MAMEWorld Forums - Hardware - Re: HELP NEEDED ... lost sound on mame arcade cocktail table

This isn't a MAME problem. This is a DOS + sound card problem.

When it says "the blaster enviroment settings are invalid", and it used to work, and you didn't change them, then there has to be a problem with the hardware itself.

You're probably wasting your time trying to get to a DOS prompt because I don't think it's a DOS problem.

Some likely possibilities:

1) Resetting the motherboard BIOS has re-enabled some device that is now conflicting with the sound card IRQ or address space. This was VERY common problem back in the old days.
2) The motherboard is going bad. Failed and bulging capacitors was a VERY common problem.
3) The sound card is not seated in the slot correctly
4) The sound card has failed

I think the most likely culprit is #1

> audio card is configured at A220 I5 D1 H5

This means that your card is trying to use:

Address base: 220
IRQ: 5
DMA channel: 1
16-bit DMA channel: 5

The conflict is likely IRQ5 if that's what the problem really is. Try going into your PC's BIOS and looking around to see if anything is using IRQ5.

This is not the kind of problem that you're going to be able to easily diagnose over the Internet. Even more so that the hardware and OS you're dealing with is over 20 years old.

Your best bet is to find someone in your area who is close to 50 years old who has lived through the dark days of manually configuring IRQs in DOS PCs and enlist their help.

Another option would be to scrap that ancient PC and replace it with modern hardware. You could probably pick up a really nice micro-ATX or mini-ITX motherboard with a current CPU and put together a whole PC for a few hundred bucks.

GroovyMAME support forum on BYOAC

Edited by krick (07/02/18 04:24 AM)