Multiple sound cards in 1 pc help

[Forts]

Hi folks... I posted a little bit ago about adding a USB sound input to one of my machines to consolidate some of my hardware. After less than favorable reviews of the USB based sound cards I did a little digging thru my stash of old hardware and was able to build another pc. I've got an old P3-533 that had a Sound Blaster Gold PCI card in it... I installed WinXP and everything works great. A little more digging turned up another Sound Blaster Gold PCI, so I slapped it into the box. Windows boots, the little 'new hardware found' icon appears in the bottom right, and within a minute or two the box freezes and reboots. Now I'm guessing it's likely fighting over IRQ's or something. I've tried moving the cards into various slots, and assigning IRQ's manually in the BIOS (I have 6 PCI slots.... 1 and 2 are independant, 3 & 6 share and 4 & 5 share) but no no avail. Either XP boots, then eventually crashes or I get a BSOD on bootup. Anyone have any bits of wisdom to share with getting multiple sound cards to play in the same machine? I've got an oldie goldie ISA ESS Audiodrive board as well, but XP seems to ignore it completely. Basically I'm trying to run my online scanner stream and use a decoding program like Trunk88 on the same box. I tried going the stereo input route (left pin is discriminator from scanner 1, right pin is audio for my stream) but didn't have much luck there, although I didn't spend a lot of time on it.

Hints, tips and suggestions greatly appreciated! In the meantime I'll go get me a thinkin' beer and see what I can come up with

[TheManBornWithin]

When you get the BSOD, what is the error code that you get? Also, have you tried the second sound card by itself? It might be bad, and causing the problems.

[Forts]

I've tried the 2 sound cards individually (one at a time) and they seem to work ok. When I get the BSOD it doesn't stay on the screen (likely they typically do). It flashed up long enough for you to realize what it is, then the pc reboots. Not nearly enough time to see what it's saying. I'll double check the sound cards though to make sure one of them isn't acting up.

[mcscanner]

With one card installed check to see what system resources the board is using. Likely more that just IRQs are involved. Swap card and check for what overlap.

[Forts]

Ahhh... good thinkin'. I'll give that a try, thanks.

Update: Still no dice. SB Card in PCI slot 2, Win XP shows IO FF80-FF9F, IRQ 9. SB Card in slot 4 shows IO FFE0-FFFF, IRQ 5. Either card in alone, and the machine boots fine. Set the BIOS to manually control those IRQ's, with one card in... machine boots fine. As soon as I put in 2 cards..... BSOD. Can't get Windows to boot at all with both of them in... and again the BSOD just flashes by before the machine reboots.

[bezking]

as soon as the BSOD shows hold the PAUSE\BREAK key - this should freeze the message - copy it down and post here.

[mikew]

If an information message flashes on the screen during bootup and it's to fast for me to read I point a video camera at the screen then play it back frame by frame to analyze the message.

[Forts]

Originally Posted by bezking

as soon as the BSOD shows hold the PAUSE\BREAK key - this should freeze the message - copy it down and post here.

Thanks... I'll see if I can catch it that way.

[n5ims]

I know it sounds wierd, but try placing the sound cards in different slots (say 2 & 5 vs 2 & 4). Some of the old systems would pair up the slots, even and odd. I had conflicts with multiple modems if they were in all even or all odd slots, but worked fine with one even and one odd. It may not solve anything, but would be an easy fix if it worked for you as well.

[DaveNF2G]

Originally Posted by Forts

SB Card in PCI slot 2, Win XP shows IO FF80-FF9F, IRQ 9. SB Card in slot 4 shows IO FFE0-FFFF, IRQ 5.

Could be a DMA channel conflict.

[Unitrunker]

This is probably a bug in the SB driver. If you have a different model SB card or different brand for the second card - that used a different driver - it would probably work. Have you tried Windows Update or browsing the Create Labs website for an updated driver?

[Forts]

No I havent checked for any newer drivers....I'll give that a try too.

[Forts]

Viola! New drivers from Creative did the trick. Thanks for all the tips folks.