The wavetable is muted by default, and it's labelled 'Aux1' or something like that. Check the DOS / Windows mixer for that option and crank it up - you might need to go to 'advanced' option in the Windows mixer and select it for display.
And no it's not SB16 compatible, SB Pro only.
Hi,
Okay, I will go home and test it out the AUX. (Another... 6 hours of work, than im home free)
FYI, i am using the driver from https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid=17 , ESS 1688/1868/1869 Pre-installed for DOS 107.44 KiB 2014-05-11 09:27:45 ESS Technology" . Is that the correct driver?
Also, for windows 9x and XP, will the default driver that comes with windows, is sufficient? or do I need to find and download the updated drivers for them?
Thus... how do you check if it is not SB16 compatible, but SB Pro only? (Im noob at this..) What Tools or DOS software, to you use, to determine this?
MPXPLAY:-
I never user it before. I just download it today. I will give it a go during the weekend... errm.. any particular setup/setting for me to play around ,to check and test to test SB16/SB Pro/WSS PCM compatibility ?
Generally, MPXPLAY does a good job of guessing settings from the environment variables you have set. It then attempts to initialize the device.
You can manually specify the output it uses, as documented in README.TXT included in your MPXPLAY documentation:
1Sound card and file (wav/bitstream) output: 2 -scs CARD : manual soundcard select (force) (CARD can be: in DOS version: CMI,ENS,ICH,IHD,SBA,VIA,S16,ESS,WSS,GUS,SBP,WAV,NUL, in Win version: WDS,WIN,WAV,NUL)
In other words, MPXPLAY -SCS S16 will attempt to initialize a SB16 card (or compatible) for output.
In either case, the output method will be displayed in the top right hand corner.
The default drivers loaded by windows are all that's needed to run the card in windows. The drivers from vogons are only needed for DOS operation. These cards are great for both windows and dos retro gaming.
gdjacobs wrote:Generally, MPXPLAY does a good job of guessing settings from the environment variables you have set. It then attempts to initial […] Show full quote
Panties wrote:
MPXPLAY:-
I never user it before. I just download it today. I will give it a go during the weekend... errm.. any particular setup/setting for me to play around ,to check and test to test SB16/SB Pro/WSS PCM compatibility ?
Generally, MPXPLAY does a good job of guessing settings from the environment variables you have set. It then attempts to initialize the device.
You can manually specify the output it uses, as documented in README.TXT included in your MPXPLAY documentation:
1Sound card and file (wav/bitstream) output: 2 -scs CARD : manual soundcard select (force) (CARD can be: in DOS version: CMI,ENS,ICH,IHD,SBA,VIA,S16,ESS,WSS,GUS,SBP,WAV,NUL, in Win version: WDS,WIN,WAV,NUL)
In other words, MPXPLAY -SCS S16 will attempt to initialize a SB16 card (or compatible) for output.
In either case, the output method will be displayed in the top right hand corner.
It stated... on the Top Right.. SBp.... So it is Sound Blaster Pro.... it can play Mp3 music.. wow.. I never knew MSDOS can play MP3 songs.. (im pampered with WinAMP in Win9x... 🤣)
badmojo wrote:
Panties wrote:
Thus... how do you check if it is not SB16 compatible, but SB Pro only? (Im noob at this..) What Tools or DOS software, to you use, to determine this?
Read my lips Panties - it ain't SB16 compatible!
"read my lips panties"? That didn't come out right.
Yes, you are right. I tested with Mechwarrior 2 CD, SetSound.. and Mortal Kombat 3, Setsound...
With autodetect, Only Sound Blaster PRO! If I select SB16, it says error.
Yes, you are also right about one thing. The WaveTable works like a CHARM! 😀 I have to adjust the AUX in Windows (AUXB for DOS) in order to hear my DreamBlaster X1! 😁
Just wondering , do I need to edit autoexec.bat, to add "SET BLASTER=..etc..etc.." for compatibility? Or the ESS DOS software itself, is good enough?
also.. inside the Go.bat, they use IRQ7.... I change it to IRQ5 and still works like a charm. Is there any concern on changing the IRQ?
Finally... one Important question.... I am planning to purchase a daughter board for this ESS (The Dreamblaster X1 is for another Computer).
I am mostly going to play Final Fantasy 7/8, Monkey Island and Some Doom games... Any recommendation of Daughter board for some Classic MIDI to put into this Wavetable?
nekurahoka wrote:
The default drivers loaded by windows are all that's needed to run the card in windows. The drivers from vogons are only needed for DOS operation. These cards are great for both windows and dos retro gaming.
ahh.. well, from Windows 98 onwards.... , but unfortunately, Win95 doesn't come with the driver for ESS1868F. I have to find Win95 all over the internet for it.... I found it and it works nicely...(The good old win95 Startup Sound... NICE!!! ) I decided to upload the drivers in to my dropbox and share it , for those who wants it. It also has ES1869 too.... I'll upload it soon.
I put the drivers into my dropbox:- https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ekztaxkw3xwrs65/AA … CLaLPF1-8a?dl=0 under Soundcards folder, ESS1868_1869_1938_1989.zip , for those who needs it.
It should have Win95 Drivers, as well as DOS installation, for the ESS1868 (i only tested with this card and it works like a charm).
Since it have a Wavetable, does anyone know a good daughterboard that I can buy from Ebay? I'm aiming for.. Final Fantasy 7, and DOOM... so any recommendation?
Since it have a Wavetable, does anyone know a good daughterboard that I can buy from Ebay? I'm aiming for.. Final Fantasy 7, and DOOM... so any recommendation?
They're getting a bit hard to find these days unless you're patient but people seem to like the dreamblaster, which is a newly made thing and not outrageously expensive:
badmojo wrote:They're getting a bit hard to find these days unless you're patient but people seem to like the dreamblaster, which is a newly m […] Show full quote
Panties wrote:
Since it have a Wavetable, does anyone know a good daughterboard that I can buy from Ebay? I'm aiming for.. Final Fantasy 7, and DOOM... so any recommendation?
They're getting a bit hard to find these days unless you're patient but people seem to like the dreamblaster, which is a newly made thing and not outrageously expensive:
I started playing around with a few ES1868 cards. I have three in total.
There is lots of good stuff to talk about. It's very quiet, the drivers are small and easy to use, especially if you like command line tools. FM music sounds very nice.
Only negative I found is that on all 3 cards the wavetable Stereo gets reversed.
I figure it's okay to bring this up on this thread instead of making a new one.
I've had a ESS card of my own for a little while; it's a Compaq Premier Sound "ES1869 Audio Feature Board" with a ES1869F. I was never able to get it to function on my Pentium rig, though; with the card inserted the machine halts at BIOS after checking for hard drive and CD-ROM. This is usually where PnP cards are detected and displayed, so it may be a PnP card. Hope not, because ISA PnP sucks donkey balls.
I also noticed that there are 6 extra pins in addition to the standard 16-bit ISA stuff, you can see them on the bottom left of the card, marked "P4". Was this for some kind of proprietary Compaq bus? Maybe explains why it's not working?
Pluto, the maxed out Dell Dimension 4100: Pentium III 1400S | 256MB | GeForce4 Ti4200 + Voodoo4 4500 | SB Live! 5.1 Charon, the DOS and early Windows time machine: K6-III+ 600 | 256MB | TNT2 Ultra + Voodoo3 2000 | Audician 32 Plus
ElementalChaos wrote:I figure it's okay to bring this up on this thread instead of making a new one. […] Show full quote
I figure it's okay to bring this up on this thread instead of making a new one.
I've had a ESS card of my own for a little while; it's a Compaq Premier Sound "ES1869 Audio Feature Board" with a ES1869F. I was never able to get it to function on my Pentium rig, though; with the card inserted the machine halts at BIOS after checking for hard drive and CD-ROM. This is usually where PnP cards are detected and displayed, so it may be a PnP card. Hope not, because ISA PnP sucks donkey balls.
I also noticed that there are 6 extra pins in addition to the standard 16-bit ISA stuff, you can see them on the bottom left of the card, marked "P4". Was this for some kind of proprietary Compaq bus? Maybe explains why it's not working?
I took one such card out of a Compaq, it's basically like a slightly longer ISA slow with extra pins for I think it was the onboard speaker (could be wrong though, dunno how many different such card were made).
I never tried it in another system, but I got it for free so I didn't bother tossing it as it looked interesting.
Since it have a Wavetable, does anyone know a good daughterboard that I can buy from Ebay? I'm aiming for.. Final Fantasy 7, and DOOM... so any recommendation?
For Final Fantasy 7 you want a db50XG. there is no substitute.
For doom you want an scb-55 (sound canvas on a wave blaster)
IIRC, and FWIW I think the 1869 added full duplex support. Was a great card back in the day, excellent value and the compatibility was amazing.
Exactly ! I remember spending a day with my musician friend trying to do some recording with sonic foundry acid and we was never able to do full duplex even tho the spec sheet of the 1868 card mentioned "full duplex", I remember a guy in #irc mentioning it was a misprint and the ess was a null-duplex card 🤣
zaphod77 wrote:For Final Fantasy 7 you want a db50XG. there is no substitute. […] Show full quote
Panties wrote:
Since it have a Wavetable, does anyone know a good daughterboard that I can buy from Ebay? I'm aiming for.. Final Fantasy 7, and DOOM... so any recommendation?
For Final Fantasy 7 you want a db50XG. there is no substitute.
For doom you want an scb-55 (sound canvas on a wave blaster)
good luck finding them.
Definitely good luck on finding them. I took me about 4 years to find a good-priced sound canvas SCB-55. The DB50XG was a lot easier to find, because I found its "generic" version, the NEC XR385, a long time ago.
My heart sinks to think about how many of those daughter boards were effectively thrown away, or recycled, back when digitized wave-recorded music replaced MIDI/etc.
386DX-40MHz-8MB-540MB+428MB+Speedstar64@2MB+SoundBlaster Pro+MT-32/MKII
486DX2-66Mhz-16MB-4.3GB+SpeedStar64 VLB DRAM 2MB+AWE32/SB16+SCB-55 MY BLOG RETRO PC BLOG: https://bitbyted.wordpress.com/
Surprisingly mine is PnP. ESSCFG does initialise the card, but command line options are ignored. It gives you a message about this and that you need to use ICU software. Using Intel's ICU boot floppy I was able to change resources.
However it seems the card takes two DMAs, 1 and 0. The gameport and IDE interface can easily disabled with ICU.
I like the mixer tool, it works great and makes it easy to create a simple batch file to get the card going.
It sounds great. Stereo wavetable output is reversed, which is a bit of a bummer, but otherwise I haven't found anything negative.
badmojo wrote:I picked up this handsome card recently and it's the best AudioDrive I've found yet. It's using the ES1688F chipset, the specs o […] Show full quote
I picked up this handsome card recently and it's the best AudioDrive I've found yet. It's using the ES1688F chipset, the specs of which can be found here:
Unlike the other ES1688 card I've tried the wavetable header worked perfectly first time, so this card:
- has no nasty popping noise when the PC is booted
- is easy to configure
- is NOT a PnP card, yay
- provides solid, great sounding Sound Blaster Pro compatibility
- has a bug free wavetable header / MPU401
- allows you to select the 'AudioDrive' option in the games that support it natively (the ES1868 chipset didn't always register)
- is cheap as chips
- includes an OPL3 clone that sounds great to my ears (some of them include an actual OPL3)
In summary this card rocks, and everyone here should own one:
This card as space for add a real ymf262 opl3 chip, would it be just solder the missing ship or also add other components/move jumpers ? Anyone tried it?
This card as space for add a real ymf262 opl3 chip, would it be just solder the missing ship or also add other components/move jumpers ? Anyone tried it?
I would expect there to be a jumper (or some option in ESSCFG or such) to select whether to use the built-in OPL3 emulation, or the real chip.
If both chips would be active at the same time, I think there may be issues when reading data from the chips. Also, unless there are separate mixer channels for the real OPL3 and the built-in one, I would expect that you need to set some switch so that you hear the real OPL3 through the mixer instead of the built-in one.
One would also need to populate the YAC512 D/A converter, the MC3403 opamp and all these missing surface mount passives around it to complete the mixing circuit... if anyone could find this card with the OPL3 populated then it would be easier to copy it... at this state it's doable but would require too much work and knowledge to succesfully complete it
I have never seen a soundcard that had an internal FM clone available, but that used a separate OPL3 regardless.
More likely this PCB was usuable for an ES688+OPL3 and an ES1688 without. Both ESS chips are 100-pin PQFP.
One could find out in the ES1688 datasheet wheter FM data can still be send outside of it, or not.
