VOGONS


First post, by Ozzuneoj

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I've had this card for months and have been meaning to make a thread about it. It's nothing fancy, it's just such an oddity.

Here it is.

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Yep, an ISA ESS Audiodrive ES1868 + ESS Tel.eDrive based modem which is also equipped with an ESS ES692S wavetable synth!

Never seen anything like it aside from this one (and one more that the seller seems to still have, which is listed on multiple marketplaces online).

Interestingly, it also came with a microphone, telephone line and drivers (zip file containing the contents of both disks is attached to this post).

Once I got my hands on it I thought to myself: "Nice, lets throw this thing into a system and just use it as a soundcard."....

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... or not! They managed to make a modem that contains a wonderful sound chip and a very solid wavetable synth, but they didn't even put an audio OUTPUT on it!

I probed around a bit on the card and managed to find an internal audio connection (J2). I had to wire up a connector to fit it and then that must be connected to another sound card via line-in\aux\CDROM etc.

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In this picture, the top most pin of J2 (white wire) is the left channel. The center pin is ground (black) and the bottom pin is the right channel (red). Pretty simple. Ignore the other plug with the yellow wire... that's what was left from the original end of the cable.

Anyway, I didn't get to do a ton of testing with it. The reason it has taken me so long to post about it is that I was planning to do more extensive testing, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I figured I should just post what I know before I totally forget it all. 🤣

Relevant system specs:
440BX Motherboard
Pentium III 850Mhz Slot 1
AWE64 as main sound card

In the limited time I spent with the card, I only got it fully functioning under Windows 98SE, mostly due to it needing to be run through a second sound card. I didn't spend much time playing with it in DOS. Even though the driver disks say "Windows 95 Drivers", the second disk does appear to have at least some DOS and Windows 3.1 drivers. I do not know if it's possible to get the wavetable functioning in DOS.

Under Windows 98Se with the drivers installed (it seemed to require the modem drivers to function, but again, there may be another way), the card worked pretty much as expected. The wavetable sounded decent but appeared to have hanging notes when I would stop a song (playing basic MIDI files with media player). I know my PIII 850 was way more than was needed so I decided to try it with a slower CPU (266Mhz PII, running at 200Mhz), and surprisingly, that fixed the hanging note issue when stopping songs.

I also tested the ESS FM synth and it also worked but had a bit of an odd sound to it... sort of a "ringing" sound around some notes\instruments. I guess there's a possibility that I was also hearing the AWE64's CQM mixed in with it... I can't say I've ever played with FM music piped from one sound card to another under Windows like this, so I don't know if it's possible to hear both together.

Anyway, I want to tinker with it more at some point, and when I do I'll post here.

If it's possible to easily use the card under DOS for digital sound, ESFM and wavetable synth, it could make a very interesting "daughtercard" type solution to add these features to another sound card without any external pass-through required.

Attachments

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 1 of 13, by cyclone3d

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Thanks for posting about this. I love weird cards like this. I found and bought the other one that was listed 😀

I wonder if it was originally meant to hook up to a separate front panel or rear panel connector with an amplifier built-in.

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Reply 2 of 13, by rmay635703

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-06-23, 18:28:

Thanks for posting about this. I love weird cards like this. I found and bought the other one that was listed 😀

I wonder if it was originally meant to hook up to a separate front panel or rear panel connector with an amplifier built-in.

Many generic computers came with this device. Including one I bought out of the computer shopper years ago.

http://www.esstech.com/PR_1998/11-16-98.pdf

I don’t really remember what purpose the wave table device served but the modem was not used as a sound card in my machine at least (machine had a regular sound card for that),
if I can find the documentation I believe it came with software for it to work as an answering machine/fax machine and it had call waiting and other features when you were online.

I remember thinking it was a big deal (in the 90’s) and being somewhat let down (for whatever reason)
I honestly can’t remember what I thought it could do at the time.
Considering I got a different low end computer every year in those days it’s no wonder, I usually could break even or make a small profit which made it worth changing systems often. Those were the days.

Ah well

Last edited by rmay635703 on 2020-06-27, 15:26. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 13, by Pierre32

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Pretty cool 😀 Likewise, I'll be looking a little closer at ISA modems in my browsing from now on. Presumably you could just wire that connector directly to a rear panel line out jack.

Reply 6 of 13, by Ozzuneoj

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-06-23, 18:28:

Thanks for posting about this. I love weird cards like this. I found and bought the other one that was listed 😀

I wonder if it was originally meant to hook up to a separate front panel or rear panel connector with an amplifier built-in.

Awesome! I think we have similar collecting habits. I'm glad you got it. 😀

rmay635703 wrote on 2020-06-23, 20:28:

Many generic computers came with this device. Including one I bought out of the computer shopper years ago.

I don’t really remember what purpose the wave table device served but the modem was not used as a sound card in my machine at least (machine had a regular sound card for that),
if I can find the documentation I believe it came with software for it to work as an answering machine/fax machine and it had call waiting and other features when you were online.

Are you sure this is the same device? There are tons of ESS Tel.eDrive modems on ebay, many with a similar layout to this, but they are all just modems. I think it's fairly uncommon to find one with an Audiodrive built in, let alone one with the ES692S wavetable chip. Literally the only pictures or information I could find about this device were from the seller where I bought mine. All of the pictures and listings for them online are from this specific card, sold by the same seller on different sites.

rmay635703 wrote on 2020-06-24, 01:31:

Most of the MWAVE sound cards I’ve noticed are also modems.

Lots of crystal sound and modem combo cards as well

Yes, but what set this apart is the actual GOOD hardware Wavetable synth onboard, along side one of the most well regarded ISA sound chips around... and the fact that it has no line out jacks on the back to use them! The Mwave can apparently do all sorts of things but isn't very practical as a MIDI device as far as I can tell. The cards are quite common and yet hardly anyone here has used one for MIDI synth. I have seen many other modem\sound combo cards... mostly Aztech, some with Crystal CODECs, Opti chipsets, etc... but none have had a wavetable synth and all are clearly soundcards with audio jacks on the back.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 7 of 13, by Ozzuneoj

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appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-23, 20:55:

I will never gloss over an ISA modem/sound combo card again..

My thoughts exactly! I double check them all now.

Pierre32 wrote on 2020-06-24, 00:57:

Presumably you could just wire that connector directly to a rear panel line out jack.

I have thought about this too. I think I have most of the parts to do this... except for some kind of good quality 3.5mm panel mount jacks. I could easily use a backplate from some broken old sound card or other device to hold it. This is giving me ideas. 😁

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 8 of 13, by Jo22

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Cool find! Reminds me of these old sound modems with phone jack connectors (for headseta) that could be used as an answering machine.
My beige Creatix modem was one of them, I believe. It also was usable as a WAVE file player through the communications software.
This was via V.24 port, so likely used heavy 4Bit compression..

Anyway, it was fun. The software was made by Balloon Software, I recall,
and also had a FAX retrival and personal mailbox features (BBS).

My best guess is that this soundcard/modem card was intended as an add-on card for office PCs
that already had a CD-ROM controller card or very low-end soundcard installed (SB Pro).

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Reply 9 of 13, by chinny22

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I'm still struggling to think why the modem also has a wavetable synth?
Only thing I can think of is hold music but would assume software would still need to control that, in which case why not pass it onto the other half of the card? Not t mention I doubt hold music even got used on the majority of cards.

Still interesting project indeed!

Reply 10 of 13, by jmarsh

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chinny22 wrote on 2020-06-24, 10:17:

I'm still struggling to think why the modem also has a wavetable synth?

Just meant to be an all-in-one card I think, usually found in big brand name systems with built-in speakers.