GA-7N400-L sound card gameport and F8 BIOS issues

It looked like I had put together a nice upgrade for my second machine,
but in doing some routine testing, I have come across a couple of issues.

I have a dual boot between Windows ME and Windows 2000 set up. All
drivers for all of my hardware are up to date and DirectX 9.0b is
installed under both OS's. I decided to go with my Hercules Fortissimo
III 7.1 sound card for this upgrade. I made sure that the onboard sound
was completely disabled, along with the game and MIDI ports. My Microsoft
Sidewinder gameport gamepad works 100% under Windows 2000 when plugged
into the Fortissimo III. However, no matter what I did, I could not get
the gamepad to work under Windows ME, even though there are no conflicts
or anything. I tried different port configurations and even moving the
sound card to a different PCI slot. Nothing worked.

I then decided to update my F6 BIOS to the F8 BIOS going through proper
BIOS update proceedures. After updating from F6 to F8, I powered down
after the update, powered up again after 30 seconds, reset the BIOS to
default settings, saved and exited, then went back in and set it up
properly.

Now, not only does the problem with the gameport on the Fortissimo III
under Windows ME still exist, but now my Maxtor 80GB ATA-133 hard drive
which was working perfectly in DMA 6 mode with the F6 BIOS is now running
in DMA 2 mode! It's noticeably slower. Of course, I can override this in
Windows 2000 using nVidia's nForce2 ATA controller, but not in Windows ME.
There are no other drives connected to the primary IDE controller, but
both of my optical drives on the secondary controller are ATA-33.

I have e-mailed Gigabyte about this, but I wanted to pass this along to
the group for your info, and also in hopes that someone may have some
insight to these problems. Thanks.

Ha! I discovered that pressing CTRL and the F1 function key in the BIOS
(at the same time) allows you to see options which are not normally
visible. I was able to get ATA-133 functionality on my hard drive in the
BIOS as a result of this, as well as ATA-33 on the optical drives. The
gameport is not functional in Windows ME still, even when using a
different sound card. But that's OK, I'll use the onboard sound instead
and will just go out and buy a USB gamepad.

Hi,

NightSky 421 wrote:

gameport is not functional in Windows ME still, even when using a
different sound card. But that's OK, I'll use the onboard sound instead
and will just go out and buy a USB gamepad.

I have the same problem with Windows XP and a Soundblaster 128 PCI. No
way to get the game port working, it claims to have an address conflict.
The onboard one might work, but without a suitable slot connector...?
So I hope to have no game rejecting my Logitech RumblePad.

Bye
Marcus

"Marcus Lungarotti" wrote in message
...

I have the same problem with Windows XP and a Soundblaster 128 PCI. No
way to get the game port working, it claims to have an address conflict.
The onboard one might work, but without a suitable slot connector...?
So I hope to have no game rejecting my Logitech RumblePad.



These problems kinda suck, but in the end after trying various things, I
decided to go with the onboard ALC655 sound. I guess I will have to use a
USB gamepad but the good news is that even old games like NHL 97 and Jazz
Jackrabbit 2 are happy with a USB gamepad.

I will say at least that I like the nVidia NVMixer!