Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-30, 07:40:

zuldan wrote on 2025-04-30, 07:09:

I set Prehistorik to Sound Blaster but then complained about "ct-voice.drv not detected" not being detected. I tried Adlib and it's working fine. Is there a trick to get Sound Blaster working or am I supposed to use Adlib?

Feel like a noob, never played this game before.

No worries, it does take some effort to get that game running.

Check the thread that I linked to and find a version of CT-VOICE.DRV that shipped with SBPro cards. It should be in one of the attachments in the first post. Then copy that file to the Prehistorik folder and it should run with Sound Blaster selected.

Ok finally got the game to work. The result is......it freezes on the first NPC so maybe when the digital sound kicks in 🙁

zuldan wrote on 2025-05-02, 06:28:

Ok finally got the game to work. The result is......it freezes on the first NPC so maybe when the digital sound kicks in 🙁

That sounds similar to what I experienced.

A few older games will only run with SB-Link enabled on the Solo-1. But many others will work fine with just DDMA or TDMA.

zuldan wrote on 2025-05-02, 06:28:

Ok finally got the game to work. The result is......it freezes on the first NPC so maybe when the digital sound kicks in 🙁

Please try with the attached ESSOLO.COM, it is modified to force the card into PC/PCI (SBLINK) mode. This assumes that your board has actual traces going from the onboard chip to the southbridge.

I've personally not fully tested it yet, only preliminarily.

Tried it and it initialized into DDMA mode. So no luck. But maybe I'm a special case as I cannot force SB Link mode in any way on my 440BX board.

Paar wrote on 2025-05-02, 18:10:

Tried it and it initialized into DDMA mode. So no luck. But maybe I'm a special case as I cannot force SB Link mode in any way on my 440BX board.

PC-PCI/SB-Link on the Solo is as rare as hens teeth... Some people claim it works, but you can count them on one hand. Personally, I did get mine to initialize as PC/PCI, I don't remember exactly how, but it still didn't work properly. I'm sure it does in fact work, in some very specific scenarios for some people, but it's not worth the time or effort (ESFM is also a disincentive and is why I abandoned ESS cards in general). If you need PCI audio with full ISA compatibility, get a YMF724 -- it works with practically zero effort on any system I tested it on, provided it was connected to the SB-LINK.

Yeah, spent several hours trying to make it work, without success. On the other hand YMF724 card worked on the first try. But I think the ESFM sound pretty good, and is well balanced with PCM volume for games that max volume up (e.g. Wolf3D). Maybe too strong low pass filter for low quality samples but not horrible by any means.

Paar wrote on 2025-05-02, 18:43:

Yeah, spent several hours trying to make it work, without success. On the other hand YMF724 card worked on the first try. But I think the ESFM sound pretty good, and is well balanced with PCM volume for games that max volume up (e.g. Wolf3D). Maybe too strong low pass filter for low quality samples but not horrible by any means.

ESFM is ok, but it depends for who. If you never played games on original OPLx hardware, sure, ESFM is the best of the bunch. If all you heard was OPL 30+ years ago, it ain't good enough.

The only drawback with the YMF724 is the lack of the wavetable header. If you need that you can order a specially made wavetable adapter that plugs in to the back of the card's gameport. I could get this functional on the YMF724, but not on the YMF744.

It gets problematic if you need to actually use the gameport though. Haven't had a chance to look into that yet. Maybe a 15 pin splitter would work for that.

mockingbird wrote on 2025-05-02, 13:37:

Please try with the attached ESSOLO.COM, it is modified to force the card into PC/PCI (SBLINK) mode. This assumes that your boa […]
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zuldan wrote on 2025-05-02, 06:28:

Ok finally got the game to work. The result is......it freezes on the first NPC so maybe when the digital sound kicks in 🙁

Please try with the attached ESSOLO.COM, it is modified to force the card into PC/PCI (SBLINK) mode. This assumes that your board has actual traces going from the onboard chip to the southbridge.

The attachment PCPCI.zip is no longer available

I've personally not fully tested it yet, only preliminarily.

No luck unfortunately 🙁

jtchip wrote on 2024-08-20, 01:34:

FWIW this is my card, as you can see it's really minimal, the game port is a dummy and the passive components to make it work are not fitted.

The "enhanced minimal" version : it has longer traces, it runs with Netware and is "Year 2004 ComplanI" 😀
https://www.olx.kz/d/obyavlenie/zvukovaya-kar … rd-IDnFstd.html

Wow, with "Perfect 3D Sound Effect", good catch! 😁

capitaine wrote on 2025-05-09, 10:43:

jtchip wrote on 2024-08-20, 01:34:

FWIW this is my card, as you can see it's really minimal, the game port is a dummy and the passive components to make it work are not fitted.

The "enhanced minimal" version : it has longer traces, it runs with Netware and is "Year 2004 ComplanI" 😀
https://www.olx.kz/d/obyavlenie/zvukovaya-kar … rd-IDnFstd.html

A Netware-certified sound card? That's amusing to see. Thanks for sharing. 😄 Any real-world applications it had in the day? Maybe as some kind of audio streaming server?

So as a datapoint, I have a K400 chip on my IBM (Labway built) Solo-1 card and it can play Enhanced "Native" ESFM because the koolnESS demo player has no problem with it: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=96920

Using it with games is probably hindered by the same reason ESSVOL.EXE doesn't run with it.
Warcraft II's setup.exe won't detect it as an AudioDrive for Enhanced ("Native") ESFM.
So I suspect warcraft2 tries to use the ISA AudioDrive's mixer commands to detect compatibility, just like ESSVOL.EXE.

I don't have any other ESS-enhanced games to try, but Theme Hospital sounds like a good one to get.

At lease it's not a case of these later rev Solo-1 chips getting a simplified ESFM block, which would contradict its datasheet that still describes "Native" ESFM.

I currently have five different ESS ES1938S Solo-1 sound cards with different ES1938S chip revisions.

• Labway Solo-1 D60 (H419)
• Labway Solo-1 L70 (K400)
• Terratec TTSOLO1-N V1.1 (G398)
• Terratec TTSOLO1-S V1.1 (G388)
• Terratec TTSOLO1-SL V1.2 (K194)

I've confirmed that all cards and chip revisions support ESFM and TDMA when the appropriate PCI register configuration. I've used the PCISET.EXE method to do this for each card. None of the cards are detected by Warcraft II as an ESFM card.
Like other's have experienced, ESSVOL.EXE does not work on the cards with K*** revision chips. I used a DEBUG.EXE script to set all the mixer volumes. Only one of my K*** rev cards has a wavetable header, but I've confirmed it works after setting the mixer volumes with this method.

To do this, create a file named SETVOL.SCR with the following contents:

1o 224 00
2o 225 00
3o 224 04
4o 225 99
5o 224 32
6o 225 99
7o 224 36
8o 225 99
9o 224 3a
10o 225 99
11o 224 3c
12o 225 00
13o 224 1a
14o 225 00
15o 224 38
16o 225 00
17o 224 48
18o 225 00
19q
20:end

Then run this to execute the script:

1DEBUG.EXE < SETVOL.SCR

A quick overview of what this does is below. Exact specifics for each register can be found in the ESS ES1938S datasheet:

• 0x00 - Reset mixer
• 0x04 - Set DAC volume
• 0x32 - Set Master volume
• 0x36 - Set FM volume
• 0x3a - Set AuxB volume (wavetable header)
• 0x3c - Mute PC Speaker
• 0x1a - Mute Mic Mix
• 0x38 - Mute AuxA (CD)
• 0x48 - Disable ES689 interface (not sure if required, just matching what ESSVOL.EXE does)

The most interesting discovery during my testing is that the K*** revision chips sound have much less noise than the other revisions. The other revisions all suffer a high-pitched whine depending on what's being played. I can hear it while playing DOOM even when all volumes are lowered to 0, but it is not present in Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. This high-pitch whine can be lessened by setting SB mixer 0x71 to 0x02, though it's still present and thus noisier than the K*** rev chips.

1o 224 71
2o 225 02
3q
4:end

Another interesting discovery is that it is possible to disable the low-pass filter by setting the first bit in the same SB register 0x71. Set the mixer value in the above to 0x06.