No sound from SB128 Mediator 1200 TX

[Hedeon]

Hello,

I have a A1200 in a tower with a Voodoo3 3000, an fast ethernet card and a Soundblaster 128 (ES 1371) running on OS3.9 with the unofficial BB4. All on a CF which is connected through a FastATA IV controller. Everything works except for the soundblaster. Mixer (or Ghostmix, or Taskimixer) initializes as I can hear the click when the Amiga boots. Using the mixer i can mute and unmute.

However, AHI 6.7 does not produce any sound using the test button. Switched the SB128 for another (CT 4750), no luck. Exchanged Voodoo for Radeon, no luck. Switched the cards around the various slots, no luck. Tried different AHI modes, no luck. Tried a vanilla 3.1 boot, no luck. Tried a different mobo version (without FastATA - 1B, 1D4) ... you guessed it.

Both SB's work in my A4000 mediator setup. Both Amiga's have the latest drivers (MMUP 2.1).

The only thing i noticed is that the IOSpace on the A1200 is in CHIPRAM and as far as I can see on the A4000 it isn't (thought IOSpace was supposed to be in the gfx card RAM).

I'm out of ideas...what can it be?

[roy bates]

are you leaving anough memory alocated for the sound card?

when you set up the gfx card it cant be more than 14mb otherwise the card dont work and is it plugged in all the way i had one that slipped out of the pci socket and stopped working.


also have you chosen he card in the ahi setting someting like sb128

[amigoun]

Seems that Mediator TX does not support Sounablasters anymore. I have the same experience.
Fortunatelly soundcards based on Fortemedia chipset work.

[Hedeon]

The radeon has 31 MB allocated for DMA, that should be enough (recommended setting from Mediconfig). I normally use the HiFi 16 bit stereo +++ mode, but tried em all.

Guess I have to wait for the Fortemedia card to arrive by mail. Should be in this week. Or I guess the SB driver needs an update.

I'll post the results if my FM801 card works.

[johnim]

hi has the mixer been setup and added to startup-sequence

please start ami from cold and have a set of headphones plugged in and on your head and start you miggy

you should hear a click and hiss if it is working

you also need to open mixer and save settings

you could also try

for any one having problems with sound use ghostmix
http://aminet.net/package/driver/audio/GhostMix

To Install GhostMix, follow the following steps:
1. Copy GMStart to c:
2. Copy GhostMix and GhostMix.info to Prefs
3. From a Shell, type "GhostMix SAVE" to save your current settings ready for use from the next reboot
4. Change the line in user-sequence that says "MIXER NoGUI QUIET" to "GMStart"

[Hedeon]

@ johnim

Did all that, as mentioned in the original post. I can hear the hiss after mixer / gmstart / tkimixerinit (take your pick, tried em all) starts from the user-startup.

I'll just wait a few days for the FM801 card, and if that one doesn't work either then I'm gonna try all possible combinations of putting the PCI cards into the 5 different PCI slots (can't use the 6th in the EZ-Z4 tower...)

[Bamiga2002]

SB 128 *does* work with Mediator TX, but you might want to "downgrade" from the newest (4.14) to a tad older driver (4.12) on SB 128. Also set VoodooMem=14. And one advice still: use ahi v4.18 instead of the latest, it seems to work better. Do you have the directory "mixer" in "Mediator" -env-drawer?

[Hedeon]

I have the directoy mixer in the ENV:Mediator drawer.

At the moment, I am using SB128 driver 4.20 with AHI 6.7. Tried SB128 4.20 with AHI 5.6 but not with 4.18

VoodooMem is now set at 12.

I'll try the different options.

Update:

Tried AHI 4.18 with SB driver 4.20 & 4.18. Modes are listed but no sound. Had an old driver 4.05 laying around, but no modes are listed. Older AHI prefs crashes with 4.05 with division by zero. Don't have 4.14 or 4.12 laying around......

[Bamiga2002]

Maybe I remembered wrong version numbers for the drivers. I'll check them later and get back at this. Are you using the right input for sound btw.?

[Hedeon]

Well.... Inserted an FM801 card and have sound now using AHI test. Quality is not good in Amplifier, and in AmigaAmp it is good but the sound is skipping and workbench becomes unresponsive (in all modes from 8 to 48 khz). Small baby steps, I guess. What other programmes can be used to test AHI?

I think I'll give up for the sb for now.

At what quality can a 40 mhz 040 play mp3s without hogging all of the cpu? (nvm. Googled it. I'll test it also in my A4000 to see if the soundcard fully works, then wait for my bppc to return from repairs)

[roy bates]

you should get cd quality through ahi with a 040@40mhz

with mp3s anyway.

[amigoun]

Unfortunately only 060 is able to play MP3s at full quality and it comsumes all of its power. With 040 you should reduce to 22050 and ticking mono output is also helpful. Also Select correct modes in AHI Prefs (not only for music unit and also the unit 0 etc.) Setting them to 48Khz stereo is ok.

[Bamiga2002]

But doesn't the existing soundcard offload most of the strain from cpu?

[Hedeon]

The soundcard is not a mp3 decoder, cpu is needed for it.

Only strange thing now is that it skips at every mode, even the lowest 8 khz.

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

The soundcard is not a mp3 decoder, cpu is needed for it.

Only strange thing now is that it skips at every mode, even the lowest 8 khz.

Be better off getting mas player. Sound card on the amigs is mostly pointless