I've been stalking these forums for a little bit as I found that an old baby AT K5 PC that I had long given up for dead apparently still works, and so I set about refurbing it. Who knew that DOS sound was so complicated!

Since I don't have $100 laying around to buy an MT-32, I thought that I'd try to hook up an MPU-401 compatible card to my Yamaha PSR-290 keyboard at least so that I can play GM games. The first step in my plan was to acquire a used ISA sound card. AWE 32/AWE 64 Gold sounded awesome, but I was turned off when I learned that you can't use the soundfonts in pure DOS and that there were some incompatibilities with previous Sound Blasters. Then I thought of Sound Blaster Pro, but it's not MPU-401 compatible. Sound Blaster 16 sounded perfect, but then I learned about the hanging notes problem for MPU-401 MIDI...argh!

I found that someone had reviewed the ESS1868 chips favorably (someone wrote that it had good FM modulation, was highly Sound Blaster compatible, and didn't require drivers), so I bought a generic one off of eBay and I just wanted to make a few observations here:

1) It's not technically ESS1868, it's using the ESS1868F chipset (difference?)
2) It's true that it doesn't require drivers, though there is a driver disk with the generic ES1868 driver and ESSVOL utility (see below). Haven't yet had a problem with autodetection.
3) AdLib emulation is horrible. Since AdLib uses FM modulation, I'm guessing this means that FM modulation is actually terrible?
4) Sound Blaster emulation is decent. CORRECTION: Previously I had written that some did not have sound effects. This is because the wave volume on the card was set to zero, and I corrected this by downloading the ESSVOL utility, which is part of the drivers available at BTC's website (see below).
5) CORRECTION: Previously I had written that some games were very loud. This can be corrected by downloading the ESSVOL utility, which is part of the drivers available at BTC's website (see below).
6) My BIOS has a feature where it lists the ISA cards plugged in, and it reports that my sound card is an ESS AudioDrive.
7) It appears to have one IDE and one wavetable connector as well as three CD audio connectors plus two four pin connectors whose meaning I am unclear of. The outer pins on the latter two connectors have "L" and "R" printed above them on the PCB with the middle two having "G" and "G" (so left, ground, ground, right). Regarding one of the three CD audio connectors, it says J7 next to it, and elsewhere there is a legend printed on the PCB that reads "J7 1=SPK 2,3=GND 4=MIC OUT". Interesting.
😎 It also has a joystick/MIDI port and mic, line in, and speaker jacks.

UPDATE: Originally, I wrote that I couldn't find the model of this card. It was actually on a label on the back. The card is a Behavior Tech BTC 1853L and there are DOS drivers on the company's website (www.btc.com.tw), though I didn't need them for SB emulation.

Waiting for my MIDI cable to come in, then I'll let you all know how GM playback goes.