HDD / sound card crosstalk

[Peter B. Steiger]

I have an AMD K6-something-or-other in a cheap generic mini-tower with a
strange problem: Any disk activity causes a low-volume static buzz in the
speakers plugged into the sound card. Also when the mouse pointer moves
across the screen, the buzzing sound increases, and I just noticed that
when I'm watching a website with flash animation, the buzz occurs during
animated segments and goes away when the images on screen are not moving.
The noise also occurs when my instant message client (gaim) has a chat
window open, whether anyone is typing or not, but not when just the member
list is on the screen. And just now I see (hear) that the noise gets
louder when I have a message entry window open in my newsreader (pan)
but not when I'm just browsing and reading messages. The noise remains
when I switch console modes (ALT-f4, for example) to a text-only console,
while the GUI remains active in the background.

I don't think it always did this, but I have swapped out hard drives,
motherboards, network cards, CD/DVD players, etc. so often over the past
few years I don't know when it started. I thought it might be the onboard
sound chip, so I asked Santa for a new sound card and my brother delivered
- a Diamond Multimedia PCI job that improves everything including more
volume for the same static whenever there is disk activity. So I know
it's not the sound card, at least.

It's also not the OS or the drivers - I mostly run this thing in Linux,
but when I boot into the Win98 partition the same thing occurs.

I'm sure there is some basic flaw since I buy crappy generic stuff all the
time - the case is the cheapest one I could find, as are the motherboard,
CPU, RAM, and peripherals. But I have no idea which specific area is to
blame or where to look for problems.

Any suggestions on where to start, that doesn't involve expensive
replacements? I might be able to set aside enough cash for another roll
of duct tape, but that's about it.

 

[zimrh]

Hi

I have also encountered this problem before and was able to duplicate
them using the currently built in sound card on my board. It occurs for
example when you move your mouse and when you log into yahoo beta when
there is that little animation

I know you have already replaced the sound card but that did not help,
still give this a try as it solved my problem

I found that if you look in Volume Control where it has the various
sliders eg

Volume Control, Wave, SW Synth, CD Player, Mic, Aux, etc

I find that this occurs when the AUX is set to a high volume and the
Mic is also set to a high volume (Both UNmuted)

my first suggestion is to try turning both the AUX and the MIC to their
lowest value and muting both of them and see if that clears it. (This
is the windows solution as I have never worked with Linux give it a
try)

Rob

 

[Peter B. Steiger]

my first suggestion is to try turning both the AUX and the MIC to their
lowest value and muting both of them and see if that clears it. (This is
the windows solution as I have never worked with Linux give it a try)

AUX did not have any effect, but MIC certainly did. A million thanks!