It's an ES1370 card with a decent AKM codec. Not anything I'd jump up and down about.

gdjacobs wrote:

It's an ES1370 card with a decent AKM codec. Not anything I'd jump up and down about.

I'm happy about it. 😊 Here's a picture of my model from some website. There appears to be two models.

What are you putting it in?

oeuvre wrote:

What are you putting it in?

I believe it's the following:
Pentium 120 with 8Megs of Ram, 256k cache, ATI Mach64 Wincharger. I'm mostly playing 2D games, and a few primitive 3D titles. Oh, and DOS 6.22 with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.

I'll add more RAM, and probably get a Pentium 166, my motherboard's maximum.

Not a great DOS card (I hate the Ensoniq/Creative TSR), but it'll do fine for Windows stuff.

gdjacobs wrote:

Not a great DOS card (I hate the Ensoniq/Creative TSR), but it'll do fine for Windows stuff.

Good enough for me, I barely find DOS stuff anywhere! BTW, what's a TSR?

Terminate and Stay Resident program... read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminate_and_s … esident_program

oeuvre wrote:

Terminate and Stay Resident program... read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminate_and_s … esident_program

So how does it apply to sound cards? Do the drivers not work well in systems? Sorry for the questions, I'm still learning.

Sound cards in the ISA world (that covers anything DOS basically) were accessible to programs directly (with the exception of some sound libraries). Adlib was on port 388, Sound Blaster sitting on 2x0 (220 typically). Programming them means writing meaningful data (according to a known protocol) to these ports. PCI does not use these ports as they are still on use for the ISA bus. So you need some glue in between. This can be done by a TSR under DOS.

In the case of sound cards, a TSR program will allow a sound card to support, through software, functionality that the hardware is incapable of performing on its own . In the case of the Ensoniq AudioPCI, the TSR program provided by the manufacturer allows ISA Sound Blaster 16 compatibility . The compatibility provided in this way is usually much less reliable then when It is implemented in hardware . ISA compatibility on a PCI card is a non trivial task and few manufacturers have managed this with a good degree of success (and usually with the help of something called SB-LINK a.k. PC/PCI). Ensoniq's TSR solution is not generally considered to be among the more compatible ones.
For this reason, if DOS compatibility is important, sticking to an ISA sound card or a PCI one with a better compatibility track record is a good idea.

Well, the original Ensoniq AudioPCI cards supported SB Pro feature levels via the TSR. SB16 compatibility was available in later cards. SB-Link was one of the three prominent compatibility methods, the other two being DDMA and software.

I have one of these in my DOS/9x system that has no ISA and have no complaints about the performance or compatibility in DOS, but I only run late DOS era stuff for the most part. The DOS driver only eats a couple of KB so it's not causing me any headaches. No issues in 98SE or XP either, has just worked without issue for me.

darry wrote:

In the case of sound cards, a TSR program will allow a sound card to support, through software, functionality that the hardware is incapable of performing on its own . In the case of the Ensoniq AudioPCI, the TSR program provided by the manufacturer allows ISA Sound Blaster 16 compatibility . The compatibility provided in this way is usually much less reliable then when It is implemented in hardware . ISA compatibility on a PCI card is a non trivial task and few manufacturers have managed this with a good degree of success (and usually with the help of something called SB-LINK a.k. PC/PCI). Ensoniq's TSR solution is not generally considered to be among the more compatible ones.
For this reason, if DOS compatibility is important, sticking to an ISA sound card or a PCI one with a better compatibility track record is a good idea.

Ah, I see now. I'll still give it a shot, though. It still seems interesting...

gdjacobs wrote:

Well, the original Ensoniq AudioPCI cards supported SB Pro feature levels via the TSR. SB16 compatibility was available in later cards.

For some DOS games such as Duke Nukem 3D you can use the Soundscape option for 16 bit sound with the 1370.

I have a ES1370 with another type of capacitor. It works great in Windows XP.

Ok, so it came here, but I found a Sound blaster in between the time, so maybe I'll use it for a PII or PIII build later.

I liked this card back in the day. I never used it in pure DOS, only Windows 98 and I loaded the 8MB sample ROM from the CD. Pretty sure it lived in my Celeron 300A / Abit BH6 overclocked to 450-MHz if that gives any indication to the time period.