Please Help, Vintage GPU and Sound Card Conflict

Shaina11 · Dec 26, 2015

I'm having a problem upgrading my vintage build from the inegrated SiS 530 graphics to the EVGA GeForce 6200 PCI GPU. It looks like it works without the ISA sound card installed, but as soon as the SC is installed, the motherboard has one long beep, and two short beeps, and no image displays on the screen. The only way to boot with the new GPU is to remove the sound card.

My specifications are as follows:

Motherboard: ASUS P5S-VM rev 1.01 (HP Pavilion 6640C) [Phoenix BIOS ver 1.10]

CPU: AMD K6-2 400

Chipset: SiS 530/5595

Integrated Graphics: SiS 530

RAM: 1x PC100 256 MB

Sound Card: Labway Yamaha LWHA151A00 OPL 3 SAx ISA with IDE connection [Only jumpers it has are for disabling the on-board amplifier, IDE port cannot be disabled.]

I believe there is a hardware conflict between the GeForce 6200 PCI card and the Yamaha sound card. I have already tinkered around in the BIOS and tried reserving IRQ 5, however that doesn't seem to make a difference, the VIRQ jumper on the motherboard is enabled, and when the GPU is installed, I disable the integrated GPU with a jumper. [This is a different jumper, not the VIRQ.]

I have tried to reserve certain Upper Memory Regions in the BIOS in attempt to find the conflict but to no avail. I don't have much experience when it comes to the UMB/UMA.

According to Device Manager under Windows 98 SE (when I boot without the SC) the GPU uses the following memory ranges:

000A0000 - 000AFFFF
000B0000 - 000BFFFF
D2000000 - D2FFFFFF
E0000000 - EFFFFFFF
D1000000 - D1FFFFFF
000C0000 - 000CEDFF
0F800000 - 0F81FFFF

According to the BIOS under the PCI/PNP ISA UMB Region Exclusion, these are the following areas I can reserve for ISA cards:

C800 - CBFF
CC00 - CFFF
D000 - D3FF
D400 - D7FF
D800 - DBFF
DC00 - DFFF

I have also disabled the serial ports and the parallel port to free up some IRQs.

Can someone please help me to figure out where the conflict is and how to resolve it? What do I have to reserve, and are these components even compatible with each other? I am providing manuals for my motherboard and the GPU below. If you need any more information, please let me know.

P5S-VM Manual
EVGA GPU Manual

Please reply ASAP, thank you.

P.S. If anyone knows of any software or anything I could use to locate what hardware is using which UMA/UMB, please let me know.

little_me · Dec 26, 2015

Random question, Mainboard, according to manual page 15, has optional onboard soundcard which can be disabled with jumper.
If the board has said thing, you tried disabling that when using the ISA sound card?

Also manual notes that built-in hardware monitoring thing uses memory address 290H-297H and no one else can use that.
Now, following is based on the assumption that the build wont work at all with the sound card.
If i remember right, ISA sound cards wanted to use one of the areas:
260-26F
270-27F
280-28F
or
290-29F

However, if there are no jumpers for choosing said memory range, you might be stuck especially if you can't get to driver installation part where you could perhaps choose it within the driver.
On IRQ conflict side though, I doubt that is totally the issue since according to manual, ISA slot takes what IRQ it wants and rest are given to PCI slots for grabs.
Trying to use the GPU on different PCI slot wont hurt much though since I think the IRQ dividing was somewhat less than free like 1st slot gets 1, 4, 7 second 2, 4, 8 and third 3, 6 and 9

I'm not sure on that though but trying it on different PCI slot would be worth the try at least if nothing else.

Shaina11 · Dec 26, 2015

little_me :

Thanks for the response. My particular motherboard doesn't have the built-in audio, thus the sound card was mandatory,(also given this was originally a DOS-based build, I needed an ISA OPL 3 card.) and the SC itself works fine, and the integrated graphics work and have the drivers installed, but it's slow as molasses, thus why I'm hoping to get the GeForce working. The GeForce seems to boot when the sound card is not installed, but as soon as the SC is inserted, I get one long beep, and two short beeps, which means it was unable to initialize the GPU for some reason. Yet the integrated graphics still work just fine.

Oh, and I didn't mention that it won't even let the PC boot when the SC is in as the GPU won't display anything. If the SC is removed, all is well, as well as when I only use the integrated graphics. And I have verified that the GPU itself does work in another PC, so I don't believe it's the card, I still think there's a conflict somewhere. Granted the MB is from 1999 and the GPU is from about 2005....

I also think my ISA SC is Plug-n-Play compatible, so maybe I didn't need to reserve IRQ 5 after all? But what about the memory blocks I could reserve? Or do PnP ISA cards even need reserved resources at all? I also wonder if my BIOS is just crappy about managing IRQs/Memory Ranges.

By the way, do you think disabling the VIRQ could change anything? I think I messed with it before, but I haven't recently. When I get the chance I'm going to mess around with it some more.

P.S. I believe my SC uses I/O 220, at least that's what it's set to in the autoexec.bat from the drivers. I need to play around with that to make certain.

P.P.S My motherboard does not have the same BIOS as that of the manual, so some settings are different. Mine is Phoenix. Thus it will not let me manually assign IRQs to the individual PCI ports like in the manual. I still wonder if the VIRQ would do something for the GPU though....

little_me · Dec 26, 2015

Okay, no built-in optional audio, that removes one possible conflict.
If the ISA card is plug and play compatible:
It should not care what resources it gets, it'll play with what it gets. This is not the case here though.
It uses 220-22F range since as you mentioned it, it is set in autoexec.bat
It might be that either config.sys or autoexec.bat also shows what IRQ is in use.

You noted that it works with integrated GPU (slow) so if you have the soundcard in and use integrated GPU to get to windows, then check it through device manager.
Knowing where the sound card wants to be is important.
next (or first) step would be to verify, in same manner, where the new GPU wants to be. AKA is there even a conflict? (supposedly)

you usually cannot set certain IRQ to certain PCI slot in BIOS, IRQ reserving is only going to work for older ISA slots (according to manual anyway)

PCI slots use other kind of IRQ assignment, basically "all of them" which can in theory fail with one of them in use. (your mainboard uses INTA for all PCI slots, What that means, I think is I don't know exactly, more on that later but it is all google-search-guessing.

Based on above, changing the GPU to different PCI slot could fix the issue since all PCI slots use different IRQ but can accidentally share one in use by ISA... it could also be worth trying.

All I know is that it has been ages since I last toyed with 95 to 98 computer, like... pre-2000 thing and I also know that I never had similar problem so I'm only throwing possible ways to find out what is wrong.

Shaina11 · Dec 26, 2015

One thing I'd like to be certain of though, is that the sound card always gets IRQ 5, as that has the best compatibility with DOS games, which is what the build was originally for. I'm planing on booting with just the SC and integrated GPU, I'm going to boot with the SC line in the autoexec.bat the first time, check device manager, then, I'm going to rem the SC line, reboot, and check device manager again, this may help me to find out how the SC wants itself to be configured.

Then I plan on booting with just the GPU, trying different PCI slots and checking device manager, then I'm going to disable the VIRQ jumper, and do the same again to see if there's a difference.

From what I've heard, back in the day when PCI rolled around, they tried to make ISA cards PnP compatible, however they never really worked that well, thus causing conflicts. Could it be possible that my SC is partially PnP and partially legacy? I noted that when I boot directly in DOS 7 before I had the SC configuration line in the autoexec.bat, anytime I would go to play a game, it would go to a blank screen due to incompatible sound settings, even though they were set correctly, IRQ 5, 220, DMA 1, etc. Then after I copied the line from the startdos.bat, and placed it in the autoexec.bat, the game worked fine. This leads me to wonder if the SC wants a different address, but the autoexec.bat sets it differently. And when the GPU is inserted, I don't even have the HDD plugged in as the PC won't boot. So autoexec doesn't have a chance to set anything, so I'm thinking it's got to be a hardware issue.

I also noted that the IDE port on the SC is using(or at least trying to use according to device manager, but there is a conflict with the USB bus and PCI IRQ steering.) another IRQ. Possible IRQs in device manager are 9, 10, and 11. The SC also has a game port, but I haven't checked to see if it requires an IRQ, I'll get on that soon.

I'm about to do some testing and I'll get back to you asap. Thank you for taking the time to help me, also, Merry Belated Christmas.(If you celebrate it that is.)

Shaina11 · Dec 27, 2015

Update
After fiddling with the VIRQ jumper and trying the GPU in every PCI slot, nothing makes a difference, and it never changes the IRQ, the GPU as well as the integrated graphics when it's enabled loves to stay on IRQ 9, unless said IRQ is reserved. With IRQ 5 and 10 reserved for the SC and its IDE connection, I still cannot boot with them both installed. The GPU works great on its own, same for the SC, but they refuse to work together. I'm sick of hearing the beeps every single time I try to test it.

There's got to be something with the IRQs, I/O addresses, Memory blocks or something! I really need help resolving this asap before I have to return the GPU if I can't get them to like each other. Pretty much the only things I can adjust in the BIOS is to reserve certain IRQs and memory blocks(as shown in my first post.) and I can change the PCI latency,(default is 0040h) and set a PCI port as the master. So far, nothing has made a lick of difference. Though I have not tried the PCI bus master nor the PCI latency, but I doubt that has anything to do with it.

Any ideas? Are these components possibly just not compatible? Would another SC work if it didn't have an IDE interface?(doubtful.) An older PCI GPU? A different motherboard with more BIOS options for PnP and VGA? If you need pictures of my BIOS or my device manager, let me know.

Also if it's a possibility I can spend more time looking throughout DM and writing down everything relating to PCI/VGA and the SC. This includes memory addresses, I/O addresses, IRQs, etc, etc. But I can't do much through the BIOS sadly. I'm nearly at my wits end, I'm about at a loss of what to do.

little_me · Dec 27, 2015

Well, I start to run out of ideas also.

SC:
IRQ 5 for sound
IRQ 9/10/11 for onboard IDE that cannot be disabled

Onboard GPU:
IRQ 9 (unless 9 is reserved for ISA usage)

Add-on GPU:
IRQ 9 (and thus, shouldn't cause IRQ problems since as noted above, uses same IRQ as integrated)

Now, based on above things:
We know GPU wants to use IRQ 9, doens't matter if it is integrated or the new PCI one.
Thus, testing with integrated GPU would follow:

Soundcard IDE port tries to use IRQ 9, same as what GPU's try to use. What happens if you reserver IRQ 5+9 for ISA? would the soundcard then use IRQ9 and GPU something else? (Having 5+10 reserved for ISA still causes conflicts in device manager, thus why it should be tried with 5+9)

The goal:
SC uses IRQ 5 for sound, IRQ 9 for IDE and integrated GPU uses some other IRQ. which one?

If yes, it might fix the problem. if not:

Same as above, except reserving IRQ's 5 and 11 for ISA and seeing how that changes the setting.
The goal:
SC uses IRQ 5 for sound, IRQ 11 for IDE and leaves IRQ 9 and 10 alone, I will assume that integrated GPU will use IRQ 9 as you've stated (IRQ 9 to be used by the PCI GPU but we want no conflicts in device manager before adding more things cards)

If none of above works, I can only conclude that as far as I know, the sound card has some weird conflict with the new GPU and wont work together with it.

Shaina11 · Dec 29, 2015

I've been working with it for a while now and trying different IRQs and so far nothing has worked.... Hopefully if I can get an extension on the return date of the GPU I can try ordering another ISA sound card that doesn't have an IDE port and see how that works out. I'm also looking at a Sound Blaster 16 CT1740, but I'm wondering if the proprietary IDE connection requires its own IRQ as well, and if the port could be disabled?

I'm also looking at other Yamaha cards that don't have IDE ports. Do you think it's a possibility one of these "PnP" cards could work, or would it be safer to go for a "legacy" card that is configured by jumpers? When I was reserving IRQs, the SC itself seemed to listen and assign itself to the specified IRQ, but the IDE seemed to do whatever it wanted. -_-

Also do you think there's any possibility with the memory ranges I mentioned in my first post could be causing a conflict?

little_me · Dec 29, 2015

The memory areas listed in first post should not conflict since none of them overlap. I'm pretty sure said listing doesn't cover them all.
sound card and it's IDE slot. the IDE part would likely take it's own IRQ and memory addresses too.
GPU and it's IRQ and memory addresses.

It could be that different sound card in ISA slot could work but.. at this point, it is pure guess work.

It could also be that while mainboard manual claims otherwise, using BOTH integrated GPU and add-on GPU at same time could work.
The beeps are result of "no valid video output device" which stops it all but.. if there were integrated GPU in addition to sound card and extra GPU, you might see all the conflicts at once. maybe.

Above based on the assumption that you earlier mentioned being able to set PCI as "master" over the integrated AGP GPU. (which it shouldn't be in that case, it should prefer the integrated to allow booting.

Also, rereading the manual BIOS part (which is not same as you have, but still) It details something called Video rom bios shadow. and following other Shadowable memory areas.
which, if enabled, might (unlikely but still) cause the add-on GPU to get memory conflicts since if enabled, some of the shadowed areas overlap what GPU supposedly wants to use.

In short, I fear I've exhausted all the possibilities that I can think of. (besides the chance that loading BIOS defaults might somehow reset some bit that would allow it to work)

Shaina11 · Dec 29, 2015

Hmm. Anytime I've tried to use the PCI GPU I've always disabled the integrated GPU with the jumper on the motherboard, unless that doesn't disable it completely and it could still be saving resources for itself... Unfortunately I cannot change anything related to the Video ROM BIOS Shadow. The manual did mention something about C800-CBFFF Shadow to DC000-DFFFF Shadow though, I can't change that either. But I could reserve C800-CBFFF, but I don't think that did anything last time I tried that.

One time I did actually unplug the PC, remove the CMOS battery and drained the power from the MB, would that also reset the Extended BIOS area, or should I do that manually through the BIOS?

I may have to try another sound card or two, and if it doesn't work, I'll either have to find a workaround, i.e. using PCI audio for more modern games with the GPU, and then switching to ISA SC and integrated GPU for DOS games, but that's just a royal pain. Or build a P4-based PC and use DOSBox when necessary. The reason I originally built it is because there's nothing quite like playing DOS games on real hardware.

P.S. Could it be that upon boot, the GPU needs to use the system's physical memory? I have 256 MB, and the GPU has 256 MB integrated. Should I try adding another 256 to get 512 and try that? It seems doubtful given that the GPU works without the SC though, unless the SC possibly just pushes it over the limit. This is highly doubtful though.

Far-fetched but maybe trying a different RAM slot?

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