The ES1868 is good - preferable in many ways to a Sound Blaster. Lots of detail and appreciation here: ESS AudioDrive (ES1868) - a surprisingly good ISA sound card

Many manufacturers pumped out these ESS based cards. Who actually made it is probably of little consequence, as you'll use the same generic drivers for pretty much all of them. Here's one that looks the same as yours though, with a "Funworld" sticker on it:

https://de.shopotam.ru/catalog/Computer_Table … 30875-item.html

It looks vaguely like a clone of the Addonics A111-860:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe8S8Y_xnGw

That would indeed be the place for an IDE header on the left. But I'm guessing just adding one won't work. Note some additional components in that area on the A111-860. (On your card, these are the pads marked AN1, AN2 etc which are unpopulated).

I've had a different ESS card (ES688) that crashed after a few minutes gameplay. Something was amiss with the card, and the chip was overheating. At least yours isn't scorched brown like mine was! But check the temp of that chip under load if you're having issues. They shouldn't be getting very hot.

I expect all the cards pictured so far were made by Labway Corporation. At least in this part of the world they seem to have been a fairly common OEM for cheap sound cards - I have in my inventory A381-F20 (Advanced Logic ALS120); A111-860, A111-A20 (ES1868F); A151-830 (OPL YMF701-8), A151-A00 (YMF719E-S).

Their website was labway.com and labway.com.tw though I doubt there is much of any real interest there on the wayback machine as generic ESS1688F drivers will work fine.

Pierre32 wrote on 2022-09-19, 12:12:

That would indeed be the place for an IDE header on the left. But I'm guessing just adding one won't work. Note some additional components in that area on the A111-860. (On your card, these are the pads marked AN1, AN2 etc which are unpopulated).

I've had a different ESS card (ES688) that crashed after a few minutes gameplay. Something was amiss with the card, and the chip was overheating. At least yours isn't scorched brown like mine was! But check the temp of that chip under load if you're having issues. They shouldn't be getting very hot.

Sorry for the late reply. Thank you for all this information; that's really helpful. It's a shame the IDE header isn't a simple addition. I'd not spotted the missing component spaces you highlighted.

I'm still not sure why the PC crashes after a few minutes of Doom. Everything else seems fine, including the Doom time demo. Weird. I'll be sure to check the temps of the ESS chip next time I have the case open. Cheers.

davidrg wrote on 2022-09-19, 20:25:

I expect all the cards pictured so far were made by Labway Corporation. At least in this part of the world they seem to have been a fairly common OEM for cheap sound cards - I have in my inventory A381-F20 (Advanced Logic ALS120); A111-860, A111-A20 (ES1868F); A151-830 (OPL YMF701-8), A151-A00 (YMF719E-S).

Their website was labway.com and labway.com.tw though I doubt there is much of any real interest there on the wayback machine as generic ESS1688F drivers will work fine.

The 'A111-860 / A111-A20' matches the 'A111' on my PCB, so I assume you're right; it's Labway. Thanks!

jarcher1701 wrote on 2022-09-25, 16:09:

I'm still not sure why the PC crashes after a few minutes of Doom. Everything else seems fine, including the Doom time demo. Weird. I'll be sure to check the temps of the ESS chip next time I have the case open. Cheers.

It is indeed odd if Doom is the only game that is crashing this way. This might be a stupid question, but have you checked that you don't have any hw conflicts and you used the esscfg software to set up the card correctly?

I just set up a Pentium desktop last weekend with different but very similar ESS1868F card and so far everything I've thrown at it just works both in Win98SE and DOS. Overall I'm very happy with it and it has very good sound quality, no noise and OPL3 emulation is almost perfect to my ear at least.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2022-09-26, 05:42:

jarcher1701 wrote on 2022-09-25, 16:09:

I'm still not sure why the PC crashes after a few minutes of Doom. Everything else seems fine, including the Doom time demo. Weird. I'll be sure to check the temps of the ESS chip next time I have the case open. Cheers.

It is indeed odd if Doom is the only game that is crashing this way. This might be a stupid question, but have you checked that you don't have any hw conflicts and you used the esscfg software to set up the card correctly?

I just set up a Pentium desktop last weekend with different but very similar ESS1868F card and so far everything I've thrown at it just works both in Win98SE and DOS. Overall I'm very happy with it and it has very good sound quality, no noise and OPL3 emulation is almost perfect to my ear at least.

Sorry for not replying sooner. I somehow missed your response. I did use the esscfg to set up the card. I do remember it asked me to identify the IRQ settings (etc.) so I chose those I remembered from the Soundblaster days and it seemed to all work fine in the games I played. However, I may have chosen an incorrect setting.

Do you happen to know of a guide I could follow. Many thanks.