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ESS Allegro (ES1989) Laptop DOS compatibility

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First post, by keenmaster486

Posted on 
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l33t

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to get this old HP Pavilion n5xxx series laptop to work for my sister. She wants to play DOS games all the way from Keen to Descent, plus the odd late 90s; early 00s Windows game.

I'm trying to get the sound card working right now. It doesn't have to work in pure DOS, Win9x only is fine.

It's an ESS Allegro PCI card, which claims to be Sound Blaster compatible. I get the usual sound effects + MIDI in Windows 98 DOS boxes (no surprise there, that works on every card I've ever tried with 98), but I have to get FM sound working for games like Keen. The DOS drivers I found on vogonsdrivers (ESSDOS.ZIP) don't work; either in 9x box or pure DOS. They complain about the BIOS being in Plug and Play mode.

Question: Does this card even have an FM chip at all? And if so, how do I enable it?

I want to avoid using DOSBox. Please, any suggestions?

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 2 of 3, by h-a-l-9000

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> They complain about the BIOS being in Plug and Play mode.

Does your BIOS have a setting like 'DOS support', Plug&Play-BIOS? Try to disable it. But wouldn't that indicate the chip is already available?

1+1=10

Reply 3 of 3, by notsofossil

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I asked about this earlier and I came to the conclusion that you need ESS drivers in VXD format, not WDM. After that, the only other thing to check for is as stated above, disable plug n play BIOS.

I was using a Dell Inspiron 8000 with an ESS Maestro-3 PCI card.

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