M747 MB causing major grief

[bethewall]

Hi there, kinda new to techin with MB's, so I bought several working and not working computers to get better. Have a M747 running PII 450 (clocking 300 for some reason) that will not run an ISA sound card. Recognizes two or three known good cards, but no sound. Has a functioning modem in PCI slot. No conflicts except "IRQ steering disabled due to IRQ table conflict" in PCI bus. tried to adjust busclk settings in bios, no avail. tried removing/resetting devices, no good. Running Me flawlessly with on-board video, 6 Gig HD, CD-rom and floppy. All up and going EXCEPT no sound! to get this close and not pull it off is frustration!!! Can't find any good tech manuals at pcchips site either. Am about to gut the whole thing and start fresh with a more up-to-date/user friendly MB. ANY suggestions would be helpful. Much thanks.

 

[Mercutio]

Did you disable the on-board sound device? Nearly every PC Chips board has one, whether the header is on the board or not, and the resources will still be reserved even if you haven't loaded the driver.
Make sure your preferred playback device in Windows is the ISA card. I *have* seen it set to "Wave device for voice modem" before. That was an early-generation winmodem, but this is Windows and PC Chips we're talking about. A singularity of mediocre behavior at best.

What happens when you try a PCI soundcard?

And the dummy questions: Are speakers plugged in to the output port on the card? Are the speakers amplified? Is the card? Are the speakers plugged in to AC?

 

[Mercutio]

For the 300/450 thing: You've almost certainly got the jumper for 66/100MHz bus operation set incorrectly. If your jumpers are all perfect, fiddle with them anyway. My experience with PC Chips poorly-illiustrated page of documentation is that it's usually wrong.

Er, if they're right, maybe you need a BIOS flash or something (although I'm pretty sure PC Chips just releases new boards instead of bothering with those pesky BIOS updates).

 

[bethewall]

the continuing saga of m747

Didn't expect such a quick response -thank you so much for the suggestions. Here is the update. Yeah, did the dumb stuff like checking/switching out speakers, cords, pwr, etc. Gonna pull the PCI modem card to see if it is causing the IRQ table conflict. Suspect; problems arose when the bios frequency was switched from 66mhz to 100mhz by previous owner, I found out this morning. Switched back to 66mhz (even though the board and the processor are supposed to support 100mhz) uninstalled PCI bus and related stuff via windows to let it re-recognize it. No new issues, everything happy except; NO SOUND still, and still have an IRQ table conflict. Can't believe that everything works so well and is so stable EXCEPT for this one thing! Like the idea of pulling the modem card that is disabled anyway and pulling the ISA and putting in a PCI sound card, but will that rectify the IRQ table? How do I even view the IRQ table or get windows to tell me what the conflict is? It won't let me run Hardware troubleshooter.

There are practically NO JUMPERS on this board, except DImm voltage, clear CMOS and a couple for keyboards, and on-board stuff (yes, on-board sound is disabled). On board USB/PS-2 card is enabled, could that be suspect?

Seriously considering disabling everything except on-board video, putting on a serial mouse and standard keyboard and seeing if that helps then buidling up from there one thing at a time.

This stuff is frustrating but very addictive! Thanks again for all your suggestions! will check in after work today to see if anyone else has more insights.......

 

[bethewall]

update: windows won't let me select any playback devices; the selections are there on those pages, but I can't highlight them....does that help any? Checked everything else; harddrive has no errors, windows running seamlessly except for noted probs, and memory chips check out. there is bios upgrade and on-board video upgrade available, but the fixes they list don't have anything to do with my problems (allows bigger hard drive, compatibility with NT, etc.). PCCHIPS site is useless, no help at all. Difficult to read and download from at best, and the 747 mb is not listed at all on SEVERAL pages. ARRRGH!

 

[Mercutio]

the continuing saga of m747

Have a different ISA slot to try? Can you get sound in DOS (yes, that's probably a hassle to set up, but at least it'll tell you if it's something with the board/card or some Windows problem).

I'm not about to go look, but I'm sure I've worked on that board before... I'm almost positive that's an "everything is on the board" setup, isn't it?

PC Chips is lowest-common-denominator kit. Not good stuff. Usually their manual is a single gatefold sheet with a diagram of the board, some jumper settings (usually not correct), and a few sentences of poorly-translated english. Little wonder you're not getting anywhere.

First thing to do with your board is trick it in to using 100MHz bus like it's supposed to. After that I'd suggest installing Windows whatever with nothing installed or enabled but a video card, disk controllers and I/O ports. Turn off USB and sound, if you can (some of the PC Chips boards don't let you). Pull any NICs or Modems you have, too.

If you don't want to do a whole-hog reinstall, try setting up a new, empty hardware profile (My Computer > Properties > Hardware Profiles > Copy). When Windows starts, it'll ask which profile to use, Choose "none of the above" and it'll re-detect EVERYTHING (at this point, we're hoping just your video card and I/O ports).

Check Device manager, make sure everything to that point is detected OK, no conflicts, proper drivers - particularly for the motherboard chipset - loaded, etc.

Add in your soundcard.

Any sound?

Your card is of a "plug and play" ISA variety? Or, at least, something that has manual settings in a sane configuration?

At that point I might try reserving an IRQ for the card in the BIOS, or maybe turning off "Plug and Play OS Installed: yes" and manually assigning everything, then seeing if Windows is willing to behave better.
Or maybe I'd chuck the board. PC Chips isn't exactly a paragon of reliability.

Hey, I've got a half-dozen or so Celeron 300As + motherboards sitting here unused. All of 'em work, too.

 

[bethewall]

you are one of many who have expressed an extreme dislike for PCCHIPS boards. I was discouraged from starting there just because of the frustration factor. Will try what you have suggested tonight and post again in the a.m. Again, much thanks.

As for the extra MB's and processors, am interested; let me get over this problem and we can talk shop more. I am tackling one crisis at a time if for no other reason than the learning experience. I figure worst case scenario the MB will make a great paper weight.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't want to talk trash about your PC, honesty, if it's what you can afford (see threads elsewhere on this site), but for the $15 - $20 difference between a PC Chips and a Soyo, FIC, TekRam, Gigabyte or Epox is really a HUGE difference in terms of reliability. There's a couple of resellers locally who think motherboards don't matter, and throw the cheapest, ugliest PC Chips boards in their machines... sometimes I get called to fix their machines. Absolutely awful stuff. I don't like them, and I think I have a good reason.

 

[bethewall]

I need this feedback and this experience. I have put together one gigabyte board, and one ASUS board, but both were of the modern practically program itself in bios type (less than six months old, PIII architecture. I want a board I can put the Intel 450 slot I cpu I have and SDRAM I have into; prefer AT/ATX form. Most importantly, I want a board that is reliable and stable that will help improve my ability to put these together and LEARN which is why I bought this PCCHIPS system anyway. I have spent less than $50 on it, so am at no loss to rip out the PCCHIPS board and start fresh, but don't know what MB to turn to assuming the previous suggestions don't work. I am confident everyone has their favorite board and model, so give me your thoughts. Thanks!

 

[NRG = mc²]

For the P2-450 I'd go either for an Asus P2B or something like the Soyo SY-6BA+III. Solid reliable boards though the Asus has many jumpers to fiddle with but once you set them its one of the most reliable and stable P2-P3 boards.