Sound Blaster 1.5 - test-sbc.exe DMA error

[Locutus]

Hello everyone!

Recently, I finally decided to try out my Sound Blaster 1.5, I got on eBay some months ago. It came with packaging and original floppies. Because I didn't find any updated drivers in Creative's archives, I went with the original floppies. The card is installed in a 486 system with ISA-PNP BIOS and 16-bit ISA bus. The DSP version is 1.05.

The problem is, the test-sbc.exe program gives me error 400 and according to the manual this is supposed to be due to some kind of DMA conflict:

DMA conflict, error found, error code 400
this is caused by another adapter card that uses DMA channel #1 (usually a scanner card). Change the DMA channel on the other card to channel 3 (or channel 0) and this error should go away.

I have nothing else installed in the system, except a graphics card and I already tried to set "DMA 1 used by ISA" in BIOS, removed the DMA jumper, set the card to IRQ5, everything to no effect. Despite this the talking parrot application that plays samples and the FM music seem to work.

The game Syndicate Plus however crashes on start when I enable sound.

Has anybody else experienced this kind of error?
Are there updated drivers for the card?

Thanks!
locutus

[Great Hierophant]

DMA channels can also be used by SCSI ports, ECP Parallel Ports, Network Cards, Tape Backup Interfaces, and some modems.  I assume your motherboard does not have any of these things, other than perhaps the parallel port, integrated onto it.  Make sure the Parallel Port is set to EPP or SPP, which should not use a DMA channel.

Otherwise, I would suspect your hardware may be too fast for certain software, such as your test-sbc.exe program.  Sierra's earlier Sound Blaster supporting games would frequently fail to work with the Sound Blaster option selected on later 486s and the Pentium processors. 

I believe later versions of test-sbc.exe should work with the older card. 

[Locutus]

Hi Great Hierophant!

Thanks for the reply. I already tried to disable the parallel port in the BIOS, but that didn't help. I think I ruled out that a real DMA conflict is the case, because an SB16 CT1740 currently runs fine in the system. Is there any place where I can get updated drivers for the Sound Blaster 1.5?

Locutus

[Patrick Chang]

Hi Locutus,

May I know how fast is the clock speed of your 486?

PC

[Locutus]

It's a fairly fast 486 with 133 MHz. I recently tested the card in a friend's PC which is a Pentium 90 and it shows the same behavior. Most of the games however were able to detect the card and play samples and FM music, so maybe it's a bug in the test-sbc.exe program. It may also be related to the clock speed, but my guess is that the PNP-BIOS is the evil-doer.

[Patrick Chang]

It's a fairly fast 486 with 133 MHz. I recently tested the card in a friend's PC which is a Pentium 90 and it shows the same behavior. Most of the games however were able to detect the card and play samples and FM music, so maybe it's a bug in the test-sbc.exe program. It may also be related to the clock speed, but my guess is that the PNP-BIOS is the evil-doer.

Locutus,

I believe yours is the AMD-X5-133 CPU... the fastest 486 made by AMD. Which is nearly as fast as the Pentium 75MHz.
You may try the following test-sbc.exe which was meant to fix the 486DX-50MHz. Hopefully it will help solve your problem.

http://ftp2.de.freebsd.org/pub/misc/creative/creative/patches/testsb.exe

Let me know if it works.

PC.