Two Sound Blaster 16 (CT2940) cards, both with crackling in right channel \ VOGONS

Two Sound Blaster 16 (CT2940) cards, both with crackling in right channel

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First post, by Reputator

Posted on 2016-10-12, 01:21

Reputator Offline

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My motherboard is Socket 462 running a VIA KT133A chipset. It has one ISA slot, and it's the only board I own with one. I bought a CT2940 which exhibited crackling in the right channel when playing PCM sound effects (FM music seems fine). So I bought another one since they're cheap, and it does the same thing.

IRQ is set to 5, Low DMA 1, High DMA 5, Address 220. Motherboard's onboard sound is disabled, BIOS defaults reset multiple times (PnP feature has to be disabled for the sound card to even work). I'm running Windows 98 SE with drivers from VOGONS.

Here's a sound recording of the issue:

https://soundcloud.com/nathan-mayer-387886261 … ct2940crackling

I tried both speakers and direct headphones connected. Tried both line-out and speaker out. Tried disabling all integrated peripherals. Different graphics cards in case of interference. I'm starting to wonder if there's some quirky compatibility issue with my board. Has anyone encountered anything like this?

https://www.youtube.com/c/PixelPipes
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Reply 1 of 5, by firage

Posted on 2016-10-12, 01:27

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Wouldn't be surprised if it was the chipset. That doesn't help much I guess. No other system you could try them in?

My big-red-switch 486

Reply 2 of 5, by Reputator

Posted on 2016-10-12, 01:32

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Sadly no. This is my first swing at a DOS gaming desktop, so this was the motherboard I chose. I could try updating my chipset drivers, but I'm not sure that would have any effect in MS-DOS mode, would it?

EDIT: Tried updating VIA chipset drivers, as well as the BIOS to the latest one I could find online. No changes.

Might be crazy, but I'm thinking about just buying a nicer SB16 with a Yamaha OPL3 chip on it. I'd hate to spend more and have the same issue, but I don't like the idea of buying another motherboard either.

https://www.youtube.com/c/PixelPipes
Graphics Card Database

Reply 3 of 5, by firage

Posted on 2016-10-12, 05:01

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Yeah, an earlier SB16 might act differently; there are some pretty significant differences between them.

Maybe try a lower FSB to see if that changes anything. And changing BIOS settings like spectrum spread, ISA clock, ISA I/O wait/recovery time.

My big-red-switch 486

Reply 4 of 5, by mastergamma12

Posted on 2016-10-12, 05:06

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I remember encountering this bug with a Vibra 16 under a DFI PA61 (Now discarded) which had a VIA 693/596b.

That board was also a buggy piece of trash.

The Tuala-Bus (My 9x/Dos Rig) (Pentium III-S 1.4ghz, AWE64G+Audigy 2 ZS, Voodoo5 5500, Chieftec Dragon Rambus)

The Final Lan Party (My Windows Xp/7 rig) (Core i7 980x, GTX 480,DFI Lanparty UT X58-T3eH8,)
Re: Post your 'current' PC

Reply 5 of 5, by Reputator

Posted on 2016-10-12, 11:31

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firage wrote:
Yeah, an earlier SB16 might act differently; there are some pretty significant differences between them.

Maybe try a lower FSB to see if that changes anything. And changing BIOS settings like spectrum spread, ISA clock, ISA I/O wait/recovery time.

Thanks for the suggestions. My board gives me lots of options for PCI, not so much for ISA. I did try enabling spread spectrum and clocking down the FSB to 100, to no avail.

https://www.youtube.com/c/PixelPipes
Graphics Card Database

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