VOGONS


Reply 20 of 33, by Mau1wurf1977

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Back to the Sound Blaster Pro 2 / AWE64 Gold 😀

I always do after being unfaithful for a bit 😈

My website with reviews, demos, drivers, tutorials and more...
My YouTube channel

Reply 21 of 33, by Cloudschatze

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
badmojo wrote:

Whether this is because the card is bad, or because it just has crappy MPU-401 functionality in general is anyone's guess.

It could be a problem with your card, or something specific to the implementation thereof, but the actual MPU-401 functionality of the Jazz16 chipset itself is solid enough, per my own experience.

Reply 22 of 33, by Skyscraper

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
badmojo wrote:
orcish75 wrote:

I remember being bitterly disappointed playing any Direct X games, Diablo, Starcraft, etc and having distorted music coming from the one channel. The same thing happened when playing MP3s. The other channel was crystal clear. It never had this issue when playing 8-bit audio in DOS games, both channels were clear and distortion free.

Yes I vaguely remember someone saying once that Media Vision audio cards didn't play nice with Windows games, and that they should be considered DOS only.

I think my Audiowave Platinum 16 uses the Jazz16 chipset. It also has a Crystal CS4231-KL codec chip.
So far I have no issues at all with distorted sound in Windows 3.11 or in DOS games that use 16 bit MSS.
Parhaps the issue only exists in Windows 9x? or perhaps only Media Vision boards are affected?
The Sound Blaster Pro part of the card also seems to be perfect so far.
It is possible that some note have played a bit to long in Daggerfall so perhaps the hanging note bug also affects my card.
Its hard to tell since the music in Daggerfall mostly consists of notes playing for a long time. I have not heard anything strange in other games.

I will try to listen for hanging notes.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 23 of 33, by badmojo

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

My second encounter with the Jazz16 chipset has been even less productive than the first - I don't think I'll be going back for a third. I picked up this nice looking Gateway OEM card, for which Gateway still hosts the specs and drivers on their website. The card looked to be in great condition but it literally went up in smoke the instant I turned the machine on - I was testing it in a PIII which has played nice with all of the ISA cards I've tested in it to date. Here it is, 2 surface mount resistors (I think they are) on the lower right is what burned:

IMG_4985_zps16e64d15.jpg

IMG_4987_zpsbbc49d99.jpg

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 24 of 33, by Jepael

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

The burned L6 is a ferrite bead, definitely part of filtering supply voltage entering the card.
As there is no picture from the bottom of the board at all and the top picture is charred, I can't tell which supply voltage that is and where it goes, but it is either +12V or -12V supply line.
So much current has passed through it so it got too hot, so there is most likely a shortcut or broken component somewhere else.
L5 seems to have survived.

I noticed there is something burnt right below jumper P9, it could be the source of the problem. Or another ferrite bead. I cannot see from the picture.

Since it has a real OPL3, it might worth to try to fix or mod it so that at least something could be heard.

Reply 25 of 33, by badmojo

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Thanks for the info Jepael but I'm not going to try to fix it, my soldering skills are probably not up to the job and I don't think it's worth the time finding out.

I've asked the seller for a refund but the listing was carefully worded to not include a condition, so I might be SOOL

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 26 of 33, by badmojo

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I'd promised myself no more Jazz16's but I found this one at the local recycling center in a pile of eWaste, so I decided it was worth the investment of 0 dollars and a little bit of time. It doesn't have a wavetable header and has a SCSI interface, so it's not worth much to me, but this one works at least. The sound blaster pro emulation seems fine but it sounds a bit thin, and I can't think of a reason why this thing exists really. I'd take an AudioDrive over it any day.

It looks nice though:

IMG_5115_zps929175a7.jpg

IMG_5119_zps1c41c13a.jpg

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 27 of 33, by Tiremaster400

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I'm using two different Jazz 16's in two different Pentium 60 computers and they sound fine to me in DOOM II ver. 1.9. Sounds just like a SB16 with OPL.

Reply 28 of 33, by dogchainx

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I have an old GATEWAY 2000 486 system that the 16MVCARD came in. I downloaded the Jazz16.zip drivers from here (the ONLY ones anywhere I can find for anything close to the 16MVCARD) but the installation freezes as soon as it gets to the configuration screen of I/O, IRQ, etc. I got the drivers manually declared and loaded in the AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS and it now plays sound, but anyone else having problems with the installation program for the JAZZ16?

EDIT: On a lot of extra testing, reinstall, plain boot disk, etc...sometimes the install will get to a point where it'll say there's a DMA conflict, though its not consistent. Time for more thorough, step-testing with notes. 😠

386DX-40MHz-8MB-540MB+428MB+Speedstar64@2MB+SoundBlaster Pro+MT-32/MKII
486DX2-66Mhz-16MB-4.3GB+SpeedStar64 VLB DRAM 2MB+AWE32/SB16+SCB-55
MY BLOG RETRO PC BLOG: https://bitbyted.wordpress.com/

Reply 29 of 33, by dacow

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Not sure if you had any luck with the card dogchainx, but I tested mine after being in storage for a bit and the drivers loaded okay, mixer software worked but audio was really really faint. So faint I had to turn up my amp to almost max to barely hear anything and at that point I decided I've had enough of this card and back to storage or maybe the bin it goes.

Reply 30 of 33, by dr.wily

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I have a media Vision pro Audio Wavetable (650-0152-51). The FCC ID is IXW-JAZZWAVE. There are 3 majors chip on the board :

- a JAzz16 mvd1216b
- a spectrum mva416
- an ICS2115v

Scan of this soundcard :

http://wellby.dyndns.org/dnl/img/pro-audio-wave.jpg

This sound card works great under DOS (SB16 emulation) but I could not make wavetable to work. There is a DB connector + an integrated wavetable synthetiser, but I don't understand how use the integrted wavetable part. Any idea ?

Reply 31 of 33, by gdjacobs

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Please try to keep your project organized in one thread and link to that thread in any related threads such as this one. It makes it so much easier for everyone.

BTW, I wonder if that card was a prototype?

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 32 of 33, by Tenorman

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I know this is an old thread, but I have been messing with the same Gateway OEM card and I had almost exactly the same thing happen. A ferrite burned up in the lower right corner and the card "went up in smoke". 😀

I did get quite a bit of testing done before this happened however and made several recordings. I posted a writeup at http://tenorman.info/pc/gateway16mvcard.

The 16MVCARD isn't really anything exciting, but it also doesn't seem to have any major problems (assuming it doesn't blow up on you). I suppose there is something to be said for that.

[Compaq Presario 633 | DOS 6.22 / Win 3.1 | DX4 100 Overdrive | 28M RAM | SB16 CT2770A | SPEA Media FX (Soundscape S2000) ]
[GA-6BXC R2.0 | Win98SE | Via C3 Ezra 866 | 384M RAM | TNT2 32M | Voodoo2 8M | SB32 CT3670 | Ensoniq Soundscape Opus]

Reply 33 of 33, by Iano

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
dacow wrote on 2014-06-09, 02:49:

Not sure if you had any luck with the card dogchainx, but I tested mine after being in storage for a bit and the drivers loaded okay, mixer software worked but audio was really really faint. So faint I had to turn up my amp to almost max to barely hear anything and at that point I decided I've had enough of this card and back to storage or maybe the bin it goes.

I fixed an issue like this on a couple media vision cards yesterday. One was a jazz 16 and the other one was a quick shot jazz 16 clone. Had really faint output on one channel poor quality on the other. I traced the problem to dead or failing capacitors on the amplifier circuit, connected to the TEA2025 amplifier chip. On both boards there is a 16volt 47uf electrolytic capacitor for each output channel, the only two 47uf caps on my boards. I replaced them with used caps from something else and got full audio back.

With hardware this old you have to watch out for failing capacitors. It's pretty common after this many years. Interesting that those two 47uf caps we're the only capacitors with problems. The others tested fine I don't know what it was about those. I suppose the power load on those two caused them to fail sooner
I'm not sure this will be useful to anyone here now as this is an old thread, but for future reference...