Audiophile Clicks and Pops while old game card doesn't. Please Help!

  • Thread starter Thread starter quattro_xxph
  • Start date Start date
OK, I ran ctbios and this is what I found:

BIOS date: 07/08/00
Award BIOS: Award modular BIOS V4.541PG
Board/BIOS Version: V.920BF/920BN F08 07-10-2000
OEM: Jetway
Chipset: Sis-620//SiS

Also, it seems that you guys are right, this has something to do with the video interface. It got better when I shifted to 256 colors, better but its still there and still noticeable. Also my other observations still hold: I can record one track (stereo) without a glitch (very very slight if any). And with 256 colors, I can record 2.

I checked what was controlling my video and it said that it was controlled by a device called SiS-620 (same as the chipset?) and that there was an allocated memory of 4MB.
 
Did it give you an ID-string? Should say Award ID-string with a string of numbers.
:cool:
 
Apparently this is Jetways Scheme.
Turn your computer off.
Turn it on and as it boots up let the first 3 lines come up then hit pause.
On the 3rd line it will give you the model # and bios version.
Write it down and post it.
:cool:
 
OK (good thing I wrote that down last night too)

Award ID String: 07/08/00-SiS-620-2A6INJ19C-0D
 
Hey quattro_xxph if your still up can you give me the Model#? Cant seem to find it with just the bios string.

:cool:
 
I'll try to give it to you tomorrow I guess (the computer in question is at home and Im at work).

Anyways, how are you going to use this info? Ive checked for drivers but this chipset business is pretty confusing. I dont know which one will work (if any). Anyways, thanks and I'll get that number up here when I get it.
 
Anyways, how are you going to use this info? Ive checked for drivers but this chipset business is pretty confusing. I dont know which one will work (if any). Anyways, thanks and I'll get that number up here when I get it.
Click to expand...

Chipsets and drivers are one thing but USB and Video seem to be the most common problem. You want to make sure your soundcard is not shared with Video or anything else if you dont have too. You wont know that without a manual. (Unless your a computer engineer whos gifted enough to read a Board.) You may have only 2 or 3 pci slots on board. If you have only 2, money has it that one is shared. If you have 2 soundcards then Guess what! One has to be shared. This is where AGP might help out. I bought an AGP card for another system I built but it wont work on it because its an earlier AGP version. The manual will tell what version you have. You can have the card if you need it. Its just collecting dust.
With the Manual its going to be easier to go through with the process of elimination rather than backtracking haphazardly. If it was a driver issue and you still had a card shared with video that was also a problem, then the new driver or drivers wont do you any good.
From the partial ID string its possible your board is a J-620bf or a 620cfrb. With that model # on bootup you can find out the exact one needed to get the manual. That is if jetway has their stuff together. :rolleyes:
Sure would be nice if the Computer Industry could build a PC and you could put anything in it and have it work! Guess we all cant afford Apples! :)
 
Mr. Duck: thank you for your help but I think I have identified my board:

Its a Jetway J920 BF

More bad news for me: Its supposed to have a built-in SIS6326 AGP2X video accelerator. I read some its specs... no AGP slots. That long black slot I saw on mine was probably an ISA slot.

Im going to check for drivers for this thing and probably use it. I checked last night, but when I looked at Control Panel>System>Display Adapters... what I saw was SiS 620. Now i dont know if this will make a difference but Im going to try and download some drivers and see how things hang....

ALSO: Some specs on that onboard video acceleration:

On Board 6326 AGP V.G.A
- Support direct memory access shared memory area from 2MB to 8MB selected by BIOS SETUP

-Support 64 bit memory data Bus interface

-Integrated a high performance and high quality 3D engine

-Support AGP spec. 1.0 compliant, 1Xmode(66MHz), 2Xmode(133MHz)

-Integrated programmable 24-bit true-color RAMDAC up to 240 MHz Pixel clock

What can I do with this and how do I monkey around with this in the BIOS (Im gonna check that 2MB to 8MB thing)

If nothing happens (or it gets worse), I sure as hell am not going to live with the clicks and pops... therefore I'm gonna go get another Slot 370 mobo with an Intel chipset (they say M-Audio stuff dont have issues with these, is that true?) and an AGP video card (the cheapest I can find).

Now, IF I do that... do you think that the problem will finally be solved?
 
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I haven't re-read the whole thread, so my appologies if that has already been discussed.

Make sure you have set correct soundcard driver in Cakewalk. It should be M-Audio ASIO, not any other M-Audio of other Asio driver that you might have on your system.

Just a thought.
 
quattro_xxph
Did you get the model # from Boot up? Just make sure you have the right Model.
I tried to download the j920bf manual from jetway 8 times and it was a no go. I tried another site that used a word file but I get no pics of the Motherboard. I did find out that if this is your motherboard it looks like you have hardware jumpers to disable both onboard video and audio. If this is the case you will need the manual to see their locations if you plan to disable them. It said you have 3 pci and one Isa slot. The word file is screwed up so I couldnt read what slots were shared. If you are able to download the manual tell me where you downloaded it. I prefer the PDF file. Im not working at the moment so ill have some time to help you (as far as my knowledge goes anyway)
Jetway boards rank right up there with "Packard Hell" but that doesnt mean the board cannot be workable. Just have to have all your Ps and Qs in order to see if it will.

"What can I do with this and how do I monkey around with this in the BIOS (Im gonna check that 2MB to 8MB thing)"
I guess you could lower it to see what happens. Just be real careful when making changes in Bios.
:cool:
 
Mr webstop: CAnt use ASIO drivers. I use Cakewalk

Mr duck: I downloaded the manual too (the Word one). Yeah, the PDF is screwy. Thats my board alright (cheap as hell I hear).

I already took out the onboard sound system both and disabled it from my hardware profiles and uninstalled the drivers about a year ago. About the video "card" is it AGP? (because they say it is).

I read the manual and monkeyed around with the BIOS. I took the setting for AGP aperture down to 4MB which is the lowest level. And then I disabled anything with the word "BURST" on it. I think that did the trick. I recorded again on the ninth track, and this time I did a really long track. I hardly noticed any interference. I tried it on the cakewalk project I was testing it on the other day, and this one STILL gave me the same pops and all in the same places. I'm thinking that maybe this project is severely fragmented (Cakewalk says that happens) so Im going to try to defragment it tonight by saving it to bunfile and re-extracting it. I tried on blank projects.... good results! Oh, and I set my video color down to 256 colors when Im working on this.

The kicker here is nothing happened to severely affect my other applications. Before sleeping, I popped in a VCD and watched and everything was fine even if I was down to 16 bit color (I reset it when Im done with audio). But Im still worried that this maybe something so unstable and that I just got lucky last night. I didn't get to read the manual a whole lot since I d/l it late yesterday so I'll read more on it today and experiment with the BIOS settings.

btw, how do you think adding more RAM (mines a teensy 192 MB) on this thing will affect it? What noticeable changes am I supposed to expect?
 
quattro_xxph said:
Mr webstop: CAnt use ASIO drivers. I use Cakewalk
Click to expand...

You are right! I never used Cakewalk and forgot about that.
Maybe there is such a thing as M-Audio WDM then...
 
Well thats some good news quattro_xxph.
"About the video "card" is it AGP? (because they say it is)."
Yes.
btw, how do you think adding more RAM (mines a teensy 192 MB) on this thing will affect it? What noticeable changes am I supposed to expect?

Adding more ram would help speed things up. Its my understanding that AGP utilizes ram as its needed.
I think AGP is an Intel invention that helped speed up 3d rendering. Its supposedly faster than a Video card on the PCI bus. Applications like Gigastudio that use Samples or Soundfonts require a lot of memory also. It seems like I read a post here saying Gigastudio really needed 512 meg of ram. Looks like 256 megs of ram works on most stuff. You should have all your Ram at the same Bus speed. I dont have your manual here but it seems like your bus speed was 100. Could be 133.
:cool:
 
Mr webstop: yes, M-Audio has WDM. I'll prolly be using them when I decide to go for XP (Windows 98SE apparently doesn't support it and mine cant recognize it at all)

Mr Duck: I think I should up my RAM (I think Ive got the lowest in the whole board!). The ones I use are PC133. Im still investigating more stuff on the BIOS, but overall I think this problem has been solved. Might as well check the electrical system in my room.

Thaks for all the help... If anything of the sort occurs again, I'll just bump up this thread. =)
 
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