Well, I found another issue using the 1868 drivers. While this gives DOS and Windows waveout with no problems, any attempt at directsound access will cause the computer to hang, so most games and whatever desktop software tries to access the card in that way is unusable...

This is a shame, as I really didn't want to give up sound when launching DOS software without having to reboot the whole computer into DOS mode, but I've yet to find another solution...

I'm sorry for the triple posting, but since I can't just add this information to the last post and this might help someone in the future, in my particular case it turns out I managed to sort out my directsound issue by downgrading directX from 9.0 to 8.1

So to recap: 1317 driver files, with ES1869.DRV and .VXD replaced with ones from ES1868 v1207 renamed, and DirectX 8.1 so far seems to be the setup that a Compaq Armada 1750 prefers the best for both 98 and DOS applications 😀

squ1rrel wrote on 2025-08-31, 20:07:

I'm sorry for the triple posting, but since I can't just add this information to the last post and this might help someone in the future, in my particular case it turns out I managed to sort out my directsound issue by downgrading directX from 9.0 to 8.1

So to recap: 1317 driver files, with ES1869.DRV and .VXD replaced with ones from ES1868 v1207 renamed, and DirectX 8.1 so far seems to be the setup that a Compaq Armada 1750 prefers the best for both 98 and DOS applications 😀

Hmm, this is interesting.

I've just built a Windows 98 machine with an ES1869 card (Compaq 332859-001) and at first the music sounded very odd in games like Doom95. I installed the different (non WMD) drivers and that fixed the sound issue for that.

I then tried to run Dino Park Tycoon from Windows 98 and cannot seem to get any audio from it. I haven't tried other games yet but this is interesting.

Is there a chance you can write a more in-depth step-by-step process on how you achieved this? Where did you get the 1207 drivers from?
My understanding from your post is:
- Download 1207.zip from somewhere
- Extract 1207.zip
- Rename ES1868.DRV and ES1868.VXD to ES1869.DRV and ES1869.VXD respectively
- Download 1317.zip from the post on the last page
- Extract 1317.zip
- Move/Replace the ES1869.DRV and ES1869.VXD from 1317 with the ones renamed from 1207. (Then do what?)
- Install DirectX 8.1

Thank you for your findings! Hopefully you can let us know what we do with these files after they've been renamed and added to the rest of the 1317 files. Is it just a case of going to Have Disk for the drivers again?

OK, so after spending almost 3 hours searching, I managed to find 1868_v1207.zip. I've attached it here to save people this headache in the future.
1317.zip is included on Page 2 here so I won't attach it to this post.

I followed the steps in my last post with the exception of installing DirectX 8.1.
The extra setup I did was:
- From the combined files of 1317 and 1207, run the SETUP.EXE package
- The computer will reboot and on start, ask you to insert the disk for the drivers. Just navigate to the place you stored the driver files and click OK
- Drivers will install and system will reboot
- That's it, done

Now, I am not sure that it is perfect. I cannot get Dinopark Tycoon to run with any kind of sound or music (and in true DOS, the game doesn't even start properly - never has on this system), but Duke Nukem 3D's audio works just fine.
Doom's audio is also fine with both the Doom95 sourceport and the PRBoom sourceport.

At this point, I don't need a higher version of DirectX than what I'm already using (which I think is DirectX 6.0) so I haven't tried with DirectX 8.1 and probably won't unless I absolutely have to.

Thank you squ1rrel for your detective work on this. Hopefully this thread will help others in the future.
If so, hello future people - hopefully this works for you, too!