It's a SB 2.0 clone, no drivers necessary, just set the BLASTER environment variable in AUTOEXEC.BAT, eg.:

set BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T3

But!
ES488 itself lacks synthesis indeed.
For full SB compatibility, FM synthesis is necessary.
Hopefully there is some OPL2-compatible chip on your card.
If not (unlikely, but possible), there won't be much use of that card, especially with an 8088.

Grzyb wrote on 2024-04-14, 04:26:

It's a SB 2.0 clone, no drivers necessary, just set the BLASTER environment variable in AUTOEXEC.BAT, eg.: […]
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It's a SB 2.0 clone, no drivers necessary, just set the BLASTER environment variable in AUTOEXEC.BAT, eg.:

set BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T3

But!
ES488 itself lacks synthesis indeed.
For full SB compatibility, FM synthesis is necessary.
Hopefully there is some OPL2-compatible chip on your card.
If not (unlikely, but possible), there won't be much use of that card, especially with an 8088.

It seems there is an OPL2 chip on board. I’m also not entirely sure what the jumpers do, maybe that has to do with something?

Jumpers and dipswitches might well be relevant here.

Challenge is finding the settings. That FCC ID shows it's a Labway card (JV7 is the grantee code for Labway), but it isn't one of the cards on TH99 and googling it just shows this earlier Vogons thread and your VCF thread from a few weeks back (would have been polite to mention you'd already asked there and had several suggestions which you tried and didn't help)

I concur with the older thread here: figuring this out will involve trial and error due to lack of documentation.

That said, it's not rocket science, we know the functionalities of the card:
- SB compatible DA with base address, IRQ and DMA. So three settings here.
- OPL2 which if 100% SB compatible can be addressed at same address as SB, or at the higher AdLib address ranges. Possibly one setting for address, possibly another for enable/disable
- game port (via that smaller flat cable in top left) - this is probably a simple enable/disable.
- What looks like an IDE connector for CDrom. If it's IDE, it could have settings for IRQ, address and enable/disable.
So adding that up means up to 9 settings. There are more jumper+dipswitches though, so probably single settings have multiple jumpers/switches.

What I would do is get out my multimeter, set it to continuity testing and see which unknown jumpers and pins of dipswitches connect where on the ISA bus (i.e. on the edge connector of the card). That way I could map out at least IRQ and DMA settings, including for IDE. For the rest, I'd see where traces from the switches/jumpers go and focus on the OPL2. Finally I'd brute force the ones that do (it's binary, so with say 3 switches/jumpers you have 8 possibilities).

Be sure to test with music set to AdLib/Sound Blaster (so not MIDI or SB16 or something).

Been a bit busy. Finally getting back to this.
I don't know much about motherboards and traces, but I'll try my hand at multimeter continuity testing.
In the meantime, I'll post some photos in case that helps anyone.

Alright! So I've tested the continuity and came back with a (probably) poor way of showing it.
I don't know if I did this correctly?

Anonymoose wrote on 2024-04-23, 19:44:

Alright! So I've tested the continuity and came back with a (probably) poor way of showing it.
I don't know if I did this correctly?

Let's see:

• Yellow: IRQ2
• Green: DACK3
• Cyan: DRQ3
• Red: DACK1
• Orange: DRQ1
• Blue: IRQ7
• Purple: IRQ5
• Pinl: IRQ3

It would have made interpretation slightly easier for inexperienced people if you removed the jumpers before checking continuity, because you can't see now whether a pin is directly connected to the ISA bus or through a jumper. The two left-most pins of the DMA blocks and the bottom row of the IRQ block is not directly connected to the ISA bus, but the connectivity is provided through the jumper. The card is currently set to I7 D1, which was a very common default configuration back the days. Until Windows, the IRQ7 for the parallel port was rarely used, but IRQ5 is used by the XT hard disk controller. With the advent of AT computers that used IRQ14 for the hard disk controller and were more likely to run windows, the default IRQ for soundblaster type cards shifted from I7 to I5.

Jumper Instructions:

IRQ configuration:

• IRQ2: JP3 1-2
• IRQ3: JP3 3-4
• IRQ5: JP3 5-6
• IRQ7: JP3 7-8

DMA configuration:

• DMA1: JP4 1-3; JP5 1-3
• DMA3: JP4 2-4; JP5 2-4

Likely JP1 is for the I/O base configuration, and the DIP switches configure the CD-ROM interface base address, which is probably 300h at the moment (first two bits set, all other bits cleared).

Wow! Thanks for that! Should I redo the continuity without the jumpers? Anyways, the Set Blaster is currently set to the basics (220,7,1,3). Is that an ok assumption? As for the CD-ROM port, do you mean the pins on the far left? That’s for a parallel port.

Anonymoose wrote on 2024-04-24, 00:08:

Wow! Thanks for that! Should I redo the continuity without the jumpers?

No need to do so. As I have enough experience with analyzing cards, I could easily deduce the effect of the jumpers. I just meant this as general hint if you want to practice to trace stuff this yourself, it's easier to interpret the results with jumpers removed.

Anonymoose wrote on 2024-04-24, 00:08:

Anyways, the Set Blaster is currently set to the basics (220,7,1,3). Is that an ok assumption?

Yes "T3" is correct for the ESS488. A220 I7 D1 likely is correct to. I7 and D1 have been confirmed by your measurements, and you would immediately have noticed if A220 is wrong.

Anonymoose wrote on 2024-04-24, 00:08:

As for the CD-ROM port, do you mean the pins on the far left? That’s for a parallel port.

I don't think it's a parallel port. For one thing, the TTL chips don't match what you would expect on a parallel port. You need latches for around 4 control bits and 8 data bits, but the only things that could be used as latch are 2 bits in the LS74 at U6 and up to 8 output pins of the PAL U11. In that case, the PAL wouldn't be able to do much other stuff, though. Furthermore, the Slot cover that has the suspected parallel port mounted says "CD-ROM" above the 25-pin plug. I first wondered whether it might be an extremely basic SCSI interface with an "Apple-Type" 25-pin SCSI pinout, but a SCSI interface needs even more latched output pins, so that's unlikely.

Interesting, I never considered the possibility of a cd-rom drive. I also didn’t see the obvious label above the plug… I’m sure someone smarter than me can decipher the mystery plug (some sort of 25 pin cd drive?)

As for the original question, is there a reason that the card isn’t working? First step was to decipher the traces, what’s next?

Anonymoose wrote on 2024-04-14, 01:28:

I have an ESS ES488 card, and while it does work, some games/programs don’t seem to work with it? For example, Protracker II doesn’t emit sound and Doom doesn’t play music.

So, what software does work?
And what's the machine you're testing the card in?

The machine is a Compaq Deskpro 4/66i.
I do admit, I haven’t tried many games. Prince of Persia works, Paku Paku works, Doom didn’t, I assumed a problem. Any other games that could point out an issue?

Prince of Persia - with a Sound Blaster - uses FM for music, and PCM for effects.
If both work, the hardware is probably OK.

What sound settings you use in Doom?

Music Sound Card - SoundBlaster, port address 220

Sound FX Device - SoundBlaster, port address 220, IRQ 7, DMA channel 1, Sound FX 4

After posting that, I realized that my settings didn’t match the BLASTER command, so now music does work, but sound effects don’t 😒

OK, so the FM synth does work.

Now, try to play some .MOD file in Inertia Player:
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=29208

In ISETUP.EXE, select the plain Sound Blaster, and try both AutoDetect and manual settings.
At first, try Mixing Speed = 22 kHz, if you get it working you can try 44 kHz.

So it sorta works? Running at 22 produces very quiet, garbled sound. 44 doesn’t work at all, track position doesn’t increment.

This recording was taken with the sound card volume and the speaker volume at max. The previous forum I asked this question on suggested that there was a jumper for speaker amplification. Would that be a possibility?

Yes, some cards have jumpers to enable/disable the amplifier, close to the OUT jack - but I can't see anything there on your card.
Also, FM music plays at normal volume, right?
If so, then it can't be disabled amplifier.

Try some other software, eg. Pinball Fantasies.
In SETSOUND.EXE, try "Sound Blaster", "Sound Blaster 2", and "Adlib".

And try HWINFO, or some other software that detects the sound card, and displays the DSP version.
I think it should report "2.01" in your case.
Earlier DSP versions are limited to 22 kHz, but 2.01 should support up to 44 kHz.

If that also fails, then probably something is broken.
Can you try the card in another machine?
And it would be a good idea to check if the -5V supply is OK - lack of this voltage causes mysterious problems with certain sound cards.

Edit:
And try to remove all the jumpers, and install them again in the same places.
It did help me a few times - jumpers that weren't touched for years (or even decades) are naturally prone to oxydation/bad contact.

Would HWinfo be this one?
HWiNFO for DOS resurrected !

Yes, that HWINFO.
The attached program should also do the trick, in verbose mode:

blaster -v