VOGONS


First post, by maverick21

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Last week I got myself a not-functioning Maestro 32/96, luckily I could send it back to the dealer. I bought an EWS64XL on ebay instead, which I got yesterday. At first it semmed alright, at least it installed in win98se. But I could'n get the applications to work. So I tried it in DOS 6.22 and could not get the ewsinit.exe to work correctly. I can change the configuration of the card, but cannot load any soundsets i.e. The program ends with "Bootstrap does not run correctly". I found something about this problem on the terratec homepage. Terratec says that it is likely to be a hardware defect. On another page I found something about the eeprom tool which might help in those cases (EWS64NEU.EXE). Tried it too, there was no error message while doing the rewriting of the eeprom, but after a reboot the error message with ewsinit.exe was still there.
Is there anything else I could try? This is really annoying.... I'd love to have a nice Terratec soundcard, but while my 4 creative cards work fine - despite being even older than those two terratec cards - I obviously got no luck with those 😒

retro-rig1.jpg retro-rig2.jpg retro-rig3.jpg

Reply 1 of 9, by Jo22

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Hello, did you check Vogons Wiki for the EWS64 already ?
If it really is damaged, maybe it can be fixed somehow (new EPROM, etc). The EWS64 was a quality soundcard, so I hope there's a chance for that.
If you haven't done already, you could try to play a bit with the BIOS settings (ISA speed, DMA/IRQ, PnP BIOS, shadow memory).
In case something is interrupting the communication to the card (which could also have affected the firmware upload), this may help.

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 3 of 9, by maverick21

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I've tried a little bit longer, first in windows and found out that the card obviously had problems with the ram (which I bought with the card!). It could not recognize the ram chips, so I changed the bar. This helped in Win98 environment, so I tried it again in plain DOS 6.22. And I got it working there too, kind of... I'm able to load a soundset into the ram and play it with dosmid. But when I initialize the card, most games will have no sound (got the BLASTER Variable set, too). When I reboot and skip the driver part some of those games will have sound, but of course without the soundset. It's confusing, but at least it's not broken. But I think it's better to be used in my Windows-Retro-Machine than in the DOS one.

retro-rig1.jpg retro-rig2.jpg retro-rig3.jpg

Reply 4 of 9, by matze79

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also check your EWS 64 for leaking capacitors..
i already had 2 of them, both with failing capacitors 😳

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Reply 5 of 9, by maverick21

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I'm wondering why the terratec cards have so much trouble with the capacitors, while all of my creative cards seem okay - even an much older SB Pro 2.
Have you soldered new ones in, and where did you buy new ones in germany, at Reichelt?

retro-rig1.jpg retro-rig2.jpg retro-rig3.jpg

Reply 6 of 9, by sprcorreia

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The wavetable is muted. You need the mixer from crystal to toggle that. Search the forum, that issue has been discussed in great depth.

Reply 7 of 9, by maverick21

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Alright, thank you for your comments on this topic. I think I've sorted it out now. There were quiet a few problems adding up.

At first, the RAM module the buyer sent me was broken, that was the reason I had problems using ewsinit in the first place. When I had this running I could load soundsets and configure the cards resources. But the sound was awful! I read all over the internet how incredible the card should sound, but everything was out of tune. First I blamed the soundset, so I tried others, which sounded different, but still horrible. Then I was wondering if maybe there were some kind of filters or effects going on. Problem was that I could not see that with the original DOS Tools, nor with the mixer for crystal, because that was for volume on the different parts of the card.
In Win98 my midi files sounded alright, but I had troubles getting the Apps running. In the end I've made just some mistakes while unzipping them with other EWS Stuff in one folder, resulting in not functioning at all. Today I've tried again in separat folders and now I could use the original mixer-app in Win98 and saved my setting in an ttm file.
After loading this with ewsinit in my dos 6.22 environment, finally everything sounded as it should!

Btw.: of course I've also checked the board itself. All capacitors look absolute well, nothing leaks, nothings looks bloated in any way. While I got an answer from the company I bought my Maestro 32/96... they checked the board and that had broken capacitors, but they could not get it working even after replacing it. It still had the distortion sound, so they gave my money back 😀

So it seems, everything just need some time 😉 Sorry for some repeating some parts of my older postings.

Thomas

retro-rig1.jpg retro-rig2.jpg retro-rig3.jpg

Reply 8 of 9, by elianda

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In the vogonswiki there is a default ttm file for the ews64 available btw´at http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Example_. … file_for_EWS64S
It has the adapted effects setting from the in depth discussion here at vogons by cptklotz.
I guess you checked already the mute bug solution by Locutus.

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