No FX possible solution for VLB bus boards
Patric Schirrmann
partial solution for a problem, that seems relatively common here.
After buying a 16 bit soundcard with a wavetable add-on, I experienced
immediately problems mainly with my games. I had no sound fx in games
like DOOM, Tie Fighter. All games with stereo sound fx (my card is SBpro
compatible in DOS) showed the same symptoms: the fx vanished after 5 seconds
to 5 minutes. After weeks of trying different settings and BIOS setups, I
lost my hope ever to find a cure. But...
Yesterday I stumbled over the manual for my motherboard and by random I saw
the following: " Vesa Local Bus Devices Compatibility Setup "
A soundcard is no VLB device, but the bus is definitely connected (don't
know how, I'm no hardware expert) to the normal ISA bus.
And behold: after fiddling around with the jumpers the problem is nearly
gone. The manual doesn't say anything about the meaning of the different
jumper settings or what they do.
The whole thing consists of two jumpers on the board with three different
settings. Obviously the default setting was the worst (makes you think,
doesn't it?). The next setting seemed ok for Doom, but the sound in Tie
was breaking up after 2 or 3 minutes. Now I'm working with the third
setting. It is okay for 20 to 30 minutes of undisturbed playing
as far as I tested it last night.
It's not the perfect solution, but better than sound fx for 2 seconds.
I will mess around with DMA and IRQ settings again, as soon as I have the
time.
So, everybody who is deperate enough to change jumper settings on the
motherboard to solve the FX problem and different IRQ and DMA settings
hadn't helped, look for something like
"VLB compatibility..." in your manual.
But let me say this: Your the only responsible person if anything
unexpected happens.
Don't come to me, I just reported what I have found.
It seems that this problem is anchored deep in the unknown depths of my
motherboard. Well, it's an old board (UMC I think), and I had problems from
the day I bought it. Next spring is the time for me to get a new one.
So, and here is my setup:
486 DX2 66 Intel CPU on a UMC(?) VLB motherboard
AMI Bios (1992?)
8 MB Ram
SPEA Mirage VLB graphic card with 1 MB RAM
(I had problems too with this device, which now are also cured)
Terratec Maestro 16 soundcard with wavetable add-on
(german product with an Opti-16 chip, SbPro or Windows Sound System-
compatible under Dos)
VLB-I/O-controller (Pine?, cheap and bad)
So, you see my system consists mainly of old and cheap parts, and perhaps
I'm the only one who can use my solution, but I hope I could give a
hint for the right direction to search.
Comments? Questions?
All is welcome.
Patric