386 + win95 reboot on audio playback

[Mike Chambers]

i recently received a motherboard with an AMD 386 DX 40 MHz chip on it and 4 MB of RAM. i'm posting this very thread from the 386 actually. i have installed windows 95 on it, and it's been mostly working great but for some reason this thing likes to suddenly reboot whenever i attempt to play any 16-bit audio file.

the sound card can handle it, i originally had a SB AWE64 (CT4520) on it and i thought maybe there was something wrong with the card. i took it off and replaced it with an SB16 value (CT2770) which is still on it. i get the same exact problem with this one too.

it's player-independant. the same thing happens whether i'm using media player, sound recorder, or winamp.

if i convert a file to 8-bit audio first, then copy it over and play it works absolutely fine. i've never seen anything like this before. does anybody have any ideas? just for kicks, i ran memtest86 on here, and it passed 15 times. no errors whatsoever. maybe there's something real obvious i've overlooked, but i'm currently at a loss.

 

[patscc]

sound card

sound card

Do you have a non-sb sound card to try it with ?
Have you dropped down into "DOS" mode and tried playing 16-bit .wav there ?
It sounds like either an IRQ or driver issue. The Soundblasters are the ISA-pseudo PNP type, right ?
patscc

 

[Mike Chambers]

hmm, well the driver is the standard SB16 one that comes with win95. it may be an IRQ problem too, good point. one thing though, if it is something like that wouldn't it have the same problem playing even 8-bit files?

and yes, i do have a few non-SB cards.. i'll give them a shot tomorrow. i have quikview installed, so yeah first i'm going to try playing 16-bit with that.

 

[QuantumII]

Maybe it's a DMA issue. There's one DMA for 16 bit and one for 8 bit (If I remember correctly)

 

[per]

Maybe it's a DMA issue. There's one DMA for 16 bit and one for 8 bit (If I remember correctly)

My 486 with a SB16 (CT2290) gets parity errors by playing 16-bit audio files when the high DMA is not set to the same as the low DMA. Your motherboard might have the same problem.

 

[patscc]

Dma

Dma

I think traditionally DMA0 through DMA3 are 8-bit, and DMA4 through DMA7 are 16-bit, although I don't know to what extent 386 and higher clones respect this.
patscc

 

[Trixter]

if i convert a file to 8-bit audio first, then copy it over and play it works absolutely fine.

Then you absolutely have some sort of 16-bit DMA conflict. Use a regular SB16 that can be jumpered to DMA 5, use that, then check the other cards to see if any of them use DMA 5.