Snover wrote:

I'm confused... if you're using Windows 2000,...

He's using it in tandem with a DOS boot-disk and (I presume) at least one FAT partition. The "poor man's" dual-boot.

1. Your sound blaster PCI card can not use IRQ 5.

Doesn't make sense to me, except for one possibility: the early PCI SoundBlasters were notorious for not measuring up their ISA predecessors. This limitation may be related to that...

Sorry about the confusion, Shigawire. I was really exhausted and didn't read carefully enough this thread.

Regarding UniVBE, there *should* be a UVCONFIG.EXE program with it that you can use to change those settings, disable VESA 2.0 extensions, disable buffering, and do some other nifty, if questionable, stuff.

Yes there is a uvconfig.exe , not that I am proficient in using it..

A strange error/bug har occurred in windows2000 btw..
Heres what happens. I reboot to play in DOS, so I change the settings in bios to disable LPT1 and set IRQ5 as legacy.. and turn off PnP. Some of the dos games work fine. When I'm done playing.. rebooting, and entering Windows again.. my floppy is suddenly reading like hell (even though there isn't a floppy in the drive) , I don't know why, but for every process my computer does, the floppy tries to read.. "brrrrt brrrt"
I've reset the BIOS settings to the "default" I normally use for windows.. and still the same!

And when I run norton system doctor, the floppy gets really "mad" and make a constant long reading-noise.. like a machinegun.

I just tried uninstalling and installing the floppy, it's just as mad..
Hehe.. it even makes sounds when I press "submit reply" on this forum 😜

I've disabled the floppy in windows for now.. if I need it I'll just enable it again, because it still works even though it's a bit mad.

God, that's weird... I don't recall exactly what can cause this, but I know that I've seen/heard it happen before.

*shakes head* This is all wrong. Classic "can't-be-happening-but-it-is" syndrome.

Two things jump out at me:

1) It sounds like you needed both IRQ 5 and 7 for your soundcard. That should never be the case.

2) You installed and used a Sci-Tech product. Call me superstitious...

I used univbe yes. And tried uvconfig..

Yeah the irq settings confuse me.. but this is how I think it works: The physical PCI card uses IRQ 7, while the SB 16 _emulation_ uses IRQ 5. If any devices are running on IRQ 5, I'd have to enable "reserve IRQ 5 for Legacy" in the bios.

Here's a quote from a FAQ for my motherboard (A7V)

Q : After I install audio driver for Creative PCI 128 / SB Live! Player 1024 / SB Live Platinum for A7V motherboard, I got IRQ conflict in the system. How can I fix the problem?

A : The Creative® sound cards need two IRQs. One is for SB16 DOS emulation (ISA IRQ) and the other is for PCI IRQ. The BIOS assigns all IRQ to PCI slot by default because A7V doesn't have ISA slot. Please correct the problem with the following setting in the BIOS setup menu. Advanced -> PCI Configuration -> PCI/PNP IRQ Resource Exclusion -> "IRQ 5 Reserved for Legacy Device" -> "Yes"

Taken from this site: http://www.vr-zone.com/guides/a7vfaq/

Pretty weird.. :\

Shigawire wrote :
>Yeah the irq settings confuse me

Then you're not alone 😮

>the SB 16 _emulation_ uses IRQ 5. If any devices are running on IRQ 5, I'd have to enable "reserve IRQ 5 for Legacy" in the bios.

Good for you if you can make it !
My new BIOS doesn't allow me to fix this anymore.

>A : The Creative® sound cards need two IRQs. One is for SB16 DOS emulation (ISA IRQ) and the other is for PCI IRQ

It seems we're going after similar information, since I've been reading all this stuff too lately.
If what I've been doing may matter to you a little bit (my card is a SB Live!) :
- had to forget all the irq swapping business because I can't possibly do it
- changing the card's slot had no effect either
- installing dos drivers off the Live!'s cdrom won't work (emulation not installed) either under Win98FE or dos mode after warm reboot
- using a WinME EBD fails because of the incompatibility between ME sys files and emm386 and there's no messing with any autoexec or config or system.ini tricks
- a Win98FE EBD (including of course cdrom and mouse support) will do and prevent the emm386 conflict. Using the sblive*.zip instructions be sure to edit config.sys to avoid calling device=A:\HIMEM.SYS twice. Ah, afaik it's good to completely bypass the ramdrive creation thing.
- after http://www.mameworld.net/emuadvice/sound.html advice
tweak sbeset.exe and if it can help what finally worked for me was just applying the "magical" c:\sblive\sbeset -I10 -w0 settings (i. e.: IRQ #10 + drop the Windows specs) which apparently made the trick.
Ironically though when I checked it out (via sbeset -c) it appeared that sbeinit.com did initialize the whole damn thing, and in fact the sb16-emulation was and is fine after all, yet the IRQ #5 and no other is what is still in use. Funny, uh ?
I have no idea why it ought to be so 😎
nor if this makes any sense to you, but I'd be glad to hear what you think of it all.

Shigawire wrote:

The physical PCI card uses IRQ 7, while the SB 16 _emulation_ uses IRQ 5.

If so, that would explain why Creative needed Ensoniq so badly. Before they were "absorbed" by Creative, Ensoniq's PCI SoundBlaster emulation was known to be superior.

Not that this info helps you...

Actually, I've solved all and any problems I had by moving my P75 downstairs.. borrowed an ES1868 from a friend, and games work flawlessly on it 😀
I think I'll continue to use it for dos games.. and let the win2k computer be used for 3d graphics and new games instead.

"To know a thing well, know its limits. Only when pushed beyond its tolerances will true nature be seen."
-The Amtal Rule
(Dune)

For the record, Shigawire, SDD (UNIVBE) 5.1 did not support the GeForce2/MX, your aforementioned videocard. This explains your odd message:

Video Card: Generic VGA SuperVGA ((null)) with 256 Kb, VBE 3.0
RAM DAC: Normal 8 bit DAC
. Installing VBE 2.0 32 bit protected mode extensions

I got a similar message using a version from around that time with my 3dfx Voodoo3. I'm sure the GeForce2/MX wasn't out yet when UNIVBE 5.1 was. Which explains the problem.

Nope, definitely not supported. From the README for UNIVBE 5.1:

Supported Chips --------------- The following is a list of supported SuperVGA families, and chipsets within each family. If you […]
Show full quote

Supported Chips
---------------
The following is a list of supported SuperVGA families, and chipsets within each family. If your graphics chip is on this list, and it probably is, it can be detected by UniVBE. You may not see any "board vendors" like Hercules, Genoa, Orchid, STB etc, but their products actually use chips from the manufacturers on this list, so UniVBE will work perfectly with those VGA boards too. See UNIVBE.TXT for any technical notes on your particular chip.

• Acer Labs ALi CAT-32/64
• Ark Logic ARK1000VL, ARK1000PV, ARK2000PV
• Avance Logic AL2101/2201/2228/2301/2302/2364 SuperVGA
• Ahead V5000A, V5000B
• ATI Technologies 18800, 28800, Mach32, Mach64
• Chips & Technologies 82c45x, 655xx, 643x0 WinGine
• Cirrus Logic CL-GD62xx, 5402, 5422/4/6/8/9, 5430/4
• Cirrus Logic LCD CL-GD64xx
• Compaq IVGS/AVGA, QVision QV1024/1280
• Diamond Viper P9000+W5186/OAK87 VLB and PCI
• Everex Viewpoint, Viewpoint/NI, Viewpoint/TC
• Genoa Systems GVGA
• Hualon HMC86304/14
• IIT AGX-010/11/14/15/16/17
• Matrox MGA Atlas
• MXIC 86000/86010 SuperVGA
• NCR 77C20/21/22E/32BLT
• OAK Technologies OTI-037C/057/067/077/087
• Paradise/Western Digital PVGA1A, WD90C1x/2x/3x
• Primus 2000 SuperVGA
• RealTek RTG3103/3105/3106 SuperVGA
• S3 86c911/924/801/805/928/864/964/866/868/968/Trio32/Trio64
• Sierra Semiconductor Falcon/64
• Trident 88/8900/9x00/8900CL/8900D/9200CXr/9400CXi/9420DGi/9440AGi
• Tseng Labs ET3000, ET4000, ET4000/W32/W32i/W32p
• UMC 85c408/18
• Video7 VEGA, HT208/209/216
• Weitek 5086/5186/5286, P9100

Chances are, you've never heard of many of those companies, let alone graphics chips... Considering UNIVBE 5.1 came out in 1995, this is not surprising.

Anyhow, the solution: Use a more recent version of SDD. SDD 7.0 for DOS, which I provided the link for, contains the last version of UNIVBE ever. Perhaps you could purchase a registration key (or find a crack) for it. SDD 7.0 definitely supports the GeForce2/MX.

I'm working on a SDD "Changelog" and graphics chips compatibility database so we don't run into this problem anymore...

SDD 6 WILL work; however, it will not detect the correct card. (But it still works, which is the important thing. 😀)