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AWE32 - IRQ Setting error

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First post, by Groenegel

Posted on 
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Hello everybody,

I've been using an AWE32 card in a DOS machine for years without problem.

Earlier today I had to replace my faulty serial mouse with a PS/2 mouse. After powering the computer on again I noticed games/applications would freeze or refuse to launch when using Sound Blaster (with Duke3D invoking a possible IRQ conflict).

Went and ran DIAGNOSE.EXE and got this error:
awe32diagnose9djys.jpg

I retried without the PS/2 mouse pugged in (which should not have conflicted since it uses IRQ 12 and the AWE32 was set to IRQ 10), got the error again.

I tried freeing up other usable IRQs (3, 5, 7) from the BIOS, kept getting the error. Peripherals using these IRQs (serial mouse, onboard sound hardware) work otherwise fine.

I tried relocating the AWE32 to different ISA ports, to no avail.

Also, I put the AWE32 in another, Win98 machine, and it installed and operated correctly. I don't think the card itself is faulty.

Computer is a Compaq Presario 4526, PII 233 MMX, under DOS 6.22. AWE32 is a CT-3670.

Does anyone have a lead?

Reply 1 of 2, by mkarcher

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The AWE32 is a PnP card. This card does not get its IRQ assigned by diagnose (as the non-PnP soundblasters did), but by the plug-and-play initialization process. Creative Labs distributed "CTCM" (the creative labs configuration manager) with their PnP soundblaster cards, which gets run every boot. Also, mainboard BIOSes since around 1995 initialize some or all ISA plug and play cards in a basic manner. If you set "Plug and Play OS installed = No" in the BIOS setup, the BIOS tries to initialize all PnP cards. If you set "Plug and Play OS installed = Yes", only cards (possibly) required for booting (like network cards, SCSI controllers, IDE ports) are initialized by the BIOS.

So:

  1. If you want to get away without CTCM, make sure the soundblaster IRQ you prefer is not set as "Legacy ISA" in the BIOS configuration. Make sure you configure "Plug and Play OS installed = NO".
  2. Otherwise, make sure CTCM is loaded from CONFIG.SYS. It should output a message like "3 out of 4 Creative PnP devices configured". Oftentimes, CTCM fails to find free resources for the IDE port on soundblaster cards, so thats why one device is often unconfigured.
  3. If CTCM gets loaded but fails to configure the soundcard automatically, use CTCU (supplied with CTCM) to configure the available resources.

If you search the internet for CTCM, don't mix up the "Creative Technology Configuration Manager" with the "c't cache measurement" tool. Both are called CTCM.

Reply 2 of 2, by Groenegel

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Thanks! The card was indeed set up with CTCM but I didn't know/had forgotten about CTCU (probably did not need it when first installing the card).

Turns out the original IRQ setting was still in place after the card had started malfunctioning and there was no way to alter/get rid of it.
awe32ctcu8ukkx.jpg

Assigning the card to IRQ 7 with CTCU would make the sound work again, but there were still problems left like the gameport not working.

Eventually, taking out the card, replacing it with another PnP card (had an SCSI adapter on hand), taking that out and putting the AWE32 back again appears to have done away with the "ghost" setting and everything went back to normal.

Again, thanks!

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