How did you put the waveblaster to the board? Pointing up or pointing down?
Just to make sure...

This card needs it pointing up, away from the ISA connector side.

I have this card with a Dreamblaster S2 in my Win95 rig at the moment. I had no problems getting it to work, but as has been mentioned it has to point upwards.
Many older waveblaster boards are a lot bigger, and wouldn't fit in the other way round.

I did plug one in the wrong way round quite a few years ago (different sound card) and the computer would not turn on as there was a short circuit.
Nothing was permanently damaged.

DerBaum wrote on 2023-09-03, 21:12:

How did you put the waveblaster to the board? Pointing up or pointing down?
Just to make sure...

Pointing up indeed. I checked the als120 pcb first as the waveblaster pinout has a very recognizable amount of ground pins, which I matched up with the ground pins on the waveblaster.

Imperious wrote on 2023-09-04, 00:28:

I have this card with a Dreamblaster S2 in my Win95 rig at the moment. I had no problems getting it to work, but as has been men […]
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I have this card with a Dreamblaster S2 in my Win95 rig at the moment. I had no problems getting it to work, but as has been mentioned it has to point upwards.
Many older waveblaster boards are a lot bigger, and wouldn't fit in the other way round.

I did plug one in the wrong way round quite a few years ago (different sound card) and the computer would not turn on as there was a short circuit.
Nothing was permanently damaged.

Do you happen to know which driver version you installed?

And what you installed / configured for DOS mode?

Installing it backwards shorts a lot of voltage pins indeed!

What kind of waveblaster board are you connecting? Does this card supply both 5v and 12v?

Rawit wrote on 2023-09-04, 08:07:

What kind of waveblaster board are you connecting?

No-brand card, found these pages about it on Google:
https://modelrail.otenko.com/retro/wavetables-pro32aw
This one mentions it in a section about the ALS120:
https://hattix.co.uk/hardware/index.php?page=sound.html
So it seems that it's an Advance waveblaster, makes you think that it should work with an Advance sound card...

Rawit wrote on 2023-09-04, 08:07:

Does this card supply both 5v and 12v?

I don't know yet, I assume so. Sound cards are supposed to provide +5, +12 and -12v to the waveblaster.

I'm planning to use an oscilloscope to check if I can see MIDI signals going to the waveblaster and sound signals coming back. Will also check the voltage rails then, thanks for the tip.

I did some measurements with an oscilloscope. The voltages on the +5, +12 and -12v pins are ok. The reset pin goes low when I press reset on the PC. The MIDI pin is high when inactive and shows sequences with blips to low when I start a MIDI tune. But there's no signal on the audio outputs (except for a tiny amount of noise). I measure about 100k ohms between the waveblaster audio inputs and ground on the ALS120, so there is no short on the ALS120.

I removed the ALS120, installed the same waveblaster board on a Terratec Solo-1, and immediately things start to work again. So the waveblaster board is definitely okay.

This is very odd. All the signals on the waveblaster pins on the ALS120 seem okay (for as far as I can judge with a simple oscilloscope), the waveblaster itself works fine with another audio card. Why then is there no audio coming out of the waveblaster on the audio pins??? Seems like it doesn't understand the MIDI signals coming from the ALS120.

Long shot: have youtried sending a GM reset before MIDI playback.

Anither point to check is the actual MIDI signal that the card is receiving. Is it at the right clock speed ? Is the signal at the right level and "clean" ?

Hmmm, it turns out the waveblaster board might be bad after all...

I found back my gameport to MIDI cable to test if that would produce a valid MIDI signal. I first tested with the Terratec as it was still installed. The gameport MIDI signal was fine but the waveblaster was quiet. Did some restarts, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Next I tried the ALS120. To my surprise both the waveblaster and gameport MIDI worked. Unfortunately only once, the gameport MIDI continued to work but the waveblaster was quiet again and again. So somehow the ALS120 makes the waveblaster card "more broken" than the Terratec...

Sigh... why can't things just break in a binary manner, either working or broken... 😉

Anyway, the ALS120 waveblaster connector seems fine. The waveblaster signal seems to be routed through the "Synthesizer" fader in the mixer panel in Win98SE.

Check the solders of the ROM and the QDSP chips.

Waveblaster volume is indeed tied with the Synthesizer volume with the ALS card. I remember with my ALS card and a DOS install that the joystick port had to be disabled for something MIDI related to work. Do those cards output MIDI through the joystick port and Waveblaster connector simultaneously?

Rawit wrote on 2023-09-05, 07:45:

Waveblaster volume is indeed tied with the Synthesizer volume with the ALS card. I remember with my ALS card and a DOS install that the joystick port had to be disabled for something MIDI related to work. Do those cards output MIDI through the joystick port and Waveblaster connector simultaneously?

Yes, if I remember correctly. I think that one time the waveblaster worked with the ALS120, I also heard sound from the MIDI device connected through the gameport. Same for the Terratec.

retrodevices wrote on 2023-09-04, 20:19:

Check the solders of the ROM and the QDSP chips.

Just checked it with magnifying goggles, I see no signs of bad solder joints, but it's somewhat difficult to judge.

I already tried putting pressure on several parts of the board during operation to see if that would influence the problem, but to no avail.

Might just be a broken chip.