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Reply 120 of 486, by dr.zeissler

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I think it's not the IRQ it's the DMA especially the high-dma that causes these issues.
Games with early sb-support do work fine on ess-solo1 with i845 or older. They require I5/7 and only DMA1.

That's perhaps why PinballDreams2+PinballFantasies do work with "adlib" but not with "soundblaster".

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 121 of 486, by ruthan

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I thing that its emulation SB Pro T4/T5, that is 8bit (lowdma) so there shouldnt be high dma at all its for 16bit cards. I know that somehow some games (Blood) are able to use it 16bit (or at least setup look like) on these card to, but only some.. or i dont fully understand how it works. Cards with have full SB16 emulation usually have in set blaster T6 (SB16) a also HX parameter for High DMA.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 122 of 486, by Kamerat

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Made a little batch file for setting up the Solo-1 with the PCISET utility (just rename it with a .BAT extension), no need for ESSOLO.SYS/COM. I think most of the IRQ settings only applies when running the card with serialized IRQ over a PC/PCI connection. As confiugered now it sets the Solo-1 into TDMA mode, SB I/O 220h, SB DMA 1, MPU I/O 330. If viewed under Windows use the Terminal font. Don't expect any magic from this file.

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DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 123 of 486, by ruthan

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Card without drivers, i wonder for what it is good for? I know there some modern program, which have only sound card stacks.. and maybe some music programs.. but as far i understand it, it will work with games, am i right?

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 124 of 486, by Kamerat

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ruthan wrote:

Card without drivers, i wonder for what it is good for? I know there some modern program, which have only sound card stacks.. and maybe some music programs.. but as far i understand it, it will work with games, am i right?

Yes, it works with games and since ESSOLO.COM mostly ignores the settings in ESSOLO.INI it can be somewhat useful when you want to run other configurations than the default one. You can also enable and disable FM, SB, MPU and joystick separately.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 125 of 486, by Revolter

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Kamerat wrote:

Made a little batch file for setting up the Solo-1 with the PCISET utility (just rename it with a .BAT extension), no need for ESSOLO.SYS/COM. I think most of the IRQ settings only applies when running the card with serialized IRQ over a PC/PCI connection. As confiugered now it sets the Solo-1 into TDMA mode, SB I/O 220h, SB DMA 1, MPU I/O 330. If viewed under Windows use the Terminal font. Don't expect any magic from this file.

Kamerat, hey, some of the "problematic games" now work fine with Intel ICH2 if the DMA emulation is set to one of the WBDMA modes (101, 110 or 111)! THANK YOU!!!

Namely those are: Earthworm Jim 2, Quarantine 2, Crusader: No Remorse. Duke Nukem 3D outputs SFX in the setup program and starts fine sometimes, but it always freezes the computer at certain point. I will later report with the full list of tested games.

Celeron 800, 512MB, GeForce2 MX, ES1938S/DB S2, Windows ME/DOS 6.22

Reply 126 of 486, by Revolter

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So here is the list (note that I haven't tested every idTech 1 and Build game - just several of each to get the impression):

idTech 1 games                           (Windows, WBDMA) /in DOS use DOS/32A
Build games (Windows)
Aladdin
Alien Rampage (Windows, WBDMA)
Bioforge (WBDMA)
Brutal: Paws of Fury (Windows)
Carmageddon (Windows, WBDMA)
Chu Liuxiang Chuanqi: Xuehai Piaoxiang (Windows)
Crusader: No Remorse (WBDMA)
Crusader: No Regret (WBDMA)
CyberMage: Darklight Awakening (WBDMA)
Death Rally (Windows) /skips and crackling, borderline playable
Deep Red (Windows, WBDMA)
Descent (Windows, WBDMA)
Descent 2 (Windows, WBDMA)
Descent to Undermountain (Windows, WBDMA) /skips or cracles, borderline playable
Dreamweb (Windows, WBDMA)
Dune 2 (Windows, WBDMA)
Dyna Blaster
Earthworm Jim (WBDMA)
Earthworm Jim 2 (WBDMA)
Epic Pinball (Windows)
Extreme Pinball (Windows)
Flies: Attack on Earth
Hi-Octane (Windows, WBDMA)
Homey D. Clown (WBDMA)
IndyCar Racing 2 (Windows, WBDMA) /in DOS sounds end abruptly
Interpose (WBDMA) /infrequent quiet pops
Jazz Jackrabbit (Windows) /slight crackling
Kingdom At War (Windows) /audio is a bit noisy
Kome Bumb (Windows, WBDMA) /in DOS slight skips and crackling
Last Rites (WBDMA)
Legend of Kyrandia 2 (Windows, WBDMA)
Legend of Kyrandia 3 (Windows)
Lion King (Windows, WBDMA) /in DOS sounds end abruptly
Magic Carpet (Windows) /audio is a bit noisy
One Must Fall: 2097 (Windows) /slight crackling
Pacific Strike (WBDMA)
PC Rally (Windows) /audio is a bit noisy
Quake (Windows, WBDMA) /in DOS sounds end abruptly
Quarantine (WBDMA) /use DOS/32A
Quarantine 2: Road Warrior (WBDMA)
Raptor: Call of the Shadows (Windows, WBDMA) /in DOS use DOS/32A.EXE
Rayman (WBDMA) /sounds end abruptly
Rise of the Triad (Windows, WBDMA)
Screamer 2 (WBDMA)
Silverball
SlipStream 5000 (Windows, WBDMA) /crackling in intro and menu
Star Trek - A Final Unity (Windows, WBDMA) /borderline playable due to sound crackling)
Strike Commander (WBDMA)
Super Star Wars (Windows, WBDMA) /in Windows audio is a bit noisy
Terminal Velocity (WBDMA)
Terminator: Future Shock (Windows, WBDMA)
Terminator: SKYNET (Windows, WBDMA)
The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall (Windows, WBDMA)
The Need For Speed (Windows, WBDMA)
Trial By Magic (Windows, WBDMA) /in DOS slight crackling
Turrican 2 (WBDMA)
Ultima 8 (WBDMA)
Vigilance on Talos V (WBDMA) /borderline playable due to sound skipping
Show last 4 lines
Wing Commander: Armada                   (WBDMA)
Wings of Glory
X-COM: UFO Defense (Windows, WBDMA)
X-COM: Terror From The Deep (Windows, WBDMA)

What all of this means:

1) These are the games I know of that do not output digital sound (correctly, without crashes/freezes/jerky performance, or at all) in pure DOS 6.22 on the ESS Solo-1 ES1938S card (this is a pretty large family of desktop and integrated cards, so it may also be valid for Allegro, Canyon-3D and other chipsets) in its native TDMA mode on an Intel 815+ICH2 motherboard.

2) If not otherwise stated - the game runs perfectly fine in the specified mode.

3) By "Windows" I mean the built-in Windows Millenium Edition WDM driver for ESS Solo-1 ES1938S.

4) By "WBDMA" I mean the additional compatibility mode made available during the card's initialization routine thanks to Kamerat and his wonderful easy-to-read batch file. For this list I used the "111" value - as it has less artifacts and is slightly louder for some reason than the other values (101 and 110). Note: the value "100" does nothing useful compared to TDMA.

5) The games that do not have any comments beside them - simply do not work properly with this card (they either do not even start, or are unplayable with digital sound enabled due to jerky animations, speed issues or other woes) despite my workaround attempts that worked for other games.

So now it's only 5 games that don't work out of about 200 I've tested 😁 That is quite an improvement from 69!

Last edited by Revolter on 2021-08-24, 21:42. Edited 29 times in total.

Celeron 800, 512MB, GeForce2 MX, ES1938S/DB S2, Windows ME/DOS 6.22

Reply 127 of 486, by Kamerat

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Very nice Revolter. I had nearly written off the WBDMA modes, but never did any extended testing of them.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 128 of 486, by ruthan

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Its WBDMA ESS-Solo 1 specific or it could help other cards?

Revolter: Is always good to add some info to not working games too, where is problem. Someone could figure out how to fix such problem, after testing lots of games with lots of cards on modern machine, i developed quite fixing skill.. I recommend minimal test everything in EMS and Realmode (Himem.sys, dont start EMS at all) if card enable it test it with both IRQ 5/7. If you get some runtime error 200 or 6003 or divide overflow that is generally fixable. I never fixed anything by using DOS32A, but i fixed very few games or its warning by using newer version od DOS4GW.. If have are using HMI*386 libraries you can try to use library from other game - newer / older.. same with some *.ovl and *.drv drivers. And there are other tricks.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 129 of 486, by Kamerat

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ruthan wrote:

Its WBDMA ESS-Solo 1 specific or it could help other cards?

Some PCI sound cards got some other (TSR less) modes than the standard DDMA and PC/PCI modes. Crystal got it's CCLS and CCLX. Forté Media FM801-AU got it's "Legacy modes" that might be some sort of WBDMA modes. Avance Logic ALS4000 got WBDMA and WSDMA (Write snoop DMA). Trident 4DWave got it's "Trident proprietary DMA snooping mechanism" as stated in the datasheet.

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
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Reply 130 of 486, by ruthan

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Kamerat wrote:

Some PCI sound cards got some other (TSR less) modes than the standard DDMA and PC/PCI modes. Crystal got it's CCLS and CCLX. Forté Media FM801-AU got it's "Legacy modes" that might be some sort of WBDMA modes. Avance Logic ALS4000 got WBDMA and WSDMA (Write snoop DMA). Trident 4DWave got it's "Trident proprietary DMA snooping mechanism" as stated in the datasheet.

Thanks for info, so any major players.. except ESS Solo1, from modern as possible retro machine perspective.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 131 of 486, by dr.zeissler

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This batch file with pciset-utility does not solve any of my problematic game-engines.
The only thing that helps is using WDM-Drivers within win98se. sorry guys.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 132 of 486, by Revolter

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dr.zeissler wrote:

This batch file with pciset-utility does not solve any of my problematic game-engines.
The only thing that helps is using WDM-Drivers within win98se. sorry guys.

Which motherboard have you tried this on? Did you check the other values (101, 110)? Are you sure you've changed the right value? Check the picture for exact location.

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Celeron 800, 512MB, GeForce2 MX, ES1938S/DB S2, Windows ME/DOS 6.22

Reply 134 of 486, by dr.zeissler

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Testing with "100";"101";110";"111"
- Pinball Dreams2
- Pinball Fantasies
Result: Before "tack, tack, tack" now: "garbage: aoiafvhninbv"

Testing with "100";"101";110";"111"
- Extreme Pinball
Result: Before "nothing at all" now: "nothing at all"

Testing with "100";"101";110";"111"
- Duke3d
- Blood
- Swarrior
Result: Before "DMA/IRQ conflict" now: "DMA/IRQ conflict"

Testing with "100";"101";110";"111"
- Turrican2
Result: Before "nothing at all" now: "nothing at all"

So as you can see, this does not change anything for me. I am going to play these games within Win98se and the WDM-Drivers dated from 2000.
Turrican2 does not work at all (because it requires only himem), ExtremePinball sound is cratchy on Win9x. PinballDreams2/PinballFantasies
do not work on Win9x, but they do work with "adlib" and throttle. But they do not sound as good as with GUS or a Sb16, but they do work.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 135 of 486, by ruthan

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I can confirm that ESS Solo 1 is working with 4CoreDual-VSTA MB -VIA 880 Ultra / VT8237A chipset /Southbridge in pure Dos, didnt yet mess with WBDMA.. Im running with JEMM, because im unable to make EMM working (freeze on EMS line, regardless of IDE/SATA / Bios setting). ESSsolo.com print out IRQ7,A220 DMA1, P330 settings. WIn98 game are working too, i didnt test WIn98 Dos mode, but i discovered that there is some legacy device in device manager - there was detected A240, i changed it to A220 to better compatibility, no problem.

I have same problems as other with Doom II + Blood - music only, no SFX, i know that it was already reported but its still suprising that these high profiles games are not compatible Doom II is on of "most important" Dos games..

What is working (i did test only few games): Warcraft I + II, Dungeon Master I, Golden Axe.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 136 of 486, by ruthan

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Ok i have tested ESS Solo 1 + VIA 880 Ultra with some games are added results to my sheet (last collumn):
https://docs.zoho.com/sheet/published.do?rid= … 04bf92a9209e034

I didn yet fiddle with WBDMA, but .. i would say that Aureals and Yamahas are better choices for pure DOS, ESS SOLO 1 make sense probably only when you need to assemble Core 2 Quad machine Via chipset in comparison with some i865 board which supports only Duo Core, also there are "Frankenstein" Asrock MB with PCI-E (all Gen2 cards are supported up to Geforce 730), and AGP and PCI videocards its better that i865 boards for multiboot.. but i would say that X58 is much better for multiboot.

From results ESS Solo 1 is not bad card with VIA chipset, lots of games are working, but with others cards even more game are working even on newer chipsets and there is also issues that with VIA 880 ultra, im only able to use JEMM386 and QEMM, EMM386 freezing at start even with IDE HDD.. so im glad that i tested it, but is not some ultimate hidden gem.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 137 of 486, by Revolter

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ruthan wrote:

I didn yet fiddle with WBDMA

But that is the whole point: the WBDMA trick makes this already decent card the best PCI solution for DOS games compatibility (in my opinion). Much less games are prone to freezing or crashing on startup like with Aureal cards, no EMM386 requirement and lack of wavetable header of Yamaha's, drivers are not throttling-sensitive like Creative's. And for those games that do not work still - there are always the WDM drivers shipped with Windows ME (they also enable the wavetable header in Win9x). Have you read the comments above?

Doom and other idTech 1 games work in both DOS (via WBDMA + DOS32A) and Windows (via WDM).

By the way, I've since found out that Death Rally demo version works fine for some reason. One Must Fall 2097 is also good in Windows, but only if you can run your CPU slow enough concerning real speed (300Mhz tops I think), so that you could slow it down to 486 level with Throttle.exe. I've already played through the whole game like that and finished it 😀

Celeron 800, 512MB, GeForce2 MX, ES1938S/DB S2, Windows ME/DOS 6.22

Reply 138 of 486, by ruthan

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Revolter wrote:

But that is the whole point: the WBDMA trick makes this already decent card the best PCI solution for DOS games compatibility (in my opinion). Much less games are prone to freezing or crashing on startup like with Aureal cards, no EMM386 requirement and lack of wavetable header of Yamaha's, drivers are not throttling-sensitive like Creative's. And for those games that do not work still - there are always the WDM drivers shipped with Windows ME (they also enable the wavetable header in Win9x). Have you read the comments above?

Well, i dont care about Win98, its running fine even on much faster machines. I wanted to test default driver settings at first and after if i would have time later with WBDMA. Reports are actually mix bag - Kamerat - wrote dont expect too much, for you its working (i dunno with which values), dr.zeissler reporting that its the same..

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 139 of 486, by Revolter

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ruthan wrote:

Reports are actually mix bag

Not at all: Kamerat told us he hadn't tested the WBDMA modes, and dr.zeissler had reported about the games I've already listed as not working in DOS even with WBDMA (the Pinball series works in Adlib mode, so they are non-problematic in my book).

Celeron 800, 512MB, GeForce2 MX, ES1938S/DB S2, Windows ME/DOS 6.22