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Sound Blaster Live SB16 Emulation paired with ESS 1868 in WIndows 98/DOS

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First post, by fsmith2003

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First of all my goal is to have an all-in-one 90's era machine that I can just keep in tact without swapping cards for certain games to run. In theory my solution was to have a SB Live for the Windows 98 games. Then I have installed an ESS1868 PNP ISA card for MPU-401 support in DOS. Before installing the ESS card the SB16 Emulation from the SB Live was working fine when running DOS games from within Windows and in Real-Dos mode (Blood, GTA, Doom, etc.) I was hoping to go into real DOS-Mode to run games that would require a MPU-401 interface using the ESS card alone but still using the SB Live SB16 DOS drivers for all other sound.

The first issue I came across. Once the ESS was installed it made all the in-windows DOS games unable to see the previously working SB16 emulation.
Second issue. In real-DOS mode I can not figure out how to get any sound working period.

Not sure how to disable all aspects of the ESS while enabling only the MPU-401 interface and then keeping all other aspects of the SB Live's SB16 emulation as my primary sound choice otherwise? Also I still cannot figure out how to make my DOS games running within windows as well to see the SB16 emulation?

Reply 1 of 1, by Riikcakirds

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In Dos I did something similar a few years ago, using both card simultaneously. I would disable the poor/awful FM (OPL, ADlib etc) emulation of the sblive (port 388), and just keep it's digital sb16 emulation.
Then, you don't need to disable ESS1868 and can use it for it's much more accurate OPL3 FM and MPU401. Pick a IO port of 260 or 280 in esscfg. Use IO port 220 for the sblive dos config. Use IRQ 5 for the ess1868 and irq 7 for the sblive dos driver (in the CTSYN.INI). Set up the ess1868 drivers first, then run sblive sbeinit.com and it will set the SET BLASTER line correctly.
When you play a game make sure it is using IO 220 /IRQ 7 if it auto detects during sound setup.
That will produce digital sounds from the the sblive and FM from the ess1868 in games that support both. You will need small 3.5mm Stereo Jack cable from the line out of the ess1868 to the line in of the sblive card.

As I didn't have an external midi module, I did the above but used the General Midi and 8MB ecw soundfont file of the SBlive instead of a synth connected to mpu401 gameport. That way I got sb16 digital for sblive, and the choice of music using opl3 from ess1868 or general midi from sblive.

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