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First post, by Blades

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Basically the issue is this. I upgraded from a SS7 board to a ACORP 6VIA81P/6BX/VIA/ZX81 slot 1 motherboard. Currently houses a PIII733, 128 SD 133MHZ RAM, Geforce 4MX 420 AGP with ISA Sound Blaster Awe 32 (CT3780)Non PNP and Running Dos 7.1 No Windows.

I chose this board because it supports Floppy A and B(so i could have 3.5 and 5 1/4. Where most of the BX chipset Slot 1 only support 1 Floppy drive).

I have had zero issues with the Soundcard on my other motherboards. The jest of the problem is, that it will play sounds and GM just fine, but when i play music "MOD" 's(in any MOD player program) or fire up Duke 3d or Shadow Warrior,ROTT i get this horrible clicking sound out of the right speaker while the game is loading and then in the game(game plays fine and sounds are as they should be, it just clicks like crazy). Sometimes its a constant ticking, and other times random pops depending on what is going on with the game or music player at the time and only right speaker. But it doesn't do it for all the software, If i play Doom,Wolf etc, no issues there, it plays ADLIB, MIDI files no issues. SBAWE32 Diagnose programs works just fine. And this soundcard works great in other motherboards.

Now just to be sure i have installed a differnt soundcard SB16(with jumpers) does the exact same thing with the clicking. However if i put in a SoundBlaster AWE64 that is PNP(that is the key as this clicking issue isn't there when there is a PNP ISA sound card plugged in), then there are no issues then. It seems to be only soundcards that have selectable(jumper) NON-PNP that have the issue.

I have tried different Port, IRQ, DMA, software combo I can think, disabled Joystick and MPU and changed everything on the sound card and still an issue. I tried the other two ISA slots, and still issue. I put in different RAM, CPU and Video card. Still clicking, but I wonder if this Motherboard just doesn't like certain cards. I have even reserved the DMA, IRQ and PORT in the BIOS for Legacy ISA cards(or let it handle as AUTO), and it still does it.

Yes I could just run the AWE64 Value PNP, but I am married to my SBAWE32 card, its a nostalgia thing and its the card i want to use and have been using on my old boards.

Is there any suggestions or has anyone else had issues with this motherboard? Is there anything else BIOS wise you guys can think of that I haven't tried. Again, its not that the sounds/music don't play, its just that on certain game(as an whatever sound initialization that Duke and Warrior use, or any of my MOD music players I use, i get this random snap or Pulsing sound. Then on other games no issues at all. Very stumped.

Thanks again in advance.

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Reply 1 of 5, by Jo22

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Hmm.. Seems you did everything right. I see no issues either. Perhaps there's some kind of conflict,
maybe caused by the network card or the USB controllers (if any).

But network cards love to interfere with port 330, which is for MIDI only (MPU-401).
Another thing is IRQ2/IRQ9, which also sometimes gets interrupted (pun intended) by other devices.
But that, again, is only relevant for MIDI, which seems to work fine..

Maybe it is somehow related to ISA DMA ? Maybe the DMA controller is buggy or there's a conflict with DMA1 and DMA5 (SB16 high DMA).
In that case, run a diagnostic program like CheckIt (system board test) or the DMACHK utility of UMBPCI. Maybe it helps.
The latter is only intended to check ISA DMA regions, not the actual controller itself.

Sorry, just guessing. Maybe disabling the COM ports could also help (since your board has two of them) ?

Good luck! 😀

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Reply 2 of 5, by Blades

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Thanks for getting back.

I have tried what you have suggested and It comes up with zero conflict. Although, the version of Checkit that i found looks different than the one you have an image of.

I have disabled the USB, Serial and Printer ports. Turned off APCI in the bios. Turned off assigning an IRQ for the VGA. There is no, Network card installed just VGA and Soundcard. Its a bare bones as it comes.

Again, not sure why Doom and other games works just fine, but Any 3Drealms game and MOD music apps it clicks(like clicks when the loading screen of Duke comes up, like the clicking is insync with the hard drive loading. Then also in the game it will click as well. Maybe its conflicting with the Hard drive controller somehow....but that is using interrupt 14. Not sure about the DMA though.

But I'm kinda thinking that the issue is this motherboard, and its hatred for NON-PNP ISA sound cards.

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Reply 3 of 5, by cyclone3d

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Do you have the latest BIOS for the motherboard?

Have you tried different RAM?

What about a different power supply?

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 4 of 5, by Blades

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cyclone3d wrote:

Do you have the latest BIOS for the motherboard?

Have you tried different RAM?

What about a different power supply?

Thanks for answering.

Yep i have tried both. No joy.

And upgraded to the latest bios that i could find, and it upgraded successful, but problem remains. Weird.

Reply 5 of 5, by Blades

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Well a little update.

I found another VIA chipset Slot1 motherboard i had in a box. It was out of a Compaq and the chipset is VT82c693. So i popped in a 500 PIII as that is the max it will support. And I get the sound Snapping issue with this board as well regardless any port,irq, software combo.

But when i put my configuration in a Slot 1 with the intel BX chipset. All is good, no snapping. So apparently, the VIA chipset has an issue with the ISA Soundblaster cards with physical jumpers. If put in a PNP ISA sound card and no snapping/crackle.

So thats interesting.....but unfortunate. I guess I will have to use my intel BX slot 1 and lose the 5 1/4 floppy. Kind of sucks as i liked having both when i needed it. HA. Well if anyone has any suggestions that would be great. But thanks for the info and Help everyone has offered so far!

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