Bought TBSC (Turtle Beach Santa Cruz), but my games crash!
Feb 27, 2002 at 11:48 PM Post #16 of 44
What, some games require 3D sound support to even have audio playback? That's ****ed up.

It was just a suggestion, I see your priorities are elsewhere, that's perfectly fine.

BTW, the EWX 24/96 is available for $179 w/ free shipping here
 
Mar 1, 2002 at 4:26 AM Post #17 of 44
*slaps himself in the face*

Shame on me!! My DirectSound games still crashed on my system when it was running Windows 98SE. Now I know why: Windows 98SE doesn't properly support any of the newest CPUs!! DUH!
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You see, of the currently-manufactured (not always the same as currently-available) processor chips on the market, the ONLY one that is supported by Windows 98SE is the Intel Celeron processor. All of the other currently-produced CPUs (AMD Athlon XP Palomino and AMD Duron Morgan, and Intel Pentium 4) require Windows 2000, Windows Me or Windows XP in order to function properly. This became apparent when I benchmarked my Athlon XP 1600+ system running both OSes. Normally, Windows 98SE is slightly faster than Windows Me - but on my system, the opposite is the case (Business Winstone 2001 came out on my AMD system with a score of 53 under WinMe, but only 52.1 under Win98SE; Content Creation Winstone 2001 reported a score of 58.9 under WinMe, versus only 55.1 under Win98SE).

Thus, I will need at least Windows Me with my AMD Athlon XP system.
 
Mar 15, 2002 at 2:05 AM Post #18 of 44
*hangs himself with a pair of POS Sony W08Ls*

That m*th*rf**king Turtle Beach!! I read on ComputingREVIEW.com on another user who has (or had) the very same problem with his TBSC under Windows 98, even with the latest VxD drivers (the only drivers that will work under Windows 98). He has a 1.4GHz Thunderbird Athlon system with an AMD76#-chipset-based DDR motherboard! And Turtle Beach is no longer updating the VxD drivers!
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Bottom line: If you are an AMD user, and you are using a TBSC soundcard, you'd better be running Windows Me, Windows 2000 or Windows XP (with WDM drivers)! The TBSC/Win98(SE) combo - with VxD drivers - will only work properly on Intel-processor-based systems!
 
Mar 15, 2002 at 8:08 AM Post #19 of 44
ack...glad im not after good sound on pc
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ahh my live
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(dont laff)
 
Mar 15, 2002 at 6:24 PM Post #21 of 44
Wait, you have direct x 8.1? That's your problem right there, not your processor. Dx8.1 simply does not funtion correctly with 98SE, period. I ran my 1600+ Athlon XP with not problems for a few weeks, and after I installed direct x 8.1, every Dx game either dropped directly to the desktop or gave me a BSOD either instantly or after a min or so of play.

I ended up upgrading to XP. I have seen others run into the same problem, and suggested to try the same solution.
 
Mar 15, 2002 at 11:43 PM Post #22 of 44
Maybe. I may have to substantially downgrade my graphics card (all the way down to perhaps a badly outdated Rage Pro Turbo chipset) if I want to use Win98SE; all of the drivers ever released for the R8500 require DirectX 8.1. And unfortunately, all of the latest graphics drivers for the GeForce and the Radeon series of graphics cards require DX8.1 in order to function correctly.

WAIT! ATI has an archive of older driver versions for the original Radeon (7200), but some of them may not work properly with AMD processors.
 
Mar 16, 2002 at 9:48 AM Post #23 of 44
Ignore CaptBubba's suggestion, no one in their right mind should use Windows XP. Windows 2000 maybe, but not in a million years XP.

First, have you checked your IRQs? Go to the Control Panel and click on System. Click on the Device Drivers tab and then double click Computer. Tell me if the Santa Cruz is sharing IRQs with any other devices. If it is, see if you can change it's IRQ or the IRQ of the device it's sharing with.

One other thing, and I doubt this since you had a Soundblaster Live, but check the BIOS and make sure the ACPI is off under Power Management. That would consistently crash my system because it conflicted with my SB Live for some reason.
 
Mar 16, 2002 at 3:38 PM Post #25 of 44
Hamsterball_Z, which OS are you running?

Because if you are running Windows 98SE, the only TBSC drivers that will work under that OS is the obsolete VxD driver (which has severe compatibility problems with DirectX 8.x). And with drivers for the newest graphics cards requiring DirectX 8 or higher just to even function at all (using those newest graphics cards under DirectX 7 will permanently lock your resolution at 640x480, your color depth at 4-bit/16-color mode and your monitor's refresh rate at 60Hz unless you upgrade your DirectX to a later version), and the VxD drivers working correctly only with DirectX 7, you'll have to downgrade your graphics card just to use the TBSC under Win98(SE).

As for installing Windows 2000 (or Windows XP), installing those OSes with ACPI disabled in the BIOS will also disable all bus mastering. I learned that after my initial installation of Windows XP - my HD's transfer mode was permanently fixed at the slowest PIO transfer mode, which (literally) used all of the CPU's processing power just to access data on the hard drive. And none of my graphics cards will work correctly with busmastering disabled, to boot - graphics will show strange artifacts, especially in 3D games. Thus, you should install those OSes with ACPI enabled in the BIOS, and then disable ACPI after you have those OSes up and running.

(BTW, that IRQ sharing with ACPI enabled in Windows 2000/XP occurs mostly with Intel-brand motherboards; it may or may not occur with other brands of motherboards.)
 
Mar 16, 2002 at 7:04 PM Post #26 of 44
I'm posting this from a laptop with win2k. My main system, which is very similar to yours (K7S5A, XP 1700+, Voodoo3, SB Live, 512MB DDR) runs 98SE. I've been doing computer support and building systems for 8 years so I do have some idea of what I'm doing.

Not sure why you're so gung-ho to keep the Santa Cruz if it's such a compatibility problem. I mean, how many upgrades are yo willing to do on your system just to get this one sound card working?

As for IRQ sharing, that's possible with any PCI system. It's not just because of ACPI but that does make it worse.

(HBZ)
 
Mar 17, 2002 at 6:05 AM Post #27 of 44
As much as I hate those Santa Cruz compatibility problems, I dislike my old SB Live even more! Mine has way too much hiss and crackling noises that are very annoying, to say the least - and those noises get worse with the volume turned up above the "barely audible" level. And all revisions of the SB Live have the very same serious sound-quality flubs, due to their really crappy output hardware.

IMHO, Creative has gone WAY downhill with its sound cards ever since the company had abandoned the ISA interface in favor of a PCI interface (after the company had acquired Ensoniq). The Live and the Audigy theorhetically have great sound processor chips, but the rest of the hardware on the cards themselves are crappy. And my motherboard has no ISA slots whatsoever, so I'm screwed on sound cards.

And when I mentioned that IRQ sharing on Win2K/XP running on Intel-brand motherboards with ACPI enabled, I really meant that all connected hardware devices will share the very same IRQ as each other (if they require IRQ settings) - the very same one that the ACPI driver itself uses. Normally, I expected two or more PCI slots to share an IRQ, but the extreme problem of IRQ sharing described earlier in this paragraph occurs mostly on systems equipped with Intel-brand motherboards.

Maybe I should abandon soundcards altogether and rely on the motherboard-integrated audio solution of the SiS735 chipset...
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Mar 17, 2002 at 6:40 AM Post #28 of 44
I hope you don't ignore me.......


Driver support was actualy one of the reasons I suggested you upgrade, as the newer OS's will get more attention as far as getting new drivers.

Which PCI slot do you currently have the card in? Have you tried moving it to other ones to see if the problem goes away? Normaly the top PCI slot shares an IRQ with the AGP and the bottom one shares one with USB. I would also try pulling all the cards out except the vid/sound card and seeing if the problems still exist, if you have not done so already that is.
 
Mar 17, 2002 at 6:50 AM Post #29 of 44
On my AMD-based system, all of the PCI slots share an IRQ with something else on the motherboard. The PCI slot nearest the AGP slot share the same IRQ 11 as the AGP slot; the second and third PCI slots and one USB channel all share IRQ 10; the fourth PCI slot and the second USB channel share IRQ 5; the bottom PCI slot uses either IRQ 10 or IRQ 11 - and the ACPI support uses IRQ 9; once ACPI support is disabled, IRQ 9 remains unavailable to PCI devices.
 
Mar 18, 2002 at 8:14 AM Post #30 of 44
On a side note, I had reverted to a Pentium III-700 for much of this weekend. I got my performance AMD system back on line - along with my R8500, my TBSC, and Windows XP Pro (not Home) Edition. Most - though not all - of my games work under XP (but for some strange reason very few of those would have run at all had I chose Windows 2000 Professional), but some may have to be tinkered with in order to run correctly.
 
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