Problem installing a new sound card

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Mon Jul 30, 2001 1:00 am

Hi guys,
This is a very long and detailed description of a problem with a new sound card.

I finally decided to upgrade my old trusty Sound Blaster AWE32 card that I've had forever. I currently have it running in an Abit BH6 motherboard using Win98. After posting a suggestion as to which new card to get, I decided on a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. The installation say to remove any software via the add/remove, but there was none for my SB AWE32. I then went to device manager and deleted the card from there. I proceeded to shut down my pc and remove the card. I installed the TB Santa Cruz in an open PCI slot and rebooted.

The instructions for Win98 are to cancel the installation when the card is detected by windows after a reboot. The installation must be done by launching the setup.exe file on the CD according to the manual. So when I receive the new hardware wizard screen, I click on cancel and then my screen goes black (goes into sleep mode I guess), as the power is still on the monitor but I can't see anything on the screen.

Anyway, I hit reset and the same thing happens. I then tried it once more and this time, I clicked on continue when windows finds the card, but the next screen I click on cancel and finally I'm able to install the new card and drivers. Now here is were the problems come in. If I play any game, the screen goes black and the sound is heard looping in the background. This happens after about 30 seconds or so in Half Life TFC and Quake 3. There are NO conflicts in device manager. None of my cards are sharing any IRQ's. Everything on the desktop works great: mp3's and even DvD movies all play and sound great with the TB Santa Cruz, but games are no-go.

System:
Abit BH6 with NV bios
256 mb ram
PIII 600MHz CPU
Maxtor 13.6 HD
300 watt power supply
CTX 17" monitor
Creative Geforce2 GTS video card using the 12.41 reference drivers
3COM Etherlink III ISA network card
Tekram SCSI UW controller
OS: win98

Any ideas on how I might be able to solve this problem with games? I since have removed the TB Santa Cruz and re-installed my old SB AWE32 until I have some ideas to try. I have already tried moving the card to another pci slot, but with no luck. Again, I have NO conflicts in device manager.

Radboy · Post by **Radboy** » Mon Jul 30, 2001 1:39 am

Hi Ex.

That's a great description of the problem.

I have no solution other than to try another PCI slot, or try moving cards around.

Rad

sethpa · Post by **sethpa** » Mon Jul 30, 2001 6:17 am

You using the drivers that came with the card? Might look on the TB website for updated ones and give those a try. That card has been around a while and I'd about bet they have newer ones out.

sethpa

Slugbait · Post by **Slugbait** » Tue Jul 31, 2001 9:02 pm

try going into device mangler and disabling sb emulation.

heck, even Creative can't get it right. i have to disable this for my xgamer 5.1 just to get input devices to work (originally i formatted before i figured this out).

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Tue Jul 31, 2001 11:06 pm

The SB emulation is not installed by default, so the card is using only 1 IRQ in device manager. I'm wondering maybe it might be the AGP apature size? It's currently set at 64, and I have 256 megs of ram. I was also thinking that I should make the default AGP slot speed at 2x? I really don't know what the default speed is because I'm using an Abit BH6, and I did not see anything in the BIOS for AGP bus speed. I have NVMAX, and it reports it as "default". I'm pretty sure this is a conflict between the video card (geforce 2 gts) and the new TB Santa Cruz sound card. Why it messes up in games only is beyond me. Weird...

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 7:19 am

It sounds like an PCI IRQ channel sharing problem (NOT the same as an IRQ conflict). Details here: http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/glfaq5.htm#5_9

Easiest fix is to move the card to a different slot.