6 channel USB sound device driver - solved

[Rock in stereo]

I purchased a Skymaster External USB Sound card with six channels yesterday. The supporting documentation states that the device supports 98SE & ME (along with 2000,XP,Mac OS 9.1) otherwise I would not have chosen it. The device came with a CD-ROM which has NO drivers for 98SE & ME at all. It only comes with drivers for XP & Vista, talk about misleading packaging!

Attempt 1: 98SE installs it with its own Windows drivers and recognizes it as a 'USB Audio Device', but it doesn't function at all. It doesn't show up on the taskbar like it should and I can't see any trace of it under the Device Manager.

Attempt 2: Using Kernelex I installed the XP setup into 98SE and as expected, it got 90% way through the installation but failed. So the XP drivers are not suitable.

I have installed this onto my XP SP2 laptop and it works, but I didn't buy it for this machine, I want it to work on my primary desktop, ASUS Motherboard P5GZ-MX, ~500 MB RAM, ~3 GHz, ATI Radeon 9200, 160 GB WD IDE (formatted to utilitize 120 GB only). This machine exclusively runs 98SE.

XP tells me the following specifications about this USB sound device:

Audio controller: Intel 82801DB/DBM USB Host controller 24c2

3d audio engine: Xear 3d CRL3d DS3d EAX2.0 A3d1.0

Audio driver version: 5.12.08.1803 (library 76.2)

My on board sound (Intel HD) is unsupported so if I can't get this to work I have no sound device. Inserting a PCI soundcard instead is not an option (so simple, I wish it were!) because this motherboard only has two PCI slots and one PCI Express and both PCI slots are full. I should note that this Asus motherboard is extremely irritating (in terms of poor expansion options, only single IDE controller, no AGP and no official 98SE support) but I received it free, that's why I am using it.

Any assistance in getting this External USB sound card working (presumably there exists a valid 98SE driver out there) would be greatly appreciated...

Update:

I pulled this apart (carefully) and the chip inside is the CM106-L, a High Integrated USB Audio I/O Controller. It uses C-Media drivers and software.

Datasheet for this chip is freely available, see:

http://www.datasheetpro.com/664301_download_CM106_datasheet.html

Edited April 26, 2010 by Rock in stereo

[Rock in stereo]

This POS does not install on my other dedicated Win98SE desktop either without proper device drivers, which I have still not been able to find after several hours of searching.

The Creative Sound Blaster Extigy USB External Audio Device looks to be what I should have purchased. They are available secondhand on Ebay Australia. If you are able to assist me with A- locating substitute drivers for the CM106-based USB Audio Device or B- you have a Extigy running under 98SE please share your experiences.

Based on at least one internet review, the Extigy definitely works under WinME BTW.

Edited April 25, 2010 by Rock in stereo

[triger49]

Hi ...

They are tough to find ...but try this ...

http://list.driverguide.com/list/company223/

You'll need to sign up for a free account to download

or put up with a dozen pages of ad's first..

Found some here also ...

http://www.x-drivers.com/catalog/drivers/sound_cards/companies/c-media/models/cm-106/index.html

Jake

[Rock in stereo]

http://download.driverguide.com/driver/C-Media+USB+Audio+Device/C-Media/d385807.html

Thank you Jake! A manual install under the Add New Hardware Wizard (using the ME driver

folder supplied in the above download) worked, and it now appears under the Device Manager

and is functional. The software interface in the above download wouldn't install because it couldn't recognize the device and kept asking me to plug it in, but I don't need the

software anyway and wouldn't use it.

I now have sound functional (everything is now working!) on this 98SE setup:

Asus motherboard P5GZ-MX (2006 - unsupported by 98SE)

D-Link Airlink Wireless PCI card (2005 - supported)

Intel Integrated Graphics (unsupported by 98SE - using generic driver referenced on this board)

512 MB RAM (2006)

New 120 GB IDE HDD as master

Yamaha CDRW (1999) as slave

New Acer 17" LCD

New 6 channel USB External Audio Card (supported)

B)

Edited April 26, 2010 by Rock in stereo

[triger49]

http://download.driverguide.com/driver/C-Media+USB+Audio+Device/C-Media/d385807.html

New 6 channel USB External Audio Card (supported)

B)

Never argue with success..

I'll bet Van Halen doing "Jump" would

sound terrific in 6 channel sound!

Jake