Sound card / floppy drive conflict

[olliehay]

Hi there:<br>A friend of mine has a PB 660cd with 40 mb RAM, 1.3 gig free hard drive space.&nbsp;&nbsp;He's varied the configuration of the computer by adding a SB16 sound card, and a 56K modem.&nbsp;&nbsp;He also installed the Win 98 upgrade over Win 95.<br><br>Sometime in the midst of adding the new hardware and installing the windows upgrade, his floppy drive stopped working.&nbsp;&nbsp;It still shows up in the Device Manager, as working fine, but any attempts to use it completely freeze up his machine.&nbsp;&nbsp;In an offhanded remark, he mentioned he was having problems with his sound card.&nbsp;&nbsp;We took the sound card out and the floppy drive worked, so it's obvious that the two are conflicting.<br><br>My question is this:&nbsp;&nbsp;we've tried to change the IRQs for the sound card, but the way PB sets it up we have limited access to the CMOS or BIOS setup.&nbsp;&nbsp;I would like to format the hard drive and then install Win 98 only on the system.&nbsp;&nbsp;I think that this would allow us to access the IRQ and BIOS and so on.&nbsp;&nbsp;Do you think that it would work?&nbsp;&nbsp;Has anyone else had this problem?&nbsp;&nbsp;He doesn't have any free slots to physically move the sound card, so it's the only solution I can think of.&nbsp;&nbsp;The thing is I'm reluctant to make him go through that much if there's not much chance of success.<br><br>Thanks.

 

[edfair]

You can generally set the IRQ's from control panel and device mangler. No way that I know of to set the card from bios. SB normally sets up as 5 and 10 unless there is some conflict.&nbsp;&nbsp;How about pulling the modem before the next SB install to see if it will select differently. And make sure that everything from SB is out before trying to reinstall.<br>Not much difference that I can see in the upgrade version vs complete install on the bottom line.&nbsp;&nbsp;Have gone both ways but I'm not a power user, just a hardware tech.<br> <p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: > </a><br><a href= > </a><br>

 

[fenris]

I have encountered this problem before, although on a newer machine. It turned out to be the hard disk controller driver that was causing the problem. Try unistalling them and let win98 recognize them. BTW boot into safe mode and see if accessing the floppy is possible. Also while you are there check to see if there are any dupplicate devices in your device manager. If there are duplicates for almost all your devices (which in my experience from installing win98 over top of win95 is true) then you may want to remove all the devices, restart the computer and let windows redetect them. This may help.<br> <p> fenris<br><a href=mailto:fenris@hotmail.com>fenris@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br> I am interested in Mining Software, as well as Genetic Algorithms.

 

[ATCal]

The floppy uses IRQ 6 which I have never seen anything else try to use unless user intervention was involved.<br>Is the sound card an ISA card? (if it is an honest to goodness SB 16 it should be). Is the modem ISA? If they are, then as edfair stated the resources should be configurable through the device manager. If the sound card is real old, and not even plug and play (which could be causing your problem) then the resources would be set in the autoexec.bat file (SET BLASTER=I5 (forIRQ) etc.). This can cause problems with other devices which are plug and play. I never cared much for Packard Hells, and am not familiar with that model. If there is a setting in the BIOS to reserve IRQs for Legacy devices, map out the ones for your non PNP cards.<br><br>Post back with anything further.<br> <p>Al<br><a href=mailto: atc-computing@home.com> atc-computing@home.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>

 

[tomw]

One other thought on the floppy...When I poke around inside a box now, I try to always check the cables.&nbsp;&nbsp;Fiddling with one component, you may have caused the data cable to work loose.<br><br>Is the problem all the time, or intermittent??&nbsp;&nbsp;Also, does the FDD work in DOS mode.<br><br>A stated earlier, IRQ 6 has always been for the floppy, and no card I've ever seen had an option to jumper to IRQ 6. <p>Tom Whitehead<br><a href=mailto:twhitehead@commeq.com>twhitehead@commeq.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>

 

[olliehay]

Thanks for your comments.<br><br>The floppy drive does not work at all unless the sound card is physically removed from the system.<br><br>I believe it is an ISA card, I'll have to check on that for sure - I'm pretty sure the modem is ISA anyway.<br><br>We've been in contact with a SB technician for some time to no avail.&nbsp;&nbsp;Basically he just recommends to reinstall the drivers etc.<br><br>We are gearing up to format the machine and reinstall Windows - I'm hoping that if we install Win without the sound card or modem at first that we will be able to maintain use of the floppy drive.&nbsp;&nbsp;If nothing else, I feel we need to eliminate the duality of the machine running on both Win 95 and 98.&nbsp;&nbsp;I am, however, some distance from my friend so will have to help him format the machine over the phone.&nbsp;&nbsp;If there is any flaw in my thinking or any possible problem that you can foresee, please let me know what you think.&nbsp;&nbsp;I am trying to prepare for every eventuality so that I can walk him through it.<br><br>Thanks again for your help.&nbsp;&nbsp;I really appreciate it.

 

[Guest_imported]

Packard Bells typically had a sound card installed at the factory. What<br>happened to it? If removed, were the drivers, etc. removed?<br>Also, there were some early versions of SB-16 ISA that had some<br>problems interfacing, as they had a port for a CD-ROM drive which could<br>be jumpered on-board for various resources.<br>Did you check DMA settings?<br>If all else fails, I would agree to formatting, then installing a fresh<br>copy of WIN98, without the add-on boards installed. After configuring<br>and testing the new windows installation, add the boards one-at-a-time,<br>configuring and testing each.<br><br><A HREF="

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