blakespot wrote on 2023-12-31, 00:15:

weedeewee wrote on 2023-12-30, 20:43:

Can you post a close up photo of the solderpads of both 317T regulators ?

By no heat flaring, do you mean no discoloration, like no slight browning around hot components ? which is good.
look for any ring like patterns in the solder, those can form due to thermal variations and resoldering those points, adding a little solder, fixes that, if any exist.

Here's the shot.

bp

I was hoping for a shot of the other side of the card 😀

weedeewee wrote on 2023-12-31, 08:10:

blakespot wrote on 2023-12-31, 00:15:

weedeewee wrote on 2023-12-30, 20:43:

Can you post a close up photo of the solderpads of both 317T regulators ?

By no heat flaring, do you mean no discoloration, like no slight browning around hot components ? which is good.
look for any ring like patterns in the solder, those can form due to thermal variations and resoldering those points, adding a little solder, fixes that, if any exist.

Here's the shot.

bp

I was hoping for a shot of the other side of the card 😀

I might need to take a clearer shot -- took this yesterday.

bp

Also, I just took a proper, well lit photo of the front of the card.

UPDATED IMAGE LOCATION:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/blakespot/53434 … 24270/sizes/5k/

bp

Could it be system power?

What I did to the system recently, before all this started, was add a CF card adapter and 512MB NOS card to the IDE port on the mobo. It takes a 3.3/5v power in (floppy style) and I added that to the mix. The PSU I have is a 200 watt (max) from Bestec. I accidentally disconnected the CF adapter and CD-ROM drive power (same time) and the GUS worked. I reconnected and it stopped outputting sound. I then disconnected that power again -- still no sound, though.

What I have in the system:

- ASUS PVI-486SP3 mobo w/ 256K cache
- Adaptec ISA SCSI card
- GUS
- 3Com ISA ethernet board
- VLB Tseng ET4000/W32p gfx card
- 3.5" SCSI HD
- SCSI CD-ROM drive
- 3.5" floppy dirive
- 5.25" floppy drive
- 5x86 160 CPU and a fan for it

Latest move was disconnecting the spinning HD (must use more power than that CF card, right?) and still no sound... Am I too close to the edge on power, tho? As far as I know this PSU is same vintage as teh 486 mobo that came with it from eBay.

Thanks

blakespot wrote on 2023-12-30, 20:06:

Bad caps would show some kind of sign likely, right? Bulge or leak? I'd like to fix this and am wondering what my best approach is likely to be. Thanks.

I know what I'm going to reference isnt a GUS but my Media Vision PAS16 did the same thing and its caps looked perfectly fine and were quality Nichicon caps but they were original to the card. I pulled the 2 caps on the output circuits and they both failed a test. Replaced them with 2 new Nichicons and the sound came right back... so you cant judge caps even quality ones by your eyeball alone.

I probably should have replaced all the Nichicons on the card at that point but still havent.

Ok -- I think I have this tracked!

This all began when I opened the system and added a CF card / adapter to the mobo IDE controller (apparently VLBus tied). Through trial and error and accidental power cable coming loose -- all together -- it seems that when the CF Card on the IDE bus is powered, there is no audio from the GUS. When the CF card is unpowered, it works fine.

But...why?

I still have the 3.5" spinning HD in the system and I tried disconnecting it and also the CD-ROM drive power and just booting on the CF card, and STILL no GUS audio. So, it can't be power overrun, surely.

Is this some kind of DMA, IRQ overrun between the IDE controller and the GUS? Note that on line-out on GUS, with powerd speakers MAXED, I can hear the fainest of the playing tune coming out of the GUS when that CF card is active, so the GUS is working internally. That doesn't sound like DMA, IRQ issue. Also note when the CF card is powered, it is the boot volume -- and it has an exact copy of the DOS and config files from the spinning disk -- so there's no difference on the file content when starting DOS.

Any ideas? Thanks.

** UPDATE: This is nuts!!

So, the one different I guess I should have mentioned between the CF boot volume and the SCSI HD boot volume is that I have System Commander 7 installed on the HD and it controls the MBR. (I thought I wanted to run Win95 and DOS both here, but I do not any longer want the latter, so SC7 is just in the way, slows booting with its graphical menu.) As I said, I was seeing things work fine with the GUS audio out when booting off the HD, when the CF card is disconnected -- and that means booting thru SC7 (the DOS CF card lacks SC7 but all else on the disk is same - but standard boot record).

So, to clean things up, after seeing GUS work over and over booting off that HD, I did an "fdisk /mbr" to get rid of the SC7 boot menu, so it went right to DOS instead of first going thru its menu. When I tried to run the player to test -- NO SOUND from the GUS. I noticed that something in the startup config indicated that SC7 was rewriting its MBR, so when I rebooted, I expected and saw the SC7 menu back. When I go thru that to DOS, the GUS plays fine. I redid the "fdisk /mbr" and tried again -- no sound. Over and over.

So, if I get to DOS by first going thru the System Commander 7 menu (which then shuffles me off to a normal DOS startup with my autoexec, config, etc.) then things play fine. If I set the disk to boot straight to DOS with a DOS MBR in place, there is no GUS sound. How is this possible? And, confusingly, as I stated before, maxing volume on line-out connected powered speakers will let me hear super faint GUS audio -- so it's playing, but with no volume! In both cases, the same GUS config is being loaded, defined in autoexec.bat -- it's not as if there is some other config with a low volume set or some such.

I am confounded.

Do you have a multimeter? I'd check voltages from the PSU and on the motherboard, with and without the CF card.

I recently had an issue with a bad PSU that resulted in lower-than-normal audio volume coupled with distortion from sound cards.

If you have extra parts, another thing to do is swapping out parts like the PSU, CF adapter, etc. Basically rule out specific hardware one at a time.

blakespot wrote on 2024-01-01, 16:49:

** UPDATE: This is nuts!! […]
Show full quote

** UPDATE: This is nuts!!

So, the one different I guess I should have mentioned between the CF boot volume and the SCSI HD boot volume is that I have System Commander 7 installed on the HD and it controls the MBR. (I thought I wanted to run Win95 and DOS both here, but I do not any longer want the latter, so SC7 is just in the way, slows booting with its graphical menu.) As I said, I was seeing things work fine with the GUS audio out when booting off the HD, when the CF card is disconnected -- and that means booting thru SC7 (the DOS CF card lacks SC7 but all else on the disk is same - but standard boot record).

So, to clean things up, after seeing GUS work over and over booting off that HD, I did an "fdisk /mbr" to get rid of the SC7 boot menu, so it went right to DOS instead of first going thru its menu. When I tried to run the player to test -- NO SOUND from the GUS. I noticed that something in the startup config indicated that SC7 was rewriting its MBR, so when I rebooted, I expected and saw the SC7 menu back. When I go thru that to DOS, the GUS plays fine. I redid the "fdisk /mbr" and tried again -- no sound. Over and over.

So, if I get to DOS by first going thru the System Commander 7 menu (which then shuffles me off to a normal DOS startup with my autoexec, config, etc.) then things play fine. If I set the disk to boot straight to DOS with a DOS MBR in place, there is no GUS sound. How is this possible? And, confusingly, as I stated before, maxing volume on line-out connected powered speakers will let me hear super faint GUS audio -- so it's playing, but with no volume! In both cases, the same GUS config is being loaded, defined in autoexec.bat -- it's not as if there is some other config with a low volume set or some such.

I am confounded.

Could the sc7 mbr rewrite somehow mess up some gus card registers ?
When you say max volume, It's the volume control on the speakers that you're talking about, right ?
Have you tried verifying the GUS volume controls using ultramix ?
Might as well try running the unisound program to config the gus. UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.81b

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-01-01, 17:28:

Do you have a multimeter? I'd check voltages from the PSU and on the motherboard, with and without the CF card.

I recently had an issue with a bad PSU that resulted in lower-than-normal audio volume coupled with distortion from sound cards.

If you have extra parts, another thing to do is swapping out parts like the PSU, CF adapter, etc. Basically rule out specific hardware one at a time.

But, with my last discovery, the presence of the CF card powered on does not affect things after all. It seems to be whether or not I boot through System Commander 7 or not that determines if it works. Which makes no sense. But, here we are. It's not power, it seems.

blakespot wrote on 2024-01-01, 19:16:

But, with my last discovery, the presence of the CF card powered on does not affect things after all. It seems to be whether or not I boot through System Commander 7 or not that determines if it works. Which makes no sense. But, here we are. It's not power, it seems.

That's good news as it points to a software and not hardware issue.

That said, that's a bit of a mystery as to why System Commander 7 would have that effect on the GUS.

Ok, I have further simplified this. What I'm about to show will probably reveal the error to someone reading this, I'm guessing.

So, forgetting everything about possible power issues (that's not it, proven) and taking System Commander out of the way, here is what we have:

I have the CF card on IDE booting DOS 6.22 with a boot menu. There are two options to choose from, one is with QEMM loaded and configured, the other is without. At every boot, the GUS plays audio normally on the QEMM-enabled choice (with its own section in autoexec.bat and config.sys, of course). When choosing the other QEMM-less option at the boot menu (which is what I usually use for watching scenedemos and playing games), the GUS does not output audio normally. Here, I include the contents of the two files, nothing that the Ultrasound-specific portion is in the @common area, loaded in both scenarios. Please take a look.

>>>>> AUTOEXEC.BAT:
@ECHO OFF
ECHO.
GOTO %CONFIG%

:qemm
C:\QEMM\LOADHI /R:2 /LO C:\DOS\SMARTDRV 8192 /X /V
rem C:\QEMM\LOADHI /R:2 C:\DOS\KEYB DK,865,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
ECHO.
rem C:\QEMM\LOADHI /R:2 C:\MOUSE\MSCMOUSE /1 /A3
rem C:\QEMM\LOADHI /R:2 C:\DOS\DOSKEY /INSERT
rem C:\QEMM\LOADHI /R:2 C:\DOS\NLSFUNC C:\DOS\COUNTRY.SYS
GOTO common

:himem
C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE 8192 /V /X
@REM nothing

:common
@if exist c:\checkmbr.exe c:\checkmbr quiet (Validate MBR, not a TSR)
@REM ===== Gravis initialization (4.00) =====
@SET ULTRASND=220,1,1,7,5
@SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRASND
@SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T1
@C:\ULTRASND\ULTRINIT.EXE -ej
@REM ===== Gravis initialization ends =====
SET MTCPCFG=c:\mtcp\tcp.cfg

>>>>> CONFIG.SYS:
[menu]
MENUITEM=qemm,QEMM
MENUITEM=himem,HIMEM
MENUCOLOR=7,0

[common]
NUMLOCK=OFF
BREAK=ON
FILES=90
FCBS=1,0
BUFFERS=10,0
LASTDRIVE=J
STACKS=9,256
rem COUNTRY=045,865,C:\DOS\COUNTRY.SYS

[qemm]
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\DOSDATA.SYS
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS R:1 RAM
rem DEVICE=C:\QEMM\DOS-UP.SYS @C:\DOS-UP.DAT
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.SYS /R:2 C:\QEMM\QDPMI.SYS SWAPFILE=DPMI.SWP SWAPSIZE=1024
rem DEVICE=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.SYS /R:2 C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 32767 /E
SHELL=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.COM /R:2 C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS\ /E:2048 /P

[himem]
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICEHIGH /L:1,12464 =C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE

Does anything strike anyone, here? Many thanks!

Ok, while the above post is true and accurate, I found a much simpler case of works vs. doesn't work -- and it's more confounding. QEMM has nothing to do with it, it turns out.
Check this out:

Here are two options in my MSDOS 6.22 boot menu I've isolated. One is "himemcd" and the other is "himem." The former loads the CD-ROM driver, where the latter does not.

>>>>> AUTOEXEC.BAT

1:himemcd
2C:\DOS\MSCDEX /D:MSCD1_2 /M:4
3C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE 8192 /V /X
4
5:himem
6C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE 8192 /V /X
7@REM nothing
8
9:common
10@if exist c:\checkmbr.exe c:\checkmbr quiet (Validate MBR, not a TSR)
11@REM ===== Gravis initialization (4.00) =====
12@SET ULTRASND=220,1,1,7,5
13@SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRASND
14@SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T1
15@C:\ULTRASND\ULTRINIT.EXE -ej
16@REM ===== Gravis initialization ends =====
17SET MTCPCFG=c:\mtcp\tcp.cfg

>>>>> CONFIG.SYS:

1[common]
2NUMLOCK=OFF
3BREAK=ON
4FILES=90
5FCBS=1,0
6BUFFERS=10,0
7LASTDRIVE=J
8STACKS=9,256
9rem COUNTRY=045,865,C:\DOS\COUNTRY.SYS
10
11[himemcd]
12DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
13DOS=HIGH,UMB
14DEVICEHIGH /L:1,12464 =C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
15DEVICE=C:\DOS\ASPI4DOS.SYS /D
16DEVICE=C:\DOS\ASPICD.SYS /D:MSCD1_2
17
18[himem]
19DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
20DOS=HIGH,UMB
21DEVICEHIGH /L:1,12464 =C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE

The Gravis Ultrasound board operates normally under "himemcd" but is not audibly outputting sound under "himem," and the only difference is the loading of CD-ROM related drivers and EXE. (To clarify -- things work only if the CD-ROM driver is being loaded.) In fact, even if I REM out line 2 of the AUTOEXEC.BAT listing in the "himemcd" section in order to not load MSCDEX.EXE, the GUS still works normally. (Also note that the CD-ROM audio output is not attached to the GUS -- there is no direct connection in place presently for audio coming in to the GUS from the CD-ROM. Also note system has 32MB RAM installed.)

AND what makes this insane is the fact that when the card is "not working," the system can see the card, my DOS modplayer thinks its playing MODS on the card, and on the line-out output of the card, when I turn amplified Audioengine A5 external speakers to MAX, I can hear the proper music playing at an incredibly whisper faint level!

TL;DR on the thread is that I've moved the contents of the old book HD to a new boot CF card -- this time going straight to DOS on boot (with the same autoexec, config, etc.), whereas on the old disk I was booting into System Commander 7 first, then clicking thru to DOS. In that scenario, the choosing the "himem" boot menu option drove the GUS just fine -- so something SC7 was doing to memory must have had a (positive) impact on things, as the GUS never had issue there. I no longer want to use SC7, is part of this move.

I hope this powers on a lightbulb in the mind of someone who knows the intricacies of DOS configuration better than I. Thanks.

Workaround / fix found.

I do not have any idea what is causing this, that the GUS is not outputting sound normally (nearly silently as described in the previous post) when I just boot in with HIMEM.SYS and nothing else, but I used ULTRAMIX to check the output levels of the board. All inputs and outputs are set to 0 at boot, I saw (the range is -59 to 0, the max volume being 0), so that seemed not at issue, but I went ahead and issues and "ULTRAMIX o0" which is to set the general output to level 0 (even though the program shows that to be the current level). I then brought up my modplayer and -- BOOM -- things work as expected.

Why the loading of a CD-ROM Driver somehow prevented the audio levels from getting out of whack is beyond me, but I added the aforementioned command to my autoexec.bat, and I am now back with sound in the DOS boot profile of my choice.

If it works, it works, I guess. So very, very odd.

Anyway, thanks for the help along the way.

bp

ASPI4DOS.SYS
ASPICD.SYS

SCSI CDROM

Which IO addresses, (interrupts, DMA channels) are your GUS & SCSI card using ?