Cant remember if 3.11 stalls without a cable or if it cant find a DHCP server. either way /n gets around this. I can check tonight for you though.
Also wanted to check, do you get no sound in Dos AND windows or just windows?
If dos isn't running smoothly Windows doesn't stand a chance

No sound in DOS. Haven't checked / couldn't check Windows yet.

Most games simply accept the sound card values and play no sound, Duke3d setup apparently checks a bit further and complains about DMA not working. I've tried every available DMA channel.

FM sound and AWE32 both work fine.

Consistent behaviour with two different sound cards (AWE32 PnP and Opti 929).

chinny22 wrote:

Cant remember if 3.11 stalls without a cable or if it cant find a DHCP server. either way /n gets around this.

Perhaps this is card or board specific, because I didn't have a problem with it on all my builds. Did find a note for my p5tx-bpro - "win3.11fwg hangs at splash if default install. installed without networking to avoid that problem."

As you can imagine, it doesn't take much to confuse windows 3.x So can imagine some of the more exotic hardware causing problems, but even a good basic NE2000 card wont let windows boot if it cant find what it's looking for.

The fact that sound in DOS doesn't work means this isn't a happy PC.
Fist step is to get dos working properly. If it was me I would wipe the disk and start again.
(If you want to back the original PC up its as simple file copy onto another HDD/PC whatever, the only files that wont copy across properly are the sys files but typing sys c: a: will back these up to a floppy for you)

I would install Dos then the AWE 32 drivers from the original creative installer which can still be found on their web site.
This will configure the Autoexec and config.sys files for you. the CT3980 is a PNP card so should be pretty straight forward.
Test a few games and make sure you have sound, mouse, etc.
Plug the network card back in and double check everything works as it did before.
If everything is working fine maybe back up the system here, Just dumping it onto your CF card will do for now.
Install WFW and hopefully It'll pick up the network card. 1 thing to look out for is NE2000 is a standard not an actual card, some company's cards are able to use the generic drivers better then others.
If WFW no longer boots restore the backup pre windows install and try again with no network card. If Windows starts we know its the Network card/drivers.
Installing/removing hardware in 3.x doesn't really work so always recommend a clean build after a hardware change

I'm using the AWE as I'm more familiar with it but if the Shuttle HOT-233 has a nice installer use whichever you like

Wow. Yeah, that seems like a pretty good plan of action!

Will try a different ISA slot for the sound card first. Then try the DOS reinstall.

chinny22 wrote:

I'm using the AWE as I'm more familiar with it but if the Shuttle HOT-233 has a nice installer use whichever you like

Yeah, it does have a Windows-like configuration tool, pretty straightforward. I assume it's not PnP but doesn't have jumpers either, configuration is done by software.

The OPL3 of the Shuttle card blows the AWE's OPL out of the water! And it's less noisy too. So I will use this one in the final configuration if at all possible. Maybe add a nice daughterboard in the future.

So, moving the sound card to a different slot didn't work, as expected.

Will try reinstalling DOS tomorrow...

Ah, forgot the answer regarding the Windows switches.

It's weird. It seems that Windows is starting normally, but not reacting to any input devices, i.e. it's not locking up. With /n, it got to the point that program manager shows normally. It even created the program group for the AWE, because I installed the AWE drivers from DOS beforehand. But I can't move the mouse, use the keyboard or switch to another PC on the KVM until I turn the machine off.

I have generated a bootlog.txt, but it doesn't show anything out of the ordinary.

Have you tried going into the windows setup program to ensure that the correct mouse and keyboard type are selected?

Pretty certain, but will look again.

3.1 works with the same settings, so there's that.

Checked my WFW this morning
Unplug network cable form the switch (Also DHCP server) Windows hangs
Win /n boots fine
Add an static IP windows still hangs if cable isn't plugged into the switch.

My 486 with a serial mouse would loose the mouse after a bit, running ctmouse again would kick it back into life. never had a keyboard not working.
Sounds like something is conflicting with something else in the WFW setup, although for the time it would take to go through and check everything I would still just blow it away and start afresh.

So...

reinstalled DOS, installed basic drivers for the AWE32, nothing else, aaaaand: still no sound 🙁

grarglblarglargh

Why, why, WHY?!?

Duke3d setup says: Playback failed, possibly due to an invalid or conflicting DMA channel.

Don't know if that has anything to do with anything. I've tested several DMA channels.

chinny22 wrote:

Checked my WFW this morning Unplug network cable form the switch (Also DHCP server) Windows hangs Win /n boots fine Add an stati […]
Show full quote

Checked my WFW this morning
Unplug network cable form the switch (Also DHCP server) Windows hangs
Win /n boots fine
Add an static IP windows still hangs if cable isn't plugged into the switch.

Said so!...🤣

PS: I spent first two years of my work life (1993-1995) setting up NT 3.51/ WFW 3.11 networks (over thin net, no less). 😈

So, where can I go from here? I've run out of options / don't know what to test anymore 🙁

tayyare wrote:

Said so!...🤣

PS: I spent first two years of my work life (1993-1995) setting up NT 3.51/ WFW 3.11 networks (over thin net, no less). 😈

Yeh, also knew /n would do the trick, Was very common problem at our school. Just couldn't remember if the cable just had to be attached to the PC as a work around, or if it had to actually see the network to boot.
Never seen NT3.x in the wild, was it any good?

Back on topic, if you run Diagnose from where you installed the AWE drivers do you get anything? It will default to whatever the set blaster line in autoexec.bat is but if it doesn't work you can test any of the other settings from within the program apart from the IRQ which is a jumper on the card itself.

chinny22 wrote:

Back on topic, if you run Diagnose from where you installed the AWE drivers do you get anything? It will default to whatever the set blaster line in autoexec.bat is but if it doesn't work you can test any of the other settings from within the program apart from the IRQ which is a jumper on the card itself.

Dunno, will try.

It's a PnP card, no IRQ jumpers there.

CTCU tells me no conflicts.

chinny22 wrote:

Yeh, also knew /n would do the trick, Was very common problem at our school. Just couldn't remember if the cable just had to be attached to the PC as a work around, or if it had to actually see the network to boot.
Never seen NT3.x in the wild, was it any good?

What was NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 (and later Windows server editions) for their respective time, NT 3.51 was exactly that for that era. You can think it as a Windows NT 4.0 with Windows 3.x GUI. 🤣

chinny22 wrote:

Back on topic, if you run Diagnose from where you installed the AWE drivers do you get anything? It will default to whatever the set blaster line in autoexec.bat is but if it doesn't work you can test any of the other settings from within the program apart from the IRQ which is a jumper on the card itself.

So, Diagnose works and plays sound. So why, why, WHY doesn't this work in games? Either they play no sound or they hang.

oerk wrote:

Is it possible that DMA is not working at all in this machine, or under certain circumstances? I'm asking this because OPL3 and AWE work, and AFAIK those don't need a DMA channel. That would also explain why Windows hangs with a bluescreen if I enable 32-bit disk access in setup, which I assume has something to do with DMA.

I don't know if this is still relevant, but 32-bit disk access has nothing to do with DMA. Floppy drives use DMA if you want something you can test.

If that's a consolation, the problem doesn't seem to be new: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.sy … a4/QPM9MO-9JzIJ
(sound fx don't work in PS/1000 machine. No solution, though.)
FGB says he used GUS Max, SB-Pro 2 and SCC-1 in his PS/1000: http://www.amoretro.com/viewtopic.php?t=4
Hmm, did you try the lower (8-bit) DMA? Perhaps there is an issue with 16-bit DMA?

Ahh, ok. Floppy drive works.

I will contact FGB. That's pretty much my best bet at the moment. If the one he had in ebay was the one he was talking about in this post, that's a different model without VLB.

Yes, I've tried several games in (original) Soundblaster mode, doesn't work either.

Hi,
got your message, here I am.

Beautiful tower, the archtype of all IBM workstation towers.

I have one similar PS/1000 tower with a BlueLightning 50MHz part @66MHz and one same spare motherboard / main unit with video board and VLB riser card.

Few answers: The VLB slots are very good for replacing the somewhat slow Cirrus card. For my liking a good S3 or Tseng card is much better.
The CPU socket next to the DLC is a regular 486 socket. One can go the route up to DX4 with voltage converter board. Handy if one needs a Copro which the otherwise quick BlueLightning CPU lacks.

Regarding the soundcards:

The cards I installed work troubleless. I can offer you to built a system and test several sound cards with my spare board as I have no access to my finished PS/1000 tower at the moment.
I can't remember any DMA and/or sound related problems with this machine. All went straight forward. I had no NIC installed.

Best regards
Fabian