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Digital Sound problem : laptop + ESS audiodrive

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First post, by yyyeeeaaahhh

Posted on 
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Hello

I recently bought a notebook Compaq Armada M300, and installed Windows98se, directX 8.1b and the latest driver from the Compaq website.
It has one of these sound chip : ES1978, ES1920, ES1921, or ES978 AudioDrive (driver call it generally ESS M2E) --> i'll look this evening which one it is exactly

The problem is: i cannot setup the card for digital sounds. The only thing I have is the MIDI music.

I tried with Settlers 2 Gold, Daggerfall, King's Quest 1 & 2 (with KQ sound works with the PC speaker but... well don't know why but i don't like it 😅 )
but the sound does play in the dxdiag tests

Is this problem known ? Did i miss something (maybe in these forums ?)

Regards

-edit-
Should I try VDMSound for Win9x ? My laptop is a Celeron 300 with 128MB SDRAM, is it enough for emulating a sound card ?

Reply 1 of 2, by QBiN

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Yes. My guess is that the ESS drivers are WDM or W9X drivers, not DOS / real-mode drivers. VDMSound or DOSBox is where I'd go to next to emulate the IRQ's, etc. of a real Sound Blaster.

BTW, can you hear digital effects from Windows? Like the startup sound? or a random .wav file? If not, you've got bigger problems.

Reply 2 of 2, by yyyeeeaaahhh

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QBiN wrote:

Yes. My guess is that the ESS drivers are WDM or W9X drivers, not DOS / real-mode drivers. VDMSound or DOSBox is where I'd go to next to emulate the IRQ's, etc. of a real Sound Blaster.

BTW, can you hear digital effects from Windows? Like the startup sound? or a random .wav file? If not, you've got bigger problems.

yes i can hear them in windows (at least startup sound & all dxdiag tests)
I might have to try again, but i didn't remember hearing any sounds from Flight Unlimited, though it is (?) a W95 game

-edit-
in the meanwhile i'll try with vdmsound, i don't think this laptop is powerful enough to run dosbox with satysfying results (daggerfall...)

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