No sound (old school hardware) need help

[Audiofight]

I am sitting here trying to make my latest creation work properly, but alas it isn't to be so easy.

Here's the system specs:

Dual P2 333 MHz cpus
Tyan Dual Slot1 440BX mobo
ATi 128 AIW AGP
Adaptec 2940U w/ 50-pin 40x Toshiba cdrom
Promise ATA100 controller w/ 20 GB Maxtor and 80 GB WD hdds (on seperate cables)
10/100 NIC
Soundblaster AWE64 Gold
16x DVD-Rom
floppy
300 or 350W psu, gotta open it up and look
WinXP Professional

According to device manager, everything is working properly. No conflicts or anything. I am using the supplied Y-cable to convert the dual RCA out on the card to a standard 1/8" mini-stereo plug to plug into my speakers.

Whenever I try to turn on any of the ATi software, it freezes my system up. I have to reboot (sometimes hard reboot) the system in order to make it go away. I can't make the sound card send out any sound, period.

Anyone have a similar problem or think of any solutions to try?

 

[lucky9]

i once had some probs with an ati card. i ended up removing all their software, setting video to standard vga. rebooting and then reinstalling it WITHOUT their control panel. if you need that kind of functionality you can try it (latest version of course) then. it may work better than it used to. i had a lot of trouble with my old soundblaster live! model card. i took all of sb's softeware off the pc and using the windows drivers, first. then downloading the latest update of the sb stuff. it worked after all of that. i can't remember if i also moved the card to a different slot. there are some slots that used to have interupt probs. worth a try also.

 

[Audiofight]

Thanks for the attempt.....but this sound card is an ISA model, which doesn't give me a whole lot of room for moving around.....the Creative software isn't installed simply b/c there isn't any to install. No WinXP support on their site, but built-in WDM drivers. I will try to remove the ATi software and re-install it, but I believe I tried that sometime along the way.

I will have to bite the bullet and remove some of the PCI cards in hopes that it will be solved in a simple way like that....hopefully just the scsi card removal will be enough.

 

[nimo]

ATI TV isn't going to work properly in Winxp
Most BT chips on 3D rage, fly video etc?. are causing havoc with their software

As for the adapter it self just use the standard one that XP recognizes it self

For AWE try http://www.soundcard-drivers.com
I checked they have one driver for winxp it might work

 

[crypticlogin]

Even thought the AWE64's were PnP, I always had better luck shoehorning them into an IRQ slot instead of letting the BIOS/OS decide.
Of course, this was Win98SE and WinNT so I'm not exactly sure how different it'd be to do that in XP.

Speaking of which, have you told the BIOS to allow an IRQ to be assigned to an ISA slot?

 

[Audiofight]

I have tried to reserve a DMA and IRQ for the sound card, usually whatever one it is currently running on, but it will move around and everytime I try to manually re-assign it, I get an error message saying that I can't make changes.

I have nearly given up on the sound card and this finally solidifies my blacklisting of Creative. I had problems with their SBLive back in the day, having problems with this card now too. Not worth the work in order to get some form of sound to come out.....will prolly just buy a cheap PCI sound card w/ optical outputs, seems I can't find a cheap sound card with coaxial digital output.

 

[crypticlogin]

I have tried to reserve a DMA and IRQ for the sound card, usually whatever one it is currently running on, but it will move around and everytime I try to manually re-assign it, I get an error message saying that I can't make changes.

Well isn't that inconvenient. I guess that's another WinXP barrier designed to keep the end-user from fiddling with low-level things, huh.

I have nearly given up on the sound card and this finally solidifies my blacklisting of Creative. I had problems with their SBLive back in the day, having problems with this card now too.

To an extent, I'll agree with you there. I was pretty happy with my AWE64 gold but when I moved up to a newer board and lost my ISA slots, the SBLive install seemed go through without a hitch with a 70% chance. Nowadays, there are just too many other choices with comparable features that don't cost half of the Creative offerings.

Not worth the work in order to get some form of sound to come out.....will prolly just buy a cheap PCI sound card w/ optical outputs, seems I can't find a cheap sound card with coaxial digital output.

If I could offer a suggestion: the Philips Acoustic Edge with dongles (one of them includes coaxial digital out). I've seen them sell in the for sale forums for about $25 a few months back, and it's in that range on eBay now.

 

[lucky9]

An overview of resource usage in Msinfo32.exe can be found in the All Programs menu under Accessories, System Tools. Open the Hardware Resources in the console pane. Check the Conflicts/Sharing entry, and the Forced Hardware item.

XP, for legacy devices, can't assign some of them resources. You'll have to adjust jumpers or use a software-based setup/configuration utility to change resource settings for them.

I stole the above from MSWindowsXP Inside/Out.

Of course getting the latest Bios and driver may help. My old bx has a Bios that can be switched to Plug and Play, or not.

They also say that shifting cards can help (two at a time). Of course, I'd figure, like you, that lifes too short and buy another card. They've gotten very reasonable for a lot of power.

 

[lucky9]

An overview of resource usage in Msinfo32.exe can be found in the All Programs menu under Accessories, System Tools. Open the Hardware Resources in the console pane. Check the Conflicts/Sharing entry, and the Forced Hardware item.

XP, for legacy devices, can't assign some of them resources. You'll have to adjust jumpers or use a software-based setup/configuration utility to change resource settings for them.

I stole the above from MSWindowsXP Inside/Out.

Of course getting the latest Bios and driver may help. My old bx has a Bios that can be switched to Plug and Play, or not.

They also say that shifting cards can help (two at a time). Of course, I'd figure, like you, that lifes too short and buy another card. They've gotten very reasonable for a lot of power.

 

[lucky9]

Msinfo32.exe will get you to the sys info utility, All Programs menu, Accessories, System Tools. Hardware resources will show Conflicts/Sharing and the Forced Hardware items.

If there are conflicts with a legacy device you may have the option to reset a jumper. I don't think i'd hold my breath with a Creative card. There may be a software config tool that will help. Tho I don't know of one, it may exist.

But with the prices on cards nowadays, I'd buy and be done with it.