First post, by BeastOfSoda
Hello,
Wondering if you fine folks may be able to help me with a strange behaviour I'm experiencing.
I have a Sound Blaster 16 that only seems to work for a few minutes at a time, after a cold boot. When I turn on the PC, the output is very clean, but after a while I start hearing a high pitched whirring sound coming out from the left speaker, and no more proper audio coming out of it. This is audible during POST, so it's not a mixer issue; upon closer hearing, the sound kinda "ramps up" after power on, reminding me of a motor spinning to life (but I have already tried disconnecting all fans, to no avail). Running DIAGNOSE makes the problem worse, and produces straight up white noise.
From a few cursory inspections, I did not notice any funny looking caps, although unfortunately I don't have the competence to test them, much less do a recap job (my clumsiness would just end up turning it into a hunk of burnt plastic). I did try testing for DC offset, but I'm not sure I did it right (I stuck the positive probe on the case and the negative to the tip, ring or sleeve of an audio cable connected to the line out).
Also of note: at one point, I did experience a similar issue with an SB Live in a previous incarnation of this setup, so I am tempted to think that the PSU may be doing a number on the components (it's an old LC Power), however only the Creative boards have had issues. Any thoughts? Could this be a likely cause?
Here is my setup for reference:
P3 866
Shuttle AV11 mainboard
2x128 GB PC-133 RAM
LC Power LC420H-12 PSU
Nvidia TNT2 m64
Voodoo 2
Sound Blaster Live
ES1868f
Sound Blaster 16 ct2230
In BIOS, I have set IRQs 5+7 and DMAs 0+1+5 as legacy ISA.
Thanks in advance!