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SB16 freezing P75?

T

Tr3vor

Experienced Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2012
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183
Location
Jerome, ID
I got a pentium 75mhz machine from a thrift store two days ago. It had Windows 98 Plus on it. That was far too slow so I installed DOS 6.22.

So the problem here seems to be that the PnP bios is choosing parameters for the SB16 Vibra card I have that conflicts with other stuff. Every time I take the card out or put it in the bios tells me that its Updating the ESCD. Every time it says that, the computer will boot. So, when I leave the card in there and just turn it on later, it won't say "Updating ESCD" and it will just freeze before it loads anything from the HDD or FDD.

So from what I know is that ESCD is something that saves PnP ISA card configurations. So I'm guessing the computer saves the configuration for the SB16 and then a reset after that, wants to set a system device to the same parameters and it fails to boot. I can change the DMA channel for the parralell port in the bios to get it to update the ESCD and boot again, but that just lasts for that one boot. If I restart again, it freezes.

BTW, the bios is "Award Modular BIOS 4.50pg" I'm wondering if its the BIOS's fault and if I need to update that.

So I'm not sure if I explained this adequately, its kinda hard to put into words, but If I need to I'll make a video showing its behavior. Thanks in advance for any advice.

I also bought an AWE64 for this computer the other day, hopefully that works better than this sb16 vibra...
 
Well I know that it will sound better, but I'm hoping that my computer doesn't freeze on startup like it does with the Vibra.
 
That BIOS is known to be a little quirky. Was WIN98 on the PC when you got it? WIN98 may be a stretch at 75 MHz - some may run okay but generally you're looking at slower machine. If you are just running DOS now, you may want to check your SET BLASTER settings (http://www.computerhope.com/ac.htm). Also, a little googling turned up this (I know it pertains to NT build it might turn out to be useful): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/135527.
 
Yeah, It had 98 on it when I first got it. It ran way too slow and the OS was kinda messed up anyway, so I just threw DOS 6.22 on it. I tried messing around with the settings in the microsoft support link, and it still freezes.

Its not the BLASTER settings, the computer freezes before it even states "Starting MS DOS", It won't register a ctrl+alt+del when it freezes either. I think its the BIOS's PnP stuff setting the Vibra's DMA to something a system device is using.

Is there an alternate BIOS that I might be able to use? are BIOSes from back then ('95) motherboard specific?
 
How about pulling the Vibra out and see what happens. Also, I would run a memory test before I got in any deeper. It seems doubtful to me that you would get away with swapping out the BIOS, as they were pretty much tailor made back in the day. Also, you might want to run MSD and see if you have any IRQ conflicts. BTW, WIN95 ought to run fairly good on that mobo, and there's always 3.1 which is straight forward and easy to configure.
 
When I pull out the Vibra, I have no issues with anything. It came with a ESS Audio Drive that's not PnP, That doesn't give any problems at all, and I can get audio out of that. The ram isn't the problem, I've swapped its 2x32mb sticks out for a known working set of 2x16mb sticks so I could increase the ram on another computer, and it acts the same way. There are not IRQ conflicts.

In a way I'm kind of suspicious of the card, It hasn't really passed the high DMA test on any computer I know, maybe that's faulty. I guess we'll see when I get that AWE64. I only wanted the sb16 vibra in there temporarily for sound, but I'm getting sound out of my ESS Audio Drive for now without issues, so the vibra's going back into the 486.

Yeah, I need to find some Win95 discs for it, thats what I want to run on it, but right now I only have 6.22 and 98se, so yeah.
 
I can almost assure you that anything that takes advantage of Windows 98 will not enjoy a Pentium 75. Windows 95 is a better choice.
 
So I got my AWE64 in the mail and hooked it up. It doesn't have the same freezing problem as the Vibra did. I installed windows 95... somehow... and everything works perfectly under windows.

The only issue I have now is that AWEUTIL and CT3DSE and other programs and games don't detect the AWE part of the card at all, while they will pick up the SB16 part. I can play with FM Synth and SB sound effects but no AWE 32/64 music or effects.

With windows 95 in DOS mode do I have to SET BLASTER parameters? I did that and CT3DSE worked, but AWEUTIL and other games didn't work, so I'm wondering if I entered the parameters wrong.

Besides that, this p75 machine is turning out to be quite the DOS/early WIN95 gaming machine. I quite like it, and with this AWE64 card, its great.
 
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