Can i use 2 sound cards in one system?

[Sunny129]

all you who have been around since the stone ages of computers listen up. my girlfriend's old CD-ROM doesnt follow todays IDE standard (40-1, or 39 pin ribbon cable). it has all 40 pins on the back (instead of 39), and it wont plug into my old system's mobo which i'm giving her since i built myself a new one. my old system has an intel SE 400BX mobo, which is fairly recent, and certainly up to date when it comes to today's IDE standard. so the fact that her CD-ROM has 40 pins on the back and a 40 pin ribbon, the other end of the ribbon wont fit into the 40-1 pin IDE2 array on the mobo. instead, it plugs into a 40 pin array on the sound card. so this is the reason i had to keep her old P.O.S. sound card...b/c the CD-ROM had no other place to plug into. now oddly enough, when i transferred all the card onto the mobo in the Dell system, it didnt ask me to install drivers or anything. i just had to put the sound card into an ISA slot, plug the CD-ROM into the sound card, and give the CD-ROM power, and the system was up and running correctly. the CD-ROM works fine, and the sound card works fine too, and all without having to reinstall drivers. well i guess this grew into quite the story, so with no further ado, here is my question:

would i be able to put the Turtle Beach Montego (the original card that came with the Dell) sound card back into the machine and leave the old P.O.S. sound card there too?

the reason i want to do this is b/c, like i said, the old one is horrible. it produces the worst sound quality i have ever heard (its a 7 year old component). the only purpose it serves is to provide a 40 pin array for the CD-ROM to plug into and function properly. could i put the other card back in and use it for audio purposes while the other just sits there for the CD-ROM's sake?

 

[Burn]

*just taking a guess

You should be able to disable the sound from the old soundcard within windows, and not disable the onboard connection. I have done in in the past and it appears to have worked fine.

 

[Bloodybrain]

It'll work. You'll even be able to use both sound devices at the same time in Windows. The only possible problem is that the Turtle Beach' SB emulation could be disabled by default if the old sound card is an original Sound Blaster or a clone. You can always set the base adresses, IRQs and DMAs manually in order to use both (maybe you'll have to play around with jumpers on the old card if it's not PnP).

 

[Sunny129]

cool thanks guys...well it looks like christmas break is over, so i wont get a chance to try out those two sound cards right now. in fact i might not be able to do that until the summer. anyways, thanks for the advice, and i'll definitely try it out sometime.