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Creative AWE64 not recognized by Win98 or DOS games.

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First post, by Gamuza

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Hello! I came by several times to these forums looking for information about old hardware and always found exactly what I needed. For that I thank all the people who frecuent the forums. Now I'm having a problem with a recently bought PC I was going to use for oldschool DOS/WIN98 gaming and I need your knowledge.

I'll start off by detailing the PC specs:

FIC VA 503+ Motherboard
AMD K6-2 400Mhz (FSB unknown at the moment)
2x 128MB RAM PC100
Diamong Viper V550 (ATI Rage?)
Creative AWE64 ISA Sound card.
10 GB HDD, CD-RW combo drive and obviously a floppy drive.

Every part is working 10/10 except for the sound card. The card is not being recognized by Win98 nor CTCU utility so first thing I thought was that it's busted.

But checking again for anomalies I found the -12V pin (Pin7) was kind of dark, like dirty. I was thinking maybe that dirt is preventing the card to receive the required voltage to operate and that's why the card is not being recognized. If that's the case, cleaning the contacts might revive the card. What chances are this could be a solution? Or maybe that dirty contact is indicating the card was fried?

BTW, I tested another sound card in its place and worked flawlessly (OPTI931).

Thanks in advance!

Reply 1 of 4, by Imperious

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Posting a photo could help us help You. Definitely clean the cards contacts and see if that helps.

Atari 2600, TI994a, Vic20, c64, ZX Spectrum 128, Amstrad CPC464, Atari 65XE, Commodore Plus/4, Amiga 500
PC's from XT 8088, 486, Pentium MMX, K6, Athlon, P3, P4, 775, to current Ryzen 5600x.

Reply 2 of 4, by mmx_91

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Yeah, you should try to clean it before testing. A good advice is to use a cotton stick and alcohol / a pencil rubber. Sometimes, the contacts in the card get dirty and the beahviour is not as it should be 😀

Reply 3 of 4, by .legaCy

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Well when working with retro hardware i always like to have contact cleaner with me, i recommend WD-40 Electronic specialist( please do not use the regular wd-40) its good to be non-conductive and do not damage the plastic parts of the hardware like slots.
But you might also consider testing the card in another system if possible.
When i was building one vintage pc i had one little encore ethernet card that no matter what i do the card dont get recognised, so i tested in another system and it didnt work so the card was bad.

Reply 4 of 4, by Gamuza

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It worked!

The cause was indeed the dirty contacts. Used a few cotton sticks dipped in isopropylic alcohol and cleaned all pins. They didn't seem that dirty until I cleaned them. Also, Pin7 proved the hardest to clean and I took special care while doing so.

Once I slapped the card in and turned the machine on, the BIOS immediately recognized the card with the message "Initializing Plug n' Play cards". Win98 instantly recognized the card (it had its drivers installed already) and both MIDIs and WAVs worked flawlessly.

Pin7 closeup (sorry for crappy quality):
http://i.imgur.com/AwS26XM.jpg

Thanks for the support, guys! Now it's time to format the disk and install some games 😀

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