VOGONS


First post, by lilhoser

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I have an Ensoniq S4016 VIVO ISA card I'm trying to install on an old 486 motherboard. The card has no jumpers. I'm using original Ensoniq Soundscape installation diskettes, but it's not finding the card on the default IRQ/midi port. I've tried just about every combination of hardware settings in the ssinit program and it's just not working. If my BIOS does not let me set IRQs directly and this software can't autodetect the settings, I'm not sure how to get this to work. What am I missing?

msd shows IRQ 5 is available

Reply 1 of 12, by Horun

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Is it like this one in the picture ? What version driver are you trying to use ? What OS are you using ?
Did you get the driver from our Vogons Driver Library ?
This archive shows the drivers for both work at v1.02. http://web.archive.org/web/19980703041928/htt … _html/index.htm
Another issue could be something else interfering with the ssinit.

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Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 12, by lilhoser

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Yes it looks nearly identical to that one in the picture.

The installation diskettes read Version 2.20.24.

I have DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 installed

Thanks for the wayback link - seems i need to find where to get this installer

http://web.archive.org/web/19980214023856/htt … ds/ssiwiz31.exe

Reply 4 of 12, by swaaye

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I don't remember the steps to get a VIVO working anymore. It is a PNP card. You do need to have EMM386 loaded.

The easiest approach is probably Windows 95/98. The Ensoniq software installer will set you up with DOS support too. The Windows 3.1 installer probably does as well but Win95 knows all about the horrors of ISA PNP.

Reply 5 of 12, by lilhoser

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Pierre32 wrote on 2021-01-07, 04:02:

Wonder if you might find it in either of the VIVO packages here: http://vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid=41&menustate=46,37

Awesome, thank you! I ran this in Windows 3.1 and it seemed to install correctly. However, upon reboot I get the dreaded driver error:

"SSCPVIVO.386 was unable to locate the ENSONIQ SoundscapeVIVO hardware (Otto)."

When I run SNDSCAPE\dmtest.exe and do the digital audio voice test, I hear the voice. When I run the MIDI audio test (grand piano), I hear nothing.

SSINIT sets "SET BLASTER=A220 Ix Dx T1" and sndscape.ini has:

Port=330
WavePort=534
OttoPort=2180
IRQ=9
SBIRQ=5
DMA=1
DMAADC=3

It looks like this version of soundscape doesn't come with the ssinit.exe, so I can only change the hardware settings via the INI.

Reply 7 of 12, by swaaye

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Does your motherboard's POST screen mention anything about detecting the card? I think if it doesn't you may need a PnP configuration TSR to run first to configure it. 486 motherboards with PnP tech would be late in the life of the 486.

By the way the VIVO might be a bit of a CPU hog for a 486 because they dropped the Motorola 68000 CPU that was on the older cards. That CPU was used for some MIDI functions and emulation of things like Sound Blaster and MT-32. VIVO does that on the system CPU from what I gather.

Last edited by swaaye on 2021-01-08, 06:58. Edited 7 times in total.

Reply 9 of 12, by lilhoser

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Swaaye,

Unfortunately, I have a very old micronics motherboard (gateway 2000) with a BIOS from 1990 and it's definitely not PnP. I have tried flashing it before, but the only update I could find online was a beta from 1991 that was buggy. There is no device listing on POST at all, it goes straight into booting DOS. I have tried finding a decent replacement mid-to-late 486 era board on ebay for the past few months with no success. I've also considered just buying a new sound card that might cooperate better with this old BIOS, but I have to admit after researching the options on vogons, they are quite daunting. From what I could tell, it seems like an original SoundBlaster Pro 1.0 or 2.0 are the best for this type of system. I would appreciate any recommendations.

Pierre32, thank you for the link to UNISOUND. I will try that today and report back.

Cheers

Reply 11 of 12, by swaaye

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lilhoser wrote on 2021-01-08, 14:28:
Bummer. unisound reports the card is unsupported: […]
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Bummer. unisound reports the card is unsupported:

Unknown PnP card [ENS4080] found.  Not compatible yet.  Aborting....

Try the Intel ISA PnP Configuration Utility
http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1100&menustate=0

Once that initializes the PNP aspects, the Ensoniq drivers should work.

Reply 12 of 12, by lilhoser

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I installed the tool and ran its setup (CASSIST.EXE), which stated that I needed to run ICU to specify the sound card's resources. ICU did not list the card anywhere. I can add a card manually, but I don't have a .cfg file it's asking for, and I don't know the PnP resource values to use for manual setup. I installed the Ensoniq drivers in Windows 3.1 and rebooted. During boot, the Intel plug and play output does show the Ensoniq card, says it was successfully initialized. SSINIT runs and says it successfully initialized. However, I'm seeing erratic behavior - windows hangs when starting, doom2 hangs, even ICU.exe spits out a bunch of stack overflow errors. Not sure what's going on.