can be found on DIsk #1. b. Run the program INST-HD.EXE from DOS prompt. This program can be found on Disk #1. c. Select "Begin Installation" and follow the instructions on the screen. d. Quit the installation program when it completes successfully. e. REBOOT YOUR SYSTEM. f. Run Microsoft Windows 3.1, if you have it installed in your system. g. From the FILE menu in Program Manager, choose RUN. h. Type "C:\SBPRO\WINSETUP" and press ENTER, assuming that you installed Sound Blaster Pro software onto drive C. i. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation. j. Restart Windows. NOTE ==== WINSETUP will NOT set up the drivers and applications properly if your BLASTER environment string is incorrectly set. Please make sure that the BLASTER environment string is set up properly before executing WINSETUP.EXE. You may enter "SET" at DOS prompt to check the environment settings. Refer to your Sound Blaster 16 User Reference Manual for more details on the BLASTER environment string. In normal cases, WINSETUP.EXE only needs to be run once. If you happen to change the hardware settings of your Sound Blaster card you should use the DRIVER applet in the CONTROL PANEL to change the settings of your Windows drivers. 2. CD-ROM DEVICE DRIVERS INSTALLATION To run any CD-ROM programs, you need to have the following drivers installed: - SLCD.SYS - MSCDEX.EXE The driver MSCDEX.EXE is not included in this Sound Blaster software package. It should come with your CD-ROM drive in a separate diskette. A program SETCDDRV.EXE is included to set up the commands in your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files so that every time you boot up your computer, the drivers will be loaded. This program will check for the presence of the above drivers (SLCD.SYS and MSCDEX.EXE) in the \SBPRO\DRV sub-directory. Therefore, you should copy the driver MSCDEX.EXE into this directory before running this program. After you have set up the CD-ROM drivers, this program will not be needed unless you change the hardware settings of your sound card. NOTE ==== If you have 3 or more logical or physical drives installed in your system, you must specify the LASTDRIVE command in your CONFIG.SYS by adding the following line. LASTDRIVE=? Where: ? specifies the last drive letter available for use ranging from A to Z. An example will be: LASTDRIVE=P Please refer to your DOS manual for more details. MORE ON SLCD.SYS ================ SLCD.SYS is a hardware dependent device driver for SONY CD-ROM drive that you need to include in the CONFIG.SYS file. To install the driver manually, add the following line to your CONFIG.SYS file. DEVICE=[drive:][path]SLCD.SYS /B:xxx /D:name /M:x [/V] [/C] [/T:x] Where /B:xxx xxx specifies the Base I/O address of your CD-ROM interface. If the base address of your Sound Blaster Pro card is set at 220, then xxx will be 230. If the base address of your Sound Blaster Pro card is set at 240, then xxx will be 250. /D:name name specifies the device driver name which must be the same as the one used in MSCDEX.EXE. Example MSCD001. /M:x x specifies the data transfer mode. P for polled I/O mode and D for DMA mode. Using the D option will require the /T:x parameter. /T:x x specifies the DMA channel used for the CD-ROM data transfer when /M:D parameter is used. x must tally with the jumper setting at JP8 to JP13. /V Turns on the verbose mode of the driver to display information at installation time. /C To display the drive configuration at boot-up time. /K Enables a sector caching mechanism to improve the drive performance. Default is disabled. An example will be: DEVICE=C:\SBPRO\DRV\SLCD.SYS /B:230 /D:MSCD001 /V /C /M:P MORE ON MSCDEX.EXE ================== MSCDEX.EXE is the program used for Microsoft CD extension. It can be placed in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file so that it will be installed every time you boot-up. To install the driver manually, add the following line to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. You can also run this command from the command line. [drive:][path]MSCDEX /D:name [/M:x][/E][/V][/L:drive_letter] Where /D:name name specifies a device name which must be the same as the one used in SLCD.SYS. Example: MSCD001. /M:x x specifies the number of 2K block cache buffer to be used for CD-ROM operation. Typically, each drive should have a minimum of 4 to 5 buffers. The larger this number, the less your PC will have to read directly from the CD-ROM drive. /E tells MSCDEX.EXE to use expanded memory if your system has expanded memory. /V specify this switch if you wish to display information about memory usage. /L:letter specifies the drive letter you wish to assign to the first CD-ROM drive. The default is the next drive letter available. An example will be: MSCDEX /V /E /D:MSCD001 /M:15 /L:f 3. SOFTWARE PACKAGE LISTING The following are files contained in the distribution diskette(s): INST-HD.EXE - Hard disk installation program README.COM - Program to display the README.TXT file README.TXT - This file TEST-SBP.EXE - Sound Blaster Pro card test program INSTALL.00? - Installation data files DISK.ID - Disk identification file The following are files that will be installed to your hard disk. In the \SBPRO sub-directory: README.COM - Program to display the README.TXT file README.TXT - This file TEST-SBP.EXE - Sound Blaster Pro card test program INST-DRV.EXE - Program to reinstall drivers settings SBP-MIX.EXE - Sound Blaster Pro mixer controller SBP-SET.EXE - Sound Blaster Pro SET-ENV.EXE - To set the BLASTER environment variable in AUTOEXEC.BAT SBFMDRV.COM - Resident driver for FM music SBMIDI.EXE - Resident driver for playing MIDI files SETCDDRV.EXE - Program to set up your CD-ROM driver in your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files WINSETUP.EXE - Sound Blaster Windows 3.1 drivers and applications set up program. WINSETUP.INF - WINSETUP program information file. *.BAT - Batch files In the \SBPRO\DRV sub-directory: BLASTER.DRV - Driver for Sound Blaster Text to Speech applications CT-VOICE.DRV - Loadable driver for voice memory version CTVDSK.DRV - Loadable driver for voice disk version AUXDRV.DRV - Auxiliary driver for controlling volume ORGAN.DRV - Driver for PRO-ORG SLCD.SYS - SONY CDU31A CD interface driver In the \SBPRO\MMPLAY sub-directory: MMPLAY.EXE - MMPLAY program MMPLAY.ACT - Script file for MMPLAY MMDEMO.BAT - MMPLAY demo batch file *.VOC - Sample voice files *.CMF - Sample CMF files *.FLI - Sample image files In the \SBPRO\PARROT sub-directory: PARROT.E? - Talking Parrot picture files PARROTV.VCB - Talking Parrot voice file VOICE.DRV - Talking Parrot voice driver MAKEPV.EXE - Program to create Parrot voice PARROT.EXE - Talking Parrot program In the \SBPRO\PLAYCD sub-directory: CDPLYR.EXE - CD player program In the \SBPRO\PLAYCMF sub-directory: PLAYCMF.EXE - CMF music file player *.CMF - CMF music files In the \SBPRO\PLAYMIDI sub-directory: PLAYMIDI.EXE - MIDI files player *.MID - Sample MIDI files In the \SBPRO\PRO-ORG sub-directory: PRO-ORG.EXE - Sound Blaster Pro Intelligent Organ program *.ORG - Sample organ files In the \SBPRO\SBSIM sub-directory: MUSIC.EXE - Music file player VOICE.EXE - Voice file player SBSIM.CFG - Configuration file for drivers SBSIM.COM - SBSIM driver SOUNDFX.EXE - Effect controller In the \SBPRO\SBTALKER sub-directory: SBAITSO2.EXE - Dr. SBAITSO program SBTALKER.EXE - Memory resident program to load the BLASTER.DRV SBTALK.BAT - Batch file to install SBTALKER into memory REMOVE.EXE - Program to remove SBTALKER from memory READ.EXE - ASCII Text reader program SBTEST.TXT - ASCII text file SET-ECHO.EXE - Program to set SBTALKER echo effect In the \SBPRO\VEDIT2 sub-directory: VEDIT2.EXE - Voice Editor program JOINTVOC.EXE - Program to join voice files VOC-HDR.EXE - Program to add a header to raw voice files VREC.EXE - Program to record voice into a file VPLAY.EXE - Program to play a voice file VOC2WAV.EXE - Voice to Wave converter VOC2WAV.TXT - Documentation on VOC2WAV and WAV2VOC utilities WAV2VOC.EXE - Wave to Voice converter *.VOC - Sample voice files In the \SBPRO\WIN31 sub-directory: MIDIMAP.CFG - Windows MIDI Map configuration MMJBOX.EXE - MultiMedia Jukebox (.MID player) SBPMIXER.EXE - Sound Blaster Pro mixer program OEMSETUP.INF - Windows set up file SBPSND.DRV - Wave & MIDI Driver SBP2FM.DRV - MIDI FM Driver SBPAUX.DRV - Auxiliary driver VSBPD.386 - Windows Virtual Device Driver 4. HARDWARE FEATURES FOR FUTURE ENHANCEMENT The setting of IRQ3 & IRQ11 on your sound card are for future enhancement purposes. Please do not use these two settings now as most of the software may not support them yet. The hardware selectable interrupt settings for the CD-ROM are also meant for future enhancement purposes. Please ignore these settings for the moment as the current CD software driver does not make use of these interrupts yet. 5. MIDI FILES When playing MIDI files with MMJBOX, a warning message in a dialog box may appear. The message is only an indication of whether the MIDI file conforms to Microsoft MIDI standard. Even if the file conforms to the standard, the message may still appear if the code defined by Microsoft is not indicated in the MIDI file. Please ignore the message if the MIDI files created conforms to the standard. For more information on how to indicate the code in your MIDI files, refer to the "Microsoft Windows Software Developer Kit". For a start, you can try out the MMJBOX application with the MIDI file CANYON.MID which can be found in your Windows directory. The MIDI files provided in the sub-directory \PLAYMIDI are created to support the MIDI MAPPER and they comply fully to the Multimedia PC rules. When you use MMJBOX in WINDOWS 3.1 to play these files, make sure that your MIDI MAPPER is set to either the SBP2 EXT FM or SBP2 BASIC FM. Using it with SBP2 ALL FM will cause the song to sound "cluttered". Refer to the manual for more information on MIDI file format and MIDI Mapper. 6. SBSIM SUPPORT FOR MIDI SBSIM (SB Simplified Interface Module) has now been updated to include support for the MIDI driver SBMIDI. To make use of the MIDI support, include a new section titled [MIDI] in your configuration file. The available keywords, and their default values, are as follows: [Midi] BufferSize=32 ; Specifies the size of the buffer ; to allocate for MIDI files, in ; Kbytes MidiMap=0 ; Specifies the type of MIDI file ; to be played: ; 0 = General MIDI files ; 1 = Basic MIDI files ; 2 = Extended MIDI files ; Note that types 1 and 2 are as ; defined in Multimedia Windows. Note that you need to load SBMIDI (the Sound Blaster MIDI driver) before you invoke SBSIM. The Music player program, MUSIC.EXE, has also been updated to play MIDI files. The command set is the same, except that the commands /REPEAT, /TEMPO, /TRANSPOSE and /WAIT are not available when playing MIDI files. Also, a new command is implemented to allow switching of MIDI modes. The resulting command set of MUSIC.EXE is as follows: Usage: MUSIC [ /Q ] option.. where option is one of: /PLAY:filename + /STOP + /PAUSE + /CONTINUE + /WAIT:n # /TEMPO:percentage # /TRANSPOSE:semitone # /REPEAT:count # /MIDIFMT:midiformat * midiformat: GEN, BAS, EXT (+ = for CMF and MIDI files, # = for CMF files only, * = for MIDI files only) IMPORTANT :USE EITHER SBMIDI OR SBFMDRV DRIVER ONLY (NOT BOTH). 7. NEW COMMANDS FOR MMPLAY MMPLAY (Multimedia Presentation Player) has now been extended to include the following commands: .REM - Adding remarks to the program. Lines preceding with this command will not be executed. .PLAYMIDI <MIDI filename> [Extended] | [Basic] | [General <DrmChnl>] - Playing MIDI files with the MIDI file type specified. Default is type Extended. If type specified is General, DrmChnl indicates the drum channel used ranging from 1 to 16. Default is 10 if DrmChnl is not specified. 8. UPGRADING OF SOUND BLASTER PRO MIXER FOR DOS We have upgraded the mixer (SBP-MIX.EXE) described in the chapter "Voice Utilities" of the Sound Blaster Pro User Reference Manual. There are two changes in this version compared to the earlier version: a. The < Stereo on/off > option is now removed. This function is controlled directly by the software drivers. b. A new feature has been added: <Hidden mode on/off> : Default is ON. With the Hidden mode set to ON, the user can control all the volumes from the keyboard in the background - without popping up to mixer screen. To control the volume, use the key combinations of CTRL+ALT+u - for volume increase and CTRL+ALT+d - for volume decrease To toggle on/off the sound output use the key combinations of CTRL+ALT+q To select the channel in-order to control its volume, use the key combinations of CTRL+ALT+m - for Master CTRL+ALT+l - for Line CTRL+ALT+f - for FM CTRL+ALT+c - for CD CTRL+ALT+v - for VOC CTRL+ALT+i - for Mic The pop up mode is still working in the same way as before. 9. TROUBLE SHOOTING FOR INSTALLING WINDOWS 3.1 DRIVERS A program "WINSETUP.EXE" was included to install the Windows 3.1 drivers for Sound Blaster. This program can be found in your Sound Blaster directory. However, if you prefer to install these drivers manually in Windows, please refer to the User Reference Manual. If somehow you are having problems installing the drivers, here are some points to check before you call Technical Support. a. If you installed Windows 3.1 using the "Express Installation," Windows scanned your hard disk for programs to be installed. As a result, older versions of the Jukebox were installed if they were on your hard disk at the time of installation. Please remove these icons. To do this, click on the icon once to select it, then press the delete key. Windows will ask you for confirmation. Repeat for each icon. b. Open the Driver applet in Control panel. You should at least have the following driver names in the Installed Drivers list: Creative Sound Blaster *** Auxiliary Audio Creative Sound Blaster *** MIDI Synthesizer Creative Sound Blaster *** Wave and MIDI MIDI Mapper Timer [MCI] CD Audio ;this is only for owners of CD-ROM drives [MCI] MIDI Sequencer [MCI] Sound where *** correspond to the type of card you are having. If one or more of these drivers do not exist, you must install the driver(s) using the Driver applet in Control Panel (See the Windows manual for more details). c. Check your SYSTEM.INI by choosing RUN from the File menu of the Program Manager, and typing SYSEDIT in the command line box. Examine the [drivers] and [sndblst.drv] sections. They should look something like this: [drivers] Timer=timer.drv Midimapper=midimap.drv Aux=sbpaux.drv MIDI=sbp2fm.drv Wave=sbpsnd.drv MIDI1=sbpsnd.drv [sndblst.drv] port=220 int=7 dmachannel=1 d. If Windows refuses to install a device driver or you get the error message "Device not found" when playing a Wave or MIDI file or a CD, be sure you have the following settings in the [mci] section of SYSTEM.INI [mci] WaveAudio=mciwave.drv Sequencer=mciseq.drv CDAudio=mcicda.drv ;this is only for owners of CD-ROM drives If one or more of these do not exist, you must install the driver(s) using the Driver applet in Control Panel (See the Windows manual for instructions). Do not type in the entries into the SYSTEM.INI because the files have to be installed into your SYSTEM directory by Windows. ********* End of README *********Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
For more help, visit our Driver Support section for step-by-step videos on how to install drivers for every file type.