Do you need a printer on LPT1? If not then just disable all printer ports on the multi IO.

Have you tried different a ISA slot for the soundcard? There could be a problem with the slot that might be causing issues on the bus or something when a card is inserted.

I took the multi IO card out to inspect the jumpers, saw nothing, left it disconnected and powered on the system.
To my surprise that didn't fix anything. There's just the VGA card and the sound card, yet still it beeps.
Anyways I put it in the Sound Blaster. It spares me during cold boots so I'm happy with that for now.
Thanks for replying

Wait, are you implying that warm boots cause the issue even with the Sound Blaster?

Yes, sometimes after rebooting/resetting, it continues having the issue until you power-cycle. If it happens, you can reset all you want, it's not gonna work until you flip the power switch.
But atleast it happens less often than with the ESS. The sound card works as expected (well, with PnP utility) provided it got into DOS

Have you tried a different PSU?

No, I don't have any other AT power supplies.
But the same PSU powered the same sound card just 3 weeks ago (of course, in a Pentium 120). Maybe it started failing while I was on vacation?

pan069 wrote on 2026-01-01, 20:09:

Do you need a printer on LPT1? If not then just disable all printer ports on the multi IO.

Have you tried different a ISA slot for the soundcard? There could be a problem wth the slot that might be causing issues on the bus or something when a card is inserted.

Disabling because of IRQ conflicts?
As far as I know it's not so much of an problem in practice.

The IRQ conflict often occurs when two devices same time use same interrupt.

But on DOS and Windows 3.x that's not the case, they don't use interrupts for printing via LPT.
OS/2 is the exception here.

As a simple fix, if OS is DOS, is to simply cut the IRQ line of the LPT port.
If it's an ISA multi-i/o card, removing a jumper or cutting a trace next to IRQ 7 ISA pin is enough (or IRQ5 if it's LPT2).

That way, the LPT still works for Covox SpeechThing or printing.
If the cut was done carefully, it can be undone by using a jumper wire.

Well the issue occurs without the multi IO card too. So I think it's either conflict with keyboard controller or just not a fan of my chipset.
I made a recording of the noise (loops during ram test until the keyboard error happens)

As someone who experienced the same problem years ago (around 1992–1993), I’m writing this. Back then, I had a custom-built 80386SX computer with a Hedaka motherboard, and I installed a cheap sound card called the Sound Galaxy NX. The system was completely thrown into chaos. At first it didn’t work at all; later, when I changed the graphics card, it was thought to be fixed—but no. After running for a while, the keyboard would freeze. The computer could keep running like this for hours, and unplugging and reconnecting the keyboard didn’t help at all. I also replaced the I/O card, but it made no difference. Changin sound card IRQ jumpers, mainboards BIOS settings, nothing changed.

For a long time, I accepted the situation and got by using programs and playing games that could be controlled only with a mouse. I still don’t know exactly where the problem was, but it was most likely related to the motherboard, and no one was able to solve it.

Is there a 74ALS245 chip under the BIOS chip? If so it might be dying, can't handle the extra ISA card(s). Consider replacing it, with ACT variant if you can't find a new ALS.

If there is no '245 part there then it might be the '206 ASIC itself that degraded. Some of these are known to die, but usually people report DMA or FDC not working.

Note that there might more '245 chips on the mobo, between the slots, these are usually slower LS series (not ALS) and drive different lines, these usually don't cause problems.

You say that "the keyboard controller doesn't work. I get a error and can't enter anything" but you don't state the error message. What is the error message?

The keyboard is on IRQ 1 and nobody in their right mind would build a sound card to use that IRQ. Furthermore, IRQs 0, 1, 2, 8, and 13* are not available on the ISA bus, so it'd be impossible to do so. The keyboard I/O ports are 0x60 and 0x64, and wouldn't conflict with a sound card.

* 0 - System Timer, 1 - Keyboard Controller, 2 - Cascade to Second PIC, 13 - FPU

Deudan, I couldn't find any 206 or ALS245 chips. There are some LS245 between the slots though.
Alaric, the error message is "Keyboard error or keyboard not present", I should have been more specific but I also don't think this will help anyone out.
I think it's just chipset weirdness, I don't think UM849x is exactly known for its compatibility. But you can't be picky, especially with 31 year old parts.
I'll reply if I get any further details but I'm busy right now!