IBM Mwave Soundcard - how to get it working?

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semigeek

1606 posts

Uber Geek

#165624 15-Feb-2015 18:22

For the past hour or so, I have been trying to get sound drivers installed on an old IBM Aptiva P133 which originally ran Windows 95, but now runs Windows 98.
Why am I doing this? I have some old games and software that I want to use.

I have tried detecting hardware through Add New Hardware(nothing gets detected), I have tried adding it manually using inf files off the diagnostic disk in the MWave folder. I believe I should be using mwdsp or something like that, but still no luck, as when it says select your device or similar after using the mwdsp.inf(file name may not be accurate) file, the selection box is blank.

Any ideas on how to get the sound installed/working? I would just install another sound card if I had one lying around, but don't.

kiwirock

685 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1239532 15-Feb-2015 19:00

Sorry can't offer any more advice but those were awesome sound cards in their day. They were one of the first cards to support two streams of playback in a consumer card (virtually two sound cards on the same board). Up to then, audio was played only one stream (file) at a time to the sound card, no software cheat mixing, then came the MWave.

They also had proper audio peak meters via the WAVE device driver that were executed in hardware rather than the OS in software.

Modern consumer cards mix everything in software to get more than one audio file playing back at the same time, and do a lot of dithering and anti-aliasing to cheat sample rate mixing and the OS gives you audio levels of the software mixing.

To do what an MWave did, you'd pay over $400 now unless you had two seperate cards. I recently paid over eight hundy for a 4 stream hardware card.

Those MWaves had an intergrated modem in them too didn't they?

semigeek

1606 posts

Uber Geek

#1239564 15-Feb-2015 19:51

Yep, they do have an integrated modem, a 28.8, well in my one anyway. I got it working in the end. It all came down to IBM Dolphin Mwave DSP Adapter which was in the Other devices section of Add New Hardware. I was only looking under Sound etc previously.