Sound and CD ROM

The Midnight Question Archive

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Copyright 2005 by Morris Rosenthal

Troubleshooting your Laptop or PC

Midnight Question Archive

See the new Troubleshooting your laptop or PC (May 2008)

4/18/99

(Q) I have more than one SCSI CD-ROM drive that are in external cases. I would like to play CD audio from them and use the multiple drive function that most software CD player's have. Since the sound card usually has just one audio cable hookup and mine are external anyway, I figured that I could just play the audio through the SCSI bus, right? If you can I don't know how. If you could provide a solution or even a reference to a CD player that does, I'd be very greatful.

Jared

(A) No way I know to play CD audio over the bus, it's a seperate function entirely. There's a two dollar chip on the drive that does the actual D/A conversion and kicks out a real stereo audio signal on the 3 or 4 pin connector.

Morris

11/23/98

(Q) The problem is I reformatted the hard drive using C: format C: /S and that worked but now I realized I didnt have the CD-Rom Drivers that came with the CD-rom. I have located what I think is the correct driver on the web for my CD-Rom and it seems to work but when I run setup in DOS it can't locate MSCDEX.EXE. So I guess my question is where do I find this and how do I install it? Also are there any sites that have any step by step set-up instructions for setting up a computer after formating the hard drive?

Joe

(A) If you have Win98, you can set the CD bootable in CMOS, and the whole install is automatic. In any case, unless you are going with DOS, you shouldn't format manually for a fresh install. FDISK the drive, delete any partions, and let the operating system to do the FDISK and FORMAT. Otherwise you may lose the option to put all the drive capacity in a single 32 bit partion, which is the way to go. What you want is a boot floppy that will install the CD drivers. Normally, Win 95 and other operating systems are shipped with a boot floppy, which you only need edit to include the name of the CD driver in config.sys, and the name you choose for the device in the MSCDEX invocation in autoexec.bat (see further below). MSCDEX (MiscroSoft CD EXtension comes with the operating system).

Morris

11/19/98

(Q) A while back I upgraded my girlfriends Compaq Presario 486 DX4 (900 series I think) from Win 3.1.1 to Win 95. It only had one hard drive - 700meg - and a CD-ROM both connected to its only channel. Once I upgraded the OS, disc space as expected decreased greatly and she found herself in need of more. She didn't use the CD-ROM that much and I had a spare 500meg disc. So, I disconnected the CD-ROM and plugged in the new hard disc. I booted the machine up and the BIOS detected the new drive and so everything was cool - she had more space - I got a nice dinner. However, just to check I could go back on myself I disconnected the new hard drive and reconnected the CD-ROM. Disaster! The machine goes through a partial boot process and then just hangs, blank screen. Anyway shortly after this I fell ill, she was angry at me and we haven't spoken since. Perhaps you could offer some advice - Computers that is - not relationships.

Surinder

(A) Good thing you don't need relationship advice, a guy who stays up after midnight answering e-mail from strangers doesn't have much to offer on the subject. Hard to guess exactly what went wrong, although it may just be CMOS failing to "un-autodetect" the second drive. Could also be something simple like a forgotten slave jumper or a partially disslodged IDE cable, at any of the 3 connection points. Either way, if you can't get it going, I'd stick the second hard drive back in and try to get it working again, and if the PC still hangs during boot, try using <F8> to get to safe mode. If you can't get that far, it's most likely a simple hardware screw-up and not a Win95 problem.

Morris

11/12/98

(Q) I have a Sound Blaster PCI128 sound card (the Ensonics kind without a processor) and a brand new Viper V330 PCI 8 MB video card. They're running on an Intel Pentium 233 MMX with 32 MB of SDRAM and Win 95 B. In certain games (directX games?? - e.g. Rainbow 6, Need For Speed IISE, Jedi Knight, MS Urban Assault, etc.) the sound works fine in the beginning (menus, player selection, etc.), but once the "action" portion begins -- no sound. I have DirectX 6 (have reinstalled more than once). If I go into System Properties | Performance | Graphics and move the slider (Hardware Acceleration) down two notches to "Basic," then sound works in the troubled games. (The video is horrible, of course, but the sound works fine). I removed the PCI128 sound card and replaced it with an ISA Sound Blaster 16 and the games worked again. See my illustrated guide for how to install a sound card. Occasionally, however, my system will freeze up and a couple hundred short (1/4") green vertical lines will appear at the top of the screen, forming a bar extending across the monitor. Creative Labs says they don't know, but maybe the video card is taking up too much CPU. Diamond says its not their card, but the sound card.

Christopher

(A) I'd be inclined to blame Diamond, especially with the occasional video freezes. If you aren't having DMA conflicts, then the video card is probably monopolizing the PCI BUS. If you're married to the Diamond, a higher quality ISA sound card might be on order - the bandwidth demands aren't that great.

Morris

(Follow-up) I replaced the Viper temporarily with my old Stealth DRAM card and the same problem persists. That makes me think it must be combo Sound Blaster PCI128 and any PCI video card. Diamond continues to (rightfully?) blame Creative Labs. What's odd is that some 3D games (like Moto Racer) work fine, sound and all.

Christopher

(A) Well, I sure was wrong. Since you already installed the updated drivers for the Sound Blaster, a different sound card does look like the best way out. I guess I haven't been keeping up with the demands of some of these new sound cards, thanks for the heads-up.

Morris

10/20/98

(Q) I recently went to Comp USA and bought a 3D card (128 Velocity 8MB). I came home turned off my PC tried the card in 2 different PCI slots. Knowing that it may be possible it would'nt work in the #1 pci slot. I have Win98 and got a "config system err" looking at everything it all seemed right. The only other thing I did was look at my start up disks (the order my drives would be looked at) and when I arrowed down on CD it disappeared. Now I have rebooted, taken the 3D card out, and even let the PC rest for a couple hours and still cannot recognize D: My lights stay on (both CD & harddrive) and my button won't eject my CD tray. I have started in DOS and looked at my drivers and I do have the driver for my CD, but for some reason my PC thinks my CD is divorced.

Lorin

(A) Well, having had the case open you can't rule out coincidental failure or the possibility that you disslodged the IDE cable a little, though I'm sure you've check it already. You best bet, without getting into parts swapping or re-installing Win95, is going into Device Manager and deleting the CD (if it still exists), shutting down, and see if the system will autodetect it. (The problem turned out to be a disslodged ribbon cable. The point is you can never assume that nothing has changed once you open the case.)

Morris

9/18/98

(Q) I recently bought a new scuzzy adapter; Advancsys ISA SCSI 5140 internal. I also bought a CDRW; Yamaha4260 internal. My CD writing software is NTI CD Maker Pro. I tried to write an audio CD, but I get an error message like SCSI parity error.

Mandi

(Q) Well, I'm assuming you haven't been able to write any kind of CD? A parity error is probably from either the SCSI card or the CDRW having a "parity enable" jumper set. It must be either enabled or dissabled on both devices. Parity is a hardware-hardware handshake on the SCSI bus, so one of the devices is reporting the error to the software.

Morris

8/20/98

(Q) I have visited site you mentioned on your page and downloaded what I thought was correct driver for aztech cdrom (2x)and sound card, but it still does not recognize them.....this has always been an obstacle to me when reformatting or re-partioning...what is the best method when you have no back up...or is there a driver that will work just to make it function long enough to install Win95? ( I do have MSCDEX loaded)

Diana

(A) It's always a hassle. The first step is to copy the DOS driver for the CD on a bootable 95 floppy and create a config.sys (I use copy con) that reads

device=cddriver.sys /D:cd001

where cddriver is the DOS CD driver you get off the manufacturers web site and cd001 is an arbirary device name (I use cd001, easy to remember). Next, invoke MSCDEX, which must also be on the floppy, as

MSCDEX /D:cd001

If the cd driver is correct and the hardware is OK, you'll get access to the CD ROM.

Morris

8/12/98

(Q) I have a Toshiba Tecra 700ct notebook that I just bought a CD rom drive (xm1202b, reconditioned) for that swaps out with the floppy drive. My problem is that I can't get the CD rom to read data disks but it will play audio disks just fine. Any suggestions?

Rob

(Q) The audio disc function is built into the CD. As long as the driver is capable of telling the drive to start playing, music will come out of the headphone jack (if it has one), and out of the analog connector on the back, which your sound card will amplify, regardless of anything else going on. The data function requires all of the software setup to be correct. Try downloading a new set of drivers from web. However, it is possible that something is wrong with the interface, since audio doesn't use it. Double check the mating, and make sure that the flat cable hasn't seperated from the connector.

Morris

7/21/98

(Q) I have a Packard Bell s618 computer. It is a 233 mmx, with 48mb RAM, 6.4 gig hdd, and a combo sound card/modem. I have not had any problems with the computer until I tried to upgrade to windows 98. After the upgrade, everything worked fine except the modem. The sound from the same board worked fine, but no modem. Win 98 recognized it on startup, but evidently could not find proper drivers for install. The modem is a Sound4 Winmodem. Do you know how I can solve this problem, or where I can find the drivers for this combo card? I have tried 3com, USR, and Aztech Labs, and Packard Bell's website trying to find the drivers. Who makes this combo thing??

Mike

(A) I believe you can get the Sound4 Winmodem driver at the following website: http://support.packardbell.com/ftp/drivers.asp?audio. In addition the following site explains how to install the Sound4 Winmodem in Windows 98: http://support.packardbell.com/windows98/sound4.asp.

Jennifer

7/10/98

(Q) I have a P133 w/32 meg ram, a 1.3 HD-primary, a 6.4 slave.ATAPI 8X cd-rom, and a Mitsumi 2801TE burner. I want to burn audio cd's. Currently, I have to switch cd's for every track out of the cd-burner tray and record everythng to the hard drive in .wav format, and then copy it all back to the cd burner. What I want to do is put the audio cd in the cd-rom, and the blank in the burner, then just let em copy away, and not have to swap. However, I get an error message saying my cd-rom can't do digitial audio extraction. So I popped open my tower, and looked at the back of the drives. Both the cdrom and the burner had a part that said digital audio, this was on the far left end of the drive (rear view). However, I don't have this 2 pin connector, and I have no clue how or what it hooks up to.

Jason

(A) The existence of this Digital Audio output is new on most CD drives and the people who know the most about recording using a DA output are in the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) game, namely, audiophiles. The short story is that you need to buy a sound card that supports a Digital Audio input, and have software that supports streaming this through to the CDR, or write the result to the hard drive, and then record it. I don't think there is anyway to do a direct connection, the CDR isn't set up for it, and the Red Book format (CD-DA) for laying down the audio tracks wouldn't be transferred out the DA output on the CD. According to the DAT folks, the 2 pin connector is chintzy as hell, you need to you a high quality A/V coax. One pin is ground, as you can determine with an ohm-meter, so that gets tied to the coax shield. The savings in all of this is that you eliminate the D/A step at the CD and the A/D step you'd otherwise do at the sound card, so reproduction should be as perfect as the original. Also, it seems to me that those of us with a SCSI CDR and a SCSI CD drive can use "SCSI Device Copy" to copy audio CDs digitally over the SCSI bus - been a while since I tried. Click here for the best FAQ I know of for CDR.

Morris

6/30/98

(Q) I have a funny problem (don't we all !). I have a Win95 OSR2 Pentium MMX 200 Mhz system with a new creative 32 x (model 3230E) cd-rom drive. The rest of the config is 32 MB, S3 trio v2/dx 2 meg vram, sb16 sound card. When I insert a CD with an autostart application - my CD starts making whirring noises and after several read tries the display blanks out. I can normally get back the display by pushing the escape key a few times. But this just repeats the whole cycle, till I take the CD out of the drive. I looked up the microsoft support site and it says this is due to old cd-rom drive which does not support mpc-2 standard. This is not correct in my case. I have already installed the latest device drivers from creative ftp site. I have also tried out various connection settings - like primary ide slave to disk, master on the secondary ide, etc, etc. I have also cleaned the CD to an extent that any more will damage the surface. The problem happens not with one but with almost all the autorun CD's. I have no problems with CD's which have just data on them. Something else that I have noticed is that, when in the rare case i have been able to open such a CD it shows the CD to be full - the ones that do not cause a problem are not full !

Sandeep

(A) While I can't guess at the cause of your problem, I'll suggest that you try holding down the shift key while inserting a new CD into the drive. This is supposed to dissable the auto-run feature for that CD in Win 95. Most people have the opposite problem, that autorun CD's don't even try to start. I find that the results are somewhat machine dependant and random, and the solutions are pretty specific. I get lots of questions on the subject of Autorun CD problems, if somebody knows a good source for info, please let me know.

Morris

6/3/98

(Q) I have a P-II 233 Mhz system which was purchased with a 16-bit generic (ESS 1868 Plug n Play) sound card. Then I bought an internal modem 33.6Kbps and installed it. Since then my sound card has stopped working. If I remove the modem the sound card works fine. The device manager shows 'No Conflicts' for both of them when both are installed. The sound card works (along with the modem) if installed after booting but otherwise cannot work. On restarting I have to again install it. How do I save my installation (or configuration)? The only error messages I am able to get are: when I try to play a game with audio the error message is "The sound card is in use." When I go to DMI wizard it displays "Incorrect PnP version returned by bios" - when I 'View Devices by Connection' in the device manager the sound card is not seen even after I have installed it correctly.

Rajashree

(A) It sounds like the "Curse of the Plug-n-Pray Devices" I've come across many problems with multiple plug-n-play cards combined with a plug-n-play BIOS and plug-n-play operating system that make me want to plug my screwdriver into a wall outlet with my fingers on the blade. I don't know any universal cures, though if the modem can be jumpered to specifix settings (sometime a possibility) it often helps. It usually turns out that one adapter is preventing the other adapter from being assigned any resources at boot, and Device Manager lies through it's teeth. If BIOS upgrade is available, it may fix the DMI issue. At any rate, the best generic approach I've come up with is to get rid of any hardware you aren't using (i.e. Com 2, sometimes even Com 1 on a mouseport system with no extra serial devices), install the Sound Card on IRQ 5 (good place to be for DOS compatability anyway), then try to get the modem to play in one of the com port spaces.

Morris

6/1/98

(Q) I'm trying to attach a CD-ROM (Toshiba x32, XM-6202) to my SB16 (model CT1740). I've tried all kind of settings, and whatever driver I could find on the web (I guess SBIDE.SYS is the correct one, but it does not work either).Here is how things are connected: The computer is 486DX with a DX4 overdrive processor. 32MB RAM, New WD Caviar HD (4.3 Gig - needed EZ-Drive to work). 3 partitions (C,D,E) . I have only one IDE cable connection. If I connect the CD-ROM to the IDE cable, then on boot time the screen is dead (even the BIOS message does not come up). This is so even if I just have the CD-ROM attached, and boot from the floppy. Master or Slave setting on the CD-ROM didn't help. So I tried connecting it to the SB16 IDE port but the software reports no CD found. Is the new ATAPI CD incompatible with the older IDE connections?

Michael

It sounds like you have a stone dead CD drive, otherwise it should never have prevented the system from getting to the BIOS. Take it back (or send it back) where you got it, at 32X it must still be under warranty. Only other possibility I can think of is a bad IDE cable, pretty rare, but ATAPI drives are Supposed to be backwards compatible to IDE. Actually, now that I think about it, that's true for hard drives, but I remember some flakey problems with early ATAPI CDs on IDE connectors, though I still don't believe they should prevent you from getting a boot screen.

Morris

5/8/98

(Q) I have an AMD233 I built my self with a 2.5Gb drive on it, split in half. I recently reformatted the c:\ partition. I have Win95 and Win98 on CD-ROM but I can't remember how to access the CD after a format. I have a bootable floppy so I can get back in to DOS. What do I do to access the CD???

Steve

(A) You need to put the device driver for the CD in the config.sys file on the boot floppy, and then invoke MSDEX with the name assigned to the CD on the Device= line in config.sys. That means you need on the boot floppy, the CD driver (a ".SYS" file) and MSCDEX.EXE.

Morris

4/21/98

(Q) My friend recently gave me an old 50 mhz 486 that had a bad cmos battery. I managed to get the BIOS set for the hard drive (C) and the floppy(A) and they work just fine. Unfortunately he had reformatted the hard drive before he gave it to me and thus there went the drivers. I am running Windows 3.1 and Dos 6.2. The problem is the CD-ROM drive. He doesn't have the driver, so I downloaded the one for a Reveal X4 from online. When I install it, it writes out to the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files just fine. When I reboot the system it says the D drive is not there. I got into the BIOS setup and the "D" drive appears to want to be another hard drive by default, when I used option number 47, user definition, it still wants all the usual hard drive information. Is there some special way I need to define this or do I just have the wrong driver.

Butch

(A) The CD-ROM should not be listed in CMOS, that's for hard drives only. You want CMOS to show "Not Installed" for the D:. If the drive doesn't work after that, it's just a matter of getting the driver set up correctly. Make sure that the MSCDEX line in AUTOEXEC.BAT refers to the driver name used in Config.sys, as in

c:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /M:20 /D:aspicd01

Where aspicd01 is my SCSI CD driver from Config.sys

Morris

4/13/98

(Q) Where can I get the correct driver for my video card? Where can I get the correct driver for my ATAPI CD-ROM?

Rick and Bill (two questions)

(A) The best one-stop driver place is www.drivershq.com

Morris

4/1/98

(Q) We were given an IBM PS/1 Consultant 486DX2. It contains a Sound Blaster CD-ROM device by Creative Labs, Inc. Windows 3.1 was not on the machine when we received it. The CD drive was not working. I installed Windows 95 on the computer. Windows 95 shows that the CD is installed but when I try to open it, I receive messages that the "Device is not ready" and "CD-ROM device driver not selected. When I check it seems that it is loaded, but only to run under Windows 3.1. Is there a way to get a driver to run the CD drive?

Bill

(A) Creative Labs has one of the best support sites on the web, I've been able to find the proper drivers for ever Creative Labs device I've ever come across, including an old 1X CD on a proprietary controller I put in for a guy just a month ago. Site is www.creativelabs.com

Morris

3/27/98

(Q) I have recently purchased a JVC R2626 CD-R drive (SCSI), and have installed it. I use it for mastering audio from an Alesis ADAT multitrack. (My PC is a Pentium 90 with 32Meg RAM running Windows95, and importing the sound via a Soundblaster 16). I have no problem with large (30+meg) WAV files being burned correctly to the disk (either at 1X or 2X), but when I record a WAV via the SB16, the WAV (and therefore, the CD if I don't catch it first) will stutter, or breakup for a split second at various intervals... any idea what my problem could be?

Jim

(A) I had a lot of problems like that with my 16bit clone card, which in the end turned out to be a performance bottleneck, whether with the card hardware or the drivers/operating system, I never fully determined, though software seemed to be the culprit. What I can say is if it records OK (no ticks or stutters) at a lower sample rate, like 22KHz instead of 44KHz, it's a performance issue.

Morris

3/18/98

(Q) I am looking into a Cd-Recordable and I am having trouble deciding, the main reason why I want the Cd-R is for recording my cd's into cd mixes for the road, so I have been looking for one with goodaudio coopying quality. I think I also would like to go for a SCSI drive, even though my system is IDE, so I would need one with an addapter card(by the way is that card called an SCSI II?)

Anon

(A) Since the CD's are digitally recorded, there is no difference in sound quality from one to the next. However, the software provided with the CDR makes a big difference as to what you can do with it. If you will be trying to isolate tracks for re-recording, you may be stuck playing the CD into your sound card and saving the WAV files to the hard drive until you have a virtual CD, because I don't know how the software could support single track copying. Most CDRs come with their own SCSI card, the technology generation doesn't matter much since the are very slow, in the relative sense. A system with two SCSI drives gives you the ability to duplicate whole CDs via SCSI copy, but tracks still would need to be gathered on a hard drive first.

Morris

3/6/98

(Q) I am planning to buy a big amount of cd-r for my new burner and my short question has to do with the two different colors of cd-r. Is either one (green, gold, do cd-r come in any other color?) better overall or better for audio or data? Your response will be much appreciated!

Tom

(A) I've used both in my recorder, but I do remember reading once how one color was supposedly better for some CDRs than the other, and vise-versa. If the CDR manufacturer tells you it doesn't matter, I'd take their word for it. Since were on the subject of CDRs, I'm going to address another question I recieved this week (not Tom), complaining that his CDR sometimes reports BAD BLOCKS and fails when he attempts to copy known good CDs. This is due to the manufacturers copy protection scheme, not the CDR.

Morris

2/10/98

(Q) Hi, I'm thinking of buying a cd burner but am not sure whether I should get a scsi or an ide drive, price is a major factor for me...I would like to use the drive to copy audio tracks as well as normal data and I have heard you need a scsi drive to do this, is this true? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Shaun

(A) As far as I know, you need a SCSI recorder to copy audio CD's, because you are doing a SCSI device to device copy, which doesn't even look at format. The truth is, I hasn't realized that IDE recorders were out, but I can't see any reason you wouldn't be able to record audio tracks on them, provided you have them stored as Red Book format 44KHz .wav files on your hard drive. By the way, even with SCSI drives, many newer CD's are uncopyable (is that a word?), because they leave intentional gaps in the TOC section of the track that the straight SCSI copy software reads as a defective source.

Morris

1/29/98

(Q) I recently purchased an Aptiva, Pentium150 system complete with a monitor, speakers and what looks like an ethernet card inside of it. (and a CD-ROM, TEAC) The computer used to have been used in a business that went under. It had Windows95 as its OS. I was forced to reformat the drive due to a virus, and the fact  that the CD-ROM seized to be detected by windows. In the process, I realized that in the CMOS setup, the CACHE is enabled but its size is 0KB. Does this mean that the cache has been taken out by someone? If so, can the machine still run fine without the cache or do I have to buy one? (how much are they?) Question#2: Why is it that what looks like an ethernet card (its very large) is connected to the CD-ROM?

Tomasz

(A) A Pentium is really crippled by lack of external cache, an the fact that it shows as "enabled - zero", may in fact explain the other problems that you've had, since external cache issues can mess everything up. Whether it was taken out, or has falied, is impossible to say without looking, but you definitely need to get some working cache in the system, probaly between $20 to $50, depending on the rarity. The large card that's connected to the CD is probably a proprietary CD card (does nothing else), or a sound card. I leave out SCSI cards and spare IDE adapters, because neither reminds me of am ethernet card.

Morris

1/13/98

The following is a repeat question to include a new readers answer.

(Q) I have Sound Blaster 16 on my hand-me-down 486-DX 66 computer. I have a microphone bought at Staples that works in demo machines at Staples, so I know the mic is in good working order. I have Sound Recorder, which plays WAV and MIDI files just fine. However, when I plug in the mic (into the jack labeled for mic), I cannot get sound recorder to record. I have tried to send sounds over the net via Cool Talk and Pow Wow, but only register a clicking sound on the other end. Do you think the input in my sound card is bad? Do I not have enough CPU horsepower? Have I configured my drivers improperly?

Harry

(A) It certainly isn't CPU power, I've recorded stero quality music through the mic on a 486DX-40. My guess is you either have the drivers wrong, or more likely, you are missing something with operating the software. On my old setup, you had to turn on the mic independantly on a "mixer" and a "recording control" before the thing would work. Do you have a "line" jack on the sound card where you can just run a lead from a stereo over and try that? At any rate, I wouldn't give up, I'd take a real good look at all the bits and pieces of sofware involved.

Morris

(A) Many sound cards have non-standard depth for the circuit. That is to say, on the standard mono jack the plastic seperator between the hot and ground for the mic might be too wide. I found this to be the case on several machines we have here, using a variety of different mics. The fix was to use a stereo adapter - it has smaller gapping and worked universally.

Chris

1/6/98

(Q) I have a problem with my PC:P133 64Mb 512cache 1.2G IDE, 3.2G IDE, 4.3G SCSI, ZIP SCSI ,CD burner SCSI. My problem is that my IBM Ultrastar 2ES HD who is connected to a Diamond Fire Port 40 SCSI-card is too slow. I get only 2.0Mb/s uncached and 21Mb/s cached transfer rates and that must be too slow for an ultrawide SCSI. I also have problems burning CD´s which should work fine with both a SCSI HD & SCSI-burner, the only strange thing I noticed is then I look in the driver properties for the SCSI-card it says "no drivers needed or loaded for this unit"(or something like that i had to translate) can that be correct?

Peter

(A) The "no drivers" doesn't really mean "no drivers" and the "2.0MB/s" is probably a realistic figure for a true average transfer rate. What sort of trouble are you haveing burning CD's and what CD recorder is it? Your system is plenty fast to handle 2X recording, even 4X, but have you ever started with 1X and worked your way up as a troubleshooting method? I would tend to suspect the caching controller, all other things being equal. Remember, you only need about 600KB/s to burn at 4X, but you can't afford any interruptions longer than about a second with a standard 1MB buffer on the CDR. You can also try  burning CD's from your IDE hard drives, which are also plenty fast. Even if the caching controller is working properly, it can't help with CD recording, since caching is useless on a continually changing data stream - nothing to cache.

Morris

12/22/97

(Q) Sometimes I get an error message saying that drive D: is  missing. Or CDs can't be read. I thought this was my CD ROM  till I replaced it. I installed a new 8X speed and it works fine until I shut my computer down. When I reboot it does not see it. If I reboot several times it eventually does. Sometimes on the first try, sometimes on the 7th try. I have checked connections and am stumped.

Luts

(A) Since you've already replaced the drive, you've pretty much narrowed it down to the controller, or a flakey power supply lead. Try switching the power supply lead first (it's free!). Also, although this isn't your prime issue, don't forget that the most common CD problem is that the discs get dirty. A flannel shirt is generally the best solution for cleaning them.

Morris

12/5/97

(Q) We were installing a sound card on a clone PC through Windows 95. After much trouble we finally got it working. We shut down the computer in the normal manner, powered off the system and when the system came back up it had lost the partitions. So is there any way to re-partition the drive without losing all the data. (By the way we had checked for virus earlier but found none.)

John

(A) Well, that shouldn't have happened at all, but I guess you know that. There are a couple different things that could have gone wrong. What you want is not to re-partition the system (which will destrioy your data), but to recover the old partions. You first need to boot the system up from a floppy, and then you can try running ScanDisk (not that I've ever seen it actually fix a partiton), or you can try a more advanced utility like Norton Disk Doctor, which will definitely work, IF THERE ISN'T A REASON IT SHOULDN'T, like hardware problems, viruses, badly botched FATs. My suspicion would lean towards the ribbon cable to the hard drive becoming partially dislodged when you were installing the sound card, at either the hard drive end or the motherboard end. I've seen this happen more than once where the resulting buildup of errors didn't cause a catostrophic problem until the system was rebooted. In these cases, since the errors on the disk are real (data written over other data in the wrong places), none of the software utilities will fix them all.

Morris

11/24/97

(Q) I am currently using an Addonics Sound Vision 500 soundcard which worked  perfectly for several months. Although there have been no upgrades or changes to the system the sound had become garbled. Device Manager revealed no conflicts, so I removed the Legacy Board [parent device] and have not been able to reinstall the software on it's factory default settings , IRQ 10,5 - DMA 00,01 - configuration and I/O'S remain correct and consistent. The display adapter [Trident SVGA / Video 57 P] has claimed IRQ 10 [NO modifications allowed]. Software installation will attempt IRQ 7 [printer port]. Addonics Tech. said the software must use default settings and suggested CMOS. System Tech. is no longer available. I must get back to Fury III in order to save the Planet!

Don

(A) DMA 0 sounds wrong, but I suppose that's another question altogether. By suggesting CMOS, the Addonics Tech is probably reffering to the way the PCI slots are assigned IRQs, which is changeable in most Pentium Setups. Normally, there is a prioritization "first come, first served" scheme involved, but you can assign which IRQ "first come" gets. These are almost always shown in HEX by the way, A=10, B=11, etc... If you don't have this option, you could try swapping the slots the cards are in. I have no clue why it should have failed in the first place, so solving this part of the problem may not save the planet.

Morris

11/20/97

(Q) I have Sound Blaster 16 on my hand-me-down 486-DX 66 computer. I have a microphone bought at Staples that works in demo machines at Staples, so I know the mic is in good working order. I have Sound Recorder, which plays WAV and MIDI files just fine. However, when I plug in the mic (into the jack labeled for mic), I cannot get sound recorder to record. I have tried to send sounds over the net via Cool Talk and Pow Wow, but only register a clicking sound on the other end. Do you think the input in my sound card is bad? Do I not have enough CPU horsepower? Have I configured my drivers improperly?

Harry

(A) It certainly isn't CPU power, I've recorded stero quality music through the mic on a 486DX-40. My guess is you either have the drivers wrong, or more likely, you are missing something with operating the software. On my old setup, you had to turn on the mic independantly on a "mixer" and a "recording control" before the thing would work. Do you have a "line" jack on the sound card where you can just run a lead from a stereo over and try that? At any rate, I wouldn't give up, I'd take a real good look at all the bits and pieces of sofware involved.

Morris

11/19/97

Q) My question concerns what degree of control I have over the spin-up / spin-down functionality of my CD Rom Drive. I recently purchased a Toshiba 24x IDE drive (I apologize I don't have the model # but my guess is it's irrelevant) to replace my older Sony 6x drive. To my dismay I have found that due to recurrent spin-downs and spin-ups my new drive is actually slower than my old drive. I understand the transfer rates are quicker but for applications that frequently access the drive this spin lag time makes the drive virtually worthless. I know that I can adjust the spin-down time delay in config.sys for DOS but haven't found a way to do so in win95. I also have a hunch that it doesn't matter what I do since in looking around I read that sound files force the drive to drop to 1x and then spin up for data. At any rate, is there any means by which I can keep the drive from spinning down after about 15 seconds of innactivity in Win95?

Ben

(A) I'm afraid that in the case of Windows 95 and your specific drive I just don't know. However, you are correct that multi-format CDs (like those from rock groups) which can be played in a regular stereo or a PC are storing music in the Red Book (CD Digital Audio) format, and will play at single speed, using the D/A conversion on the CD player, as opposed to reading the data at maximum speed and doing the D/A at the sound card. The easiest way to tell if a given soundtrack is being produced by the soundcard or the CD player is to plug a headphone into the front of the CD drive and get it straight from the horses' mouth.

Morris

11/17/97

(Q) I have a PVI-486AP4 mother board, with a 486-DX2 processor. It has one onboard IDE port, to which both a master and slave IDE harddrive is attached. The A: drive is connected through a IDE/FDD Controller card (UN-105). I can find no manufacturer in the little pamphlet that came with the card. When the CD-ROM is connected to the IDE port on the card, the computer won't boot up. In the CMOS, there are 4 HD possibilities, but ATAPI or cdrom is not an option. A friend tells me a BIOS upgrade is unnecessary, and I've since discovered that the latest BIOS is already installed on this board. Installing the CD software without the drive (necessary, as it won't boot up with the drive connected) doesn't help.

Lee

(A) CD Drives are never installed in CMOS. CMOS settings are used only for IDE hard drives. SCSI drives (all sorts) and all the flavors of CD Drives are managed by software drivers. Upgrading the BIOS won't get you anywhere, except another day older and deeper in debt. If your CD is an ATAPI and not a straight IDE, you will need a card with an ATAPI port, either standalone, or a sound card which supports it. If your CD is actually IDE, you should be able to set up your add-in card as the secondary controller (single jumper), set the CD to "Master", and the install software should find it.

Morris

Note: I was traveling from the 4th to the 16th, I'm back on-line (temporarily in Israel) as of November 17th.

10/28/97

(Q) I recently purchased a scanner and the sound card hasn't worked since. There are no conflicts in the device manager but it still doesnt work. My ESS Plug and Play appears in 2 DMA addresses (1+3) and 3 I/O adresses. I have an Atapi CD Rom 8x. I try to play a sample sound and it says the sound card is in use already. Is it best to remove the SCSI card that came with the scanner and start from scratch.

Jack

(A) Some of the proprietary SCSI cards that ship with scanners are wicked cheap, and not terribly compatible. Definitely take it out a moment and see if you can get your sound card working again. Most likely conflict would be an IRQ, which you don't mention. The default sound card IRQ = 5, and if the CD is connected to the sound card, it's using another IRQ, often 10 or 11. Even the cheapest SCSI cards normally give you an IRQ jumper, so try another setting, if the sound problem clears up when you take it out.

Morris

10/21/97

(Q) I have a Dell P75t that I have upgraded to 133mmx and added quite a few peripherals to over the last 2 years. The quad speed Mitsumi CD ROM drive that came standard on the PC lasted about 18 mos before I started getting read errors and it started to make whirring noises on about half the CDs that were inserted. I bought an 8x CD ROM drive and hooked it up very easily to my system and my Vibra 16 soundcard. The new 8x drive is starting to do the same thing as my old drive (whirring, occasionally clicking, not reading new CDs that are inserted). Is it something that I am doing that is causing my CD ROM drives to die on me? Secondly, I just upgraded to a AWE 64 and the cable from my CD ROM drive doesn't plug into the connector on my new sound card(my old card had 2 different inputs for the CDROM a large 4 pin connector and a smaller 4 pin connector. The new card has only the larger 4 pin connector. I wonder if I can get a new cable or if I have to start looking for a different soundcard that has the correct connection for the drive.

Sam

(A) The 4 pin connector is for audio only, left and right channel with grounds. You might find a correct cable, but I'd just cut up the one you have and kludge it. No tricky digital stuff, just unamplified sound. I'd guess you just got unlucky with the drives, the only thing I can see affecting lifetime would be bad power or intermittent ground. You might try using a different power supply lead. CD discs do get dirty, which causes inconsistent reading or failures. A soft flannel shirt makes a pretty good cleaning kit, no chemicals required.

Morris

10/20/97

I have a new motherboard (Biostar 8500TVD) installed and working properly. This board has two IDE sockets with two hard drives connected to the primary. I tried to install my old 2x Panasonic CR563 on the secondary IDE socket and my system won't boot at all. I tried the CDROM jumpers set on master and slave, still won't boot with either setting when the CDROM is connected. I have an old Sound Blaster 16 card installed which has an IDE connect on it. I connect the CDROM to that and the system recognizes the CD-ROM on boot up and in WIN95. The problem is I'm trying to run WIN NT but it will not recognize the Sound Blaster port. I've tried three different IDE cables, all the master/slave jumper settings, and set the CMOS to enable the second IDE port, and pulled the sound card, and don't know what I could be doing wrong.

Kevin

(A) I didn't think the CR563 was an IDE Drive. Are you sure the Sound Blaster port it works on is really an IDE? You could try temporarily disconnecting your second IDE hard drive, and connecting the CD as slave just to see it's EVER going to work, but I wouldn't bet on it. (The drive was a Panasonic proprietary interface - Kevin found an NT 4.0 driver for the Soundblaster on the web, which fixed the problem).

Morris

10/19/97

(Q) I've begun having a problem with REFRESHing the directory of my cd-rom in Win95. I can read data from a CD fine, until I swap in a new disk. The system refuses to re-read the directory. My Computer, Explorer, or any other Win95 utility or other program that has the ability to view the directory of the CD sees only that of the CD present when Win95 was booted. Using REFRESH (F5 key) in Explorer only reproduces the old directory. No error messages occur. I've used the W95 Device Manager to inspect the drivers: those for the cd-rom (a Toshiba driver), the IDE controllers (a Promise 2300+ EIDE, and the "standard" EIDE controllers), as well as all disks are reported as functioning normally.

Dan

(A) I've never seen the problem with CD's, but it comes up once in a while with floppy drives. The problem usually turns out to be a cache or motherboard problem, so try disabling external (L2) cache and seeing what happens. Also, I've had nothing but trouble with VESA IDE controllers, so try a standard ISA IDE to see what happens.

Morris

10/14/97

(Q) I recently upgraded my home computer from a 386 20+Co pro to a Pentium 90, using a Pentium I already had and a brand new TX mother board. When I plugged it in, with the new 1.7 Gb hdd and 16Mb of RAM it works fine. The floppy drive was fine. I then added the sound card- This then caused the floppy drive to stop reading. the sound card is PnP ISA, but it has no jumpers to disable the onboard IDE. It is an Opti 930i model if that will help.

Daniel

(A) The floppy drive is not an IDE device, but is connected to a specific floppy interface, probably on your motherboard. The most likely problem is that when installing the sound card, you accidentally loosened the floppy ribbon cable on the motherboard or at the drive. The motherboard controller may have also been dissabled in the CMOS Setup. If this isn't the case, than you either have a resource conflict (solveable), an incompatability (new sound card), or a coincidental failure (pull the sound card out to make sure the floppy starts working again). The resources taken by the floppy contoller are standard - IRQ=6 and DMA=2, so it's unlikely that the sound card would try to steal them, but with PnP, you never know. As long as you can actually get booted, check the sound card resources, and change them if necessary.

Morris

10/9/97

(Q) I can not get my IBM thinkpad 755c to play sound in DOS enviroment. Example: I hit the DOS prompt in Win 95. I get no sound from Warcraft or any other DOS game. I have tried repeatedly in the setup part of Warcraft to get it to work but it says it can not find it. The thing is supposed to be Sound Blaster compatible.

Alex

(A) You don't have any Sound Blaster drivers installed in the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files that run when you exit to DOS. However, most games will work anyway, talking directly to the hardware. The most likely problem is that Windows 95 has installed the soundblaster on non-standard settings (standard is Address 220, IRQ 5, DMA 1 and 5), that the game isn't capable of using. Go into Windows 95 Device Manager (Control Panel), look at the resources for the Sound Card, then check Warcraft to see if they are supported. If not, I would check with IBM before trying to rearrange enough resources to get there, or you might cause more problems than it's worth.

Morris

9/24/97

(Q) I upgraded a 486-66 to 6x86 Cyrix recently. We had the Deep Space 9 theme running OK on 486-66 but on the 6x86 the Windows Start .wav runs OK for 2 or 3 seconds then sounds like static for the next 20 seconds or so (while Win95 is in its loading sequence). When Win95 is loaded, the static stops, and all sounds are OK. I've checked for conflicts in DMA, IRQs etc. and I can see nothing wrong. It's not the file, because when I test it, it works OK. Win95 says the sound driver is installed and working OK. I'm stuck! The card is a Soundblaster16.

Robert

(A) Thats a tough one. I guess it could be something like the improved performance of the 6x86 requiring more of the hard drive's transfer bandwidth, and actually competing with the sound card for data. Although even a CD stereo WAV file only requires about 150KB/s to play smoothly, buffering issues come into play on longer files when the drive is servicing multiple tasks. Since everything works in Windows, try switching to the default Windows Chimes, and see if they make it through OK. Maybe this 2 seconds of clear running is why the Chimes are programed to sound the way they do, with the repeated trailer. It could turn out to be a funky cache or DMA issue, but if it only fails with long files and only on startup, I wouldn't worry about it.

Morris

9/17/97

(Q) I have a 14.4 modem. My sound card is an integrated ESS 1868F audio chipset on a riser card which has three ISA expansion slots on it. I just bought a new 33.6 modem from Boca, and when I installed it and took the 14.4 out, the new modem worked fine, but Windows95 removed my sound card. Also, in the Device Manager tab in System, when my 33.6 modem is installed, my sound card is not listed. My sound card is on IRQ 5. My 14.4 modem has jumpers on the modem itself and they are set to IRQ 3, COM 2. In Device Manager, COM 2 is already set to IRQ 3. My 33.6 modem is "Plug and Play" so I can't change the IRQ and COM settings on the modem itself. Under Device Manager, when I select my modem, it doesn't bring up a Resource tab like it does on my sound card, so I can't change the IRQ settings.

Mike

(A) The problem is that the plug-n-play modem is being recognized by the system before the sound card. Although a modem can share IRQs with an unused COM port (COM4 on your system?), plug-n-play modems normally get set to the next free IRQ, unfortunately 5 in your case. It's surprising that it doesn't have a resources tab, most plug-n-play devices can be manually moved that way after the fact. The easiest fix might be to get rid of your current COM2 or COM4 port which is eating IRQ3, either in the CMOS setup, if the port is on the motherboard, or with a manual jumper on the SIDE card, if it's not. Also reboot without ANY of the cards and delete spare COM ports in device manager. That way, the modem should be automatically configured for COM2, IRQ3, and the conflict with the sound card should go away.

Morris

9/2/97

(Q) My dilema: Compaq Presario 7234 took a lightening strike through the modem. The only inoperable part of the computer at this point IS the modem. We would like to replace it with something which allows fax/data/voice in order to use the "Internet Phone" program to talk which our daughter out of state. We are in a quandry as to what to look for, anywhere, to get a reasonably priced modem. What specifications should we look for to meet our needs, and can you offer any suggestions of where to get the most reasonable price?

Mickey

(A) To the best of my knoweledge, Internet phone programs use the soundcard for all of the actual "phone" work, the modem only comes in as the Internet connection. The "voice" component on upscale modems is for generated speech, like voice/messaging systems. You'll definitely want to buy the fastest modem you can afford, which should be a 33.6Kb/s with the option to upgrade to 56Kb/s. The big question is what connection speed your ISP (Internet Service Provider) will let you connect at. Very few have implemented the one-way 56Kb/s yet, and less than half actually support 33.6Kb/s. So, after you put the modem in, you might want to shop your ISP as well.

Morris

8/28/97

(Q) I have a 133mhz Pentium with a sound blaster 16 sound card. One evening my son was playing games and everything was ok. Late next A.M., I noticed there were no sound effects on opening and closing files, minimizing and maximizing screens, shutting down computer, etc. My son noticed there was music on most games he was playing, but no sound effects, except on one game. Everything else seems ok, music will play, but no sound effects, even under sounds on control panel. When you choose the sound scheme for win 95, threr is no sound when you ask for demo

Diane

(A) Music isn't really a function of the sound card when stored as stereo quality .wav files, it is generated at the CD drive and merely amplified on the sound card, which will happen even if none of the sound card drivers are installed. Basically, it sounds like your sound card drivers need to be re-installed. On the one game they work with, the game may be talking directly with the card, common in DOS games in particular, which may also use the built in PC speaker for simple arcade type music.

Morris

8/18/97

(Q) I recently purchased a new 32 bit Sound Blaster compatable to replace the original 16 bit sound card in my aging Packard Bell 486 DX-2/66 system. When I opened the case, I found that the 2X Panasonic CD Rom drive was connected to the old sound card. The motherboard has two 40-pin IDE connectors so I took out the old sound card and connected the CD Rom to the the motherboard. I changed the jumpers to make it the hard drive master, then looked at the CD-Rom drive which had one jumper pin and four possible settings (0 through 3) on the back. I tried to turn on the computer with the jumpers in each of the four settings, but i n all cases, when I started the system it wouldn't boot. I then tried to go into my CMOS settings to try to autodetect the CD-Rom while in all of the different settings but the computer wouldn't boot while the CD-Rom was connected. If I disconnect the CD-Rom the system boots up fine.

Erik

(A) I doubt your old CD is an IDE drive, few of the 2X were. There are a couple schemes that use 40 pins, including ATAPI and perhaps the proprietary Panasonic, and none of them are compatible. Unless the drive says "IDE Connector" right on it or the connector on the SoundBlaster was labled that way (look right now), I'd stop and buy a new 10X for around $70, or whatever the best deal you can find is. Also, a CD will never be picked up by autodetect, which is strictly for hard drives. I have a photo guide about how to install a CD drive on my other site.

Morris

7/22/97

(Q) Hi, my name is John and I have a Creative 12x Cd-Rom that I cannot get to work. In device manager the CD-ROM shows up with a yellow exclemation point. It tells me about possible conflicts(there are none listed), and that the drivers are not installed and/or the hard ware is not there! It also mentions a code(Code 10). I have loaded the driver off of the disk that came with the computer. The driver is called SBIDE for Windows 95. I am not sure what type of computer brand my tower is because it has no name anywhere on it.(I'ts my father's). The moniter is an svga Techmedia. When my father bought the computer it came with some audio/cd related programs: SBCD and Opti930. I have no documentation to help with my problem. Any sugggestions would be greatly appreciated.

John

(A) I'm not sure from your letter where you have connected the CD, and what kind of connection is used. Opti930 is a sound card chipset, if I recall. SBIDE might require the CD to be attached to the IDE connector on a soundblaster card, or it may be their generic driver for attaching a SB IDE CD to the systems IDE bus. If the CD is IDE and is sharing a cable with your hard drive, the slave jumper must be set on the CD and the master jumper must be set on the hard drive. If it is hooked to a secondary IDE port or an IDE port on your sound card, it the CD should be jumpered to master. If the CD drive connection is not labled "IDE connection", but ATAPI or something else, then the IDE driver isn't the way to go, and it MUST be connected to a sound card or other adapter. Might be able to help if you supply more details.

Morris

7/9/97

(Q) I have inherited a Pentium 90 Multimedia machine which has been configured insuch a way that it barely is able to stay up. I would like to wipe the hard drive completely, DOS and all and re-load everything from scratch so that I know exactly what the set-ups are. I know that I need a bootable floppy that has the cd drivers on it etc. to be able to load the operating system, but am unsure how to go about this exactly. Any suggestions as to where to look for this information?

Dion

(A) Re-doing from scratch always presents problems, so it might be a good time for you to think about making the jump to Windows 95. On your specific question about drivers, check your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, and make sure that you copy all of the files being loaded to your backup floppy. The CD drivers are the most important of all, the hardware level driver for which is loaded in CONFIG.SYS, and the DOS/Windows driver (MSCDEX - MicroSoft CD EXtension) is loaded in AUTOEXEC.BAT. You'll also want to save all the drivers for your sound card and any special drivers for your video adapter. Drivers used in Windows need to be installed from their factory disks.

If you are going to stick with DOS/Windows, unless you actually need to repartition your hard drive, your best bet would be to clean it up rather than reload. At the most you could DELTREE then reinstall Windows, reinstalling DOS won't change anything. You might also step through your startup files on boot (just tap the F8 key after the system finishes counting memory) to see if there are bad lines or commands that take exessive time to execute. If you haven't run DEFRAG and SCANDISK recently, do so. You might also want to check your memory allocation, MEM /C, to see what's going on there.

I might be able to give you some more specific suggestions if you tell me where the machine dogs out, and what kind of problems you have.

Morris