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Dead Mach64 and frozen AWE32

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First post, by Scythifuge

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Greetings,

I received a socket 7 mobo with CPU and RAM from ebay in order to test my cards that were connected to my Zida 4DPS that died.

CF-IDE adapter works, as do both CF cards.

ATI Mach64 PCI displays no picture. Spare ATI (I think Mach32) does.

AWE32 (CT2760,) when using DIAGNOSE, detects the card at the base address, and then freezes. CT-whatever doesn't detect any PnP cards.

I haven't tested my Roland MPU-IPC-T yet. I am afraid.

Examining the AWE32 card fails to reveal anything out of the ordinary. Capacitors look fine. There are no electrical burn marks.

Is there anything I can try? Can cards like this be repaired? I ordered a CT3990 from ebay because the price is right, but it could be DOA for all I know.

What are my options if the Roland is dead? I use it to connect my MT-32. It seems that modern cards that support the breakout box are rare (there is a newer card on ebay, but it is for the mpu-401 box.) I found a possible replacement that is less than $200, and the rest are much more than that. I just read about SoftMPU, so I may try that. However, I enjoyed owning the hardware.

Scythifuge

Reply 1 of 5, by cyclone3d

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Did you try swapping out the power supply?

What power supply were you using with your old board?

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Reply 2 of 5, by Scythifuge

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-03-03, 16:42:

Did you try swapping out the power supply?

What power supply were you using with your old board?

The same PSU. I don't have access to a spare PSU just yet, though with the same PSU, I can boot up the Pentium board and the spare ATI card is working. I am trying to get more spare parts for further testing.

I was using an AT-ATX adapter with the Zida 4DPS.

Reply 3 of 5, by Scythifuge

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I just tested my Roland MPU-IPC-T, with Ultima - The Savage Empire. My MT-32 started blinking and displayed "Origin Sound System," so it seems as though the card was spared. *WHEW!*

So it is just the Mach64 that appears dead, and the AWE32 that freezes after being detected at 220. I forgot to mention that when I first tested the AWE32 with DIAGNOSE, it gave an error concerning IRQ5 (then froze,) and now locks up right before getting to the IRQ selection stage.

Reply 4 of 5, by Scythifuge

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Another thing I forgot to mention - the Wave Blaster that was connected to the AWE32 still works. I found a spare SB16 and tested it on that with Dark Sun - Shattered Lands with General Midi selected for music. So something happened to the AWE32 card when it comes to interrupts.

Reply 5 of 5, by SirNickity

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Who knows. Could be the bus controller chip got fried -- wouldn't necessarily be visible damage. It's always possible to start swapping components from a donor board, but 1) you need a donor board with functional parts, but that has otherwise failed for some reason (otherwise, why not just use the donor board?); 2) you need to be capable of SMD rework; 3) no guarantees it'll help.

At least the Roland boards were big chunky things with a number of common generic ICs. That's the one most likely to be repairable. (But also most rare, so glad it's OK!)

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