http://vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid=17

Thank you, but even though there's one that says "ES688 Audiodrive Full install for Dos", it's actually for the ESS968 and doesn't work. I also wasn't able to find a compatible driver in the "ESS ISA cards DOS, Win 3.x drivers" download either.

I don't think there is a driver for the ESS688. It's non-PnP, just assign the resources to it and it's... there.

I have the original install disks for the ESS688. I'll get them posted later today. The card requires a setup program run at boot to change the default IRQ and DMA channels. The defaults on power-on are to use IRQ 7 and DMA 1, the same as early Soundblaster cards.

SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4 should be enough to get the card working in DOS without the driver. Make sure your parallel port isn't on IRQ 7!

dr_st wrote:

I don't think there is a driver for the ESS688. It's non-PnP, just assign the resources to it and it's... there.

Some versions don't have jumpers and require initialization (eg: exceedingly rare Compaq-branded cards like mine).

I can't remember where I got mine and I'm not home, but maybe try these:
http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1461&menustate=0

Those Edison "Gold" disks should be the same as the Soundplus-16 disks I have for my old 688 based card (Disk 2 had the Voyetra Windows tools). I'd love to see the box for the Edison card, it was likely equally campy in design!

Try SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4, and if that doesn't work try changing the IRQ to 7 or the DMA to 3 or both.

I.e. just try things until it works. It's not rocket science.

This is in a laptop, so there are no jumpers for me to change. I tried adding SET BLASTER to AUTOEXEC.BAT previously, and nothing would come up on boot, probably because it lacked the files necessary to use the SET BLASTER command.

The Edison disks also should have a TSR required to enable MPU-401 support.

I checked out the Edison drivers, and they're actually Windows drivers so I can't install anything.

Red_Machine wrote:

This is in a laptop, so there are no jumpers for me to change. I tried adding SET BLASTER to AUTOEXEC.BAT previously, and nothing would come up on boot, probably because it lacked the files necessary to use the SET BLASTER command.

This is nonsensical. How are you trying to use SET?

Just the standard "SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4" in AUTOEXEC.BAT

The program ESSCFG.EXE on the 1st disk is what you want to run to configure the card. ESSVOL.EXE is a mixer program for DOS as well.

Red_Machine wrote:

This is in a laptop, so there are no jumpers for me to change. I tried adding SET BLASTER to AUTOEXEC.BAT previously, and nothing would come up on boot, probably because it lacked the files necessary to use the SET BLASTER command.

I'm not sure what model of laptop you are using, but I have a Pentium 75 Toshiba Satellite with the same sound chip. The resource settings are configurable in system's BIOS. Have a look there.

In order to play DOS games, all you really have to do is configure the BLASTER environment variable to match these settings. You can optionally run ESSVOL.EXE to configure your mixer settings in autoexec.bat as well, but this isn't mandatory.