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CV860C-based Thin PC with legacy sound issues

1

133MHz

Member
Joined
Dec 27, 2010
Messages
21
Location
Santiago, Chile
Please excuse me if I posted this in the wrong section. It's not vintage but it's certainly slow and I intend to use it for DOS gaming but I've ran into a problem, and I know there's some very knowledgeable people here who could help me out.;)

On December last year I was given three of these "thin client" systems at the place I worked on back then:



They were all missing one part or another (case, RAM, cables, switches, drive cages, etc) but I managed to put together a complete system from the lot. Here's the motherboard itself, a CV860C:



...and the I/O ports:



This thing is pretty packed: VIA Samuel 533MHz CPU, PC133 SDRAM slot, 4 serial ports (accepting funky protocols like RS422/485), parallel, PS/2, LAN, 3 USB 1.1 ports, sound, 40 & 44 pin IDE ports, CF card slot, DiskOnChip slot and a totally fanless design, running straight from an external 12V power brick.

My first thought was to use it as a silent but powerful router/firewall box, but its sole LAN interface, no internal expansion and slow USB wouldn't cut it with my 40Mbps broadband so I abandoned that idea. Then I saw that the onboard sound had legacy SoundBlaster emulation and I thought this would make a killer totally solid-state DOS/9x gaming setup if I add a CF card! so I added a cheap 4GB Kingston CF and I tried to install Windows 98SE on it... it was unbearably slow and I couldn't get the SB emulation to work, so I put the whole thing away. Leason learned: cheap CF cards make for really bad poor man's SSDs.

I've now got a better 2GB Dane-Elec CF card, not a speed demon by any means but it's actually usable now so it has revived my interest in getting this awesome tiny PC to run DOS games with sound.

Here's the obligatory SpeedSys 4.78 screenshot:

e5xfkl.png


It has the A3 revision BIOS installed which seems to be the latest one, and I'm using the drivers I found at this website.

The problem is, I still can't get SB-emulated sound from DOS or Windows to work. There's these options in the BIOS:



Back in December 2011 when I first tried it pretty much nothing worked because all four serial ports were enabled and gobbling up IRQs and whatnot so I ended up disabling all of them to free system resources. The onboard sound chip is a Realtek ALC201A and it works fine on Windows, the SB emulation device is also detected correctly
4c1Jfl.png

but it does not produce any sound whatsoever in either DOS or Windows. Games like Wolfenstein 3D see a Sound Blaster device but there is no sound output, if I set Windows to use the SB mixer exclusively by setting the "Use only preferred devices" option I also get no sound at all. What could I've been doing wrong? Any recommended diagnostic software I should run to shed some light into the problem?

For me there's something uncanny about using an x86-based PC with absolutely no moving parts, it even feels a bit eerie to see the computer working but not being able to hear it, but at the same time it's really cool and I'd love to get it running correctly and enjoy some solid-state DOS gaming!
 
I installed the Realtek ALC201A drivers, but the "SoundBlaster Pro or compatible" driver seems to be the stock Windows one.
 
I run the Neoware E90 as mail server and router. I'm running Debian, using a Seagate 5GB microdrive. One USB goes to the DSL modem, the RJ45 goes to the network hub. I also have an FM transmitter connected to the audio output driven by mplayer, so I get net radio throughout the house.

No cube for power--the AC plugs right into it. One has been running for about 3 years now continuously. I've got a second one sitting next to it with the backup drive installed, so if the first fails, I just unhook it and connect the other one.

Thin clients are pretty cool.

I use a Neoware CA19 running Win98 connected to my EPROM programmer.
 
Dumb question, the audio out jack, is that on the front panel ? When you plug headphones in, do you hear any crackling, hissing, etc ? Try plugging the headphones into the mic jack as well, if it has one, and listen for noise.
If the jack is indeed on the front panel, does it sit on the motherboard, or does it connect via a header ?
patscc
 
That jack is on the motherboard--soldered on, along with the Mic in and USB connectors. No cables.

It's a line-out jack, so the level is going to be fairly low.

If you disable the SB emulation and use the Windows AC97 drivers for sound, do you hear anything?

It could be a bad jack. You should at least hear a click in your headphones when you plug them in.
 
Chuck(G) said
It's a line-out jack, so the level is going to be fairly low.
Click to expand...
Really ? A true line-out, or a headphone output that also works for line-out ?

Not having one, don't know how easy it is to get to where the jack is soldered onto the motherboard, but it might be a good idea to check the solder joints and for cracked traces.
patscc
 
I was all impressed with the manual until I got to the part where the audio jack connections are labeled as a IR-header.
133Mhz, you might want to try finding the generic Via V8601 A or T audio drivers for 98/Me on the web, and seeing if those work any better.
patscc
 
Excuse me for not expressing myself correctly. AC97 sound is working fine in Windows, but legacy SB sound doesn't work in neither Windows or DOS. It is correctly detected and the right system resources are assigned but it doesn't produce any sound. Some DOS games like Wolfenstein 3D 'see' it while others like Commander Keen Ep. 4 don't. The BLASTER environment variable is set as A220 I5 D1. Creative's DIAGNOSE.EXE doesn't find any sound hardware.

I have tried the generic driver from Realtek's website and it doesn't work (Code 2). There is a physical ALC201A chip on the motherboard but I noticed that Realtek's Sound Manager also referred to it as VIA3058. There's also a VIA AC97 driver for this board so I tried it and it works too, but still no legacy SB sound at all.

By the way thanks for the manual, I was looking all over for it. Unfortunately it doesn't say anything about the legacy sound feature!

Indeed thin clients are great, I'm thinking of using one of the incomplete ones as a small solid-state web server.
 
Have you looked at the VT82C686B datasheet. In particular, I wonder if simply issuing a D1 command to the blaster emulation would turn on your speaker. If you don't have any luck, let me know--I think I have this VIA chip combination on one of my thin clients.
 
I just looked at it, and if I understand correctly the idea is to write $D1 to $22C to issue the "Turn on speaker connection" command. I tried it using DEBUG on Win98SE and pure DOS. No dice, SB is still dead silent.
 
Nice system! I love small computers even if they're incredibly slow.

Just a heads up, those CF cards are terrible to install Windows on. The number of disk writes that are required by Windows will shorten the life of the CF card. The best OS you could possibly install on there is Damn Small Linux. There's an option for installing it on flash drives which reduces the amount of disk writes and lengthens the life of the card greatly. On top of that, you can always try DSL to see if it gets the sound working ;)
 
I'm aware that an old OS like Win98 isn't exactly kind to flash-based storage, so I have disabled virtual memory to prevent Windows from writing unnecessarily to the CF card. Damn Small Linux is great stuff, in fact I believe these systems were running it (for their original purpose) before they were given to me. Since I'm after oldschool gaming, DOS/Windows is a must.

To rule out the possibility of hardware failure, since I have three identical systems I have tested the other two, same exact thing. I'm beginning to think that the SB-compatible sound feature of the chipset was never implemented correctly in the first place, but why have such explicit BIOS options then?

Any ideas? I was really looking forward to play some DOS games on this thing. :(
 
Just for yucks, can you post the contents of your autoexec.bat & config.sys files ? There should be something in there to actually load an emulation driver.
patscc
 
I haven't had much time lately to mess around with this thing, and I have also been without Internet access, but I've finally solved the problem. Thanks to the user swaaye from VOGONS I was able to figure it out, he provided a crucial piece of the puzzle and the rest just came together on its own.

swaaye said:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/support/drivers.jsp
Work your way to the Windows 98SE AC97 sound drivers. There is also a link in the description there for a SB driver for pure DOS.
Click to expand...
That leads here:

The audio drivers provided on this website are general sound effect drivers with common functions. System manufacturers and motherboard vendors customize audio hardware and software and therefore, to ensure optimal sound quality and compatibility, we strongly recommend you to obtain the system-validated and certified audio drivers directly from your system manufacturer or motherboard manufacturer. If you use audio drivers provided on this website and you experience a difficulty, we recommend that you uninstall them and instead use the latest drivers supplied by your motherboard or system manufacturer. This driver supports DOS sound for VT82C686A/VT82C686B/VT8231 only. The VIAAUDIO.COM file mentioned in the Readme concerning DOS sound can be obtained from this old audio driver package.
Click to expand...

SB-emulation sound in Windows

The old audio driver package (68MU220b.zip) is exactly what we need. It comes with DOS drivers and both WDM and VxD Windows drivers. The VxD drivers must be used for the SB emulation feature to work!
A proper driver will be installed for the SBPro emulation device when you use the VxD driver. Unfortunately the VxD driver performs worse than the WDM driver - the sound output is a bit weird and distorted (kind of like if both speakers were out of phase but not quite), but if you want SB-compatible sound, you've got no other choice.

SB-emulation sound in MS-DOS

In order to enable the SB-emulation feature of the VT82C686 in pure DOS mode install the DOS driver by running INSTALL.EXE found on the \DOS directory. This will create a VIAUDIO directory on the root of your hard drive and it'll modify the AUTOEXEC.BAT file for you, but it won't work straight away! You need an additional file which is not included with the aformentioned DOS driver: VIAFMTSR.COM

Just add the VIAFMTSR.COM to the VIAUDIO directory and call them in this exact order through your AUTOEXEC.BAT or DOSSTART.BAT

Code: 
C:\VIAUDIO\VIAUDIO.COM
C:\VIAUDIO\VIAFMTSR.COM
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330

You should have SB-compatible sound working in DOS now! A downside of these drivers is that they take a crapload of conventional memory, making it difficult to run your games. You might try loading them high, I had limited success with that.

---------------------------

Finally I managed to get SB-compatible sound to work so I can use this mini PC as a cool solid state DOS gaming rig I can just throw in my backpack and carry with me. :-D Sound quality is so-so but for a specialized board with no expansion possibilities I'm grateful to even have an option. It took some time and effort to get it working but now it's all documented in case someone else ends up with the same problem.

Thanks a lot to everyone who helped! :mrgreen:
 

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