Well my second AudioDrive experience wasn’t as fun as the first. I picked up this card for a few bucks because I wanted to try out the ES1688 chipset (http://alsa.cybermirror.org/manuals/ess/PB1688B.PDF):

It works fine and actually I’d say the Sound Blaster Pro compatible side of the card sounds a little bit nicer than my first card, the 1868F. I’m no expert with this stuff but it just sounds a little bit more like a real SB Pro. This chipset was also natively supported in at least one game I tried, and that I like. This chipset also includes the ESFM synth, just like the 1868, which still sounds very nice here.

Setting it up was just as easy as before; my one and only problem with it was the wavetable header, which seems not to work. Unlike the ES688 chipset, which preceded the ES1688, this card should in theory not require a driver for the wavetable header, i.e. it’s implemented in hardware. But try as I might I just couldn’t get a peep out of it. I fiddled with jumpers, shorted a likely looking blank jumper header labelled ‘WAVE-EN’, and tried all the configuration and mixer options I could think of. No dice. The MPU401 was recognised no problem, I just never got any sound.

To confuse the issue I found this information in the deep dark recesses of the interwebs:

1Wavetable Driver for DOS based Games (ES1688 only)
2Your sound card supports a universal wavetable daughterboard upgrade. If you have attached a wavetable daughterboard and you cannot hear background music or sound effects from the wavetable (usually General MIDI standard) synthesis chip, then quite possibly the game you are using does not include a driver for wavetable synthesis (an example = "Doom2"). In this case you need to enable the Wavetable Driver included on diskette # 1/1. Install as follows..
3•	Install DOS drivers as stated above.
4•	The process of DOS driver installation will create a directory called PCAUDIO. Go to this directory on your specific drive (usually C:\PCAUDIO\) by typing CD PCAUDIO at the C:\ prompt.
5•	Type EN1688 - This will install the wavetable driver.

I did manage to track down ‘EN1688.exe’ but all it seem to do was dynamically move the card from IRQ 5, to IRQ 7. Still no action from the wavetable.

I know this chipset was sometimes coupled with ESS’s version on onboard wavetable syntheses, which is what I presume the blank IC placeholders are for on the card I have, but if you’re gonna include an external wavetable header too, then why not make it functional?

Anyway I have another card with this chipset on the way so hopefully I have more luck with that one. If the wavetable header worked, I think this card would have topped the ES1868F.

I think I had the exact same problem with this card, and tried shorting the blank solder pads for WAVE_EN as well.

This was a couple of years ago and I ended up cracking the shits and sold all my ESS cards in one lot on ebay for a tenner.

At the time I presumed the empty solder pads all over the card had something to do with the wavetable header not working.

Looks like that PCB was designed for an optional onboard wavetable synth. It may have used the I/O normally routed to the Wave Blaster header to interface with the rest of the card.

There's a long lost thread around here somewhere in which RetroGames100 was testing a card with this chipset, but his included the onboard wavetable too. He was able to switch b/w the onboard synth and a daughterboard via a jumper, so maybe you guys are right. Without the onboard stuff, the header is useless too. That's a bit crap.

I'll track down one with the onboard synth functionality too and see if that gives me some love.

BTW what ever happened to RetroGames100? His hardware test threads were great.

Do you know what kind of synth these ESS cards are designed for?

On Atrend and Labway YMF71x cards there's space for a QS1000 synth + wave ROM but I've never actually seen a card with these chips on it.

jwt27 wrote:

Do you know what kind of synth these ESS cards are designed for?

ESS had their own synth and effects processors.
https://web.archive.org/web/19980215231227/ht … io/isaaudio.htm

Quick question:

Do the ESS drive route the PC speaker signal though during POST (So you can hear the POST beep), or only after initialising the card through software?

I've got a YMF 719 with the QS1000....

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Quick question:

Do the ESS drive route the PC speaker signal though during POST (So you can hear the POST beep), or only after initialising the card through software?

It doesn't snag the PC speaker signal at all on my system. I'm using it in a socket 370 machine though so perhaps the signal doesn't go via the ISA bus on these later motherboards? Uneducated guess there.

I noticed that my PAS16 - which is also supposed to intercept the PC speaker signal on the ISA bus - doesn't reliably grab it either. I guess it's not an exact science.

Sorry I meant by connecting the PC speaker header on the motherboard with the PC SPK header on the sound card (or CD, or AUX).

Out of all the cards I have it seems only my Sound Blaster Pro 2 does this without a driver and you can hear the RAM test ticks and POST beep which is always nice.

However it also creates interference, so I stopped using this cable and only use it for recording PC speaker sounds.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I've got a YMF 719 with the QS1000....

😳

What does it sound like? Is it any good? I can't find really find anything about it on the internets, except that it was used in certain arcade machines and MAME now emulates it somewhat. But recordings are nowhere to be found.

I haven't gotten around to testing it out yet. I've had a lot of hardware going bad on me lately, so I'm not in a good position to test at the moment.

Testing it is on my to do list though.

Have been playing around with my integrated ESS 1888 in my Compaq.

I'm happy with it so far. It sounds better than my old SB16 CT2230 and one of the big benefits which I just realized is that PC speaker sound is now directed to the speakers 😀 Only downside is that the wavetable connector have been removed on the motherboard (but it looks like you can solder it on though)

EDIT: Too all Windows 98 users of this card. DO NOT use the drivers that comes with Win98. Sound in DOS applications running in a DOS-window will not work! Use the Win9x drivers attached to this post.

I got this same card yesterday. Sounds great! I even got a CD-ROM working off the IDE! No more crappy Orchid that can't read CD-Rs!

vetz wrote:

Have been playing around with my integrated ESS 1888 in my Compaq.

I'm happy with it so far. It sounds better than my old SB16 CT2230 and one of the big benefits which I just realized is that PC speaker sound is now directed to the speakers 😀 Only downside is that the wavetable connector have been removed on the motherboard (but it looks like you can solder it on though)

EDIT: Too all Windows 98 users of this card. DO NOT use the drivers that comes with Win98. Sound in DOS applications running in a DOS-window will not work! Use the Win9x drivers attached to this post.

Sorry Vetz I didn't see this until now. Glad to hear you're getting some joy out of the Audiodrive, and thanks for the driver tip. Shame about the wavetable header, that's one of the main advantages of this chipset over a real SB Pro 2.0

I've been slowly gathering together a few different permutations of this chipset and will be testing them all soon, I'm hoping to find "the best of the best".

IIRC, and FWIW I think the 1869 added full duplex support. Was a great card back in the day, excellent value and the compatibility was amazing.

Would change the caps on these though. They've got to be 20 years old now, and they were off-brand caps to begin with. I have several of these cards still around here somewhere.

ESS1869 introduced 'Spatializer 3-D VBX'. As you can find in the ISA soundcard overview in my signature.

I know ESS from the Compaq Pentium 90 we had back then. Easy to use and Compatible for sure. Not the best at anything, but not bad at anything either, which is rare.

Can someone test ESS AudioDrive compatibility of PX MIDI player? You have to execute 'px blah.mid auddrvfm'.

bristlehog wrote:

Can someone test ESS AudioDrive compatibility of PX MIDI player? You have to execute 'px blah.mid auddrvfm'.

Both FM and MPU playback works on my ESS1888 😀

vetz wrote:

bristlehog wrote:

Can someone test ESS AudioDrive compatibility of PX MIDI player? You have to execute 'px blah.mid auddrvfm'.

Both FM and MPU playback works on my ESS1888 😀

Thank you!