Ah, very interesting!
I managed to edit the config file to get 2.4 to find the MIDI interface and the FM device, but it still sounds funny compared to recordings.
I tried running both 2.3 and 2.4 from the prompt in MS-DOS mode and the computer didn't like that. Weird.
I admittedly haven't done the best homework on this; I'm not the most skilled user of DOS.
I'll try the AWE32 drivers from Creative and see what happens. Thanks for the tip!