Have you disabled the onboard Audio in the Bios when using a seperate Soundcard?

Manual:
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/852191/Tran … ?page=35#manual

What kind of speakers did you connect to the card? If they are passive speakers, they possibly have less than the minimum impedance acceptable by the sound card. In that case, the chip that would fail at really high levels is the stereo speaker amplifier, which could short-circuit the system on failure, so random shutdowns are explainable by that. If your card looks similar to the one discussed by Phil at https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ess-audiodrive-es1868.html , the primary suspect would be the TEA2025B chip.

There are jumpers that allow you to bypass this speaker amplifier chip (the two yellow ones). If you use active (=powered) speakers, you will get better quality when you bypass the speaker/headphone amplifier anyway, so you can just remove the TAE2025B and jumper the card to bypass this chip to work around your issue, in case I am right that the TAE2025B failed. If you trust chinese sellers, you can get them incredibly cheap on different selling platforms, more reputable sellers seem to charge around 5USD/5€ for replacement chips.

DerBaum wrote on 2022-08-07, 15:13:

Have you disabled the onboard Audio in the Bios when using a seperate Soundcard?

Manual:
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/852191/Tran … ?page=35#manual

I did! For some reason Windows keeps seeing it as a PCI Device.

What kind of speakers did you connect to the card? If they are passive speakers, they possibly have less than the minimum impedance acceptable by the sound card. In that case, the chip that would fail at really high levels is the stereo speaker amplifier, which could short-circuit the system on failure, so random shutdowns are explainable by that. If your card looks similar to the one discussed by Phil at https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ess-audiodrive-es1868.html , the primary suspect would be the TEA2025B chip.

There are jumpers that allow you to bypass this speaker amplifier chip (the two yellow ones). If you use active (=powered) speakers, you will get better quality when you bypass the speaker/headphone amplifier anyway, so you can just remove the TAE2025B and jumper the card to bypass this chip to work around your issue, in case I am right that the TAE2025B failed. If you trust chinese sellers, you can get them incredibly cheap on different selling platforms, more reputable sellers seem to charge around 5USD/5€ for replacement chips.

It's connected to my mixer, with the mixer to a USB mic in. This is really helpful information, thank you. And I believe the 1868 and 1868F are essentially the same, according to the stuff that Phil has published. I bought it based on his videos and recommendation.

https://imgur.com/oWmswIm

This is one of my two cards. It is a little different than the example Phil shows there, but yeah, more or less the same. I'm going to give it a quick go on bypassing the amp, which I'm assuming is the UTC2025? I'll see if I can find a guide with the jumper settings real quick.

Edit: As far as I can see, moving them from one position to the other should bypass it. I did that, and the system still hangs when it checks for the card, so it might need replacing or a recap, not just as simple as disabling it now that it's borked. I will try removing it as you suggest, and trying again before committing to a new one and said recap.

ezgoodnight wrote on 2022-08-07, 15:49:

I'm going to give it a quick go on bypassing the amp, which I'm assuming is the UTC2025? I'll see if I can find a guide with the jumper settings real quick.

Most probably it's J4, changing it from pins 1-2 to 2-3.
Edit: Ah I see you figured it out already

ezgoodnight wrote on 2022-08-07, 15:49:

This is one of my two cards. It is a little different than the example Phil shows there, but yeah, more or less the same. I'm going to give it a quick go on bypassing the amp, which I'm assuming is the UTC2025? I'll see if I can find a guide with the jumper settings real quick.

Edit: As far as I can see, moving them from one position to the other should bypass it. I did that, and the system still hangs when it checks for the card, so it might need replacing or a recap, not just as simple as disabling it now that it's borked. I will try removing it as you suggest, and trying again before committing to a new one and said recap.

Yes, the UTC2025 is the speaker amp. If that chip is damaged due to overcurrent, it can take down the whole system. The jumpers just change what you get at the output jack: Either the signal before or the signal after the amplifier. The amplifier itself is connected all the time, so if that chip shorts out your PC supply, you need to remove it. If the jumpers were set to "speaker output", the UTC2025 might have tried to push several volts into the mixer (this is an appropriate voltage level for 8 ohm speakers). Depending on the construction of the mixer, it might have overvoltage protection that works by just shorting out the input if the voltage is too high. Line level shouldn't exceed 2V, so it seems plausible that you mixer enters a deathmatch with the speaker amplifier when the output exceeds 2V for some seconds. You see who won the deathmatch.

If you move the jumpers to the "unamplified output" position, you will get something around line level at the output which perfectly matches the mixer input requirements, and you skip the internal noise of the amplifier chip, which is "more on the cheap side".

Depending on the construction of the mixer, it might have overvoltage protection that works by just shorting out the input if the voltage is too high. Line level shouldn't exceed 2V, so it seems plausible that you mixer enters a deathmatch with the speaker amplifier when the output exceeds 2V for some seconds. You see who won the deathmatch.

I have to say, this reply was so awesome, it has made my day despite how bummed this hardware failure has made me. Thanks mkarcher, and for your help in this thread. Once I can get that chip pulled I'll post an update.

ezgoodnight wrote on 2022-08-07, 22:12:

Depending on the construction of the mixer, it might have overvoltage protection that works by just shorting out the input if the voltage is too high. Line level shouldn't exceed 2V, so it seems plausible that you mixer enters a deathmatch with the speaker amplifier when the output exceeds 2V for some seconds. You see who won the deathmatch.

I have to say, this reply was so awesome, it has made my day despite how bummed this hardware failure has made me. Thanks mkarcher, and for your help in this thread. Once I can get that chip pulled I'll post an update.

If you don't intend to replace it right away just clip it off at the legs using a sidecutter.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-08-08, 09:23:

If you don't intend to replace it right away just clip it off at the legs using a sidecutter.

This saved me a lot of time, I cleaned solder off of every leg and that SOB was still stuck. I had to clip it off with flushcutters, I couldn't find a sidecutter at our local makerspace sadly, but it came off.

Unfortunately, the PC is still getting hung up looking for the ISA card with the chip removed and the jumpers moved to the position as described here ESS AudioDrive ES1868F Loud glitchy distortion

So I will try and poke at it a bit and see if I've made mistakes, but I think there might be more wrong that just the amp chip.

What do you think?

You are trying line out and not spk out after removing the amp chip right?

Sometimes different potentials can exist for ground.

See if you have voltage between card ground and mixer ground. Also measure the voltage between computer line and mixer input line

ezgoodnight wrote on 2022-08-10, 21:33:

So I will try and poke at it a bit and see if I've made mistakes, but I think there might be more wrong that just the amp chip.

Too bad. The amp chip would have had an plausible explanation to fail at loud volumes if the load behaves "inappropriate", and removing it should have cleared the damage. I'm sorry that you might have clipped of a possibly fine amplifier chip.

As the quick guess obviously was wrong, please take a minute to answer these question that might help to narrow down the actual problem:

Did both cards fail when you were running a DOS game that maxed out the volume? This would strongly suggest that the failure is related to high volume.
Do both broken cards behave the same way? Do they behave the same everytime you try to start the computer? At what point in time does the system crash? Do you get spontaneous reboots sometimes or does the system always freeze?

mkarcher wrote on 2022-08-11, 07:25:

Too bad. The amp chip would have had an plausible explanation to fail at loud volumes if the load behaves "inappropriate", and r […]
Show full quote

ezgoodnight wrote on 2022-08-10, 21:33:

So I will try and poke at it a bit and see if I've made mistakes, but I think there might be more wrong that just the amp chip.

Too bad. The amp chip would have had an plausible explanation to fail at loud volumes if the load behaves "inappropriate", and removing it should have cleared the damage. I'm sorry that you might have clipped of a possibly fine amplifier chip.

As the quick guess obviously was wrong, please take a minute to answer these question that might help to narrow down the actual problem:

Did both cards fail when you were running a DOS game that maxed out the volume? This would strongly suggest that the failure is related to high volume.
Do both broken cards behave the same way? Do they behave the same everytime you try to start the computer? At what point in time does the system crash? Do you get spontaneous reboots sometimes or does the system always freeze?

I'm not worried, this was working frontier medicine, and I generally learn best through the "eff around and find out" method, so I am not that salty about it, and appreciate everyone chiming in on this issue.

-With both cards, Doom or Doom 2 loaded with the volume at the max, and on reboot, the card stopped working. Both times the system stayed up, and I was able to reduce the sound level in the game, and still got sound. Upon rebooting, it was like the card was not even there.

-The experience is the same with both cards.

-The PC no longer hangs or crashes, it was loading the config in DOS as Windows 98 loaded, and I removed those from Autoexec and Config.sys, or whatever other place I found them. It now boots to Windows, but just as before, it is as if the card is not there. I did confirm that with a working card it will detect it and work as expected. There have been no "crashes" with the system running, and I think the hang on boot was just those mappings in DOS.

I have poked around and tried both cards again after getting an Ensoniq PCI card to work. The system does not see them. Both jumpers are set to the ones I've boxed in the "amp off" attachment, essentially just moving both of them from position A to B. The "amp on" photo shows how both cards came, and images show it as default. I think on the 1868 models these jumpers are reversed, as per Phil's video on these cards. I'm overexplaining in case I've missed some little brain-dead detail.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-08-11, 04:34:

You are trying line out and not spk out after removing the amp chip right?

These particular models do not have Line out, assuming it's through the same jack, just amplified or not amplified.

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-08-11, 05:20:

Sometimes different potentials can exist for ground.

See if you have voltage between card ground and mixer ground. Also measure the voltage between computer line and mixer input line

I'll have to look up an effective way to do this. What I have is a stereo cable out to two RCAs in a powered Yamaha mixer. I'm assuming you mean the line in, but I'll see what I can do.

I'll add I've had a fair amount of stuff running into this mixer, including a different PC (PCI sound card), my MiSTer FPGA (although not now), and my Extron Crosspoint with audio from my console setup. I've never used an ISA card before this one, but I've had no other issues with the setup, but it doesn't mean something funky isn't going down.

ezgoodnight wrote on 2022-08-13, 17:07:

-With both cards, Doom or Doom 2 loaded with the volume at the max, and on reboot, the card stopped working. Both times the system stayed up, and I was able to reduce the sound level in the game, and still got sound. Upon rebooting, it was like the card was not even there.

-The experience is the same with both cards.

-The PC no longer hangs or crashes, it was loading the config in DOS as Windows 98 loaded, and I removed those from Autoexec and Config.sys, or whatever other place I found them. It now boots to Windows, but just as before, it is as if the card is not there. I did confirm that with a working card it will detect it and work as expected. There have been no "crashes" with the system running, and I think the hang on boot was just those mappings in DOS.

OK, so we know that the problem happened after running Doom. Doom worked fine, and after reboot, the card is dead. This might either be actual hardware damage (but it doesn't look like that any more), or corruption of the configuration EEPROM contents (that's the 93c66 chip on your card). In case the EEPROM contents is damaged, the chip can also use a default configuration built into the chip. If you feel confident with SMD soldering, try resoldering the resistors in JP1/JP2 into the other position (closer to the ISA slot) to have the ES1868F chip ignore the EEPROM contents. If that revives the card, we should find out why Doom corrupts the EEPROM contents...

mkarcher wrote on 2022-08-13, 20:53:

OK, so we know that the problem happened after running Doom. Doom worked fine, and after reboot, the card is dead. This might either be actual hardware damage (but it doesn't look like that any more), or corruption of the configuration EEPROM contents (that's the 93c66 chip on your card). In case the EEPROM contents is damaged, the chip can also use a default configuration built into the chip. If you feel confident with SMD soldering, try resoldering the resistors in JP1/JP2 into the other position (closer to the ISA slot) to have the ES1868F chip ignore the EEPROM contents. If that revives the card, we should find out why Doom corrupts the EEPROM contents...

I'm interested in giving it a go. Not sure I have the chops with the iron to pull it off, but I can try or see if I can get some help.

Sorry for the late reply, appreciate you taking a look.

I'm going to continue using my mixer in my audio chain. If I recall the theory is the sound gets cranked because the card is expecting resistance from the speakers, and there is none, so it defaults to full volume, or SOMETHING.

Is there a stereo jack amp, or some peripheral I can add to the chain that can offer me some protection in case I encounter this with another card?

ezgoodnight wrote on 2022-08-26, 18:27:

I'm going to continue using my mixer in my audio chain. If I recall the theory is the sound gets cranked because the card is expecting resistance from the speakers, and there is none, so it defaults to full volume, or SOMETHING.

The high volume you observed with the mixer is indeed caused by connecting a line-level input of the mixer to a speaker-level output of the sound card. On the other hand, the theory that the mixer physically damaged your sound card is debunked since the time that removing the amplifier chip didn't help. In hindsight, I realized that most mixers have input protection resistors of several kiloohms before they might have a voltage clamping circuit that tries to short out excessive voltage, so actual damage to the card caused by using the mixer is extremely low, especially as the card continued to work at a lower volume in Doom and only failed to respond properly after one or two reboots.

Because of the several kiloohms input impedance, just turning down the channel at the mixer and if you hear distortion also turning down the volume in a game should be good enough. There are some games, though, that insist on maxing out the mixer everytime you start them (I remember "Micro Machines II" and "Pinball Fantasies" as offenders). MIDIto can try to counteract those games.

All true, but there is no good reason to use an amplified sound card output if you have a mixer anyway. Use line level output