Side note: Neat photo, but my display is 1366x768... 🙁

Similar here. 1024x768. 🙁

Photo resized; I thought a bigger picture would help with reading the silkscreen on the card sorry.

Thanks. I'm using an ESS688 in one of my 286es and it works fine. 😕
The setup was done via jumpers. Even the cards on-board IDE controller is available during booting..
That mixer utility was about the only software I really used; I believe.

IRQs can be shared, as long as only one devices is in use at once.
In pure DOS that's of a lesser issue than in multi-tasking environment like DESQView or MS Windows,
since no one is printing and playing games simultanously (OK, Last Half or Darkness uses a printer, but that's an exception).

Then I guess the card is goast at hw level?

I don't know. Maybe it's just the PnP BIOS that's getting in the way (if present).
Or something like that. I'd try to get it running in Win9x also.

Anyway, for my installation I configured the jumpers so that Mitsumi/Sony/Panasonic interfaces are disabled, the IDE interface is setup as Secondary at IRQ15 and the Jumpers for CD-ROM were set up as Address 310, DRQ 3, DACK, 3, IRQ 9.

I wonder if that could be causing a conflict.

skitters wrote:

Anyway, for my installation I configured the jumpers so that Mitsumi/Sony/Panasonic interfaces are disabled, the IDE interface is setup as Secondary at IRQ15 and the Jumpers for CD-ROM were set up as Address 310, DRQ 3, DACK, 3, IRQ 9.

I wonder if that could be causing a conflict.

How though? There are no jumper settings I can see that completely disable onboard IDE..

Hi, just try to remove the jumpers completely.
Perhaps this disables the interfaces.

Ok, so here's a twist that I hope my help resolve the issue:

I removed the ES688 card and popped in this CT2290, hoping it would resolve the problems:

I ran the installers on INSTALL and PNP diskettes and rebooted, set Doom up and launched it.. And the same thing.

That made me think maybe running the CPU at 40MHz is OC'ing the ISA bus somehow, so I set it back down to 33.. No go.

When I run DIAGNOSE.EXE the card is found and configured fine, and then I get to the test screen. At this screen, if I am running 40MHz, 8-bit testing is fine but 16-bit testing locks the system up hard. If I am running 33MHz, I can do all the tests but 16-bit testing occasionally results in black screen - the test is still ongoing, I can make selections (and the newly highlighted options appear on screen) but the rest is just black.

DOOM, DOOM 2 crash at launch, but I can hear a few beats of the music before they do.

Windows 3.1 runs, I hear the first half second of the intro sound and then crashes back to desktop with an Application Error window momentarily on the screen.

Samn & Max SETMUSE detects the card but locks up at Test Sound. The game hard crashes when launched.

Strangely enough I can run Monkey Island and Loom with Adlib sound, but the music is distorted.

What could this be I wonder?

I checked the BIOS and there are absolutely no useful options in there..

Sound card and Video card conflicting?

SB16 is on IRQ 5, when I run Norton System Info 8 it shows IRQ 5 as Reserved by DOS for LPT2.. The multi I/O card's only LPT port is set up as LPT1. Maybe I should disable parallel ports on the I/O card completely?

This is the motherboard I am using:

Cards are installed like this:

ISA1: Multi IO
ISA3: VGA
ISA6: SB16

Both sound cards can't be duds so please help me out here 🙁

appiah4 wrote:

There is an Acer Multi-IO card in this system with one LPT port, I configured that to be on LPT2 (which is on IRQ5 incidentally, so LPT1/IRQ7 is not utilized).

Why LPT2 and not LPT1? I'd go with LPT1 on IRQ 7 or disable it completely.

For your Blaster, set the appropriate (default, actually) jumpers to allow A220 I5 D1 H5

appiah4 wrote:

I removed the ES688 card and popped in this CT2290, hoping it would resolve the problems

You can check jumper settings for the ct2290 at
http://th99.classic-computing.de/src/i/C-D/53589.htm

If you haven't already, make sure the ES688 settings were removed (or remarked out) from autoexec.bat and config.sys.

CkRtech wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

There is an Acer Multi-IO card in this system with one LPT port, I configured that to be on LPT2 (which is on IRQ5 incidentally, so LPT1/IRQ7 is not utilized).

Why LPT2 and not LPT1? I'd go with LPT1 on IRQ 7 or disable it completely.

For your Blaster, set the appropriate (default, actually) jumpers to allow A220 I5 D1 H5

It was set to LPT2 for the ES688 card as it was hard-configured to IRQ7 and I wanted to free that.

The SB16 is set up with the following command:

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6

SET SOUND and SET CTCM are also present. It also leads the CTCM device in CONFIG.SYS and CTCU in AUTOEXEC.BAT of course. I will post a full Autoexec.bat and Config.sys here if relevant.

skitters wrote:

You can check jumper settings for the ct2290 at http://th99.classic-computing.de/src/i/C-D/53589.htm […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote:

I removed the ES688 card and popped in this CT2290, hoping it would resolve the problems

You can check jumper settings for the ct2290 at
http://th99.classic-computing.de/src/i/C-D/53589.htm

If you haven't already, make sure the ES688 settings were removed (or remarked out) from autoexec.bat and config.sys.

The card is configured as per TH99 already, and every jumper is on default settings except the IDE controller being on Secondary instead of Tertiary (something this boar does not even support I would think). Also, ESS drivers and config/autexec entries have all been completely wiped.

I'm really thinking it's an ISA bus problem. Is there a way to check what speed the ISA bus is running at?

It may also have to do with something I noted earlier and Vogons reassured me was fine - the board I have lacks many of the capacitors and resistors found on other photos of same/similar boards I can find online. I mean, they are obviously not the exact same thing, mine lacks the model number printed on it, runs a different (and much simpler) AMIBIOS compared to their AWARD BIOS, so I can only presume mine came from a much cheaper OEM version of the same board? The only ISA slot that seems to have all the same capacitor/resistors is ISA1 so maybe I should move the card there?

Anyway, next thing on my agenda is to shuffle the cards around, I'm thinking of:

ISA1: SB16
ISA3: Multi I/O
ISA4: VGA

Let's see how that works out tonight.. If that fails, I may consider playing around with the J9/J10 jumpers next to the ISA slots that I have no idea what they do.. 😢

appiah4 wrote:

Anyway, next thing on my agenda is to shuffle the cards around, I'm thinking of: […]
Show full quote

Anyway, next thing on my agenda is to shuffle the cards around, I'm thinking of:

ISA1: SB16
ISA3: Multi I/O
ISA4: VGA

Let's see how that works out tonight.. If that fails, I may consider playing around with the J9/J10 jumpers next to the ISA slots that I have no idea what they do.. 😢

Have you tried the original slot configuration for VGA and Multi I/O, but swapping the sound card from ISA 6 to ISA 5 or 4?

yawetaG wrote:

Have you tried the original slot configuration for VGA and Multi I/O, but swapping the sound card from ISA 6 to ISA 5 or 4?

I have tried this with the ES688, swapping to Slot 5 did not fix anything. Slot 4 was a no go because of case connectors getting in the way. I couldn't possibly fit the CT2290 even on Slot 5 for the same reason. The only slots it can reasonably fit in are Slot 1/3/6, and Slot 1 is only possible because I don't have an HDD in the 3.5" bays..

appiah4 wrote:

SET SOUND and SET CTCM are also present. It also leads the CTCM device in CONFIG.SYS and CTCU in AUTOEXEC.BAT of course.

Run CTCU and walk the main configuration for the sound card - highlighting each item (Address, IRQ, DMA, High DMA, etc). It should report it.

If you have jumper settings for your I/O card, set them all to default. Alternatively, you could disable almost everything on it - all COM ports, parallel port, etc., and try to establish base line.

I'm really thinking it's an ISA bus problem. Is there a way to check what speed the ISA bus is running at?

You could attach an oscilloscope to the ISA slot's CLK pin...

Your BIOS should automatically configure the bus speed with an appropriate divider so long as the clock speed of the CPU and the appropriate jumpers are set properly.

Anyway, next thing on my agenda is to shuffle the cards around

I don't really know of any case in which what slots you put the ISA cards in makes a difference.

I assume that when you run the games without any sound card, they run just fine? If you run DOOM setup and configure for no sound card, does the game run OK?

Is that SB16 card image a photo of yours, and are the jumpers currently configured that way? Do you have a higher res photo of it? What I/O card do you have? Can you do a photo of that and provide jumpers?

CkRtech wrote:

Run CTCU and walk the main configuration for the sound card - highlighting each item (Address, IRQ, DMA, High DMA, etc). It should report it.

If you have jumper settings for your I/O card, set them all to default. Alternatively, you could disable almost everything on it - all COM ports, parallel port, etc., and try to establish base line.

CTCU and CTCM both report the card as A220 (as set by jumper) I5 D1 H5 and P330, as set by the SET BLASTER line. Changing the SET BLASTER line changes this, of course. I have tried I7, as well as setting H1 (in case High DMA was the problem) and this resolved nothing. Regardless, the ES688 had no H in the SET BLASTER line and demonstrated the same issues.

I have the jumper settings for my IO card, an apparently no-name card with the Acer M5105 chipset:

This is the only jumper configuration manual I could find:

My card's jumpers are as follows:

JP6: 1-2
JP7: 1-2
(COM1 and COM2, COM1 mouse works fine)

JP12: 1-2
JP13: 2-3
(I will try changing this to 2-3 for both to disable the LPT port configuration)

JP4: Short
JP5 Short
(IDE Controller is enabled. Both the CF-HD and the CD-ROM work fine on the IDE controller.)

JP17: 1-2
(Floppy controller is enabled. Gotek HxC works fine on the Floppy controller)

You could attach an oscilloscope to the ISA slot's CLK pin...

Your BIOS should automatically configure the bus speed with an appropriate divider so long as the clock speed of the CPU and the appropriate jumpers are set properly.

I have no access to an oscilloscope. Is there no DOS diagnostic utility that shows the ISA bus speed? I'm kind of worried that the BIOS is not doing the division properly..

I don't really know of any case in which what slots you put the ISA cards in makes a difference.

I assume that when you run the games without any sound card, they run just fine? If you run DOOM setup and configure for no sound card, does the game run OK?

Is that SB16 card image a photo of yours, and are the jumpers currently configured that way? Do you have a higher res photo of it? What I/O card do you have? Can you do a photo of that and provide jumpers?

Doom runs perfectly fine without sound. I did not think to try this but I think it could also work with just adlib sound if I tried, maybe? Because Monkey Island and Loom work with sound when I run them with the Adlib option. These games have no sound effects, only adlib music.

The photo is of my own card, here is a bigger version:

I have made only 4 changes after taking the photo:

1. I moved JP1 to JP2 so that the IDE controller is on IRQ as per default
2. I moved JP7 to JP8 so that the IDE controller is secondary and not tertiary as per default (no other secondary controller on this system and no support for a tertiary IDE channel in bios)
3. I replaced the busted capacitor with another capacitor of the exact same specs (only 85C vs 105C but I doubt that would make a difference at all.)
4. I straightened the backplate

CkRtech wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Anyway, next thing on my agenda is to shuffle the cards around

I don't really know of any case in which what slots you put the ISA cards in makes a difference.

A motherboard that has 16 bit ISA slots that are wired like 8 bit slots...

yawetaG wrote:

A motherboard that has 16 bit ISA slots that are wired like 8 bit slots...

Which kind of makes sense because 8 bit testing and adlib audio cause no issues but 16-bit testing and OPL3 lock up completely.. Is there a way I can test this? I believe IDE controller is always connected via the 16-bit bus, so any port that finds the IDE devices with the IO controller connected is actually 16-bit, no? This could be a way to troubleshoot the lower ISA slots..

Here's a high res photo of the motherboard by the way: