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Compaq LTE5300 - how on earth do i get audio working in DOS?

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First post, by my03

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Hi,

i have the LTE5300 and i use it with windows 98. I recall that i had to struggle a bit to find the proper ESS drivers working in W98 (i tried a bunch of options. They mostly installed ok, but didn't provide any audio output. In the end, i managed to find an older driver (v4.04) that worked ok with windows).

I keep hearing that this laptop is very good for dos gaming. However, i have a very hard time getting the machine to recognize any audio capabilities at all when running dos (w98 dos). I have tried the various ESS utilities (ESSCFG, etc) but they will not even detect any audio in the machine from dos.

Is it possible even? I assume so given all the praise for this laptop, but how do one go about making it so?`I'm clueless. Any good pointers that you can provide?

Reply 1 of 4, by megatron-uk

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The ESS 1688 shouldn't need any drivers in DOS as it's a hardware SB Pro compatible. You may need to initialise it before any games detect it though - I would try with UNISOUND first: UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.82a

My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net

Reply 2 of 4, by NeoG_

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Since it's in a laptop, it might have the configuration set in the BIOS settings

98/DOS Rig: BabyAT AladdinV, K6-2+/550, V3 2000, 128MB PC100, 20GB HDD, 128GB SD2IDE, SB Live!, SB16-SCSI, PicoGUS, WP32 McCake, iNFRA CD, ZIP100
XP Rig: Lian Li PC-10 ATX, Gigabyte X38-DQ6, Core2Duo E6850, ATi HD5870, 2GB DDR2, 2TB HDD, X-Fi XtremeGamer

Reply 3 of 4, by my03

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NeoG_ wrote on 2026-04-26, 14:21:

Since it's in a laptop, it might have the configuration set in the BIOS settings

Thx Megatron,

i tried the unisound linked and when i run it, it says "No PnP card detected". However, when i run Aida v3.2.3 i can see that it identifies the ESS as a PnP device available. Its all weird. So i took a leap and downloaded the recovery CD for W98 and reinstalled the machine (don't know if I'm allowed to point out directly where, but its on an "archive" very close by luckily)

After this, doing the #1 check in dos (e.g. running Doom 1.9s) i can get both fx and music working. I have no Blaster variable set either. I could repeat it with Hexen and Blood and so i will have to consider it working now 😀

Reply 4 of 4, by my03

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NeoG_ wrote on 2026-04-26, 14:21:

Since it's in a laptop, it might have the configuration set in the BIOS settings

I was hoping it would NeoG, but i couldn't see any such options in bios. Fortunately, i did get it working after a fresh install via recovery CD.

Appreciate the input regardless 😀

br

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