Gameports, SB, and WinXP

[hubsonfire]

I've got an old SB pci128 soundcard (yeah, I know, I've got dinosaur hardware and no budget to upgrade atm) that I'm using on this PC. Asus A7N8X-X, amd xp2400 cpu, 512mb pc2700 ram, FX5200 vid card. I also have an old Suncom throttle that I'd like to use. However, its a gameport connection, and I cannot get my gameport on the sound card to operate (some sort of resource conflict). Has anyone else had problems like this, or know what might be causing it? I know the soundcard is fully functional, having pulled it out of my old AH1 pc. I'd appreciate any help you might have, and can post more specifics regarding hardware and the conflict if that would be of use.

Thanks,
hub

[Siaf__csf]

Your board has a built in sound and gameport system, why not use them instead?

Did you disable the built in sound when you installed the SB?

[hubsonfire]

I do have the onboard sound, which is disabled, but no gameport.

[doc1kelley]

Originally posted by hubsonfire
I've got an old SB pci128 soundcard (yeah, I know, I've got dinosaur hardware and no budget to upgrade atm) that I'm using on this PC. Asus A7N8X-X, amd xp2400 cpu, 512mb pc2700 ram, FX5200 vid card. I also have an old Suncom throttle that I'd like to use. However, its a gameport connection, and I cannot get my gameport on the sound card to operate (some sort of resource conflict). Has anyone else had problems like this, or know what might be causing it? I know the soundcard is fully functional, having pulled it out of my old AH1 pc. I'd appreciate any help you might have, and can post more specifics regarding hardware and the conflict if that would be of use.

Thanks,
hub

You might try knocking your hardware acceleration down a notch or two and see what happens.  Also ensure you have the latest drivers for your SB.

Hope that helps...

 Jay
awDOC1

[StarOfAfrica2]

I had the same problem when I upgraded my MOBO.  It had onboard sound, but no gameport.  So I added my SB Live! 5.1 card to the comp. and figured it would be no problem.  It seems the drivers for the MOBO still came with a gameport driver.  If you look in your Device Manager, I'm betting it will show TWO gameports, one for your soundcard and one for your onboard sound.  You will have to Disable that one before the one from the soundcard will be recognized (Windows can only recognize one, not both).  My suggestion is to take out the soundcard, uninstall all the drivers for it.  This avoids confusing the device manager.  Find the gameport/MIDIport that is listed there and disable it.  Then put the card back in and reinstall the drivers.  It should detect the gameport and set the resources for it properly.

[hubsonfire]

I did indeed show 2 gameports in Device Manager: 1 Creative, and 1 onboard. I uninstalled the drivers, uninstalled the hardware, removed the soundcard, disabled the ports in bios, etc etc. Booted up, no sound devices. Reinstalled card, booted up, winxp autoinstalled the sound card drivers, but still no gameport. Its trying to auto assign 0200-0207 I/O ports (basic config 0000). The only other option displayed is basic config 0001. This config offers me 3 I/O ports in resource assignment: 0208-020F, 0210-0217, and 0218-021F. However, it says all 3 of these are unavailable. I am totally stumped. In BIOS, the default gameport (which my board doesn't even have) is assigned 0210 as a default port. I have that disabled. In fact, I have com1 off, com 2 off, onboard sound off, parallel port off, onboard modem off, and probably some other stuff. I have everything off which isn't running (modem, soundcard, vid card in agp are the only devices I've added to this PC. I am getting extremely pissed off. I'm missing something here, or I've got some sort of compliance issue (even though the most recent soundcard drivers [which i just reinstalled] say they're on the WHQL or whatever-the-hell-it-is) which would be driving me drink if the liquor store wasn't already closed.

Anyone else got any ideas? Does it sound like I've missed something or skipped a step?

Thanks,
hub

[StarOfAfrica2]

2 questions.  

1)  Does the other gameport still show up in the device manager?

2)  Is your sound card sharing any IRQ's with anything else?

If the onboard gameport is still in device manager, try removing it altogether, then reboot.  Perhaps by doing it that way, the one on the soundcard will be there first this time and it will assign the proper resources to it instead of the onboard one.

Also try checking your drivers.  Is it installing older .vxd drivers, or the WinXP .WMD drivers?  

If nothing else works to change the resources for your card,  move it to a different PCI slot.  That will change the resources allotted to it.

[hubsonfire]

The onboard card no longer shows in the Device Manager.

The drivers are, I think, WDM. I've checked out microsoft's website to see if there's some sort of issue, but I haven't found anything to indicate that yet. I'm going to do some checking, see if I do infact have the most current creative and ms drivers.

I have also tried moving the card to another pci slot, without any changes to resource assignment. I have to be missing something here.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Ok, 2 more questions.  I'm assuming the only thing that doesnt work is the gameport?  When you go to the "creative gameport" under sound and game devices in your Device Manager, does it say the device is working properly?  Second, does your BIOS allow you to manually reserve IRQ settings vs automatically assigning them?

If the device shows as working properly in your Device Manager, and you cannot set IRQ's manually to see if you can change the resources that way, it may not work.  I did find one thing on it regarding "if your gameport does not work".  There can be a timing issue where the gameport appears to be "working" but a joystick wont work when plugged in (or wont work right).  The guide suggests lowering your bus speed (if you can).  Since that would be rather detrimental to your system performance, you may be forced to go with a cheap modern card as a replacement. I'm not saying that IS the problem, just saying that the manual I found mentions that in the troubleshooting section.  Other than these things I dont know what else to suggest.  Perhaps Skuzzy knows something else to try.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Ooops found one more ideeer.  You got SP2?  I found a post from a guy on another forum with the same soundcard as you who had problems getting some of his older programs and drivers to function under SP2, but when he rolled back to SP1 it solved the problems.  He didnt specifically mention the soundcard, but it WAS the oldest thing on his system.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Here are the technical specs for your card for what IRQ and DMA settings it likes............

Interrupt (IRQ): 5, [7], 9, 10
DMA Channel: 0, [1], 3
Sound Blaster I/O Address #1: [220], 240
Sound Blaster I/O Address #2: 388
Base/MIDI port I/O Address: 320, [330], 340, 350
Wave Synthesizer I/O Address: 530, E80, F40 Hex
Connectors

The ones in brackets [] are the default.

[StarOfAfrica2]

One more idea for changing your resources, this is for if you have problems in DOS mode (older versions of Windows) but it might work for XP as well.

The default IRQ for a soundcard is IRQ 5. Therefore, before installing your Soundcard we recommend that you check that IRQ 5 is available by double-clicking the computer option in your Device Manager.

(you may need to reserve IRQ 5 for ISA/Legacy devices in the BIOS).

1. Click Start and go to Settings. Click Control Panel and go to System.

2. Select Device Manager then click on the '+' sign next to Sound Video & Game Controllers. Right-click on Sound Blaster 16 PCI Legacy Device and choose Properties. Under Resources, check which resources the DOS emulation is using.

3. If DOS emulation is using IRQ 7 we recommend that you change it, by opening Device Manager then again under Sound Video & Game Controllers - Creative Sound Blaster 16 PCI - Properties un-ticking the option 'Allow LPT Sharing'. Then reboot the system.

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

4. Restart the computer in DOS-Mode.

5. At the command promp, type CD c:\progra~1\creative\ctsnd\dosdrv

6. Run APINIT.COM to initialise the card for use in DOS 7
7. Run APCONFIG.EXE which will display the current Sound BlasterPCI128 DOS settings
8. Run APTEST.EXE which is a diagnostic utility which allows you to test the sound (Wave & MIDI) functionality on the card.


The following lines(or similar) should appear in the system files

CONFIG.SYS DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE

AUTOEXEC.BAT SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330 T2 SET SNDSCAPE=C:\WINDOWS

DOSSTART.BAT C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND\DOSDRV\APINIT.COM

Further Suggestions
We recommend that you Update your Soundcard drivers.
Try the card in a different PCI slot.
Lower the PCI VGA card's hardware acceleration
Update the system BIOS and chipset drivers.

I would pretty much ignore everything after the pictures except for restarting the computer.  The rest wont apply anymore.  I had forgotten that Creative installs "Legacy" settings by default, this area almost HAS to be your problem (even though its a PCI card instead of ISA, it will still be considered "legacy" because it wants specific settings reserved for it and doesnt like not having them).

[Hornet]

if soundcard works fine otherwise, other option is to bypass the gameport and get a gameport ->usb converter and go that route, bout $15 at radioshack.

[nsty1]

I had a similiar problem as yours,wish i could remember the Mobo,
But what i ended up doing was to "disable" on-board sound on the MOBO itself and i do recall leaving everything else on default settings under Bios.
If you have the documentation of your board,it may be the "step" you're missing,hope this helps.

[hubsonfire]

Yeah, I can get an adapter, but I'm opposed to the idea of having to buy more hardware to use the hardware I already have that's fully compatible, functional, using up to date drivers, and still doesn't f***ing work. There's some fundamental issue here involving winduhsXP automatically selecting the 'best' driver and resource assignments, and the card. I can reserve every IRQ in bios, defeat any and all automatic resource settings, move the card around in the 5 slots, and it still sets up exactly the same way within seconds of winduhs starting up.

All onboard stuff except the LAN port is disabled. I guess I'll start going through the documentation and see if I can make a change at the hardware level. This has been a wonderful exercise in futility thus far. Yaaaaay.

Anyhow, thanks for the input.