VOGONS


First post, by batmreload

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Was just curious if anybody's experienced sound problems with the sb line
of cards using 16-bit dma, and if so, how they solved it

For example, I have a Tyan S1854 Slot1/Socket 370. Its a decent board otherwise, Takes a
P3 1ghz, and has one ISA slot. Its based around a VIA chipset (of which ive heard mixed results
over the years)

System is fairly stable, yet any attempt so far to use an sb16/awe32 results in horrendous nosies
(pops and clicks) whenever the high dma channel is used. (EDIT: High dma on the ISA bus)

Again, was wondering if anybody looked further into the issue and determined if it had been the cpu,memory,
or the chipset itself that turned out to be causing the woes.

I'm about to swap out the mobo with an identical ,but new one hoping it was something that got
damaged in the 6 years its been in use since i bought it.

My philosophy when building retro systems is have an identical spare of everything but the case 😊

Reply 1 of 5, by orcish75

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Your ISA bus might be clocked too high. Check your BIOS settings if you can change it. Usually it should be set to PCICLK/4 (33.33/4=8.33MHz) or if it allows you to set it to an actual value then set it to around the 8.33MHz mark. Go slower if you have to in order to have no distortion in your sound.