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Sound Blaster AWE32

2026-02-21

Creative Sound Blaster AWE32 IDE/MKP CSP (CT3900)

The Compaq Portable 486c has no onboard audio, so one of the two EISA slots is used for a Creative Sound Blaster AWE32 IDE/MKP CSP (CT3900). The AWE32 is one of the best ISA sound cards ever made — it provides Sound Blaster and AdLib compatibility for DOS games, a Yamaha OPL3 FM synthesizer (YMF262), and Creative’s EMU8000 wavetable synthesizer with 512 KB of onboard sample RAM (expandable to 28 MB via SIMMs).

Pentium-class CPU, wavetable audio, DOOM at full speed — at some point this stopped being a restoration and started being the 486 gaming machine 12-year-old me always wanted.

The CT3900 variant includes an IDE interface and a CSP (Creative Signal Processor) socket, though neither is used in this build — the Compaq already has an IDE controller on the backplane.

Why the CT3900

The CT3900 was chosen specifically because it is not Plug and Play. Later AWE32 and AWE64 revisions switched to ISA PnP, which requires a PnP-aware BIOS or software like Intel’s ICU to assign resources. The Compaq Portable 486c’s BIOS has no PnP support, so a PnP sound card would need extra configuration tools and drivers loaded before it works — and can still be unreliable under plain DOS.

The CT3900 uses jumpers to set IRQ, DMA, and I/O port addresses directly on the card. It works immediately at boot with no BIOS support, no TSRs, and no configuration utilities required. For a DOS gaming machine, this is the most reliable setup — the card is configured once with jumpers and just works every time.

Sound Blaster AWE32 installed in the Compaq Portable 486c

See AWE32 Getting Started Guide (PDF) for the original Creative manual (v1.4, December 1996).

TODO: Add configuration details (IRQ, DMA, I/O port settings).

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