Perhaps the memory module has come loose, or the connector's dirty? I'm assuming it's a version that uses one of those proprietary plug-in modules. (That's one thing the AWE32 has going for it - standard SIMM sockets.)

I'd imagine you should be able to test it from DOS using AWEUTIL, anyway - no need to keep reinstalling in Windows over and over again.

Jorpho wrote:

Perhaps the memory module has come loose, or the connector's dirty? I'm assuming it's a version that uses one of those proprietary plug-in modules. (That's one thing the AWE32 has going for it - standard SIMM sockets.)

I'd imagine you should be able to test it from DOS using AWEUTIL, anyway - no need to keep reinstalling in Windows over and over again.

That was my first thought too, but the Gold card comes with 4MB soldered onto the board. What happens if you try to load a 4MB patch?

You're right, it is soldered to the board, and I beleive in two 2Mb chips, which is why the %12K number confuses me.

The DOS Diagnose just skips right over the ram check.

Loading the 4MB Soundfont says I have insufficient memory.

Maybe your system has not enough allocated memory for that, have you tried freeing more memory?

System A had 1GB of memory, and awe CP used to display 4MB, system B has 128.

System Ram is irrelevent, as the RAM is on the cards on all the old ISA products.

What happens if you try DOS programs supporting the AWE RAM, like Cubic Player? It works independent from any installed driver stuff, and shows the amount of available RAM in the "device" section of the fileselector.

I found that menu, but I see no mention of any type of ram in the devices menu.

Having since swapped around some cards from this machine, it now says the Gold has no ram. The SB32, also has no RAM (despite 8MB being on the board)

EDIT: It's showing 512K again. And I can continually install the 'updated' driver.

The fact it not only shows 512kb instead of 4mb, in DOS, but also changes between 512kb and 0kb points out insistently it is (partly) broken.

We are all dealing here with 10+ year old hardware.
The possibility it is broken is not only not unlikely it is very probable.

Defective motherboards or PSU can also cause all kinds of weird problems that can be totally deceptive. If the other machines you tried it on all use a different PSU that would rule it out.

could it be that you have an AWE-64 value that has 512kb of ram
maybe youve installed the gold drivers thats why things are messing up ???

Nope. I have a gold 64 (RCA outs) and an SB32 with 8MB simms. You're all probably right about it being old and broken, though I can't help but find it suspect that two function peices of hardware stop functioning in similar manners at the same time. Not to mention the rest of the cards function fine.