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AWE64 in 486DX2/66 HELP!

M

MatthewH12

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May 17, 2010
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I recently acquired a vintage 486 computer, and I am having some issues getting an AWE card to work. It's an AWE64 Model CT4380 with IDE CD-ROM Support. I might as well start by saying, while I do have experience with these era machines (the first PC I worked on was a 486), I have NO experience with ISA SoundBlaster Cards (the 486 I mentioned used an ESS board). I got this card off eBay, because I needed one with IDE support for a CD-ROM Drive, and wasn't able to afford too much.

I removed the existing Sound Card, an Aztech board of some sort (which I verified DOES work in the PC), and put the SB card in it's ISA Slot (other 3 slots are empty), and then attempted to install the drivers on a fresh install of MS-DOS 6.22. I grabbed CTCMBBS and SBBasic from Creative's site, and this is where I run into issues. I installed CTCM fine, but on bootup it does not detect the card. I believe it's supposed to print out that it found it on bootup? Trying to install SBBasic says no card found on any of the 4 available IO Ports. Diagnose also reports it can not find the card. I tried it in another machine, a Pentium class one, and had the same issue. I'm kinda worried the card it's self is dead, but there seems to be no damage to the card, or bulging caps.

Am I just missing something?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
 
I'll try it again, but I believe I did. I downloaded CTCMBBS, extracted it, and ran install. It went through the install fine, and then rebooted my PC. CTCM and CTCU run on startup, but neither mention the AWE card, or anything other than that they loaded. I tried running install from SBBasic and it said it couldn't find the card.
 
Usually a failure to find would be due to a resource conflict. Have you checked all jumpers on the card? They may be set to a conflicting IRQ, base address or DMA. Was the card sold as tested working?

Rick
 
RickNel said:
Usually a failure to find would be due to a resource conflict. Have you checked all jumpers on the card? They may be set to a conflicting IRQ, base address or DMA.
Click to expand...

This is a PnP cards, and as far as I remember it doesn't have any jumpers.

If possible try this card in a system with PnP BIOS (most Pentium systems and later had PnP BIOSes) or a system with Windows 95 or later. If it doesn't get detected - the card is broken.
 
Diagnose reported it couldn't find the card on any of the 4 I/O Ports. I don't have a machine with 95 handy, but I did try it in a Pentium machine, both with PNP OS set to ON, and to OFF, CTCM still wouldn't find it.
 
I ended up contacting the seller on eBay and got a full refund for the dead card and bought a CT3600. Hopefully I'll have more luck once I receive it!
 
Just because the AWE64 is (was) plug&play doesn't mean your MACHINE is...
Your configuration was likely screwy...
For example,
Do you not have 2 IDE connectors ON THE MOTHERBOARD? They take IRQs 14 and 15...
Your parallel printer port (usually) defaults to IRQ 7...
Serial ports (usually 2) take IRQs 4 and 3, respectively (for COM1 and COM2)...
And so on...

Pretty much the only OPEN IRQs you have are 5, 10 and 11. It is possible to steal 3 if you disable COM2... 12 if you kill PS2 mouse...

Now, for the FUN part...
EVEN THE PENTIUM would have needed 'help'... did you tell it to reset PNP in the bios?

just some thoughts to ponder.
:D
 
While I admit it COULD be a resource conflict, I did try resetting the PNP Config, both with PNP on and off, still nothing, not even the installer could find it. And I know ISA Sound cards work in the 486 machine, because it has a SGPro 16 (also PNP) that it came with that works (I removed it when testing the AWE). I also tried two different ISA Slots, still no go with the AWE. So while yes, there is a slim chance it could be a resource error, I think something would have detected it in one of the two machines.
 
... Then I hope you have better luck with the 3600...

Never really cared for the AWEs... resource/CPU hogs... all of them!
:D
 
leeb said:
... Then I hope you have better luck with the 3600...

Never really cared for the AWEs... resource/CPU hogs... all of them!
:D
Click to expand...

Got the CT3600, CTCU picked it right up, as did the drivers. Works like a champ!!
 
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