Make Soundblaster 16/Vibra CT4170 fit and work in 8/bit ISA slot in a PC XT, Amstrad PC1640

  • If you want to equip a PC XT, such as my beloved Amstrad PC1640, with a sound card, you have typically two possibilities. Either you spend a lot of money and get one of the rare 8-bit soundcards at ebay, or you buy a replica. The latter are also not for free, and may have a limited function spectrum.


    A third possibility is you buy one of the 16-bit ISA cards that function also in an 8 bit ISA slot. But how to make them fit in a PC like the Amstrad, who have the mainboard covered with an anti-static shielding? You can remove the shielding, but to you want that? And do you get drivers?



    I might have a solution for you! At least if you’re not a one of those guys that touches hardware only with an anti-static gloves 😊 I did have a Sound Blaster Vibra CT4170 (was sold under the Soundblaster 16 brand). They were common, and you can buy them cheaply and ou masse at ebay. The card uses the 16 bit expansion only if you drive a CDROM with it… as the XTs have only a 8 bit bus, that is no option anyway! So I took a metal saw, and gently cut-off the 16 bit connector. Have a look at the picture, you need to look very closely to realize this is not a genuine 8-bit card.



    Then, the original CT4170 driver disk doesn’t work nicely in the XT; effectively it is so slow it makes the whole Computer unusable. BUT I found a simple DOS executable (ct4170.exe) in the forums, that activates the PnP card, and is non-resident. The only thing you need from the SoundBlster dos driver is the mixer tool to control the card, and set the BLASTER variables in a .bat file before you load ct4170.exe. I attach a small rar file with all the files you need, and a sample config!


    ct4170xt.rar


    Tested on Prince of Persia, Arkanoid, and Secret of Moneky island, and all give a nice and crystal clear Adlib sound 😊 Have fun!

  • Have tried unisound. Nice tool, thanks for point to it, works nicely with the card! For the CT4170, it seems to do essentially the same job as the ct4170.exe tough, but with the practical extra that one can adjust the volume already with the activation.

  • Little addendum, I manged the Game Port to work in the XT, using unisound. Took my a while to realize that the the tool sets the defaul io address for the game-port to 0x200, upon which, most DOS games at least in the Amstrad don´t recognize the joystick. One needs to set it to 201 :) So just add a J201 to the Blaster variable, and it rocks.

  • Yesterday i tried the software which was linked in the first post but i ran into some irq conflicts resulting in having serious hdd issues once the soundblaster was activated. I guess i'll have to try different irq settings or testing the card in an xt with fewer extension cards installed.


    Because the card didnt work properly i couldnt check on the gameport yet.

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