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Ensoniq ES1370 Sound Card w/ MSI MS-6769 Motherboard

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First post, by jason_nepa

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Hi All - I've been reading this forum for months now with this journey of mine, and finally had to create an account to ask the question. First of all, thank you to all of you for your time and expertise. It's been very helpful in getting to where I am at now.

I am trying to find the best way to use the MSI MS-6769 motherboard to play DOS games.

I have a HDD that has a 2GB partition that boots to a clean install MS-DOS 6.22. Windows 3.11 is also clean installed.

Everything is perfect so far, except I cannot get the Ensoniq ES1370 (PCI) to initialize in DOS mode. The driver (link below) is installed in Windows 3.11 and I am able to get sound with no problem there. Whenever I have AUTOEXEC.BAT, it freezes immediately after it executes INITAP.COM and never continues. I can't even terminate it manually. My only recovery is to boot to my other HDD with Windows XP, load the AUTOEXEC.BAT on the other HDD, and Rem the line that has INITAP.COM.

Some supporting pictures:
PXL_20231104_111141404.jpg (attached) shows my AUTOEXEC.BAT. You will see that I have BLASTER set to IRQ 10, which I explain on the next line.
PXL_20231104_111550645.jpg (attached) shows that I have most devices turned off and it sees the sound card at IRQ 10. Windows 3.11 also shows it on IRQ 10. So I believe that is correct.
PXL_20231104_111159439.jpg (attached) is my CONFIG.SYS. Not sure if it's important for this post, but it might be. So posting it anyway.
PXL_20231104_111410297.jpg (attached) shows exactly where my AUTOEXEC.BAT hangs and stops.

Two other points. I have L1 and L2 cache turned off. Secondly, I have a Creative Labs CT4750 that gives me the same exact problem. I bought the Ensoniq ES1370 when I realized the CT4750 may be "too new".

I like this motherboard because I feel like it was manufactured in that perfect period where it's not too old & not too new. I can also have another HDD and boot to Windows XP. I've been using Windows XP to drag driver files from that drive to the other for ease, but I will eventually use it for newer games once I perfect the DOS w/ sound/Win 3.11 setup.

Thank you for any pointers/help you can provide.

Ensoniq ES1370 driver. Used the apiwiz31.exe file (Windows 3.1 / DOS software):
https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fil … menustate=47,38

Manual for the MSI MS-6769 motherboard:
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/802191/Msi-651m.html

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Reply 2 of 3, by swaaye

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Both sound cards use chips from the same family - Ensoniq AudioPCI. The Sound Blaster 128 uses a later AC97 compatible version of the chip. The original ES1370 has the somewhat coveted ability to play 11.025/22.05/44.1KHz audio natively but the popular-with-DVDs 48KHz out of pitch. Unless the OS of choice itself mixes/resamples before sending audio to the card. AC97 chips resample everything to 48 KHz.

I have a feeling the reason you can't get them to work in DOS is the Pentium 4 motherboard is beyond the timeframe when DDMA was supported in chipsets. PCI sound cards use a DOS driver that essentially emulates an ISA sound card and it requires some special chipset features to work most of the time. It was never a great solution and was problematic even on the most compatible motherboards. Think 1995-1999 PCI chipsets. If you want DOS sound to be reliable there's really no substitute for an ISA sound card. And you would want SB/SBPro or SB16 compatibility depending on the game. SB16 is not backward compatible but it's 16-bit audio so desirable. DOS sound is a PITA.

The search for working DOS sound on newer machines went something like PCI DDMA/PCPCI / Win9x VXD SB emulation -> WinNT 5.x NTVDM SB emulation-> VOGONS VDMSound NTVDM enhancement -> VOGONS DOSBOX. So in other words you could try WinXP and VDMSound for another sort of retro DOS audio support. But expect it to be quirky too.

Reply 3 of 3, by Kamerat

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For the SiS chipset on the MSI MS-6769 an Avance Logic ALS4000 or Yamaha YMF7x4 PCI might work in MS-DOS even without any TSR running in the background.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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