Still no Sound! Stubborn Creative Labs Slot 1 motherboard

Рет қаралды 9,872

Күн бұрын

I thought I can just follow my original plan to test this board's audio capabilities and compare it to a PCI version of the SoundBlaster Live!. Little did I know that the Blaster Board (M003) from Creative Labs had more surprises waiting for me! After going through the trouble of finding the correct drivers, I noticed that the sound chip on this motherboard was still not working!
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▬▬▬▬ Timestamps ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
00:00 Intro
01:10 Setup
01:50 Sound Blaster Live! drivers
02:58 PCBWay
03:35 First audio tests
04:48 Looking for the fault
05:16 Discovering the fault
05:48 Under the microscope
06:17 Refurbish IC connections
08:30 Second audio test
09:19 SoundBlaster Live! Experience

Пікірлер: 83

@NaoPb 8 ай бұрын

Considering you didn't use any kapton tape I'm quite impressed with your soldering work. Way to go to make this board live again. And now I want to have the thunder sound as a startup sound haha.

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

I remember having the thunder sound at windows startup. Memories 🙂

@Ojref1 8 ай бұрын

Those FQFP packages on those era of motherboards do tend to get disconnected over time too. Flexing, thermal cycles, very thin solder and oxidation (or poor joints from the line) do it too. As a preventative maintenance I'd recommend going around that SB chip if you get the chance with a reflow.

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

I'll have a look at the SB chip.

8 ай бұрын

I had an SB Live! Value in my first PC back in 1999 (I think I still have that card laying around somewhere...), I remember playing with EAX demos and their bundled music playback apps. I miss the days of "soundcards" to be honest, once Vista killed DirectSound acceleration they just became glorified DACs. All my audio is via HDMI these days...

@RuruFIN 8 ай бұрын

Cool that you managed to revive it! Never even knew that there were boards with integrated SB Live! :)

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

It seems to be a board that's not so common. I also wasn't aware that such a board existed until the owner reached out to me to help with the repair.

@JohnVance 8 ай бұрын

How ironic that it's a board only noteworthy for having an integrated proto-Audigy sound chip. Gimmcky but still a neat feature. I wonder if that solder defect you found and repaired could be the very same that caused it to be thrown out, since I'd guess it was screwing up the whole PCI bus. Might be interesting to see if the PCI slots are all functional. Also I gotta say your work is like art, I really enjoy watching it.

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

Thank you! And an interesting take on why the board may have ended up at the scrapyard. I don't want to believe that it was just due to obsolete tech 😔

@eDoc2020 8 ай бұрын

I think the regulator was most likely only used for analog circuitry. As it's a 5v regulator they would just use the 5v from the power supply if the supplied circuitry was not sensitive to electrical noise. Also I believe the PIIX4 runs on the main PCI bus, if the bus was down you couldn't boot.

@MarcoGPUtuber 8 ай бұрын

1:07 Murphy's law Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

@Ale.K7 8 ай бұрын

I thought "oh no, the pad" when I saw that brown stuff, glad it wasn't it! I enjoyed this "unexpected" repair video :-)

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

Yeah, one of those "unexpected" videos again 😂

@JohnVance 8 ай бұрын

Might be the happiest I've ever been to hear canyon.mid!

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

It's my go-to windows media file to test my capture setup 😊 (to test if everything is working)

@masejoer 8 ай бұрын

Wow, I don't remember seeing that specific EAX Demonstration app. The rest I played with, and of course the packaged Unreal. Nice job on the repair!

@nalinux 8 ай бұрын

Drivers have always been a pain with those cards. I think sometimes it's worth testing them with a Linux, I don't remember having bad results with the Linux driver. At least to make sure the card is not broken.

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

I did some more tests after I finished the video. Turns out, you need to overwrite all files the installation complains about with the older versions coming on the CD. Otherwise, you'll end up with blue screens and non-working hardware. When I overwrite all files, the vxd drivers work under Windows 98.

@nalinux 8 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts nice you finally had it working. This confirm those drivers are a pain :)

@HughJameson-qm1ku 6 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts In future, to help you find the correct drivers for a device, simply go to Device Manager -> Device -> Properties -> Details tab -> Select Hardware IDs. Search for these entries on Google or in the device driver files themselves.

@tony359 8 ай бұрын

simple but amazing fix! I don't know what happened for that IC to come loose, I also thought the whole pad had been ripped off. To me, it was poorly soldered at the factory. Kapton tape: it's heat resistant, it doesn't mean it'll shield fragile components from heat! In your case I would have used some tin sheet from a drink can for example. Something you can cut with scissors and bend to shape. Kapton helps of course but it's not an insulator! You've done an amazing job as usual!

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

Thank you! I probably should have used something to protect the plastic slots from the soldering iron. But I was extremely careful, and the parts that did melt a little bit would have been difficult to shield (bios socket)

@jnharton 8 ай бұрын

The conductivity can be an issue, but aluminum foil is good for shielding other components from heat.

@TinchoX 8 ай бұрын

Ah the good old Soundblaster thunder, jumpscaring it's users since time immemorial. 😂 Soundblaster Live! User here 😊

@dawn1berlitz 8 ай бұрын

this kinda makes me want to find a sound blaster live or audigy for a gateway i came across

@joaoc_PT 8 ай бұрын

GOTCHA moment. Getting old hardware working again is awesome ❤❤

@squeeeb 8 ай бұрын

Great fix!

@krzbrew 8 ай бұрын

So satisfying!

@argoneum 8 ай бұрын

Had a SB-AWE32 for a long time, until I no longer had ISA slot in my workstation. Even loaded midi soundfonts from friend's SB-Live! CD after upgrading AWE's RAM to 8MB. Remember replacing some Win98 driver files directly under DOS, there was a movie to test if it was a success: bad drivers = girl said "Shteven", good drivers = girl said "Steven". Sample rate could be set to around 50kHz under DOS (FastTracker ][). When I got a used SB-Live! 5.1 I was already using Linux. Later got Audigy 2ZS, and now there's a Audigy FX (SB1570) in my workstation (made of a server platform, so no onboard audio). I use it mostly for Line IN (digitizing old tape recordings, etc). Sound output is usually streamed over the network using Pulseaudio / Pipewire, and in most cases laptop's audio output is used, either connected to the headphones or amplifier. Die Welt ist Klang 🙂

@tassdesu 8 ай бұрын

Thank you, really interesting. Continue doing such good videos

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

Thank you

@denyda1754 8 ай бұрын

Fyodor Sumkin is probably satisfied

@stutz1847 8 ай бұрын

good job!

@Kundalini12 8 ай бұрын

One for my motherboard wish list.

@MsTatakai 8 ай бұрын

dayum... i miss that times ;_;

@quittessa1409 8 ай бұрын

All it needs now is a V5 5500 :P

@aleksandersaski5387 8 ай бұрын

Noice!

@Chriva 8 ай бұрын

Had better luck with Kx Project on live cards. Not entirely sure if there's w9x support but they definitely rock on XP -> Seven

@Chriva 8 ай бұрын

@user-oe2us2ly9u Now that you mention it. I think most EMU10K* chips are supported?

@Chriva 8 ай бұрын

@user-oe2us2ly9u sorry for double reply. Many Cirrus logic and Conexant-based solutions lets you fiddle with outputs on a per port-basis if you install their full drivers instead of the mainboard's OEM ones. Know from experience these are often on ASUS boards. No idea about the rest :)

@Pickle136 8 ай бұрын

did you try the audigy pack for live card from vogons?

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

I used an ISO from the internet archive which states Audigy in the installer. You can see it in the video. But later I found out that I just have to overwrite l files the installer complains about (overwriting newer files), then the vxd drivers seem to work from any ISO I used. But I have to look into this further. The Audigy/Sound blaster drivers were the WDM drivers that I used in this video.

@harvaldi 8 ай бұрын

Are you planning to compare sound quality of old soundcards? Maybe first Soundblaster, some clone of SB, SB Live and maybe something newer integrated with mainboard. I'm interested not only with midi, but especially noise. Those integrated sound chips may (or may not) get noise from mainboard.

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

I definitely am looking and learning how to do sound quality testing. I think I'll try RMAA, but I haven't started yet.

@MrFathead 8 ай бұрын

I would have pooped myself when the speakers popped haha

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

Haha, it was definitely a shock moment for me!

@SianaGearz 8 ай бұрын

What an adventurous layout/routing... i mean the synth chip is up north, this regulator between the sockets, and the Sigmatel AC97 doing the analogue duties of the soundcard is right north of the BIOS socket. Bet the regulator is for the STAC97. I sometimes just use HVAC alu tape (dollar store grade) to protect components. Or i layer it with some other tape underneath. Kapton itself gets hot and then it transmits heat, but if you're just guarding against accidental touch, Kapton might just be the best choice. Also i had a bit of a bad luck event buying Kapton recently, it turned out not to be Kapton but amber dyed PET. That was a disappointment, because this one shrinks when heated, potentially moving components about that you were trying to protect. The regulator was never soldered down properly. It had an oxide layer on the pad from bad storage, and the solder on the mainboard entirely failed to penetrate it. Excellent repair.

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

Thank you! I'll try to get some Ali tape because as you said, for hot air, Kapton tape may not be enough.

@DevilbyMoonlight 8 ай бұрын

Love these little trips down memory lane of yesteryears tech, just a thought, what was the clock divider setting for the 133mhz bus that failed? was it clock i/3 or 4? divider needs to be slackened to 4 on most of those which I assume is a 440BX to keep pci @ 33mhz and AGP @66

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

I probably have to go through the manual again. There are quite a few jumpers that need to be set for the CPU and frequency setting. It could be that I missed the divider somehow.

@RetroTinkerer 8 ай бұрын

Hello, I had used with several of my sb live cards the process detailed by Phils on his video about using Audigy 2 ZS drivers for SB Live under Windows 98, when in doubt on what driver version I must use I go with these

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

I am not sure if those drivers have all the Creative bloatware. I have seen the video from Phil - they will probably work and I could install the creative apps afterwards.

@PatientXero607 8 ай бұрын

The EMU10K1 drivers tend to not play nice with 440BX chipsets. My ABit BE6-II suffered from the same issue. I just ended up tossing the Live! for an AWE64. I might find an Audigy later on down the road and use that in my PIII build.

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

You believe there to be an issue with the drivers on 440BX chipsets? Would be odd to have the sound chip on the board. I'll try to find out more about the drivers and how to install them on windows. Let's wait for the next video 😁

@PatientXero607 8 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts I tried manually allocating resources to the Emulation driver with no resolution. I just gave up in the end. The Live! works perfectly fine with my ASUS P5A-B motherboard. As soon you started receiving the BSOD's like I did, I put two and two together, seeing that both are 440BX based boards.

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

It may depend on the board/BIOS and their resource allocation. Maybe the ABit had an issue, but other 440BX motherboards will work without issues. Let me see what the results are from my experiments. But I keep your issues in mind.

@asanjuas 8 ай бұрын

Hi i have one of those one audigy i think but i need ac97 front panel conector for my server board project. Because my server board does not have sound on board.

@fhunter1test 8 ай бұрын

If I remember correctly - middle terminal of the regulator (cut off one) is also connected to a tab, so you could have heated it too?

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

Yes, it is indeed connected to the tab. I don't know if this would work. All the heat would have to travel through that pin - maybe it would be enough to melt/damage that IC? But I see your point. Maybe someone else knows if heating the cut terminal can be abused to reflow the solder on the tab.

@downundergarage6968 6 ай бұрын

Just wondering if you could help me by pointing to where you found the correct drivers for it? Much appreciated.

@bitsundbolts 6 ай бұрын

I tried several ISO images of original Creative SoundBlaster Live installation CDs which I found on the "Internet Archive" website. I think it's called Live!Ware 3.0 - I hope that helps, but I can check later if I saved the links.

@VladoT 8 ай бұрын

There are open source drivers for this chip, try them.

@Constantin314 8 ай бұрын

hey BuB, since you mentioned the PIII 500, i also have one paired with an intel RC440BX ATX version and for some reason the board will NOT boot with the battery on. I remove the battery, the board boots. Have you encountered something like this in your endeavors? Any advice? :) You know what bugs me about your video?! It's too short! :))

@SanguineBrah 8 ай бұрын

Just speculating but some autoconfiguring boards require you to hold a key down on boot to clear CMOS and detect the CPU type. If you can find the motherboard's manual on The Retro Web that might give you some clues.

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

I have never come across such an issue. This is really weird. Maybe the BIOS retains wrong values with the battery present (faulty bios chip/cannot store data correctly?) If you leave the battery in the board and clear CMOS via jumper, does it boot (at least once)? Hehe, thanks for telling me that you'd like to get longer videos. Unfortunately, I already need about a week to make a 10-12 minute video. I wish I had more time, but that would only work if I'd quit my job.

@Constantin314 8 ай бұрын

@@SanguineBrah yes, i have the manual. without the battery on, the board boots normally, no errors, nothing, CPU is recognized, RAM is ok, FDD is ok. I put on the battery, press the start button, the cpu fan spins for 3 seconds and then it shuts down. also updated the bios from P10 to P14, without the battery, the flashing went ok, no errors. put on the battery after the flash, behaves the same

@Constantin314 8 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts i don't think it's a bios problem since i updated it, without the battery, from P10 to P14, without any problem. put on the battery after the flash, the no boot with battery on behavior reappeared. it may be a board physical problem, a short somewhere, maybe. all electronics i know is from you, necroware, vswitch, tony, etc :)

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

I know nothing about electronics 😳 maybe I manage to follow some traces... It could be that the battery prevents the system to boot. Maybe your assumption having a physical damage somewhere is correct. You don't have a POST analyzer card? Would be interesting to see if you get POST codes or if they differ with and without battery.

@cthulpiss 8 ай бұрын

why shouldn't you mix low-melt solder with proper lead one ?

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

Mainly what I have heard from others. Low-melt solder is softer than regular solder. It may make solder joints easy to break (due to flexing and heat). I usually remove it as good as I can before reattaching any components.

@itstheweirdguy 8 ай бұрын

I want to add something here. I deal with new computers with bad motherboards a lot. Mainly HP Pavilion consumer level desktops. My process is I run the HP UEFI diagnostics, and if they pass, and the computer still crashes in windows only, it's a bad motherboard. How oh how would you go about troubleshooting a newer motherboard like that? Since no one on youtube does it, I'm assuming it's someting you don't do, and you just chuck it. Right?

@bitsundbolts 8 ай бұрын

I guess this is what modern electronics are - just trash the entire thing (thank you Apple). The problem may go even further. HP, Dell, and all those companies may have proprietary diagnostic tools. I can imagine that this may be the reason nobody does it. Very unfortunate. And this will be the hardware I won't touch.

@itstheweirdguy 8 ай бұрын

That's what I thought. It doesn't objectively make sense for any software to be able to diagnose a motherboard especially with how complicated they are now. There's way too much logic. You could give a board like that to an electrical engineer and pay them 15,000$ to go through it, but no one's doing that@@bitsundbolts

@eDoc2020 8 ай бұрын

Pretty much the only thing easy to troubleshoot is power delivery. For an intermittent problem that would pretty much just be capacitors.