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Garbled OS System Sounds - i486DX2/66, Win 3.1, Sound Blaster 16

Stevenstone93

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May 12, 2014
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7
Location
Northern California, U.S.A.
I have a custom-made i486DX2/66 rig with a 540 MB Western Digital Caviar hard drive, Sound Blaster 16 (Card Model CT1750), running Windows 3.1.

The drivers appear to load properly and an audio CD plays just fine from both the audio-out in the rear of the card as well as the CD-ROM drive as well, with the Sound Blaster mixer program fully functional within the operating system. However, if I go to the Control Panel to test the operating system's sounds, I only hear a faint "thud", and no proper audio comes through my speakers. The only other program in the operating system that has sound, Tetris, also makes a garbled "thud" noise after clearing a row, instead of a proper chime. Trying to play a WAV file in Sound Blaster's "WAV Editor" comes up with an error message saying among the lines of "The audio driver is currently in use with another program", when no other application is running.

I'm not sure if this is a driver issue or not, but I'm hesitant to reinstall the SB16 drivers due to the Matsushita CD-ROM drive being reliant on the sound card itself to work. I can, however, post a photo of the Autoexec.bat entry for you all to look at. (One thing that confuses me is that the MIDI port is designated as 330 in the OS while it's designated as 220 in the Autoexec.bat file)

Many thanks for your time.

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I'm pretty sure you could re-install the sound drivers without affecting the CDROM's operation. I'd try switching the IRQ from 5 to 7, as 7 was usually the default IRQ for the Sound Blaster cards. If something else is using 7, then leave it alone. I'm pretty sure msd.exe will give you the Interrupt list.

The MIDI port is designated as 330 in both screenshots. The 'P' value of SET BLASTER is the MIDI port. 'A' is the port address for the sound part of the sound card and 220 will nearly always work, so that's fine.
 
Your Sound Blaster drivers should also include a diagnostic program which will examine your system and reset the autoexec and system.ini files with the correct values (if nec.). It will also show you if everything is working correctly. I have the CT1600 and all that is included. The SoundBlaster website still has the drivers for download. My card is on Win. 3.11 too. I have Irq 5 and port 220 on mine. BTW, does the card operate correctly in DOS games?
 
I just wanted to add that CDROM audio will be working fine because the card doesn't really need to do much, it just takes the audio feed direct from the drive. Could be something wrong with the card, or a conflict if you've changed anything recently. DIAGNOSE (I think that's the name) should be able to confirm if the card is working OK, just run it from DOS (exit windows first), should be in C:\SB16 if I remember correctly.
 
Guessing out of the blue but I'd also be looking at a potential irq conflict. Diagnose or msd might help determine if there is a conflict somewhere.
 
Another potential problem with sound cards is a high ISA clock. Look for a parameter in the system BIOS about the ISA BUS and set it at CLK/4 or CLK/5. If it doesn't fix the problem restore it the way it was. BTW, why do you load Norton Antivirus?
 
Thank you for your replies. I adjusted the IRQ to 7 but reverted back to the original settings after a respective error showed up when booting up the OS. The only diagnostic program I found under C:\SB16 was TESTSB16.EXE, which appeared relevant. In conducting the tests, I received "Error 0203: Test 8-Bit DMA Channel Error", where the diagnostic told me to play around with the settings in SB16CONFIG.exe and test again.

I did exactly this, and tried testing all 3 different settings for the 8-bit DMA Channel: DMA Channel 0, DMA Channel 1 (current), and DMA Channel 3 but each ended with "***8-bit DMA channel fails***:, stating that "This DMA channel can not be detected. Please try on another DMA channel."

What do I have here? Photos attached, including BIOS settings (which seemingly don't have any adjustable parameters for the ISA Bus):

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This might sound odd, but try commenting out SB16Set - probably won't do anything, but I remember my AWE32 refused to work with it loaded once booted into winblows.

Also, do you have more than one printer port or a legacy drive controller that might interfere with IRQ 5? Some other device that might be on DMA 1 / HDMA 5?

Unlikely to be the problem, as usually 220/330/5/1/5 is 'safe' on anything 386/newer... but it does happen.
 
Please view Post #7 above for an update from my end, as it took a very long time for my post to be approved by a moderator. Not only did I receive the "8-bit DMA channel fails" error in the diagnostic, but I also subsequently received the "16-bit DMA channel fails" error as well, with none of the other 2 available channels being detected. Do I have a dud sound card?
 
All of the previous comments offer good advice. It's possible that you may have a problematic SB, but before you drag another one out of the closet you may want to try a few simple tests. First, REM out all non-essential lines in your AUTOEXEC & CONFIG. Second, locate a copy of the blaster "DIAGNOSE.EXE" (should be found with any blaster install disks). Finally, try swapping the card to a different slot if DIAGNOSE fails. Also, post a copy of your CONFIG if possible. Note that whether or not your CD-ROM is up and running is not critical at this point. Good Luck.
 
Thank you for your replies. Posted are photos of the Config.sys file, and the error message I got when running the Diagnostic program. Switched the video card and sound card slots but to no avail - I cannot accommodate the sound card in any other slots due to the length and space conflicts. I dunno what peripheral card could be conflicting with the sound card - the cards installed are:

1. Modem card (took this out but didn't make a difference)
2. Multifunction card (for IDE, Floppy, Serial, Parallel interfaces) Note that the PS/2 mouse runs off of the Parallel port, and the Serial port cable is not hooked up to the motherboard - no idea why this is so.
3. Sound Blaster 16 Card
4. Spider Graphics Card "Plus" - 1 mb

REM'd out the "unnecessary" areas of the Autoexec.bat but to no avail. What do I have here?

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Here's a photo of the card, perhaps you all can see something I can't - still awaiting approval of my post from yesterday... how many posts do I need to no longer need these moderator approvals? lol

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The picture is a bit too unclear to accurately see how your jumpers are set, but stason.com (love the site!) has the configuration settings for your CT1750 here. It looks like you have the DAS0 and DAS1 jumpers both in the 'closed' position, which means your 8-bit DMA is set to 0. DAS0 should be 'open' and DAS1 should be 'closed' to have the card set to DMA 1, which is the default.
 
It shouldn't matter what the jumper settings are for DAS0 and DAS1, because the Diagnostic program could not recognize any of the 3 available channels (The three channels are 0, 1, and 3). The current setting is with DAS0 open and DAS1 closed, for the default "DMA 1"; I'll provide a close-up of this. What could possibly be wrong?

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