For Windows 9x and beyond, the drivers are built in, including Sound Blaster 2 emulation. For DOS there is no need to install drivers for games that natively support WSS, but you'll need drivers for the SB emulation. Not the best card for SoundBlaster gaming, though, as it does need a TSR AFAIK. Get them here

I have the drivers on floppies at home. I don't know if they are for DOS and/or W3.1, but as soon as I get home tonight I'll post what I have.

It's not really "emulation'... There's an actual Yamaha OPL3 chip on there, same as on a real Sound Blaster Pro.
It's just a hardware compatibility mode.

I believe the emulation is for digital sound. The OPL3 chip is there, though I'm not sure it receives data on the SB-specific ports, so games might need to be configured for WSS specifically or have to drop down to OPL2 (Adlib) mode.

Brilliant!! Thank you very much for the help, what are the two jumpers one behind the other for?

alexanrs wrote:

I believe the emulation is for digital sound.

Digital sound can't really be emulated either. The SB just has a very simple DAC that can be fed via DMA or port I/O, and a very simple 'DSP' to select the DAC mode, and get status info.
It could do some basic port rerouting, similar to what SBOS does on a GUS, but that would require a 386+ system (somewhat unlikely requirements given the era).
I'm not sure if the WSS works that way. If it does, that would suck, since most other cards, such as the PAS, ESS AudioDrive or Sound Galaxy were fully compatible without any software trickery required.
It's much simpler to just handle that in hardware. GUS is a special case of course, because it has no standard DAC or OPL3-compatible chip to begin with.

alexanrs wrote:

so games might need to be configured for WSS specifically or have to drop down to OPL2 (Adlib) mode.

Even if it's OPL2 mode, it would still go via the OPL3, via the same ports (as it does on eg SBPro/16). The OPL3 chip is simply a superset of the OPL2, and is fully backward compatible.

This is a card with just a AD1848JP chip. You can lookup the datasheet and know all about it. This card, unlike others, does not have a separate controller chip between the AD codec and the ISA bus (like from Opti or Aztech or C-media). So what remains, is merely the windows-sound-system compatibility in hardware. That and an OPL3.

Scali wrote:

Digital sound can't really be emulated either. The SB just has a very simple DAC that can be fed via DMA or port I/O, and a very […]
Show full quote

Digital sound can't really be emulated either. The SB just has a very simple DAC that can be fed via DMA or port I/O, and a very simple 'DSP' to select the DAC mode, and get status info.
It could do some basic port rerouting, similar to what SBOS does on a GUS, but that would require a 386+ system (somewhat unlikely requirements given the era).
I'm not sure if the WSS works that way. If it does, that would suck, since most other cards, such as the PAS, ESS AudioDrive or Sound Galaxy were fully compatible without any software trickery required.
It's much simpler to just handle that in hardware. GUS is a special case of course, because it has no standard DAC or OPL3-compatible chip to begin with.

Read this. If its not some form of emulation than I'm not sure how different driver versions could change compatibility from the original SB to SB16. Also, if you look at the picture you'll see that, while it does have a codec (the AD chip), it does not have any SoundBlaster compatible IC there. Many SBPro+WSS clones have both the AD or Crystal codec and another chip as a middleman to provide hardware SBPro support.

Scali wrote:

Even if it's OPL2 mode, it would still go via the OPL3, via the same ports (as it does on eg SBPro/16). The OPL3 chip is simply a superset of the OPL2, and is fully backward compatible.

Yes, but selecting Adlib instead of WSS/SBPro 2.0 will likely restrict the game to OPL2 music, even if it does feature enhanced OPL3 music, such as stereo tracks (OPL2 is mono - stereo OPL2 cards like SBPro 1.0 had two OPL2 chips, and you had to address them individually in SoundBlaster-specific ports).

alexanrs wrote:

Read this.

That says absolutely nothing about how the hardware and software work together.

alexanrs wrote:

Yes, but selecting Adlib instead of WSS/SBPro 2.0 will likely restrict the game to OPL2 music, even if it does feature enhanced OPL3 music, such as stereo tracks (OPL2 is mono - stereo OPL2 cards like SBPro 1.0 had two OPL2 chips, and you had to address them individually in SoundBlaster-specific ports).

That's not my point. My point is that the card has a real OPL3 chip, so it's 100% hardware-compatible with the OPL3-based Sound Blasters, which in turn are 100% backward-compatible with Adlib, because OPL3 is backward-compatible with OPL2.

It is 100% compatible with Adlib, but not with OPL3-based Sound Blasters, and that is the issue. OPL3 can be addressed at the old Adlib IO adresses or the SoundBlaster IO adresses. If the game uses the former, then it will work if you select Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 or even Sound Blaster 16 as the music device, but if the game uses the Sound Blaster addresses then it will not work. And that is not full hardware compatibility for me.

Also, as keropi said, the original WSS is just the AD1848JP codec. You can read the datasheet - it has no Sound Blaster compatibility. WSS compatible cards coupled it with another IC to achieve that, so it needs at least port redirection (like SBOS).

What I meant was that it has an actual OPL3 synthesizer, it is not emulating one like SBOS is for example.

Here are the drivers I have, archived from original floppies.

Thank you very much Beegle 😀

wow.... I've always been wanting to get this card! So rare!

BSA Starfire wrote:

Thank you very much Beegle 😀

Hey no problem!

Just a quick update, Got the card installed in my DFi Intel TX socket 7 board with DOS 6.2, Windows 3.11, all works great, Soundblaster compatibility has been spot on too, works fine with all the dos games I have tried(DOOM, CHAMP games, Xanth etc) and lots of old Demo scene stuff too, quality is very good, crisp clean & good range. I'm very happy with the card, it's a fair bit better than the Pine Crystal 4235 that it has replaced. Lovely having the 2 standard phono jacks on the back of the card too.

Best,
Chris