ruthan wrote on 2023-06-07, 19:17:

You can try to search if this is compatible with AC97.. and if yes try SB-EMU driver.. I opened some datasheet and there is some […]
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It's CMI8738. At least I could recognize the C-Media logo on the chip.

You can try to search if this is compatible with AC97.. and if yes try SB-EMU driver.. I opened some datasheet and there is something about SPDF_AC97 register, but it does not have mean that its AC97 compatible device.

Its based on MXPlay which have some Cmedia8738 support.. but this changelog is mess, i dunno if Cmedia support its DOs or WIn related:
https://mpxplay.sourceforge.net/whatsnew.txt // Search for 8738
But text new (PCI) soundcard handlers: from my point of view suggest more DOs than Windows thing..

MPXPlay does support the CMI8738 but SBEMU does not, the cmi8x38 driver is not compiled in. I made a post earlier about audio controllers supported by SBEMU. Whether an audio controller uses AC97 or not is mostly irrelevant for SBEMU, it's whether it supports the audio controller in the first place.
The Asus A8V-X has a VIA VT8251 south bridge with HD Audio controller, SBEMU will probably work with that (I think it's PCI device 1106:3288). Anyway, all that belongs in the SBEMU thread.

Pentaerythritol wrote on 2023-06-07, 16:46:

Thanks for the help! I don't know if my setup will be able to pull off dos games honestly, I just bought an Asus A8V-X board (VIA K8T800PRO chipset) which theoretically could run win 98 (according to my research), so I'm thinking to get a PCI card and try to build a strong win98 machine that could potentially run some dos games with sound. Probably it won't work, but this is my first retro build experience so whatever happens is gonna be fun I guess.

I don't really have a board using VT8251 so I cannot be 100% sure, but considering it's supposed to be pin-compatible with VT8237 family southbridges, ESS Solo-1 should in theory work as good as it is on VT8237x.

LSS10999 wrote on 2023-06-08, 00:34:

Pentaerythritol wrote on 2023-06-07, 16:46:

Thanks for the help! I don't know if my setup will be able to pull off dos games honestly, I just bought an Asus A8V-X board (VIA K8T800PRO chipset) which theoretically could run win 98 (according to my research), so I'm thinking to get a PCI card and try to build a strong win98 machine that could potentially run some dos games with sound. Probably it won't work, but this is my first retro build experience so whatever happens is gonna be fun I guess.

I don't really have a board using VT8251 so I cannot be 100% sure, but considering it's supposed to be pin-compatible with VT8237 family southbridges, ESS Solo-1 should in theory work as good as it is on VT8237x.

I got an Asus board A8V-MX (Socket 939) last week, that has the VT8251 VIA Southbridge. It does work with the ESS Solo-1 / ES1938 card using TDMA mode. DOS 7.1, using the instructions I posted on page 24 (mix of ESSOLO.INI configuration + PCISET instruction to change to TDMA).

The Northbridge is K8M800.

The only trick I did.... it was getting IRQ 10. I went to BIOS and reserved IRQ 10, next boot it got IRQ 5.

By the way, I tried a couple of boards with VIA Southbridges, all worked using this method:
Socket 754 Asus K8V-MX and K8V-X SE, Abit KV80 (VIA VT8237R)
Socket 462 EPOX 8K7A+ (AMD 761 North + VIA VT82C686B)
Socket 478 ECS P4VMM2 VT8235

In some cases I had to try a different PCI slot, at the end all worked.

The irony is VIA was the underdog, but for this retro combination it is a good alternative. I will probably settle my main retro machine on a Socket 754 reducing CPU speed with CPUSPD. It relies on common parts to fix and run, plenty available and not expensive (at the moment). I got 2 Yamaha 7x4 cards coming, I will see how they run . If they work, I will be done with it and starting playing some old games.

The Yamaha will have more features in Windows and includes a great hardware synthesizer. The Solo-1 may have better company in DOS. You can definitely use both in the same machine too!

Here is the rarest sound card from creative with the mini PCI form factor. I found it on the Firebird 803 machine.

ahmadexp wrote on 2023-07-06, 18:54:

Here is the rarest sound card from creative with the mini PCI form factor. I found it on the Firebird 803 machine.

CA20K2? I wonder what model it is... how much RAM does the card come with? Normally X-Fi cards except XtremeAudio (which is not EMU20K) have onboard memory though I'm not sure how it could be utilized...

Though it won't be of any help if you want to use it for legacy audio... CA20K is only useful on Windows with soundfonts. Sadly no one ever succeeded in utilizing its hardware features outside Windows unlike its predecessors (EMU10Kx, Live! and Audigy series).

There is nothing on the back (RAM). I am going to plug it to a ICOP 5.7" Panel PC With Vortex86DX, which got a mini PCI slot for the Wifi and see if it shows up in Windows.

Kamerat wrote on 2018-08-17, 16:17:

Yes, it works with games and since ESSOLO.COM mostly ignores the settings in ESSOLO.INI it can be somewhat useful when you want to run other configurations than the default one. You can also enable and disable FM, SB, MPU and joystick separately.

Hi Kamerat (and all!), I am hoping you can help a relative newbie!? I have a Dell Optiplex 170L PC with a ESS Solo1 1938 sound card and am trying to get sound effects working in Doom 1.9. My ESSOLO.COM (running without the .SYS) reports IRQ9. How can I change that to use IRQ5? Could that be why sound effects are not working? I tried using the ESSINIT.BAT to set these but not sure if it is working as it always reports IRQ9. I have tried the WBDMA modes as some have suggested but still no sound effects. I am also confused about not using ESSOLO.COM? When I comment that out I do not get any music or sound effects in Doom - does it need ESSOLO.COM to be executed first? Is it possible to ask what order I should set up and run these?

EDIT: I thought I would try moving the sound card around in the PC. The Dell has only 3 PCI slots. With other cards removed I can get PCI Slot IRQ3, IRQ9 or IRQ10. None of these made any difference to the sound effects in Doom - still nothing... hope someone can help!

Thanks in advance!

What is your mobo ?
Check the chipset is not too recent : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cvhr6 … K4l0/edit#gid=0

And what informations ESSOLO.COM is reporting ? Can you take a picture ?
PCI IRQ (hardware) and SB IRQ (legacy compatibilty) are two different settings, and they maybe different.

See here for a guide on how to configure various ESS sound cards:

Guide for configuring ESS PCI Audio cards for DOS (Solo, Maestro, Allegro, etc.)

Thanks all, I kept hitting a brick wall with this PC, not only with the sound card, so I have retired it and moved to another with a Sound Blaster Live card and all is working well!

Well, some years ago I did the same. I was raging like "Yet another f*** Windows 98 card".
It's been a long path, but I can't live without it now.

SB Live is nice anyway, I like it too.

I agree that the Sound Blaster Live! Is highly underrated. It doesn't have the compatibility of an ISA card or the features of an Audigy, but it's still a great card for Windows 98.

I was unfortunately cursed at the time with one of Dell's fake SB Live! cards and ended up cursing its existence. What a waste of a product and a brand. I could never understand at the time why the official drivers never worked.

Has any one been able to test an ESS Solo 1 with a Via Apollo PLE133T chipset based motherboards under DOS? Despite being a via chipset having the infamous 686B southbridge, it seems to have trouble with Solo 1 cards (tried various solo 1 variants).

stealthjoe wrote on 2025-03-24, 10:54:

Has any one been able to test an ESS Solo 1 with a Via Apollo PLE133T chipset based motherboards under DOS? Despite being a via chipset having the infamous 686B southbridge, it seems to have trouble with Solo 1 cards (tried various solo 1 variants).

VT82C686B should work with Solo-1 out-of-box via DDMA. I've tested this with a KT133A board using this southbridge.

What exact trouble were you facing? It's hard to tell without details.

LSS10999 wrote on 2025-03-25, 02:57:

stealthjoe wrote on 2025-03-24, 10:54:

Has any one been able to test an ESS Solo 1 with a Via Apollo PLE133T chipset based motherboards under DOS? Despite being a via chipset having the infamous 686B southbridge, it seems to have trouble with Solo 1 cards (tried various solo 1 variants).

VT82C686B should work with Solo-1 out-of-box via DDMA. I've tested this with a KT133A board using this southbridge.

What exact trouble were you facing? It's hard to tell without details.

Hello. The motherboard I am using is Biostar M6VLR (PLE133T). It indeed supports DDMA. I have tested Solo 1 cards with Apollo Pro 133 and 133A boards having the 686A/B southbridge with no issues whatsoever.

With the m6vlr, there is no sound blaster with many games (Doom 1, Doom 2, Crystal Maze, etc.). Have tried different methods to no avail. With some other games like Jazz Jackrabbit, there is absolutely no sound at all. The problem is that it is even impossible to get this board into TDMA mode by editing the essolo.ini file.

Let me know with which KT133A board you tested Solo 1? Also does the BIOS support setting dedicated IRQs for the PCI slots?

stealthjoe wrote on 2025-03-25, 04:54:

Hello. The motherboard I am using is Biostar M6VLR (PLE133T). It indeed supports DDMA. I have tested Solo 1 cards with Apollo Pro 133 and 133A boards having the 686A/B southbridge with no issues whatsoever.

With the m6vlr, there is no sound blaster with many games (Doom 1, Doom 2, Crystal Maze, etc.). Have tried different methods to no avail. With some other games like Jazz Jackrabbit, there is absolutely no sound at all. The problem is that it is even impossible to get this board into TDMA mode by editing the essolo.ini file.

Let me know with which KT133A board you tested Solo 1? Also does the BIOS support setting dedicated IRQs for the PCI slots?

The board I used was EPoX 8KTA3PRO.

While both ISA and PCI cards (DDMA) can work with that board, getting the right IRQ can be tricky as from what I remember I had to keep changing positions of installed PCI cards until the sound card gets the desired IRQ.

There's no way to dedicate IRQ for PCI cards. It's meant for reserving them to non-PnP ISA cards.

I recall ESS had a SYS driver (ESSOLO.SYS/ESSAUDIO.SYS) that could somehow map the card to IRQ5 but I didn't remember getting that working. The only times I got it working was when the sound card itself actually claimed IRQ5, be it this board, or later K8 VIA chipsets utilizing VT8237 family southbridges (using TDMA). As such, your mileage may vary.

LSS10999 wrote on 2025-03-25, 05:33:

There's no way to dedicate IRQ for PCI cards. It's meant for reserving them to non-PnP ISA cards.

Hope you are referring to the above with your board as the boards with which I was able to get solo 1 work properly all had the BIOS option to assign an IRQ to a particular PCI slot.

Even another KT133 board (AK74 EC) I tested solo1 had issues with the similar DOS games as above. This board also didn't have the option to assign a dedicated IRQ for the PCI slot.

Meanwhile changing the position of the card across the PCI slots did absolutely nothing with the IRQs. It remained the same throughout. So I manually set the other IRQs (9, 10,11) to ISA in BIOS to force the solo 1 card to 5. Despite this, the sound blaster didn't work properly with many games.

stealthjoe wrote on 2025-03-25, 05:47:

Hope you are referring to the above with your board as the boards with which I was able to get solo 1 work properly all had the BIOS option to assign an IRQ to a particular PCI slot.

Even another KT133 board (AK74 EC) I tested solo1 had issues with the similar DOS games as above. This board also didn't have the option to assign a dedicated IRQ for the PCI slot.

Meanwhile changing the position of the card across the PCI slots did absolutely nothing with the IRQs. It remained the same throughout. So I manually set the other IRQs (9, 10,11) to ISA in BIOS to force the solo 1 card to 5. Despite this, the sound blaster didn't work properly with many games.

I think PCI IRQs are assigned as lines (e.g. INTA#), and which PCI slot uses which line depends on board design.

Perhaps sound cards especially those legacy-capable ones should be placed on a slot not sharing the IRQ line with others (or at least leave other slots sharing the IRQ line in question unpopulated). Some old board manuals may provide more info about which IRQ lines the PCI slots use, but it's in overall uncommon.

stealthjoe wrote on 2025-03-25, 05:47:

Hope you are referring to the above with your board as the boards with which I was able to get solo 1 work properly all had the […]
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LSS10999 wrote on 2025-03-25, 05:33:

There's no way to dedicate IRQ for PCI cards. It's meant for reserving them to non-PnP ISA cards.

Hope you are referring to the above with your board as the boards with which I was able to get solo 1 work properly all had the BIOS option to assign an IRQ to a particular PCI slot.

Even another KT133 board (AK74 EC) I tested solo1 had issues with the similar DOS games as above. This board also didn't have the option to assign a dedicated IRQ for the PCI slot.

Meanwhile changing the position of the card across the PCI slots did absolutely nothing with the IRQs. It remained the same throughout. So I manually set the other IRQs (9, 10,11) to ISA in BIOS to force the solo 1 card to 5. Despite this, the sound blaster didn't work properly with many games.

You have to set the IRQ you the Solo-1 from device manager. There is a separate entry for DOS compatibility that gets installed along with the primary entry.

See here for a guide on how to configure the card.

Guide for configuring ESS PCI Audio cards for DOS (Solo, Maestro, Allegro, etc.)