Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 19:34:07 +0000 From: "Matthew Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] L50 w/damaged sound chip or fuse on MB?
>Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 08:44:47 >From: "neil barnes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >>From: "Matthew Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]><< > >> >>I can no longer run my sound driver in the L50. The only thing I can >>think of that caused this problem would be trying to set up the HP M820E >>CD-R/RW drive�s SCSI card on the L50 w/P75 CPU. The CPU requirement for >>the HP drive is a P133. At the same time, I set up the WavJammer SCSI >>sound card on the EPR�s PC card slot. Is it possible that setting up >>these two SCSI cards simultaneously, one that wasn�t rated for this >>system, could have caused the SCSI card to overheat, and thus damage the >>Yamaha OPL3-Sax chip on the MB?<< >> >>Let me preface the rest of this by saying that my L50 is stock, not >>overclocked, and the HDD spacers have not been removed. Here�s the rest >>of the story:<< >> >>The other night I installed the drivers for this HP CD-R/RW drive, and for >>the WavJammer sound card, onto a 6.4GB HDD in my L50. ...<< >Is your 6.4G drive 8.5mm? Yes... It's a Toshiba MK6411MAT >>I had to disable the onboard Yamaha driver to get the WavJammer drivers >>working, but all went well at that point. The CD-R/RW drive actually >>played music CDs fine via its line-out plug.<< >> >>Everything worked fine until I finished running some audio recording >>tests, removed the HP and WavJammer drivers, and rebooted. When the >>desktop appeared as a solid color, the mouse pointer froze along with the >>system. After trying a few things, I ended up disabling the sound driver >>in Safe Mode. That got the system to do a full boot where the system >>worked fine.<< >> >>The next night I put my old 750MB HDD into the L50 to back up files and prepare for a Mandrake installation. I could swear that the system booted with the sound driver enabled with no problem. Not remembering the system needed a P133 at this point, I went ahead and installed the drivers for the CD-R/RW drive onto this HDD to.<< >> >>But the system did not like trying to load and run Nero, and suddenly I >>realized why (not enough CPU power), as the system froze in the process. >>I booted into Safe Mode, uninstalled Nero and the CD-R/RW drivers, and >>rebooted. But it turned out that the system froze at the same point >>booting into the desktop as it did with the 6.4GB HD the night before. >>Went back into Safe Mode, disabled the sound driver, and all was well.<< >> >>But I was wondering, was this an OS problem that I somehow caused on two >>HDDS? Or is this a hardware problem related to the sound chip on the >>MB?<< >> >>So I copied the Win98 installation files to the HDD, booted into DOS, ran >>attrib and deltree to delete everything else, and installed Win98 onto the >>750MB HDD. But when Windows finishing setting up and booted into the >>desktop, everything froze. Disabling the sound driver in Safe Mode fixed >>the problem again.<< >> >>Okay� I wanted to have Win95 on that drive to experiment with installing Mandrake from a CD-ROM. So I repeated the process and installed Win95. Same problem. Froze booting the desktop. Disabling sound in Safe Mode got the system to fully boot and run.<< >> >>So here was the last test. I deleted the L50 sound driver, put the 750MB >>HDD into my L70, and when Windows asked for the sound driver, I fed it the >>L70 sound driver via FDD� and TAH DA!� the �Microsoft Sound.Wav� chimed >>out fine. No sound problems with the HDD on the L70.<< >> >>Now the only thing I noticed when the problem first manifested, was that >>the bottom of the L50 seemed fire hot when I pulled out the CD-R/RW and >>WavJammer SCSI cards. Again, I wonder if those cards could have caused >>the sound chip to overheat.<< >> >>Or could there be another magic fuse fix here Neil? >> >>All input will be greatly appreciated� though I fear the worst. >> >>Thanks, >> >>Matt ><nothing snipped for context> ><except the footers and header> > >Um...I don't have much of an idea here. A control card that requires more >CPU power should just run slowly - it needs it to get data on and off the >pcmcia card, because there is no DMA route (IIRC).< That's what I assumed myself... but I was stretching for SOME explanation of what happened. >Overheating cards is a possibility, though i've never seen it affect just >the sound. However, sudden lockups talking to pc cards were a symptom of my >last 50 overheating - though in that case it was a modem card.< Something I neglected to add in my essay, was that the system goes into a feedback loop of sorts. After booting, and freezing with the desktop showing just a solid color and the mouse pointed frozen... 30-60 seconds goes by, the system reboots itself, and then starts the process all over. I havn't tested to see how many boot attempts would be attempted, or if it would ever stop the process. But I've seen 3 boot attempts, two where it began the process again. >There isn't a fuse AFAIK that just deals with the sound card - can't see >why they'd want one, really. Kinda didn't think so. >One thought is that the interrupts and DMAs from the sound card have got >severely screwed - you could check them in the bios - possibly something >colliding with the other two cards?< Would this be at the BIOS level? I installed one fresh copy of W98, and two of W95. So I'd think it wouldn't be a problem with the OS settings. >Last thing - the sound chip has several modes of operation: an eight bit >only soundblaster emulation, a sixteen bit yamaha mode, and a sixteen bit >windows sound system mode. The windows sound is only eight bits >mono...could be it's only working in that mode for whatever reason.< I'll try a few changes in BIOS and see if I can get anything to come alive. But it would seem strange that Toshiba would allow any kind of combination of settings in BIOS that would result in a confict. Thanks for the suggestions Neil. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com ************************************************************** http://libretto.basiclink.com - Libretto mailing list http://libretto.basiclink.com/archive - Archives http://www.picante.com/~gtaylor/portable/faq.html - FAQ -------TO UNSUBSCRIBE------- Reply to any of the list messages. 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