The only boards that needed drivers assigned in DOS were boards that tried to do some form of PnP rather than rely on jumpers.
Personally I had to start Quake from win 95, because my Envision was what today we call a mediacenter PC, and was connected to the TV, so the drivers were mandatory, that audio board (an OPTI) could work in SB emulation or in WSS emulation, the latter was well done while the former not at least it used to work well with anything but Quake.
But, as anything in the IT world, is easy to explain after the culprit is spotted.
My problem was that I wasn't aware at all of an audio problem, i was sure my pc was not powerful enough, and I was wrong.
Of course if you are referring to software based Sound Blaster emulation, that is a different story. That was less about drivers and more about poorly written TSR
I use the word drivers as generic one, then no matter if they are called drivers, kernel modules or tsr, they are still the pieces of SW intended to drive the hw.
Believe me, I remember this stuff all too well. I built my own computers and shopped at computer shows during this time period.
Oh, I remember well too, although i bought my first PC at the end of WIN3.xx era, my first very first computer was bought in 1982, and since 1996 or so I stopped working as electronic technician and IT become my job (and still is). Likely I assembled, repaired, fixed, installed, dismantled, connected, modded, more than 4000 PC in 15 years.
