OK, so after taking a look at your advice and pondering a bit, I tried again. Here's what I've been doing:
1. Tried running this ctcm.exe. It seemed to be working, but did not help...
2. Formatted the C: partition again.
3. Installed DOS 7.1 using the installation floppy. Apparently the installer did a good job configuring the autoexec.bat and config.sys files - I had 620K free conventional memory after this.
4. Installed the SBPCI drivers found here:
http://easymamecab.mameworld.info/html/snddosdr.htm
5. The installator replaced my autoexec.bat and config.sys, so I just renamed their backups and edited to add the necessary lines. Then I rebooted the computer. The drivers appeared to initialize correctly - no errors or loud beeps, just info about driver initialization and the card being on IRQ 5.
6. Checked if the sound works, but still no luck. Running SBTEST resulted in a loud beep and message "Couldn't reset SB16" or something like that.
What now?
Quote:
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However, it's a fact that not all P3 mobos can get a SB128PCI working in Dos, depends of the BIOS and chipsets
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Perhaps this is the problem... I can tell that my BIOS is the PhoenixBIOS.
What's the best thing I can do now? Should I try something else with this Pentium 3 PC? Or try buying an old Sound Blaster?
(If this PC is completely unusable for this, I sort of have access to several much older machines, though none of them has anything better than 386SX + 2-4 MB RAM. Or there's one lying around which might have something like Pentium 200, though I'm not sure if it's going to work...)