Re: IIgs Sound Question

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Paul Grammens <pgrammen@sonic.net> wrote:

>Thanks to both Dave and Rubywand for the insight and detail. I used the
>same powersupply for both the noisy board and the quiet board, so it is
>not clearly a powersupply problem. Both boards have the ROM 1, but maybe
>I'll try swapping the socketted parts to see if I can get the video
>fixed on the quiet board. Maybe they only changed the ROM and not the
>video chip.

Have you tested the Ensoniq sound chip?  If the chip is busted, it
may output steady noise.

Boot a IIGS specific game or a program like NoiseTracker GS.
Play music that uses lots of voices.  See if anything is missing.

When an Ensoniq fails, reports are that it often goes quieter and
quieter until it falls completely silent, replaced by noise.  The
chip has 32 oscillators, so it is possible that you can still get a few
voices out of it but some oscillators are still busted.  Naturally,
if you are only using IIe software, you won't know but you
will still hear the "death noise."

If the Ensoniq is the problem, it can be replaced on a ROM 01.
The Ensoniq is socketed.

For video, look for the chip labelled "VGC" and take it out
of the socket of the noisy board and transplant it to the quiet
board.