You did turn up the volume using that knob? 😉
Do any of the ICs get really hot?
Do games detect it?

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. I have just finished testing them:

1) I have turned the volume knob clockwise and anti-clockwise.

2) I ran a DOS game, and then waited for 1 minute. I then pressed my fingers on to every IC, and felt nothing really hot. Is this a good or a bad sign?

3) The good news is that I ran Jukebox.exe, and it did not display any warning message about a missing Adlib card. (I removed the card, and reran Jukebox.exe, and it showed a warning message about a missing Adlib card.)

ICs *can* get really hot when broken. It would have been a suspect.

Since the card is detected the digital logic and the YM3812 are at least partially functional.

With a multimeter you could check the resistors (with a limitation since they are soldered in - the values should be less or equal to their markings). The card is not plugged in for that.

If no results an oscilloscope will be required...

OK thanks, I will dig out my multimeter tomorrow morning and use it. Please forive my ignorance, but can you tell me roughly what to do with the multimeter -

1) What dial selection do I set on the multimeter? (I've only used it a couple of times - I can't remember anything about it!)
2) For each resistor, where do I put the red and black probes?
3) Do I have to be careful when I do this - if I make a mistake, could I break something?
4) Where are the resistors? On the sound card, are they just the yellow things? Or are they the stripey things? Or both?
5) I can see some tiny writing on the yellow things. The very small yellow things have 472 written on them. The slightly larger yellow things have 106 +16K written on them. When I use the multimeter, am I looking to see if the reading given is less or equal than 472, and less or equal than 106? Is that the idea?

Thanks a lot for any help on this. I really appreciate it.

1) In the Ohms range, depending on the value of the resistor.
2) The resistor has only two conductors - but it may be of some relevance to check both directions as they are still soldered in
3) (sound card not to be powered while you do that)
4) the stripey things
5) The stripes decode to values, see http://blog.lib.umn.edu/willow/makingartinter … /resistors.html
I.e. brown-black-black-gold decodes to 10 ohms.

Thanks a lot for the info. I just found my MM. I set its dial to 200k, within the "horse shoe shaped" range. Looking at the Adlib photo above, I tested the two resistors which are closest to the headphone socket. I think the colour code on these two resistors are: Brown Black Black Gold, which you say is 10 Ohms.

I switched on the MM, and the read out said 1. For each resistor tested, I put the red probe on the top metal leg, and black probe on the bottom metal leg. The reading then changed from 1 to 0.00. Is this correct? Or should the reading say something else? I tried reversing the probes, so that the red probe went on the bottom leg, and the black probe went on the top leg, but the reading obtained was the same.

You set the meter to 200K, so the displayed value is in KiloOhms
10 Ohms is 0.01KOhm so the reading could be correct. But it's not a very accurate measurement 😉

Set the meter to 200 (without the K), then the display should read 10 ohms or less.

Thanks a lot. I set the MM dial to 200, and tried testing the first two resistors closest to the headphone socket again. The reading I get is now 10.3 and 10.2. Is that good enough? Tomorrow, I will test all of the other resistors. I found a program on the net which can tell you what ohms value corresponds to what colours are seen inside a resistor. It's here, on a website called doctronics.

If your DMM displays "1" but on the left side of the display by itself, that means the value is out of range for the current setting.

E.g: For measuring resistance, you will see "1" if you measure a 200 Kohm resistor on the 200 ohm setting, because 200,000 can't be displayed on a 0-200 scale.

And if you see 0, don't immediately assume the resistor is dead, it could just be that the resistor's value is too small for the current setting.

Thanks a lot for the info. I am now testing all of the remaining resistors. Using the colour code converter software mentioned above, I am testing resistor labelled "R4" on the PCB with this colour code:

Brown Red Orange Gold.

According the colour code converter software, this is 12K Ohms. My reading says 12.49. Is this too high? Also, I am testing resistor "R13" with this colour code:

Grey Red Red Gold.

According the colour code converter software, this is 8.2K Ohms. My reading says 6.1. Is this too low? Also, the Brown Black Orange Gold combo (resistor R10) is supposed to be 10K Ohms, but my reading says 6.68. Another identical resistor (R9) elsewhere reads 9.97, so I wonder why this first one reads 6.79?

Last question - how do I test the "funny looking" resistor at location D1. It looks different to the others. To see it, please look at the AdLib text on the PCB in the photo above, then look 1 inch to the right. Thanks a lot.

D1 looks like diode. It lets current flow only in one direction...

On dosforum.de a guy resurrected a DOA SB 2.0 clone card. He replaced all the caps.

If your card gets detected just fine and games play, I'm guessing that you could work backwards from the headphone output. The Yamaha OPL2 will have the amplified signal on a few pins, so all you need are two clamps and hook them up to the correct pins and you might get a faint signal.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

(.....) all you need are two clamps and hook them up to the correct pins and you might get a faint signal.

Please can you explain this in more detail? I don't understand what you are describing. Thanks a lot.

> ... this is 12K Ohms. My reading says 12.49.
It's okay, both resistor and multimeter have a tolerance.

> this is 8.2K Ohms. My reading says 6.1
This can happen because the resistors are still soldered in. Other components are in parallel and falsify the measuerement. The results can only tell that a resistor is bad, not that it is good.

If a value reads a lot higher than it should be, it would be an error.

> The Yamaha OPL2 will have the amplified signal on a few pins

No, the YM3812 has digital output.
(And are you sure you want RG100 to handle clamps on a powered board? 😉 )

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

> The Yamaha OPL2 will have the amplified signal on a few pins

No, the YM3812 has digital output.
(And are you sure you want RG100 to handle clamps on a powered board? 😉 )

🤣 Hal's got a point there. I think someone once called me "destroyer of old hardware".

Ooops sorry guys. Didn't do my homework before posting 😦

I used an 8ohm speaker with a probe to try to diagnose my AdLib clone. I found the digital output by accident, it's a recognizable but very distorted rendition of your audio. I still haven't fixed it though, I think the DAC is stuffed.

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

If no results an oscilloscope will be required...

I have finished testing all of the resistors, and unfortunately I have not seen a single reading on the MM to suggest that any of them are bad. I understand that the next testing step is to use an oscilloscope. I typed in that word in to ebay, and thousands of results were returned. Please can you suggest what type I should look for, when browsing ebay? Thanks a lot.

Edit: Corrected a spelling mistake. (oscilloscope)

RG100 have you inspected those yellow bead things? They are tantalum capacitors and are fairly notorious for failing. I had one explode just inches from my face once on an old 286 motherboard 😜

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

On dosforum.de a guy resurrected a DOA SB 2.0 clone card. He replaced all the caps.

Was his card detected by the driver setup at all? I've got one that's stone dead and doesn't get detected.
If his card was behaving in a similar way I might replace the caps and see if that fixes it.

I've also got a working one, but it wouldn't hurt having two 😀 Otherwise I've got a set of the CMS upgrade chips sitting here doing nothing...