Vortex2 on i815 motherboard = problems

[tweakr]

Hey all

I've just put together a second PC using a MicroATX i815 board (Aopen MX3S), and put my Vortex2 soundcard into it. However, on bootup I get the message that the board is on a secondary PCI interface, and as such the DOS sound driver, midi/joystick port etc are not availible. I remember seeing this problam before, and I *think* a solution, but not sure where - any suggestions would be appreciated.

cheers
tweakr

 

[AndyHui]

The drivers say secondary PCI bus because of the new Accelerated Hub Architecture in the i8xx series of chipsets.

Make sure that you have the latest drivers from Vortex of Sound

Boot into Windows, delete all devices relating to the soundcard.

Open au30mmed.inf in WordPad (file is located in c:\windows\inf if you already installed the drivers), do a find for "disable", and you will jump to the following: (If you need Sound Blaster Emulation, ONLY remove the semi-colon in front of the "HKR,Config,DisableBusDetection,1,1" line, if not, make sure your file looks exactly like below)

[AspenOverides.Addreg]
; virtual devices
;HKR,Config,DisableJoystick,1,1
;HKR,Config,DisableMPU401,1,1
HKR,Config,DisableDOSModemPort,1,1
HKR,Config,DisableSBFM,1,1
HKR,Config,DisableRealModeLegacySBFM,1,1 HKR,Config,DisableRealModeLegacySBFMUsingREM,1,1 HKR,Config,DisableSBFMIRQLevel,1,1 HKR,Config,DisableSBFMIRQSharing,1,1 HKR,Config,DisableBusDetection,1,1
;a3d
;HKR,Config,EnableA3DReserve,1,1
;HKR,Config,NumHost3DBuffers,1,6
HKR,Config,Reserve2DSRC,1,8

Reboot.

Go into the the BIOS and see if you can reserve IRQ5.

When Windows boots up, it will now detect all other features of the card: MPU-401, gameport, and Sound Blaster Emulation (if you didn't remove the semi-colons in au30mmed.inf that disables this feature). When Windows asks for the driver when it detects your soundcard, point it to the au30mmed.inf file in the \windows\inf directory (this is the edited file).

Check your autoexec.bat and see if there is a "Set Blaster =" line and/or a "LH C:\WINDOWS\AU30DOS.COM" line. If you don't need SB emulation, rem these lines out.

 

[tweakr]

Thanks a lot Andy, worked first time 🙂 Apart from that little problem, which has nothing to do with the motherboard, this is a great wee system so far!

thanks again
tweakr