Ahh, you are correct. Speaker Out is the top plug. I feel like a fool now. On my unit, I wrote with marker on the bracket, but my writing on the top jack had worn off. I just figured it was MIC, IN, OUT, but its SPKR, IN, OUT.

I don't recall where I pilaged my slot bracket from.

LSS10999 wrote on 2025-03-07, 03:14:

I haven't really checked the pins on the "Vol. Btns" header, but it seems to connect to the pins of the external EEPROM (93LC66) with 1K resistors in between.

It would be logical for that header to be connected to the following pins of ES1868:

VOLDN/SEDO
VOLUP/SEDI
MUTE/SECLK

Grzyb wrote on 2025-03-07, 03:39:

It would be logical for that header to be connected to the following pins of ES1868: […]
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LSS10999 wrote on 2025-03-07, 03:14:

I haven't really checked the pins on the "Vol. Btns" header, but it seems to connect to the pins of the external EEPROM (93LC66) with 1K resistors in between.

It would be logical for that header to be connected to the following pins of ES1868:

VOLDN/SEDO
VOLUP/SEDI
MUTE/SECLK

Thanks for clarifying. I think these are indeed meant for buttons to adjust the card's volume as well as a mute toggle.

If needed, one could connect a few physical buttons to the respective pins and place them somewhere accessible such as the front panel.

Sorry for the bump but... had anyone succeeded in getting audio from Windows 9x with this card?

While my card works fine within DOS after configuring via UNISOUND it doesn't appear to work correctly with Windows at all.

Windows 98's WDM drivers can pick up the card correctly (including its integrated IDE controller which was not physically exposed) and does not report any issue, but I'm not getting any sound output. Considering the card needs the /XEA parameter to configure with UNISOUND I wonder if the card was designed in a different setup from what the generic drivers assumed?

On the other hand, the card seems to use an additional DMA channel which is set to 0 by default. I'm not sure about this second DMA channel's purpose...

EDIT: Managed to get this card working fine with NT 3.51 using the 1868 driver from DOS Days, despite the chip I'm using is 1869. Looks like the issue is more about Win98 and probably I need a correct VxD driver... With the WDM driver I'm not getting any sound and MIDI playback produces a bunch of popping noise.

LSS10999 wrote on 2025-04-26, 14:49:

On the other hand, the card seems to use an additional DMA channel which is set to 0 by default. I'm not sure about this second DMA channel's purpose...

On ISA cards, full duplex (simultaneous playback and recording) requires separate DMA channels.

Tried some VxD drivers on Win98 and it doesn't help, either. Same behavior -- no sound output, FM/MIDI produces nothing but pops.

Whenever Device Manager refreshes (manually, or when making changes to devices), pops can be heard from the sound card's output.

Additionally, when I try to remove or alter (update) the main device ("ES1869 Plug and Play AudioDrive"), along with an audible pop, Win98 would raise a 0E exception that can be recovered.

On the other hand, everything works fine with this card on NT 3.51 using this ES1868 driver which can be found here. Both ESFM and MIDI works as well as playing 8-bit and 16-bit audio.

EDIT: I've found the answer -- for this card, even when using a ES1869 chip I still have to use the ES1868 driver. ES1869 driver won't work for this card's setup.

For now ES1868 VxD driver works fine with this card. I probably have broken the system's WDM functionality so I cannot verify whether ES1868 WDM driver works (the driver installs but multimedia properties report nothing present).