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First post, by DonutKing

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I'm trying to consolidate my parts stockpile into systems so I can get rid of them.

The machine I'm working on at the moment is:

UM8810 rev 1.1 BIOS 3.2J
Am5x86-133
16MB 60ns RAM single SIMM
512KB 15ns cache
S3 Trio DX 2MB
AWE64 CT4500
DOS6.22 (no windows)

I seem to have hit a strange problem with certain games, such as Doom, Heretic, Hexen, and Raptor.

When using Sound Blaster digital sound effects, instead of music I hear horrible popping/static, and the keyboard becomes very slow to respond. If I do manage to quit to DOS the keys are swapped around seemingly randomly i.e. typing QWERTY will give heaps of random letters and numbers. Trying to CTRL + ALT + DELETE just types random characters onto the command line. A hard reset seems to be the only solution.

It works fine if I use AWE music, but no digital sound effects device. Setting no music device but AWE or sound blaster for digital sound, causes the issue.

Funnily enough Tyrian, Blood and Duke 3D work perfectly with AWE sound and music. So it doesn't just seem to be a protected mode thing. Possibly a DOOM engine thing but I don't know why raptor does it too (unless it shares some part of sound code?) I've also tried Duke 2 and Halloween Harry without problems.

I do not have aweutil resident, only the /S in autoexec to initialise it.

To resolve this I have tried:

-Replacing the CT4500 with an AWE64 Gold CT4390
-disabling all drivers and EMM386 from autoexec.bat/config.sys (game doesn't run at all without himem.sys loaded)
-different versions of aweutil (1.20 and 1.36) and diagnose (4.04 and 4.05)
-patched raptor from 1.0 to 1.2
-replaced DOS4GW with DOS32A (using SB utility)
-Disabled all ROM shadow and cache in BIOS
-Set all RAM and cache timings, and PCI-Host wait state to slowest possible settings in BIOS
-Changed from IRQ5/DMA1 to IRQ7/DMA0 for sound card using CTCM/CTCU
-Disabled turbo mode (button on case)
-Confirmed motherboard jumpers
-Tried /A20CONTROL:OFF option for HIMEM.SYS
-Disabled L1 and L2 cache

None of these have helped.
I note that after switching to DOS32A I get the following message if I manage to exit to DOS:

WARNING: real mode interrupt vector has been changed: INT00H
WARNING: real mode interrupt vector has been changed: INT18H

I've used norton utilities to perform a comprehensive memory test, it ran over 3 hours and found no faults.

I'm out of ideas 😒

Attached is config.sys/autoexec.bat
Any suggestions would be appreciated!

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  • Filename
    config.zip
    File size
    729 Bytes
    Downloads
    289 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 1 of 14, by AdamP

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Does it happen in the diagnose utility (what version are you using?).
Also, which version of aweutil are you using?

You didn't mention whether the problem games use 8-bit (low DMA), or 16-bit (high DMA) sound. It's possible your motherboard or interface can't handle high DMA, in which case, you'd have to use the low DMA for it.

Reply 5 of 14, by dvwjr

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If you have access to a Sound Blaster Pro ISA card, you might want to try swapping out your AWE64 with the Pro as a test. I can not explain your 'slow' and 'key-swapped' keyboard, but the 'popping/static' from your SB16/AWE64 type 16-bit Creative Labs card is another matter.

Keep the digital sound setup in DOOM as both an AWE or regular Sound Blaster in DOOM on your same machine. Then test to see if you have the same 'popping/static' problem with an 8-bit ISA Sound Blaster sound card. I believe that you are experiencing the effect of an unacknowledged backwards incompatibility issue that affects all of the 16-bit Creative Sound Blaster 16/32/64 ISA cards when playing 8-bit unsigned samples.

If you have the time and hardware resources, please post any findings/results to a Sound Blaster substitution...

Thanks again,

dvwjr

Reply 6 of 14, by DonutKing

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Interestingly enough, the SB Pro CT1600 doesn't have the static/popping however the keyboard input simply freezes. The cursor won't respond to key presses and I have to reset. Music continues playing and I can watch the demo though, the machine hasn't locked.

An SB16 CT1740 (non-PnP) has the same effects as the AWE64.

Again, music only with no fdigital sound effects doesn't cause the issue.
This is a really strange problem 😒

EDIT: Just tried with an ESS Audiodrive 688 and got thee exact same issues.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 7 of 14, by dvwjr

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If you wish, I could look at the DOOM problem for you.

If you would be willing to ZIP up the entire installed DOOM sub-directory and upload the ZIP file to some hosting service, I could download and test on my two PCs with 8 and 16 bit Creative sound cards. The fact that the Sound Blaster Pro 2 did not have the 'popping/static' confirms what I think is a problem with the Sound Blaster 16+ family of 16-bit sound cards.

The keyboard problem would take some investigation and time...

Please PM me if you are interested,

dvwjr

Reply 8 of 14, by DonutKing

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Well that wouldn't really solve the issue with the other games though.... would it?

I have a second motherboard of exactly the same type, I swapped them over and STILL get the problem.

I've basically given up on these motherboards now. Must be something dodgy about them.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 9 of 14, by dvwjr

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DonutKing wrote:

Well that wouldn't really solve the issue with the other games though.... would it?

Might help if they are all DOOM engine game, and get confirmation of the keyboard and sound problems on other test PCs. What version of DOOM is having these problems you have described?

Thanks for the information,

dvwjr

Reply 11 of 14, by simbin

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Did you ever pinpoint the problem. Sounds like the same issue I'm having with my setup, thanks.

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Check out my Retro-Ghetto build (2016 Update) 😀
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Reply 12 of 14, by elianda

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As this thread is already digged out now... ...have you tested to configure the memory manager to place the DMA buffer to lower memory?
It seems to be an issue with DMA. Have you tested with a simple player as xtcplay or cubic player, where you can really see the runtime behaviour?
Have you tried all DMA channels available?

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Reply 13 of 14, by DonutKing

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wow got shovel? 😜

Swapped the motherboard and everything worked perfectly. I sold this motherboard on ebay since I couldn't get it going.

How would I change the location of the DMA buffer? EMM386 lets you set the DMA buffer size but not the location.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 14 of 14, by elfuego

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DonutKing wrote:

How would I change the location of the DMA buffer? EMM386 lets you set the DMA buffer size but not the location.

Hmm... I may be wrong so don't take me for granted, but I think I saw somewhere on this forum a thread 'how to optimize DOS memory' where I saw some pretty mean autoexec.bat configurations where you could set *somethings* location. Check it out, its here somewhere.

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