Does T23 audio support Sound Blaster Pro/16 emulation?

[danikayser84]

I recently revived my ThinkPad T23 with a Transcend 32GB SSD and Windows 98SE and plan on using it for old DOS and Windows 9x games, but I wanted to check in here as to whether the Crystal CS4299 supports SBPro/SB16 emulation (been a while since I used it and don't remember off the top of my head; I do know the T20-T22 do but was unsure of the T23)

The main reason I chose the T23 over the T30, T42 or T43 is because the Analog Devices chipset used in those does not support SB16 emulation, although the T23 uses an S3 video chipset and not an ATI

[rkawakami]

According to the tabook of the day, the T23 has this as audio support: Soft audio / ICH AC97 controller / SoundBlaster compatible / CS4299 AC97 codec

[danikayser84]

Well, I couldn't get any DOS games to work (I tried both the 95OSR2/98 VXD version and the 98SE/ME WDM version of the driver and it would hang the computer if I tried to run a game, no matter if I selected SBPro or SB16; I did check my "SET BLASTER" in autoexec.bat and tried the cwcdos.exe from the T22 but neither worked)... fortunately I do have a ThinkPad 560Z which is working well for my DOS games collection, sound and all

[axur-delmeria]

1. Try the earlier non-WDM driver

2. AFAIK, the Crystal Soundfusion CS4610,4624, 4280 and, 4281 were the last ones that had DOS Soundblaster compatibility support.

[danikayser84]

Yep, figured it out that the CS4299 chipset does not support SBPro/SB16 DOS emulation (IBM's tawbook must have been mistaken), neither under the VXD driver nor the WDM; will still use the T23 for Windows 98/95 games but fortunately I do have other ThinkPads (Pentium II era and earlier) that will work (I chose the 560Z for its portability myself)

[Kasm279]

I can tell you from experience that the T23 (unlike the T22) offers no Sound Blaster support at all. It's rather annoying.

[micrex22]

There is one way... although it would be expensive.

Yamaha did release some PCMCIA sound modules / so that at least would give you Adlib support. However, the only one that I saw on ebay was for $100, and someone has since purchased it.