VOGONS


First post, by HugoBoss1985

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So I decided to do a retro project with an old Advantech industrial 8.5 liter volume computer.

I am guessing this is some sort of IRQ conflict but I am not sure.
It's been a while that I have worked with Windows 98SE so please treat me as a noob.

I am having difficulty getting a SB Live! to work in this system.
I tried SB0100, CT4870 and SB0220.
All are recognized by Windows.
I haven't found any working drivers for the SB0220 yet but that is not the point.
Whenever I install the drivers for the sound card, with the card in the PCI slot closest to the PCN-6351 board, my Windows 98SE will hang after reboot just after the mouse cursor appears.
Safe mode works fine.
Everything works OK in the 2nd pci slot but because of the layout/cpu cooling I am unable to mount my Voodoo 2 12mb card.

The card gets different IRQ's from the bios depending on the used PCI slot;
After the post screen on the "overview" screen I can see this:

-WIth the card in the first slot I can see that card ("Multimedia device") shares IRQ11 with the onboard video. (Windows hang at startup).
-With the card in the second slot I can see that the card shares IRQ 10 with the onboard network. (card works fine)

With the card in the first slot I can see in device manager on the "resources" tab that Windows sets interrupt request to "03".
If I change this to something else in safe mode my system with hang before Windows 98SE boots with a flashing cursor.
I don't understand yet why the boot overview screen says that multimedia card has IRQ11 and Windows resources says "03" but maybe that is my false assumtion/lack of knowledge and I am mixing stuff up?

I have been reading several topics here and through Google search.
Is this something that cannot be fixed through software/bios? ... I read something about making/modifying an autoexec file to set the IRQ for the Sounblaster to something else than "11"?
Any advice/things I could try?

Or is this just a hardware limit and should I forget about using a PCI (Soundblaster Live!) soundcard and try with an ISA soundcard?
The board has 1 ISA slot besides the 2 pci slots.

Additional info:

My goal was a Windows 98SE system with EAX and Glide support.

The computer has 2 PCB's, the one that holds de cpu and ram is a PCN-6351 socket 7 board with SIS5582 chipset and Chips & Technologies onboard pci graphics.
It came with a 7.5gb had and booted up to an old Windows98SE installation just fine.
I tested Doom II on it with only pc speaker audio (very funny but not what I wanted to use).

This system has originally only 1 PS/2 port and no onboard audio.
The Backplane pcb board ( PCA-6104NP2) that holds the PCN-6351 takes the expansions cards and has 2x pci and 1x isa.

I did some mods:

Replaced all 3 fans with Noctua fans
Desolderd the soldered CMOS battery and soldered a modern "through-hole" battery hole (PCB had holes for this)
Installed 2x USB ports (cable, not a card) in the ISA slot expansions bay with a 2.00 pitch to 2.54mm pitch cable adapter (board has 2.00 pitch).
Removed the cpu heatsink and thermal pad, replaced thermal pad with new 0.50mm pad, screwed on the heatsink and printed an offset 40mm fan holder so I could use a 40mm fan and place the SoundBlaster Live! card.

Reply 1 of 1, by HugoBoss1985

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So I tried something interesting.

With an Award Bios editor I changed (Switched) the IRQ routing from PCI slot 1 to slot 2 and vica versa.
With the Soundblaster cards in PCI slot 1 I now see that same IRQ assignment in the overview screen (after POST) as with the original bios and with the card in PCI slot 2.

Unfortunately Windows 98SE still hangs with the card in PCI slot 1 after driver installation (and reboot).

So maybe something else is up, maybe something wrong with the PCI slot 1.

I will try one last time to reïnstall Windows 98SE and start from scratch with my modded bios, to rule out any driver issues at this point.