Common Soundblaster problems
PROBLEM - Many customers are having a great deal of trouble configuring their Sound Blaster 16
adapters with IBM Token Ring shared RAM adapters. Problems range from system hanging to
failures initializing the Token Ring adapter.
Machines AFFECTED -
All Valuepoint machines
SOLUTION -
SOLUTION -
the I/O base address for the IBM shared RAM Token Ring adapters as well as many OEM
Token Ring adapters is A20. This I/O address is hard coded and cannot be changed unless
the Token Ring adapter is switched from primary to secondary. The sound blaster 16
adapter defaults to I/O base address 220. Intuitively their shouldn't be an I/O address
conflict between the two adapters, but there is. I/O address 220 is very similar to I/O
address A20. The only difference is address bit 11. From inspection of a sound blaster 16
adapter it does not decode address bit 11. As a result, the sound blaster 16 adapter will
respond to I/O accesses intended for the Token Ring adapter. This results in an I/O
conflict and the problems listed in the problem description.
temporary workaround -
Switching the Token Ring adapter from primary to secondary is not a viable solution since
at least one Token Ring adapter installed in the system must be a primary. The only other
alternative is to change the I/O base address of the sound blaster 16 card to something
other than 220. Unfortunately moving the sound blaster 16 address from 220 may cause
your existing games not to run.
IBM will be in contact with Creative Labs for a more permanent resolution to this
problem.
Please see the LEGAL - Trademark notice.
Feel free - send a 
for any BUG on this page found - Thank you.