@wardyone

Thanks for running these tests. It is encouraging that you seem to have solved your lock-up problems. It would be interesting to hear if others have the same success by switching audio cards. (I'm afraid that I cannot help here though.)

@PEB
I think you'll find that everyone with this lock up is running SB live or Audigy cards. I'm confident that this is going to solve everyone problems.

I've been streaming internet radio with tunenet and downloading a cd iso for 6 hrs now. Something that I've never been able to do in the past.

@wardyone

Sounds great!

@thread

I'm afraid that wardyone may have something here.

I just bought the Juli@ and installed it and for forms sake I started the usual downloads and AmigaAmp playlist that has crashed for me everytime before but this time I managed to download all 6 (I could only get access to 6 this time) Debian ISO's and when I came home now audio is running and all files downloaded.

Drivers for the EMU10kx are still in DEVS/Audiomodes and Devs/AHI.

Only diff is that I installed the card and added the Envy24HT drivers to their respective drawers.

I did change pci slot for the card but I only changed it back to the slot that I had the Soundblaster originally in since I tried to switch slaots according to a suggestion from someone else in this thread.

The question is (for those who don't have another soundcard to test) can you just disconnect the soundcard and start an mp3 player even if you can't hear whats being played and see if a lockup occurs?

I had a Soundblaster 5.1 Digital live and I bought brand new (could it be 2 years ago?).



Will start a new test with the same ISO's over again from the beginning.

Last edited by Steff on 08-Jul-2005 at 11:13 PM.

_________________
Fixed A1G4XE 7455 RX933PC with fried CPU
Sapphire Radeon 9100 128mb
ESI Juli@ 24bit 192kHz Envy24HT
Sil 680 Ultra Ata 133 E-ide
SeaGate Barracuda 120gb 8mb cache

@Steff

I would tend to think that the problem is in the driver instead of the sound card itself. And I'm not sure if simply removing the card and playing MP3s would conclusively pinpoint the problem either. (But it would be interesting to know the results of such a test anyway.)

P.S.: Congrats on apparently solving your audio/internet crashes!

@Steff
Awsome! What I like to see!!
Notice any difference in audio quality? I sure did..!!!

My EMU10Kx driver is still in devs draw, and my SB Live 5.1 is in the bottom draw of my desk! Best working combo I've found so far..

Cheers

@Steff

Interesting to see. So it does matter after all.
Note that the Envy24HT driver currently at OS4depot works more by coincident with the Juli@ than anything else. I haven't uploaded the real driver yet.

Quote:

The question is (for those who don't have another soundcard to test) can you just disconnect the soundcard and start an mp3 player even if you can't hear whats being played and see if a lockup occurs?

You can't use an mp3 player without a soundcard unless you use a FileSave mode. This mode doesn't use IRQ's and isn't real-time, so that's no meaningful test IMHO.

Oh well, I'm all for dumping Creative cards.

But weren't there any people with microA1's that have problems? Those have CMI chipsets.

Note 2: the Envy24HT driver transports a triple amount of data between memory and sound card (for s/pdif and 2nd stereo output pair). One would expect this to be more troublesome, but it's the contrary.

_________________
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@DaveAE
I must first thank you for the driver for the revolution!!

A SB live in a PC with a 686b chipset corrupts the pci bus controller.
I know this because my SB live has succesfully done this to 4 of my mates PC's
There was a bios patch released, but it also fixed the DMA problems with the ide.

@wardyone
Quote:

wardyone wrote: @wegster I would reccommend another sound card, just not a SB Audigy or SB live.. I've done every test imaginable and not solved the audio lockup. As soon as I replaced my SB live 5.1 I've never had a lock up since. As I understand it, there is known issues with the SB live in cobination with the Via 686b. cheers

This is interesting- have a link to the 'known issues'?
As this is the most common A1 configuration, I expect it will have to be dealt with one way or another, if this is the root cause.

Interesting results with your card- it would be great to see the root cause here confirmed, even if not solved yet.

Anyone have an updated list of non SB/Creative cards supported? I may just try that to verify the results.

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@PEB

Quote:

I would tend to think that the problem is in the driver instead of the sound card itself.

Personally it would be the first thing I would think of but for some reason I believe the drivers are made to the best of their abilities unless there are some undocumented "features" that Creative are unwilling to make public.

Quote:

P.S.: Congrats on apparently solving your audio/internet crashes!

Don't jump to conclusions just yet. I'm redoing this test and then I'll think about it for awhile.

@DaveAE

Quote:

Note that the Envy24HT driver currently at OS4depot works more by coincident with the Juli@ than anything else.

What a coincidence! I did look around a bit for another driver because I was almost sure there should be something else (the Juli@ wasn't mentioned in the docs tex.) but this was all I found.

Yeah the sounds really good as far as I can hear. Have a really nice Onkyo (but old) receiving the output but unfortunately the speakers are just a cheap pair that I had lying around that I'm using for the moment.

The card fits me just fine as I only need stereo out because the Onkyo does surround fairly well.

Quote:

I haven't uploaded the real driver yet.

Could this be why I'm not making any headway with the midi? Not that I know what I'm doing but I just expected everything to drop into my lap, so to speak.

Anyway I got hold of 10 ISO's of 670mb each and have downloaded 23-26% for each of them atm. Haven't quite been working at them for an hour yet so maybe this won't last more than 3-4 hours total. Still it would usually have bombed by now anyway.

_________________
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Sapphire Radeon 9100 128mb
ESI Juli@ 24bit 192kHz Envy24HT
Sil 680 Ultra Ata 133 E-ide
SeaGate Barracuda 120gb 8mb cache

@wegster

Quote:

Anyone have an updated list of non SB/Creative cards supported? I may just try that to verify the results.

From OS4 Depot/drivers/audio/

OS4 native AHI driver for Terratec Aureon Sky, Phase28 and
M-Audio Revolution 7.1. The Aureon Space and Revolution 5.1
should also work but are untested. Please always use the
HiFi stereo++ modes.

Notes:

- Aureon: the inputs like CD and Aux are a bit hard to configure. Don't expect
them to work.

- Phase28: Fully works, including digital I/O and MIDI (using the envy24ht CAMD
driver).

and these as well:

This is the OS4 "Sound Blaster 128" AHI driver for all Creative Labs PCI sound
cards that are not based on the emu10k1 chip, or its variants (i.e SB Live!).

Seems I've seen a much longer list somewhere but I can't recall where.

_________________
Fixed A1G4XE 7455 RX933PC with fried CPU
Sapphire Radeon 9100 128mb
ESI Juli@ 24bit 192kHz Envy24HT
Sil 680 Ultra Ata 133 E-ide
SeaGate Barracuda 120gb 8mb cache

@wegster
I can't find the full report from via, but I'll keep looking.
But here is a link that has a snip from the report.

www.opentechsupport.net/forums/archive/topic/2724-1.html

@wardyone
Thanks, unfortunately the referenced article no longer exists, but evidently this is a known issue since 2001 or so.


Some reading on Via 686B and SB/Creative

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@DaveAE

This is sounding extremely positive guys

I had a feeling it would take some testing from slightly more 'techy' people as I was running short of ideas.

Can I just clarify what I am reading, make sure I'm not getting the wrong end of the stick? The package: "driver/audio/envy24ht_ahi.lha" on OS4Depot, happens to support the SBLive & it appears that this driver, so far, has begun to prove more stable?

FuZion.

@wegster
Interesting bits (but read all the info at the above URL):
Quote:

A German hardware site discovered a glitch bug in the 686B southbridge of the popular KT133A chipset for AMD CPUs. Large DMA data transfers between hard drives on separate IDE channels caused data corruption. The presence of a Sound Blaster Live! worsens the problem. See this news article at The Register. Read the English translation of the tests performed. VIA has acknowledged the problem and will issue a BIOS patch soon. Meanwhile, there is a fix available here. Alternatively, you can use these BIOS settings that have been reported to work: PCI Delay Transaction: 0 or off PCI Master Read Caching: 0 or off PCI Latency: any value from 0 to 32

Quote:

Creative may have designed the Sound Blaster Live! and its drivers to utilize the PCI bus inefficiently, or pushed it close to the PCI specs' limits that makes it sensitive to differing PCI bus & timings. Here's a quote from Pinnacle Systems, a company specializing in video capture solutions which have problems with Sound Blaster cards (taken from page 3 of the test report): "According to Pinnacles observations, Liveware seems to permanently transfer null-bytes over the PCI bus to the SB Live, even at times when it does not have to play notes. In the worst case, this destroys up to 30 % of a system's PCI bandwidth (that's why we noticed it on video-capturing ...). Deactivating SB Live's MIDI functions stops this behavior." PCI timing, which seems to be somewhat critical anyway, is extremely burdened in such a case, thus making the error rate explode. And what's got Creative Support to say? Right: nothing! Sounds like bad driver programming, or inefficiencies in the EMU10K1 design, requiring it to be fed useless null-bytes to keep it operating. Either way, the SBLive! is a PCI bus hog. On the other hand, VIA chipsets have been known to be more flaky in their PCI support (among other things). Either way, a PCI bus and PCI peripheral have to work hand in hand for things to work. When one side is less tolerant of the other, something gives and you'll get problems like data corruption and the dreaded static, clicking & popping.

Hmmm...

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@FuZion
Quote:

Can I just clarify what I am reading, make sure I'm not getting the wrong end of the stick? The package: "driver/audio/envy24ht_ahi.lha" on OS4Depot, happens to support the SBLive & it appears that this driver, so far, has begun to prove more stable?

Doesn't look like the SB Live is supported from the docs in the archive:

Quote:

OS4 native AHI driver for Terratec Aureon Sky, Phase28 and M-Audio Revolution 7.1. The Aureon Space and Revolution 5.1 should also work but are untested. Please always use the HiFi stereo++ modes.

_________________
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@amipal

As soon as i get the ESI back i will do some heavy #### streaming
awesome trance music from UndergroundDJ. I mean like playing for
hours, surfing the net, dnetc and read/write mails, ftp etc.

I hope that the problem is just the emu10kx driver. However i feel
bad for those people using them. Everyone write to Creative and
force them to give amiga community docs hehe. Or do just like me
and buy a better card.

However this is not 100% sure about the driver so ill keep reading
this list and see how it goes for other people.

Today i had really strange problem. My DVD was clicking in periods
and my workbench locked up. Mouse i could move. When using CTRL-ALT-ALT
my machine powered down. Hmm shouldnt it just coldreset ?

Could be that i changed stuff in prefs:UBOOT. I removed IRQ for
the port i dont use on my sii0680 like port1 for both internal/external.
Removed all irq for the internal VIA. So now i disabled the VIA not
only the IRQ. Seems the DVD is not clicking anymore. Will see more
tomorrow. Could be something in UBOOT i choosed wrong hehe.

See ya

@FuZion
Well, I'm going to try to confirm these findings. Annoying luck- I got my XE with a dead video card, bought a Radeon 9200, then a Radeon 7000 for W3d support.

Now I'm getting rid of a 'perfectly good' SB card. Just picked up a TerraTech Phase28 off eBay for $69 incl shipping, as none of 'the other cards' seem to be available locally (compusa, Bet/worst buy, etc).

Should have it sometime this week, will report back. better sound good

That still would leave two issues IF this proves to be a Creative issue-
a. There were some comments referencing a 'BIOS fix'- is this for the card, or for the PC. Either way, how do we work around this for A1s/OS4?

b. I thought this is/was also being reproduced on the uA1-C's onboard sound, which is NOT a Creative chipset...?

EDIT- My typing sucks sometimes.

Last edited by wegster on 09-Jul-2005 at 04:37 AM.

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@wegster

Correct me if I am wrong. I thought the onboard sound driver for Micro A1-C
was also mentioned in this thread.

Best Wishes,
#6

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@wegster

I referred someone from another thread to this thread. Here is the link to the
former thread. The relevant post is post #2

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=13660&forum=2

Best Wishes,
#6

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*Secrecy has served us so well*