First post, by CkRtech
- Rank
- Oldbie
So I found a Sound Blaster 32 (CT3600) at a recycle place for just under $2. I picked it up, brought it home, and tried it in a test bench I am currently using (Asus SP97-V with Pentium 200 MMX). Didn't really get far with it as the speaker/headphone port had one cap that was blown (right channel out on amplifier) as well as a generally loose 1/8" jack. I replaced both the output caps on the amp as well as the output jack. This restored the right channel and provided better headphone connection, however there are a few other issues.
Windows 95 booting to DOS prompt -
1: For whatever version of Diagnose that I am use post-CTCU and CTCM, 8 bit testing works fine... but 16 bit testing plays back with LOUD - we are talking LOUD - static/noise over it. A220 I5 D1 H5. If I reconfigure the card to use DMA 1 instead of DMA 5 for the high channel, it is mostly cleaned up but still has a bit of static ever so briefly. So I seem to have definite issue with High DMA - but also a minor issue with low DMA during 16 bit playback.
Duke 3D plays all sounds under that same loud garbage. Changing the setup to be 8 bit cleans it right up. Leaving the other settings - 8 voices, 44 Khz, etc is fine.
2: AWEUTIL seems agreeable - at least for initialization and reverb/chorus changes. A newer version of it (with fewer options) just turns on deafening noise.
3: Adlib-sound works after using the earlier version of AWEUTIL to initialize.
4: WavEffects testing worked once for maybe 5 seconds - playing that little jam tune - and then dropped out leaving only soft volume, spacey sound fx behind. It was as if the instruments just decided to quit. All consecutive attempts since that point produce those weird sounds.
Games like DOOM, Wolfenstein 3-D, Epic Pinball, Jazz Jackrabbit, Commander Keen 4, etc, are fine.
I have been googling around a bit (and some of the results return me to a vogons thread), and I am uncertain as to what problem or problems I have. Some newsgroups mentioned the exact symptoms circa 1996 without a definitive solution.
No resource conflicts are noted from CTCU in DOS or in Windows 95 (after attempting to use Windows 95 to install/initialize the drivers) Windows 95 complains about a synth sbk file error load upon loading the OS. I have no RAM installed on the card.
