486 PS/1 locking up when reading a CD in Windows 3.1?
Posted by Souprah_Mayro@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 8 comments
Recently I picked up this old IBM PS/1 consultant, its got a SoundBlaster awe32 in it and also came with a Creative Labs SoundBlaster something something 48X mx cd drive. Ive tried inserting factory pressed CD audio discs, burnt albums, even a dos game, but always the system will become incredibly unrensponsive inside windows 3.1, taking around a minute before any of the other running programs update on screen, judging by the Creative remote thing program that has a clock in it. This is just from inserting any CD.
Any ideas as to why this is happening?
gcc-O2@reddit
If you connect an IDE HDD and CD to the same cable, and enable 32-bit disk access in Windows 3.1, you may see symptoms like this.
Souprah_Mayro@reddit (OP)
Looks like to me, the CD drive is connected to the SoundBlaster board, so unsure how that all works.
Revolutionary_Pen_65@reddit
that's cd audio, the IDE cable is usually a flat grey and about 2inch wide ribbon cable with black plastic ends with two rows of holes in the connectors. that transmits the actual data to the motherboard. the cable attached to your sound card is just for playing audio tracks encoded into cd's, those are not data in a typical sense, they can just bypass the data processing and go right to the decoder in the soundcard.
eDoc2020@reddit
You're probably mistaken. Many older sound cards (including the AWE32) have a built-in interface to connect CD-ROM drives. Some of them are proprietary interfaces, some are standard IDE.
Older PCs only had 1 IDE port so this was needed.
hnyKekddit@reddit
Does the HDD light stay on during CD access? If that's the case, the CD drive is locking up the system because it's badly designed. Replace the CDROM drive.
Souprah_Mayro@reddit (OP)
I do not see the HDD light on when messing with any CDs.
Yum_Kaax@reddit
Maybe IRQ conflict?
AwkwardSpread@reddit
Or dma iirc?