Try the official driver for DOS.

https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fil … menustate=51,41

Keen Dreams does not have any music.
Effects should work though.

Privateer:
There exists a Midi patch for the CD release of Privateer that addresses Midi slowdowns if no joystick is attached to the soundcard: https://hcl.solsector.net/
Not sure if that helps in your case.

According to the manual, Privateer demands buffers to be at least "25".

166MMX with Formosa 1868F here.
Normal drivers (Interrupt 5), had my problems with unisound at that time.

I have only two games from your list:
Tyrian works, so does Dune best Intro anyway.

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-04-14, 15:51:

I have completed a big audit of all ~250 games installed on my newly built 486 system. It uses a very basic ESS 1868F card: ... […]
Show full quote

I have completed a big audit of all ~250 games installed on my newly built 486 system. It uses a very basic ESS 1868F card:
...
However I have a small number of games where I just cannot get (mainly digital audio) on the ESS card to work properly:
<snip>

You must have the ESS initialization loaded for it to work properly.

Add this to your autoexec.bat:

1C:\ES1869\ESSCFG.EXE /V:1 /I:5 /D:1 /E:3 /A:220 /B:330 /J:D
2C:\ES1869\ESSVOL.EXE /V:8 /L:14 /W:6 /M:0 /C:0 /S:8 /A:14 /P:0

This is what I use, but adjust accordingly. I like to have the wavetable (A:14) very loud compared to everything else. ESSCFG is more important. That will help the card work in the titles you mentioned.

250 games? Amazing work!

Just to double-check: in the cases where you've seen issues have you swapped out this card for something else (eg. a Creative Soundblaster) to confirm the issues were actually due to the ESS1868 and not something else? I once spent weeks messing around with a (far less compatible) card due to issues in some games - includint Tyrian, as here - before doing that, finding out it had nothing to do with the card and eventually discovered one of my EMM386.EXE settings was to blame.

mockingbird wrote on 2024-04-15, 03:09:

You must have the ESS initialization loaded for it to work properly. […]
Show full quote

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-04-14, 15:51:

I have completed a big audit of all ~250 games installed on my newly built 486 system. It uses a very basic ESS 1868F card: ... […]
Show full quote

I have completed a big audit of all ~250 games installed on my newly built 486 system. It uses a very basic ESS 1868F card:
...
However I have a small number of games where I just cannot get (mainly digital audio) on the ESS card to work properly:
<snip>

You must have the ESS initialization loaded for it to work properly.

Add this to your autoexec.bat:

Copy code to clipboard

1C:\ES1869\ESSCFG.EXE /V:1 /I:5 /D:1 /E:3 /A:220 /B:330 /J:D
2C:\ES1869\ESSVOL.EXE /V:8 /L:14 /W:6 /M:0 /C:0 /S:8 /A:14 /P:0

This is what I use, but adjust accordingly. I like to have the wavetable (A:14) very loud compared to everything else. ESSCFG is more important. That will help the card work in the titles you mentioned.

I am currently using unisound with the same values:

Set blaster=a220 i7 D1 T4 p330 j201
Unisound /c2

It prints that those values are configured. Of almost 250 titles, only these small handful are having problems.

I do need to try swapping unisound for esscfg, that's my next step.

dionb wrote on 2024-04-15, 06:05:

250 games? Amazing work!

Just to double-check: in the cases where you've seen issues have you swapped out this card for something else (eg. a Creative Soundblaster) to confirm the issues were actually due to the ESS1868 and not something else? I once spent weeks messing around with a (far less compabile) card due to issues in some games - includint Tyrian, as here - before doing that, finding out it had nothing to do with the card and eventually discovered one of my EMM386.EXE settings was to blame.

Yep, I've attached the list. Technically it's 225 games so far, but there are a few more to go on (the Duke Nukem series is currently missing, for example).

Unfortunately I don't really have an option to swap the sound card - I perhaps could go 20-25mm longer than the current ESS card, as I built the entire system around the length of the processor and sound cards themselves:

I do have two SB16's; a CT2770 and CT2290 as well as an AWE32 (CT2760), but I think even the CT2770 is too long to fit.

Update on Tyrian 2000 - even bypassing the startup environment completely; i.e. nothing loaded except ESSCFG (or UNISOUND) the Tyrian setup utility and the main menu itself have the same symptoms.

- Approximately 1 time out of 10 it starts up with no digital effects at all.

- 9 times out of 10 it starts up with digital effects playing (the select noise where you scroll up and down the menu for example), then after it has played a few times (anywhere from 1 or 2, to 10 or 12) it simply stops; there is no more digital sound.

If this happens in the setup utility I have found I can toggle Soundblaster off (choose "No effects"), then select Soundblaster again (DMA 1, as per ESSCFG and UNISOUND) and the effects come back again for a short period. This can be done indefinitely. Whether you have FM music enabled, No music set or GM MIDI configured makes no difference.

I think I may have another ESS card somewhere... if I can find it. At this point I'm starting to wonder if there is something up with the card itself. My only other option is to find an equivalent card of similar size.

Swapped over to another ESS card... but this one appears to be dead; I'm not getting any sound out of it at all, and upon closer examination it has discolouration on the reverse of the board under the amplifier chip (something the original card doesn't have - it's line-out signal only). I am guessing the amp IC (a TEA2025B) is dead.

Edit: Figured out the jumpers to disable the amp, and now I can get line-out from this second card. However there is no change with the above games - Tyrian still gives me a few instances of digital sound, and then stops playing it back. Toggling it off and then on again brings it back. So this is either a machine issue, or a ESS1868F issue. I guess it is time to start going through BIOS settings one by one.

It seems pointless to source another ESS1868 card, since two now show the same symptoms in the same games.

Of the other non-Soundblaster cards, what has the highest Adlib/Soundblaster/Soundblaster Pro 2 compatibility? Crystal or Yamaha based designs? I'm not interested in new cards like the Orpheus, since that would be more than the entire cost of this system in parts... but I can see reasonable numbers of YMF718/719 based ISA cards on Ebay for £25 or so.

Does the YMF719 have as high a compatibility as the ESS chips? Six faulty titles out of 225 is a pretty good rating....

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-04-15, 07:16:

I am currently using unisound with the same values: […]
Show full quote

I am currently using unisound with the same values:

Set blaster=a220 i7 D1 T4 p330 j201
Unisound /c2

It prints that those values are configured. Of almost 250 titles, only these small handful are having problems.

I do need to try swapping unisound for esscfg, that's my next step.

I just tested Tyrian with the "tyrian21" package available at many sites on my ES1869, and sound effects worked fine.

Something is wrong with your setup, not the soundcard, or maybe both your setup and the soundcard.

mockingbird wrote on 2024-04-15, 14:30:

I just tested Tyrian with the "tyrian21" package available at many sites on my ES1869, and sound effects worked fine.

Something is wrong with your setup, not the soundcard, or maybe both your setup and the soundcard.

I have just tried that version: no difference; music is still okay via FM and GM modes. Digital audio still craps out immediately or after one or two samples are played back.
I'm quite prepared to admit that is a problem somewhere, but I would have thought I'd have had a higher failure rate than 2% if that were the case. Being an industrial PC motherboard there really isn't a lot to adjust in the BIOS - there's no ISA clock related stuff, for example, so I'm at a loss.

Anyway, I can't fit any of my SB16 cards in to test them, so I've just bought the cheapest YMF719 soundcard I could find on Ebay, and which was no longer than a 16bit slot. I'll see if that makes any difference.

CT4170/4180 would be possible Creative options. (size)
Also highly compatible and still available cheaply.

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-04-15, 16:22:

Anyway, I can't fit any of my SB16 cards in to test them, so I've just bought the cheapest YMF719 soundcard I could find on Ebay, and which was no longer than a 16bit slot. I'll see if that makes any difference.

YMF719 is nice. Two things you should be aware of:

1) Get the version with two seperate crystals
2) Get the version on which there is information published on how to modify for enabling the filtering

mockingbird wrote on 2024-04-15, 17:40:

YMF719 is nice. Two things you should be aware of: […]
Show full quote

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-04-15, 16:22:

Anyway, I can't fit any of my SB16 cards in to test them, so I've just bought the cheapest YMF719 soundcard I could find on Ebay, and which was no longer than a 16bit slot. I'll see if that makes any difference.

YMF719 is nice. Two things you should be aware of:

1) Get the version with two seperate crystals
2) Get the version on which there is information published on how to modify for enabling the filtering

Yep, it's definitely the two can version, but the images are not clear enough to make out the positions of where the filtering caps would go from that vogons thread (was reading it earlier today!).

Worst case scenario I could completely disassemble this case and try the ISA backplane on the workbench with one of my larger SB16 cards, but that's a LOT of work! I'll wait the couple of days until this Yamaha card arrives and see what my next steps are.

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-04-15, 17:44:

Yep, it's definitely the two can version, but the images are not clear enough to make out the positions of where the filtering caps would go from that vogons thread (was reading it earlier today!).

Well if you figure it out, I'd like to know for my card too please!

Okay, the Yamaha YMF719 card arrived - there's a sticker on the card which labels it as an 'Addonics' brand. Unisound identified it as an OPL3-SAX and initialised it with the same settings as I was using before (A220, I7, D1, T4, P330, J201). No software changes have been made.

The difference?

- Tyrian plays back digital audio perfectly - I can hold the arrow key down in the setup menu and it scrolls and plays back the digital scroll noise indefinitely. No issues at all.
- Dune CD - the introductory cinematic plays without crashing. It's a bit noisy/crackly... but compared to crashing and/or losing all digital effects, that's something which is much easier to live with.

I will need to redo my audit of all the games done so far and retest them with the Yamaha card, but so far with the main problematic titles, it looks like the better option.