ISA Sound Card Slows CD-ROM Drives

[speeddragon]

I have an ISA 16-bit sound card (Digital Research DRSOUND) with uses the ESS 1869 chip. The card uses DMA 0 (or 3) and 1. My motherboard is the ABIT KT7A-RAID. I read that some sound cards that run the SB16 emulation will slow the CD-ROM drives by not allowing DMA on the CD-ROM drives.

Does anyone know if that is my problem (DMA not enabled for CD-ROM drives)? The DMA check box settings for the CD-ROM drives under WinME will not stay checked. OTOH, even though Win2K said DMA is enabled for the CD-ROM drives, they only get 2X and 4X performance when benchmarked with Sandra.

One CD-ROM drive has a UDMA 2 (ATA33) interface and the other is PIO 4.

TIA,

 

[stevewm]

Ditch the ISA soundcard. ISA and PCI devices (your IDE controller) do not always play together very well. Unless a few options are set correctly in your BIOS (passive release, ISA I/O Delay, etc..) When PCI and ISA devices are accessed at the same time the PCI device will have greatly reduced speeds.

In short just ditch the old ISA tech, get a cheap PCI soundcard and your problem is solved entirely. A cheap PCI soundcard can be had for less than $20 USD.