I recently got myself a Pine PT-2019 card, based on ES1698 chip.

Now the card itself doesn't seem to be that rare per se (documented here on Dosdays), but the chip is very obscure. No datasheet or even a product page/press release on ESS website.

I'm curious to find out more about the chip, maybe find different drivers for it to test and so on.

According to Pine 1698 seems to sit somewhere between 1688 and 1868:

- it supports ESFM
- it has software volume control (unlike 1688) along with a weird 4 pin connector that is descibed to control the volume, but I don't know what it connects to (some kind of front panel?)
- it supports 3D spatial sound (unlike 1688)
- it should be PnP (again, unlike 1688)

Unfortunately, Pine hosted their drivers on an FTP that is long gone, but some driver sites carry the drivers for Win 3.1, Win 95 and WinNT (attached the archive to the post).

According to both Dosdays and Usenet posts the 3D implementation on this card is rather temperamental, causing issues for normal operation and cannot be controlled via software (or maybe you need a different driver?)

Questions:

1) does anyone have a soundcard with the same chip that is not made by Pine?
2) does anyone have this driver package? The listing says it included (you can't download it from them though):

1 
2Length     Date   Time    Name
3 ------    -------------   ---------------
4  293          06-10-02 14:02    ESS1698.txt
5  843820  06-10-02 14:08   1698 utility disc.zip
6  258178   06-10-02 14:09   1698 driver disc.zip
7 ------    -------------    ----------------
8  1102291                                       3 files

FTP search engines point to servers that had ES1698 folders with "info.zip" inside them, but those links are dead too.