What is DMA? Also, no sound on TV Wonder

[crantang]

Hey guys

Here's the dilly... I have the ATI TV Wonder, not the value edition (VE). It was working totally fine for a few weeks and tonight I started it up but there was no sound. It's weird, because just a half hour before that, I was using it with no problems. Here are the relevant specs...

Win 98
ECS K7S5A
3D Prophet II MX w/TV 32MB
ATI TV Wonder
MMC version 2.

Weird though, because the CD Player is version 6.2 or something, and that part still works. There's sound in every part of the computer except for the TV. I've tried installing the new MMC but for some reason (maybe because I didn't know what the $@#! I was doing, it didn't work. It kept telling me that my video card is not recent enough.

Do you have any ideas or suggestions? I hate this TV card. Maybe they call it "Wonder" because you WONDER when it'll work again, or if it'll work at all...

In my device manager, under sound controllers, there are 3 "ATI WDM Teletext Decoders," and 3 "Specialized PCD WDM VBI Codecs." What are these things? Do I need three of them?

P.S. What is DMA? Should I enable it for my ZIP drive?

Thanks guys in advance!

 

[Zlash]

DMA is direct memory access, it'll allow your zip drive to access memory without going through the CPU first.

 

[jiffylube1024]

yeah DMA makes drives run a lot faster. For example, one of the leading causes of DVD-stutter is because DMA is disabled for the DVD drive.

If you can enable DMA on the zip, then by all means do it!

 

[crantang]

Bump

Please help!!

 

[RussDogg]

no sound on TV wonder usually means that you have to hook an audio cable from the vid card to the sound card.

 

[crantang]

Hi Russ

It's already hooked up. I know I did it right because I had sound for three weeks until that day it messed up. I hadn't opened the case or rearranged anything since then. Any other suggestions?

Thanks for responding!