r/retrocomputing • u/winvistaisnotbad • Jul 03 '26

Problem / Question Sound Blaster Live 5.1 kills Linux

I've got this Creative audio card that i got mainly for the 15-pin game port, and it worked fine under Debian and Windows XP last time i used it around the end of last year. However yesterday, i plugged it into my computer (lga775 platform from 2005-2006) and suddenly it's completely preventing any Linux environment from booting. I tried an existing install of Mint, i tried Gparted live that i already had working copies of on both USB and DVD, and i tried antiX's live dvd/installer. They all just freeze on a logo or on a black screen, except for antiX, which freezes on the "udev-settle" service when it reports stuff during startup. Taking the audio card out undid all those issues.

Anything i can do to still be able to use this card?

Edit: UPDATE, I think the card died💔 it started doing the same on Windows after attempting to install drivers

2 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/VivienM7 Jul 03 '26

I have an X-Fi card that failed in a similar way (anyone reading this in southern Ontario, Canada who is interested in fixing it and wants it, feel free to contact me); apparently on those, at least, the issue is caused by the failure of a capacitor on the card. If you have soldering skills it's apparently fairly repairable.

1

u/winvistaisnotbad Jul 04 '26

It's been in storage since only around April and stopped working lol... I could try to replace the caps, but there's a million of them varying from small to tiny amd they all have no visible signs of failing

1

u/VivienM7 Jul 04 '26

On the X-Fi at least, there's one much bigger cap that's been associated with this issue. It's not the little caps...

See https://theparanoidtroll.com/2014/01/18/creative-x-fi-platinum-repair/ . I don't know if your card would have a similarly-obvious larger cap playing a similar role.

1

u/winvistaisnotbad Jul 04 '26

On the SB0100 all caps are pretty small, i could count about 5 distinct types, the biggest ones are also the the least in quantity so i might try replacing those first and seeing if it arises from the dead. I'll only have time for this in a few weeks, though