Link: https://github.com/andrew-hoffman/WDMHDA

(Thanks to /u/O_MORES for posting this elsewhere)

There's a brand new HD audio driver for Windows 98/Me called WDMHDA.

Since it's a WDM driver, it will play nice with the Sound Blaster Emulation Layer built into Windows 98/ME (sbemul.sys).

And it actually works. Here's Windows 98 and this codec tested on a Ryzen 9 PC: https://youtu.be/uhWyH0TsrCc

So.. Can we run Win98 (somewhat) modern systems like Ivy Bridge?

This driver will work with any motherboard that's newer than the 915 chipset (which uses single core Pentiums). So if your motherboard supports dual-core CPUs at the very least, it will be compatible. Ivy Bridge for sure.

I haven't personally attempted to install 98 or ME on more modern hardware, so I'm unsure if there's any special steps to do so, or if it just sorta works like it would've on an older PC.

IIRC, 98 needs a homebrew patch to not crash if you have more than 512MB of RAM.

Be careful, this DOS audio stuff is a rabbithole in and of itself. Apparently, no Sound Blaster emulation is perfect for all games and there are some things that only an ISA sound card can do. I think it was a fairly short list of problematic titles, though. I'll return to post a link if I can find it. Probably on the forums of vogons.org or vcfed.org

the 512MB ram thing is true, but it's just a single line of edit on system.ini, nothing difficult

yep it works, i had it working on a haswell xeon machine

If we're talking DOS software in 98SE, there's a few patches to limit the RAM seen by the OS to 512MB or 2GB for compatibility.

https://archive.org/details/Windows_98SE_Memory_Patch

yep rloew's patches are great https://rloewelectronics.com/

though that much ram isn't really necessary, setting MaxPhysPage=20000 (512MB) just works fine