I haven't had the chance to set up a testing environment yet, maybe tonight or tomorrow..

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-01, 06:29:

Sure, I've attached everything below. There isn't much in the files though, just what the driver installer placed there. I didn't add any of these entries manually.
...
I think it does, you can see a picture of my card here. As for dumping it, I'm not sure how I would go about doing that. Is there a program that can do it?

Thanks for being so accommodating. Nah, don't worry... It would mean desoldering it and putting it into a TL866 which I'm not going to ask you to do.

Try as I might, I just could not get it to work... What I suspect is going on is perhaps any of the following:

1) Perhaps not all chip revisions support SBLink (Yours is the K revision like in the picture?)
2) There's some magic sauce in your card's EEPROM
3) The card is extremely picky about motherboards
4) Both my cards have non-working SB-Link ports (The first card has it factory soldered, I added it to the second card... The port is there, but maybe the circuitry isn't)

I tried on both my QDI P6I440BX and my Tekram P6B40-4AX. I wanted to test it with my Asus P3B-F, but it is acting up and I need to fix that board's problems some other time.

Other things I tried with no effect:
1) Running PCISET.EXE with a pause command after each register was set to confirm it was being set. Registers 51 and 52 are of particular interest here. Interestingly enough, running PCISET initializes the card to a state where ESSVOL can be run without first running ESSOLO.COM
2) PNP OS Installed toggled to yes or no (The only time I saw any relevance at all with this command is where ESSOLO.COM specifically complained about it when restarting Windows in MS-DOS mode... Someone claimed on this forum that this option determines whether ESSOLO stays resident or not... I am not convinced)
3) Passive release, enabled or disabled

I'm going to give up on this for the forseeable future. I'm happy enough with my Yamaha, and wavetable works with my Chill and Phil adapter out the joystick port. Maybe some day in the future someone will uncover some more secrets that we don't know about the card's initialization.

Action Replay wrote on 2022-07-01, 08:09:

Hi mockingbird, thank you for testing. What revisions of ES1938s chips are on your cards? Letter and numbers if you are able to please.

It worked on all three of my cards:

D228
D258
H359

mockingbird wrote on 2022-07-01, 14:08:

1) Perhaps not all chip revisions support SBLink (Yours is the K revision like in the picture?)

Yup, mine is K040.

4) Both my cards have non-working SB-Link ports (The first card has it factory soldered, I added it to the second card... The port is there, but maybe the circuitry isn't)

Very odd, but it might be possible that different revisions have different functionality built in. While SB-Link functions perfectly on mine, I simply cannot get ESSVOL.EXE to work with it.

I did some tests with the detection of enhanced ESFM with two of my ESS Solo 1938 cards in MS-DOS 7.

Enhanced ESFM is detected by Warcraft 2 and essvol finds the audiodrive on my eDio sound card (D248 chip) in Via DDMA mode.

With the exact same drivers, same pci slot and essolo.ini, Enhanced ESFM is not detected by Warcraft 2 and essvol can't find the audiodrive on the IBM sound card (K239 chip).

I replaced essolo.sys and essolo.bin from the IBM driver CD but that didn't resolve the issue.

I would like to get ESFM working on the IBM sound card because I have a problem with extremely low output volume with the eDio sound card.

Register output from Craig Hart's PCI - The PCI System information & Exploration tool

edio hi-live sc1938

1 Vendor 125Dh ESS Technology
2 Device 1969h ES1938/41/46 SOLO-1(E) AudioDrive
3 Command 0005h (I/O Access, BusMaster)
4 Status 0290h (Has Capabilities List, Supports Back-To-Back Trans., Medium Timing)
5 Revision 00h, Header Type 00h, Bus Latency Timer 40h
6 Minimum Bus Grant 02h, Maximum Bus Latency 18h
7 Self test 00h (Self test not supported)
8 PCI Class Multimedia, type Audio
9 Subsystem ID 8800121Fh Unknown
10 Subsystem Vendor 121Fh Arcus Technology Inc
11 Address 0 is an I/O Port : 0000DA00h
12 Address 1 is an I/O Port : 0000D800h
13 Address 2 is an I/O Port : 0000D600h
14 Address 3 is an I/O Port : 0000D400h
15 Address 4 is an I/O Port : 0000D200h
16 System IRQ 5, INT# A
17 New Capabilities List Present:
18   Power Management Capability, Version 1.0
19     Supports low power State D1
20     Supports low power State D2
21     Does not support PME# signalling
22     Current Power State : D0 (Device operational, no power saving)
23
24 Hex-Dump of device configuration space follows:
25  0000  5D 12 69 19 05 00 90 02 00 00 01 04 00 40 00 00    ].i.........@..
26  0010  01 DA 00 00 01 D8 00 00 01 D6 00 00 01 D4 00 00    .Ú...Ø...Ö...Ô..
27  0020  01 D2 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 1F 12 00 88    .Ò.............ˆ
28  0030  00 00 00 00 C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 01 02 18    ....À...........
29  0040  5F 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    _...............
30  0050  00 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    . ..............
31  0060  01 38 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    .8..............
32  0070  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
33  0080  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
34  0090  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
35  00A0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
36  00B0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
37  00C0  01 00 21 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ..!.............
38  00D0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
39  00E0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
40  00F0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................

ibm 33L5134

1 Vendor 125Dh ESS Technology
2 Device 1969h ES1938/41/46 SOLO-1(E) AudioDrive
3 Command 0005h (I/O Access, BusMaster)
4 Status 0290h (Has Capabilities List, Supports Back-To-Back Trans., Medium Timing)
5 Revision 02h, Header Type 00h, Bus Latency Timer 40h
6 Minimum Bus Grant 02h, Maximum Bus Latency 18h
7 Self test 00h (Self test not supported)
8 PCI Class Multimedia, type Audio
9 Subsystem ID 01621014h ES1938/41/46 SOLO-1(E) AudioDrive (Guess Only!)
10 Subsystem Vendor 1014h IBM
11 Address 0 is an I/O Port : 0000DA00h
12 Address 1 is an I/O Port : 0000D800h
13 Address 2 is an I/O Port : 0000D600h
14 Address 3 is an I/O Port : 0000D400h
15 Address 4 is an I/O Port : 0000D200h
16 System IRQ 5, INT# A
17 New Capabilities List Present:
18   Power Management Capability, Version 1.0
19     Supports low power State D1
20     Supports low power State D2
21     Does not support PME# signalling
22     Current Power State : D0 (Device operational, no power saving)
23
24 Hex-Dump of device configuration space follows:
25  0000  5D 12 69 19 05 00 90 02 02 00 01 04 00 40 00 00    ].i.........@..
26  0010  01 DA 00 00 01 D8 00 00 01 D6 00 00 01 D4 00 00    .Ú...Ø...Ö...Ô..
27  0020  01 D2 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 14 10 62 01    .Ò............b.
28  0030  00 00 00 00 C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 01 02 18    ....À...........
29  0040  5F 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    _...............
30  0050  01 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    . ..............
31  0060  01 38 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 14 10 62 01    .8............b.
32  0070  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
33  0080  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
34  0090  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
35  00A0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
36  00B0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
37  00C0  01 00 21 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ..!.............
38  00D0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
39  00E0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
40  00F0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................

Stretch wrote on 2022-07-04, 15:56:

I would like to get ESFM working on the IBM sound card because I have a problem with extremely low output volume with the eDio sound card.

Since you don't require the SBLINK functionality of the "K" revision, the most logical solution would be to just swap the chips on the cards.

Stretch wrote on 2022-07-04, 15:56:

I would like to get ESFM working on the IBM sound card because I have a problem with extremely low output volume with the eDio sound card.

For the audio output volume - On the eDio card in the photo the output jumpers are set to line-out (for feeding amplified speakers) rather than spk-out which uses the on-card amplifier to boost the volume. Also you can use ESSVOL.EXE in DOS to set the master volume and for each mixer channel.

edio hi-live sc1938 ... Revision 00h, Header Type 00h, Bus Latency Timer 40h […]
Show full quote

edio hi-live sc1938
...
Revision 00h, Header Type 00h, Bus Latency Timer 40h

ibm 33L5134
...
Revision 02h, Header Type 00h, Bus Latency Timer 40h

These two show the different revision numbers of the ES1938S chips and relate to the letter on the 4-digit-code on the chip (D or K)

mockingbird wrote on 2022-07-01, 14:08:

It worked on all three of my cards: […]
Show full quote

It worked on all three of my cards:

D228
D258
H359

Thank you for the ESSVOL.EXE test results mockingbird!

So just a quick update, there are at least two games where using SB-Link on a Solo1 provides a noticeable improvement in compatibility over DDMA:

• Prehistorik (1991)
• Dyna Blaster (1992)

When using the Solo1 in DDMA mode, both of these games will freeze while playing back digitized sounds (e.g. voices and sound effects). On the other hand, this does not occur when the Solo1 is connected via SB-Link and configured to use that mode. In that case, the aforementioned games work fine and correctly play back digitized sounds. Special thanks to @bloodem for pointing out these compatibility issues.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-12, 05:25:

So just a quick update, there are at least two games where using SB-Link on a Solo1 provides a noticeable improvement in compati […]
Show full quote

So just a quick update, there are at least two games where using SB-Link on a Solo1 provides a noticeable improvement in compatibility over DDMA:

• Prehistorik (1991)
• Dyna Blaster (1992)

When using the Solo1 in DDMA mode, both of these games will freeze while playing back digitized sounds

Just tested with my YMF724 with SB-Link, sound effects work fine. I did not test DDMA because I don't think it does DDMA with the ICH2 southbridge.

A couple of things:

- Prehistorik required me to set CPUSPD with the -o1 -t4 (ODCM to 1 and throttle to level 4) parameters, or else it would crash mid-game (Pentium IV 2.4Ghz)
- Dyna Blaster did not like the DVI on my GeForce2 at all and the display was visible but quite odd and garbled. Worked fine in VGA.

Ostensibly, SB-Link should technically be indistinguishable from real ISA, would you agree?

mockingbird wrote on 2022-07-13, 00:05:

Just tested with my YMF724 with SB-Link, sound effects work fine. I did not test DDMA because I don't think it does DDMA with the ICH2 southbridge.

The issues with these two games are specific to the Solo1. In fact @bloodem told me that he switched over to a YMF724 card because it runs those games fine even with its DSDMA TSR.

Ostensibly, SB-Link should technically be indistinguishable from real ISA, would you agree?

That has been my experience as well. Using SB-Link on a PCI sound card paired with a suitable motherboard gives you pretty much ISA level compatibility.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-13, 03:14:

<snip>

I obtained a "K" revision chip and I get the same error (for sound blaster compatibility, run applications from Windows), so I don't know what's going on with that... Maybe your EEPROM on your card is special, I don't know.

mockingbird wrote on 2022-08-21, 23:23:

I obtained a "K" revision chip and I get the same error (for sound blaster compatibility, run applications from Windows), so I don't know what's going on with that... Maybe your EEPROM on your card is special, I don't know.

Did you go through all the steps that I listed here? Specifically, are you using the same driver version as I did?

Nothing else comes to mind, other than either a different EEPROM as you say, or some obscure motherboard incompatibility with the Solo1's implementation of SB-Link.

In case it helps, I posted the front and back pictures of my card earlier in this thread. The exact model is TTSOLO1-NL VER1.2 and it was manufactured in September of 2000.

Came across Fujitsu D1133-V10. It seems to have all the goodies: SB-Link (PC\PCI ??), wavetable header, amp (TEA2025B) and a lot of caps.
"H" revision chipset. Haven't tested it yet 😉. Probably came from Fujitsu-Siemens workstation of some kind:

stef80 wrote on 2022-08-22, 09:18:

[...]

SB-Link (PC\PCI ??)

Yes, PC/PCI was the official name of the interface.

It references the ability to us PC ("ISA") DMA controls on a PCI bus.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-08-22, 04:41:

Did you go through all the steps that I listed here? Specifically, are you using the same driver version as I did?

Yes, to the letter.

Motherboard: P6B40-A4X

Used individual jumper wires for the connection from the card to the board for a sanity check
ACPI disabled
IRQ5 manually assigned in BIOS to card's slot
Passive Release enabled
PNP OS set to Yes

I installed the driver, let it reboot a few times and it put all the DOS files where they need to be.

On boot, DDMA was showing as enabled.

Proceeded to copy your ESSOLO.INI to the root directory, modified it to read-only, performed a reboot, and the message that I need to use Windows for DOS compatibility appeared.

mockingbird wrote on 2022-08-22, 17:10:

On boot, DDMA was showing as enabled.

This is a good sign.

Proceeded to copy your ESSOLO.INI to the root directory, modified it to read-only, performed a reboot, and the message that I need to use Windows for DOS compatibility appeared.

Instead of using my copy of ESSOLO.INI, try modifying your own with a Hex editor as described here and then setting it to read only.

It's possible that Windows configured the SB emulation resources of your card a bit differently than on my system. So it might be better to adjust your own ESSOLO.INI.

For the initial test, only change the value at 0C from 00 to 02 and don't alter anything else. This should switch the card from DDMA to SB-Link mode. Then, set the file to read only and reboot.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-08-22, 17:17:

For the initial test, only change the value at 0C from 00 to 02 and don't alter anything else. This should switch the card from DDMA to SB-Link mode. Then, set the file to read only and reboot.

No such luck unfortunately... I changed 0x0C from 00 to 02 and left everything else as is... This change alone caused the message that I should run games in Windows for compatibility...

Oh well... Let's leave it for someone else to chime in on this in the future... Maybe we'll find out something new.

Cheers

EDIT: One other thing I can confirm is that there definitely is a difference between the "K" revision and the rest, because as soon as I swap in a different card and run ESSVOL from the command prompt, it works, whereas with the K revision it complains about not being able to find the audiodrive.

I have a Solo with an EEPROM... I think with the combination of putting the K chip on this card and then flashing a dump of your EEPROM Joseph_Joestar, that might do the trick... But I don't want you to fiddle with that kind of thing if it is outside your comfort level with regard to technical skill.

mockingbird wrote on 2022-08-22, 19:48:

I have a Solo with an EEPROM... I think with the combination of putting the K chip on this card and then flashing a dump of your EEPROM Joseph_Joestar, that might do the trick... But I don't want you to fiddle with that kind of thing if it is outside your comfort level with regard to technical skill.

At the moment, I don't have any hardware that can read or flash EEPROM chips. Also, I think removing the EEPROM is a bit much for my current soldering skills.

Maybe someone else can find a different way around this issue. I'm all out of ideas.

I own three TTSOLO1 cards from Terratec, since i wanted to use one of them for a project i stumbled over this threat.

TTSOLO1-S VER1.1 (ESS Solo-1 G398) Wavtable Header, No Amp, no EEPROM, No SBLINK, PINOUTS
TTSOLO1-N VER1.2 (ESS Solo-1 G049) Wavtable Header, Amp, EEPROM, No SBLINK, PINOUTS
TTSOLO1-S VER1.2 (ESS K400) No Wavtable Header, No Amp, no EEPROM, SBLINK, NO PINOUTS

I set IRQ5 for the PCI Port in the BIOS, PNP OS is disabled in BIOS.
I initialized them via ESSOLO.INI and ESSSOLO.COM Version 2.12Y method
ESSSOLO hacked to use A240 D0 I5
The cards get all initialized in DOS using DDMA which is the only avilable method for 430TX chipset on my ASUS TX97-XE Mainboard.
SET BLASTER automatically added by ESSOLO.COM

I can confirm that the model with the K400 chip is not recognized as ES1688 etc. Enhanced FM Audio Sound Card using Miles Audio Setup from Settlers 2, the other (G398,G049) are.
But i get OPL3 music from Monkey Island from it. So Adlib Compatibility is given. They only seem to have removed (or changed initailization register) ESFM Enhanced between Revision G and K.
Also this confirms the EEPROM has no impact on the behavior.

Maybe there is a difference in the Whitepapers. We should compare a PDF from 1997 with a PDF from 2000.

Unfortunately Address 388 for Adlib is now mapped to the PCI bus so it cannot share the Address with ISA Cards. The purpose for my project is not given anymore. I could have nown this before.

I you are still interested in this topic i can test a few additional things.

Well, if anybody with an ESS Solo-1 (or a YMF-7xx) PCI sound card, a PCIe motherboard with a recent chipset and a PCI-to-PCIe adapter is reading this, there is something that I hope somebody could test:

If such a card is installed in a motherboard with a newer chipset that does not support subtractive decode, is the OPL3 chip made available on an alternative non-legacy I/O port (1000h or higher), or does that piece of functionality on the sound card basically become unreachable?

For a quick explanation on what the "subtractive decode" feature entails: it allows PCI cards to claim legacy I/O ports, which is the x86 I/O port address range from 0000h to 0FFFh. This is useful for PCI cards with out-of-the-box DOS-compatible serial or parallel ports, or PCI sound cards with hardware-level Adlib compatibility. without subtractive encode, PCI(e) cards cannot claim any such legacy I/O addresses, which is required to offer actual hardware-level compatibility with older hardware standards from the earlier "pre-PCI" DOS era. An exception to this limitation are the I/O ports that graphics cards need in order to provide hardware-level VGA compatibility.

Unfortunately, subtractive decode is no longer supported in more recent x86 motherboard chipsets, typically motherboards that don't have conventional PCI slots (only PCI Express).

As I understand it, this is the reason why such conventional PCI cards with legacy hardware compatibility tend not to work when installed in PCI express slots through a PCI->PCIe adapter.

However, I wonder if the resources on such PCI cards are made available on alternative higher (non-legacy) ports if subtractive decode is not available. If that is confirmed to be the case, compatibility could be restored (at least in some DOS games) through emulation software that would redirect Adlib/FM hardware access to the dynamically allocated alternative ports. Basically what DOS TSRs like ADLiPT, SBEMU and sbemu-x.

The Intel documentation that Kamerat shared here seem to imply that such cards will simply not work, or at least not the functionality that tries to listen on legacy ports.

So long story short: when an ESS Solo-1 or a YMF-7xx PCI sound card with hardware-level Adlib/OPL3 compatibility is plugged into a recent motherboard through a PCI->PCIe adapter, does the FM synthesizer become reachable on alternative I/O ports above 0FFFh, or will the FM synthesizer simply not be programmable in such configurations?

Thanks in advance to whoever is willing and able to test this.

For those willing to read more about subtractive decode and why it's necessary for full legacy hardware compatibility, see this PDF document on the Internet Archive.