ndstudio wrote on 2025-11-27, 21:38:

Hey all, […]
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Hey all,

I've got a Terratec Promedia TTSOLO1-N Ver1.1 PCI (es1938s) sound card that I'm having trouble getting wavetable header audio working. I have a few wavetable header cards both from serdashop, the WP32 McCake and the X2GS TE.

Originally I had issues getting the card to even work which required reinstalling Windows 98 SE and using the Windows ME version drivers 5.12.01.3047 found here ESS 1938 under DOS This cleared up most of my issues however the wavetable header still has no sound.

I can see that when using the MPU-401 and playing a midi track the WP32 McCake lights up and the front panel screen shows that its playing audio. But, in Windows 98 I don't hear anything... I've tried researching potential solutions but I can't seem to crack this one. Does anyone have advice on getting the audio out of the wavetable header working in Windows 98 with a solo-1 card?

Thanks!

Try this: go to Control Panel > Add New Hardware > press Next, Next, Next... Once the detection is finished, check Details. You should see MPU-401 Compatible, then just press Finish. Check the Device Manager that you can see it there, activate it through Control Panel > Multimedia > Midi

I have 1938s and for me works older and newer drivers, but i dont have any wavetable module.

1149 maybe does not work for you, but dr.zeissler had luck with it his wavetable module.
the driver phil recommends kills my wavetable-module, so I am alwas using 1149 driver on win9x.
Re: ESS 1938 under DOS

Hey khyypio, when I try to add new hardware the add new hardware wizard does not show anything. It only says, "Windows has finished detecting hardware, but did not find any new device on your system. To manually install a specific device, click next." Clicking next shows a list of hardware to add but I am not able to find anything regarding the MPU-401

marxveix, I tried installing all of the drivers but only the 1126 had very limited success but still no audio from the wavetable header.

I have reverted back to the previous 5.12.01.3047 Heres a screenshot of various properties to help give a better idea of what I have going on. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

download/file.php?mode=view&id=231861

ndstudio wrote on 2025-11-27, 21:38:

I can see that when using the MPU-401 and playing a midi track the WP32 McCake lights up and the front panel screen shows that its playing audio. But, in Windows 98 I don't hear anything...
Thanks!

You are saying it appears to be working but there is no sound output? You probably need to add the additional mixer sliders using the options menu. On my ES1869 a slider called "AuxB" controls the wavetable header volume and it's hidden by default.

Hey NeoG_,

I wish it were that simple, I keep checking the volume control properties to see if the AuxB appears when I install different drivers. But, every time I check it shows the same slider options.

Heres a photo of my volume control properties.

download/file.php?mode=view&id=231890

ndstudio wrote on 2025-11-28, 16:34:

Hey NeoG_, […]
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Hey NeoG_,

I wish it were that simple, I keep checking the volume control properties to see if the AuxB appears when I install different drivers. But, every time I check it shows the same slider options.

Heres a photo of my volume control properties.

download/file.php?mode=view&id=231890

Looks like you already have it there. Sometimes the volume control for MIDI might work under a different name, enable all of them in the volume control panel, then play passport.mid, canyon.mid or whatever MIDI track and test all those volume sliders. Also, you have a bunch of unidentified PCI stuff in the device manager, it could also contribute to this issue so install drivers for all of them.

khyypio wrote on 2025-11-29, 08:42:

Looks like you already have it there. Sometimes the volume control for MIDI might work under a different name, enable all of them in the volume control panel, then play passport.mid, canyon.mid or whatever MIDI track and test all those volume sliders. Also, you have a bunch of unidentified PCI stuff in the device manager, it could also contribute to this issue so install drivers for all of them.

All volume controls are active. When I play a midi file the MPU-401 does not playback any sound. The other two (ESFM Synthesizer, Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth) have sound and play great. The Midi slider controls those two but when I switch to the MPE-401 I don't hear anything. Again the issue is that the wavetable header does not seem to produce sound like the other two. I am not sure if this is a hardware issue with this specific card or if this is a software / drivers issue.

One thing to note, my installation of Windows 98 SE is from the Quickinstall. I have noticed that many applications and preferences are missing probably due to this being the Quickinstall. I have tried many times to install Windows 98 SE via the standard boot disk but every time I try booting after the installation I get the safe mode screen. Could the Quickinstall be the issue? Does it omit important sound drivers and preferences needed for AuxB / Wavetable playback?

Last note, when I use the Chill&Phil Wavetable Header adapter and use the audio out and route that into the ESS Solo-1 audio input then I get sound from the Wavetable card. So the MPU-401 is sending midi messages just fine. I am kind of tempted to solder wires from the header pins to one of the CD-Audio sockets on the ESS Solo-1. I know that would work because I know midi is being transmitted. Albeit I'd rather get this working the way it was intended.

Getting the AuxB slider to appear is the key to getting the wavetable header working, since that is the hardware volume control for the wavetable header line. But unfortunately I'm not sure how to make that happen besides trying different drivers which you have already done.

There was another thread on here for someone that was having the same issue, and they said that initializing the card in DOS and playing with the DOS mixer settings made it work but they also said the AuxB slider always appeared in their win98 volume control panel from the start. It's almost like the driver is reading some kind of register from the card and intentionally removing the additional volume slider.

Patching the audio from the header pins to a CD input socket would do the job if you had to because CD/AuxA is available in the mixer. You can use a couple of small wires on the back of the card (ground is usually common) from the WT header to the CD socket solder points. I've done similar re-routing on the back of an SB-Live card to redirect the mic jack on the back of the card to the internal AUX socket to create a second stereo input on the rear panel.

The pre-made quick install images are set up for non-ACPI mode and deliberately omit the standard ESS WDM audio drivers as the author expects you to be using the VxD ones instead. Also there are 2 branches of the VxD ESS drivers, one with a software wavetable and one with a control panel.

If you read through the Inf file for the ESS WDM drivers, it enables or disables different mixer settings based on the device subsystem ID but I can't tell which of the groups your card is in or what all these registry settings are doing. There are definitely registry keys for HideAuxBVolume and HideAuxBMute but I can't tell which sense of that key shows or hides them.

The inf file for the VxD version of the drivers does not seem to change the registry volume settings based on Subsystem ID. Is there a specific reason why you want to be using the WDM driver instead of the VxD?

I don't have a preference and I am not really familiar with VxD vs WDM. I only choose 5.12.01.3047 because they actually work and are the only drivers that I can get to work. As discussed here -> ESS 1938 under DOS the only drivers that would work for Win98 SE are the 5.12.01.3047. I'd like to test the other drivers again once I get my PC running again.

Would you happen to know of a VxD driver that works?

On my Shuttle SK41G I'm using this VxD driver with the 1mb wavetable with Win98se, but also I didn't install the OS on that computer using QuickInstall so I don't know if it will necessarily work for you. I think I also had to mess with a lot of settings in the BIOS and disable one of the USB controllers to get IRQ 5 free for the DOS compatibility.

ndstudio wrote on 2025-12-05, 00:57:

I don't have a preference and I am not really familiar with VxD vs WDM

VxD drivers are faster and tend to have more features in the 9x environment. I'm not sure if it's true for the 1938, but the 186x cards only produce sound for DOS software run inside windows using the VxD drivers for example

Unfortunately when I try installing the https://theretroweb.com/drivers/225 driver using the add new hardware in Windows 98 SE I get the Code 10 error in the device manager for the ESS Solo-1 PCI AudioDrive sound device. I wonder if this is an issue because of the Quickinstall or if this driver is for DOS and not Windows 98 SE ?

So you have Wavetable sound in Dos, but not in Windows ?
To show the AuxB slider, you can go to Volume Control => Options => Properties, then tick AuxB in the list.
Could be set mute.

Anyway, adding an MPU401 hardware manually in the device manager is not always needed.
It depends on the ESS driver version.

ndstudio wrote on 2025-12-05, 03:03:

Unfortunately when I try installing the https://theretroweb.com/drivers/225 driver using the add new hardware in Windows 98 SE I get the Code 10 error in the device manager for the ESS Solo-1 PCI AudioDrive sound device. I wonder if this is an issue because of the Quickinstall or if this driver is for DOS and not Windows 98 SE ?

I have integrated ESS Solo1 and i am using latest 1165 vxd driver, it just works in Win9x (Code 10 error free).

capitaine wrote on 2025-12-05, 06:58:

So you have Wavetable sound in Dos, but not in Windows ?
To show the AuxB slider, you can go to Volume Control => Options => Properties, then tick AuxB in the list.
Could be set mute.

I appreciate the input but if you read my responses and see my photos I have indicated that the slider AuxB does not appear as a selectable item in the audio properties.

I have 2 more ESS Solo-1 cards coming that I will try out. One of the cards is a replacement to the Terratec Promedia TTSOLO1-N Ver1.1 because I was supposed to receive ver 1.2. The other ESS solo-1 card does not seem to be branded at all. So I guess I will try those out and see if i have any luck with Win98 and the AuxB slider.

This is not a hardware issue if it plays fine in Dos, but only a Windows issue.
The right MPU might be one of the unidentified PCI cards. I would delete all those unknown cards, refresh and install the right driver for each of them, before going on.

And if it is not enough, I would get back to the VxD version. It setup a "SB Emulation" entry in the device manager.

That card is not easy to setup, it took patience to me also.

If you look at the poster's other thread, they say they are using a very new Windows platform, a Z97 motherboard. 9x Drivers for most of the unknown devices simply don't exist. Though I am currently working on a HD Audio driver which would probably apply to one of the "PCI Card" unknown devices, it's not a solution for the issue at hand here. Windows 98 treats all PCIe devices as PCI and doesn't understand any of the additional features provided in the new spec.

The PCI slots for the Asus Z97M-PLUS are not provided directly from the chipset, they are bridged from PCIe. The last intel chipsets with real native PCI slots were the B75/Q77. This difference between bridged and native slots may cause problems with PCI cards that use interrupts or DMA (like sound cards), or drivers that try to talk to the device directly instead of using the abstraction layer. WDM drivers work differently to VxD drivers in the abstractions used to communicate with the PCI card and thus might be more likely to work over PCI bridges. See recent Omores posts about the Startech PCIe to PCI enclosure for more on this.

Your core problem with the missing volume slider may be solved just by editing the inf file for the WDM driver you're using. As the inf is currently written, i think the Aux B volume slider is set to hidden for every model of sound card listed. Was that intended behavior? Maybe, the wavetable header was out of fashion by 2000, or it may have slipped by the testers. To fix this you would need to change all the lines like

1HKR,,"HideAuxBVolume",01,01,00,00,00

to

1HKR,,"HideAuxBVolume",01,00,00,00,00

as this seems to be the difference between the IIS and no IIS block of options.

I've done this for you with the latest 5.12.01.3047d version of the Windows Me driver, repackaged it and attached here. You might have to uninstall the device and delete the old solo1.inf file in C:\Windows\Inf for it to add the correct settings to the registry when installed.

onethirdxcubed wrote on 2025-12-06, 09:38:

If you look at the poster's other thread, they say they are using a very new Windows platform, a Z97 motherboard. 9x Drivers for […]
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If you look at the poster's other thread, they say they are using a very new Windows platform, a Z97 motherboard. 9x Drivers for most of the unknown devices simply don't exist. Though I am currently working on a HD Audio driver which would probably apply to one of the "PCI Card" unknown devices, it's not a solution for the issue at hand here. Windows 98 treats all PCIe devices as PCI and doesn't understand any of the additional features provided in the new spec.

The PCI slots for the Asus Z97M-PLUS are not provided directly from the chipset, they are bridged from PCIe. The last intel chipsets with real native PCI slots were the B75/Q77. This difference between bridged and native slots may cause problems with PCI cards that use interrupts or DMA (like sound cards), or drivers that try to talk to the device directly instead of using the abstraction layer. WDM drivers work differently to VxD drivers in the abstractions used to communicate with the PCI card and thus might be more likely to work over PCI bridges. See recent Omores posts about the Startech PCIe to PCI enclosure for more on this.

Your core problem with the missing volume slider may be solved just by editing the inf file for the WDM driver you're using. As the inf is currently written, i think the Aux B volume slider is set to hidden for every model of sound card listed. Was that intended behavior? Maybe, the wavetable header was out of fashion by 2000, or it may have slipped by the testers. To fix this you would need to change all the lines like

Copy code to clipboard

1HKR,,"HideAuxBVolume",01,01,00,00,00

to

Copy code to clipboard

1HKR,,"HideAuxBVolume",01,00,00,00,00

as this seems to be the difference between the IIS and no IIS block of options.

I've done this for you with the latest 5.12.01.3047d version of the Windows Me driver, repackaged it and attached here. You might have to uninstall the device and delete the old solo1.inf file in C:\Windows\Inf for it to add the correct settings to the registry when installed.

You are amazing! Not only explained the entire situation in detail with pointers and other recommendations but you also found the solution and manually updated the driver.

Problem solved, the Aux input now appears in the Volume Control mixer and the Wavetable Daughterboard sounds great.

And you were also right that I had to uninstall the previous driver then make sure its removed from the device manager. Upon restart I had the new hardware prompt locate the new driver and it worked. I was not able to get the setup.exe to load, it kept giving me a "Setup failed to run installation: (0x80040702)". But, its not a problem because like I said I was able to get this loaded in the new hardware prompt.