I hooked it up via USB to my main machine and chose it with Coolsoft MIDI mapper. The red light is on and the green light is blinking when playing midi files, but no sound through ear buds connected to the jack...

is the dip switch on the X16GS at position 0001 ?
also the jack is not amped - it's just line out so ear buds might not work depending on what they are

keropi wrote on 2024-05-12, 07:36:

is the dip switch on the X16GS at position 0001 ?
also the jack is not amped - it's just line out so ear buds might not work depending on what they are

It is set to 0001, and I tested the other dip switch settings. I was in contact with Serge and was informed about the earbuds and so I tested with some powered speakers, and with the external unit that comes with the SOund Blaster AE-9. I am wondering if something happened during shipment because it took a long time to get to me from across my state - almost a week with no tracking updates and that made me worried. I get stuff from across the country faster than that, usually. Plus, there was a bpost strike and it took a week for it to leave Belgium. I reinstalled my WaveBlaster and also tested an Opti wavetable board to ensure that my AWE32 CT2760 was still good and that nothing happened when I had taken it out to remove the WaveBlaster and install the X16GS.

I conducted many tests and sent pics and a video clip. The device is detected by Windows 10 and midi playback apps and X16 Manager, and the green light flickers whenever I play midi files, but no sound output under any circumstances. It is very mysterious as I took pics of the board and used a magnifying glass and compared it to a high-res pic of the board I found online and see nothing out of place. Serge tests all boards before they go out and the situation is being taken care of (I highly recommend Serda Shop!) I guess things just happen, sometimes. It seems to be my luck - years ago I decided to buy my first LCD display when my CRT died, and I had to go out of state to buy it and when I got home and hooked it up, it didn't work, and I had to go back the next day to exchange it. Another time I bought Dark Forces II that also came with Mysteries of the Sith and when I got home, disc 1 was missing and I had to go back the next day. It is odd how often this sort of thing occurs! However, the MP32L and HDD clicker I order with along with the X16GS are working perfectly and are great products. I found some cool SC55 MkII soundfonts and an Ultrasound soundfont and have been playing around with those when not testing the X16GS. However, I am very much looking forward to enjoying the X16GS!

The email came to let me know that a replacement is on the way, and I am look forward to it! I will report back when it arrives, and I have had the chance to play with it for a bit. In the meantime, I am playing Wing Commander and having fun with soundfonts with the MP32L. It is like having a mini MT-32 AND general Midi device right in front of my keyboard. It is awesome! I also appreciate the HHD clicker. At first, it was neat how silent using SD and CF cards are, but after watching a YouTube review of the device, it turns out that I missed that hard drive click.

The replacement X16GS just arrived, and I hooked it up to my main PC via USB and the external unit on my SoundBlaster AE-9 and listened to some Ultima midis using the Falcosoft midi player, and they sounded great! No issues! I have yet to connect it to my AWE32 CT2760 in my retro PC. I don't know if the original was damaged in shipping (the replacement came very fast whereas the original took almost a week once it reached the States and that is weird, almost as if it sat somewhere or was temporarily lost,) while the replacement reached my mailbox after a couple of days along with speedy tracking updates. I have two daughterboards which I have used with this AWE32, and OPTi and a WaveBlaster I (which was installed in this PC until recently,) and they work, so I am probably just feeling paranoid.

I just had a thought and emailed Serge about this (almost word for word, hehe:) back in the day I had to RMA a SB Live! once and another time I had to RMA an Audigy 1 card because they had inexplicably stopped working - two separate systems but both running Windows 98SE. After running through tests with Creative support, it was determined (in both cases) that the EPROM on the boards had somehow become scrambled, despite me not doing anything that would involve the EPROM. I know that the X16GS can have both sounds uploaded to it and new firmware (I had tried to flash the original X16GS with firmware from the Serda Shop site during trying to figure out what was wrong, but the upload option remained greyed out.) Does anyone think that it is possible that somehow something got scrambled on the X16GS when I had it connected to my CT2760? Maybe some weird freak-thing due to my system configuration with having two sound cards?  I have the Audigy 2 ZS in there just for EAX and offloading all that I can from the CPU while using Windows, and the AWE32 CT2760 with a daughterboard and the MP32L (replacing an MT-32 and a SoundCanvas Mk.I) to cover all of my LA/GS/GM needs under MS-DOS and Windows 3.11. 

Before connecting the replacement to the retro PC, I wanted to get opinions on this since perhaps my system and situation (and luck or lack thereof) could be unique when it comes to the X16GS and I don't want to risk scrambling something or otherwise having anything happen to this one if there is a risk.  When I first powered on my PC with the original X16GS, I had the AWE32 set as the default playback device in Windows 98SE rather than the Audigy because I was testing an incompatibility issue with Privateer 2 - it doesn't work with VXD drivers with the Audigy, so I learned that for some games, I have to switch playback devices in Windows. I'm not sure what Windows does when it boots up and initializes everything, especially with multiple sound cards and midi devices. I do know that in the past with the Live! and Audigy cards, they worked fine until a random powerup after a normal shutdown, so something scrambled those EPROMs between shutting down those PCs and booting them back up. At any rate, the replacement is absolutely working and sounding great on my main PC, and I am just feeling paranoid about using it with my retro PC in its current configuration. Unlike the X16GS, my old daughterboards don't have anything on them that can change - everything on them is hardware.

Hmm, in the unlikely the case some power fluctuations really reached the X16 and damaged some contents of the NAND, i wouldn't expect it to be just siilent with every installed soundbank. Either some of them must work partways or the firmware must be destroyed too.
Was is in bootloader mode (dip 0000) when you tried to upload the firmware? Did you also try to flash a soundbank?

Hummtaro wrote on 2024-05-21, 20:15:

Hmm, in the unlikely the case some power fluctuations really reached the X16 and damaged some contents of the NAND, i wouldn't expect it to be just siilent with every installed soundbank. Either some of them must work partways or the firmware must be destroyed too.
Was is in bootloader mode (dip 0000) when you tried to upload the firmware? Did you also try to flash a soundbank?

It has been a few days, though I do believe that I had it in bootloader mode when trying to flash the firmware. I had the manual up on my main display and read it a bunch of times, hehe. I did not try to flash a sound bank, only switch between them. It is weird how it is detected in Windows and the green light blinks when a midi file is played yet no sound at all. When on the AWE32 and I play a game with midi set for music, the green light doesn't blink at all, which I think means that whatever is wrong with the original board is not totally affecting the USB, but is totally affecting the waveblaster connector, with one detecting midi data and the other one not detecting it, and with neither producing sound.

Serge emailed back and thinks that since the replacement is working on my main PC that I should be alright with the AWE32, but I haven't gotten over my worry, yet. I can use sound banks with the MP32L which I have been using with my main retro PC, so maybe I'll get a chill box enclosure and use the X16GS on my main PC for midi playback and emulators and what not. If I do connect the replacement to the retro PC and something bad happens, I'll just buy another X16GS when I can (I wouldn't dare ask for a 2nd replacement if it is determined that it is my PC - but I would report to Serge if it does happen to try to figure out what on earth could cause such a thing to happen) and not put it in the retro PC until I can figure out what is happening, but so far, the consensus is that nothing in my retro PC is the problem. I took close up pics of the AWE32 to make sure that the header pins weren't backwards or anything, and took other precautions before installing the first one, because I get paranoid with the retro stuff because of the difficulty in replacing any of it if a mistake is made, especially in my personal situation.

The retro PC is set up as follows:

K6-III+ OC'd to 600Mhx (a modded K6-2+ to a K6+III+)
128MB RAM
Voodoo5 in AGP slot
Audigy 2 ZS in 2nd PCI slot (I had a voodoo2 in there with the first board installation attempt and the Audigy 2 ZS was in the shared PCI/ISA slot)
AWE32 CT2760 in the 2nd ISA slot (with original daughterboards reinstalled to test that there are no problems with the AWE32 or the header after the initial X16GS installation attempt)
MPU-IPC-T in the last ISA slot
2 optical drives
1 3.5 floppy drive
1 5.25 floppy drive
1 dual slot CF-to-IDE drive
PSU is a Corsair AX860i with everything on one connector with splitters because I don't know what happened to my other PSU cables over the years..

Everything runs fine. I will probably put a Voodoo1 in there instead of the Voodoo2 for greater game compatibility and move the Audigy 2 ZS back to the shared slot. I will note that I have ALWAYS remained paranoid when using Live! and Audigy cards since I had those EPROMS scramble in one Live! and 1 Audigy in those two different computers that happened during a power-0n, and with every Creative card I have ever used since, I am always fretting that it is going to happen again due to my strange-(bad) luck. It is why I am wondering if something became scrambled on the origin X16GS and if so, if it is related to having two audio cards with one being in the Audigy family, and the AWE32 was set to default playback device when I booted the PC with the origin X16GS installed.