Small correction:

- when using Windows 98 with the correct driver, now iMuse (from Dark Forces setup) detects the card correctly during auto detect and I can play digitised sound, but the sounds don't come out very clean, there's always a bit of "stuttering" going on (in Windows the sound is very good)
- same for Civilization, no more black screen, it starts up normally (Fate of Atlantis doesn't though)
- but not all games are working like this, these are the only ones I've found working so far that didn't previously work in pure DOS

If this is your card then perhaps it dosn't fully work in DOS, the driver has Plug and Play and "no DMA" in it's name. Perhaps this was the driver package you got sort of working in Windows 98?

Hewlett Packard (HP) ESS ES688 Plug and Play AudioDrive (no DMA) Free Driver Download

http://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=32301

Skyscraper wrote:

If this is your card then perhaps it dosn't fully work in DOS, the driver has Plug and Play and "no DMA" in it's name. Perhaps this was the driver package you got sort of working in Windows 98?

Hewlett Packard (HP) ESS ES688 Plug and Play AudioDrive (no DMA) Free Driver Download

http://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=32301

Yeah, that's the one. If I use ANY other driver (have found four more so far), the system will stall at some point. It's really strange though (even though sounds DO play), is this some special form of the chip? No one has ever mentioned that this card is not fully working in DOS.

Echtzeit wrote:

Yeah, that's the one. If I use ANY other driver (have found four more so far), the system will stall at some point. It's really strange though, is this some special form of the chip? No one has ever mentioned that this card is not fully working in DOS.

ISA DMA is needed for the digital audio in real DOS (or in some cases emulated ISA DMA). TDMA and DDMA were some DMA modes used by the ESS Solo PCI card but I do not know how your ESS Audio Drive Plug and Play is connected in your Omnibook. Perhaps it's worth taking a look at the DOS utilitys for the ESS Solo.

This thread has some information about TDMA and DDMA.

PCI sound cards and Chipsets from various manufacturers...

Lots of drivers can be found here.

http://www.soundcard-drivers.com/companies/382.htm

Skyscraper wrote:

ISA DMA is needed for the digital audio in real DOS (or in some cases emulated ISA DMA). TDMA and DDMA were some DMA modes used […]
Show full quote

ISA DMA is needed for the digital audio in real DOS (or in some cases emulated ISA DMA). TDMA and DDMA were some DMA modes used by the ESS Solo PCI card but I do not know how your ESS Audio Drive Plug and Play is connected in your Omnibook. Perhaps it's worth taking a look at the DOS utilitys for the ESS Solo.

This thread has some information about TDMA and DDMA.

PCI sound cards and Chipsets from various manufacturers...

Lots of drivers can be found here.

http://www.soundcard-drivers.com/companies/382.htm

Thanks for the tip with the Solo, I will look into that. But can you actually download something from that page? I can't, my virus program goes apeshit and then I can only download some suspicious exe-files (which don't look anywhere near like the drivers).

Echtzeit wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

ISA DMA is needed for the digital audio in real DOS (or in some cases emulated ISA DMA). TDMA and DDMA were some DMA modes used […]
Show full quote

ISA DMA is needed for the digital audio in real DOS (or in some cases emulated ISA DMA). TDMA and DDMA were some DMA modes used by the ESS Solo PCI card but I do not know how your ESS Audio Drive Plug and Play is connected in your Omnibook. Perhaps it's worth taking a look at the DOS utilitys for the ESS Solo.

This thread has some information about TDMA and DDMA.

PCI sound cards and Chipsets from various manufacturers...

Lots of drivers can be found here.

http://www.soundcard-drivers.com/companies/382.htm

Thanks for the tip with the Solo, I will look into that. But can you actually download something from that page? I can't, my virus program goes apeshit and then I can only download some suspicious exe-files (which don't look anywhere near like the drivers).

Perhaps it's a honey trap but then you can at least search for the files using the file names on that site.

Most driver sites makes you jump through rings of fire before you get the drivers.

soundcard-drivers.com is pretty clearly related to driverguide, so if you can find it there you can find it on driverguide, usually with the same file ID number they use.

So, that program for the Solo didn't really work, but I discovered an interesting piece of information.

Settlers 2 Gold has a setup program from Miles Audio (1995). It SPECIFICALLY lists the ESS688 as an option for digital sound!

- under pure DOS auto detection for this card FAILS, as does the one for Soundblaster Pro
- in Windows 98 auto detection for the ESS688 FAILS (again), but works for the Soundblaster Pro

Pretty strange, huh? So, in conclusion (at least the way I see it), the soundcard build into the laptop is some strange variation of the card and is (so far) pretty useless for DOS games, IF you want digitized sound. I'd still like to understand what is going on, so any other information anyone might have is appreciated.

(Oh, and Commander Keen 5 has sound effects in DOS, are those digital or FM synthesis?)

I have an Omnibook 600CT, but the soundcard implementation is DMA-less, like PCMCIA soundcards. In short, there is no way to get PCM under pure DOS, Windows 9X is your best bet for effects in DOS games. Some games don't require DMA, like Prince of Persia, and will give you sound effects under DOS.

I just bought one of these laptops yesterday. I have yet to test it but I found this information on the Toshiba website regarding DOS compatibility:

Subject: ESS Sound System compatibility with Sound Blaster Pro DOS based
software/games requiring Sound Blaster or Sound Blaster Pro compatible
sound cards. The following Toshiba units shipped with the ESS 688 Sound
System chip which is compatible with Creative Labs Sound Blaster chipset:
Satellite Pro 400CS/CDT
Satellite Pro 410CS/CDT
Portege 610CT
Tecra 700CT
During installation and setup, various games may have difficulty detecting
SoundBlaster Pro or ANY sound card at all.

Solution: Move Sound I/O Address in TSETUP from 220 (default) to 240
and IRQ to 10 (default). DMA channel should be set to 1 (default).
In the autoexec.bat file add the following:
...
set blaster=a240 i10 d1
set midi=synth:1 map:e

Nothing quite says “good luck in DOS! Lol!!” like a sound card defaulting to IRQ 10. 5 or 7 would be better.

CkRtech wrote:

Nothing quite says “good luck in DOS! Lol!!” like a sound card defaulting to IRQ 10. 5 or 7 would be better.

Yeah... Apparenly some games may refuse to run if the sound card is not on IRQ 5 or 7. I had a time when a semi-PnP Sound Blaster 16 (CT2290) of mine defaulted itself to IRQ 10 and DMA3, and games like Wolfenstein 3-D refused to run (just hangs there). For that sound card, I was able to fix it by using Creative's DIAGNOSE to assign IRQ5 and DMA1 to it.

Even for ISA PnP audio devices you're supposed to ensure the card is assigned to the common resources (I/O 220, IRQ 5 and DMA1). Utilities provided by manufacturers (such as ESS) should help you with that.

The difficulty for certain games to detect Sound Blaster actually lies in the fact that the BLASTER environment variable is often not preconfigured and you need to set this manually. This is true for many Apogee/3D Realms games and those game's help manuals include instructions to set this variable, if you read them thoroughly.

EDIT: Many games expect the BLASTER environment variable be set, yet it can also be very easily overlooked. Without BLASTER many games can only properly configure music playback as FM synth usually requires no configuration. When I was still little, with a very old PC equipped with ESS 688 (non-PnP), I'd been struggling to get digitized audio on many games as they crapped out because BLASTER environment variable was not set, and at that time, I did not know how to set the variable until I found the "proper" way to define the variable inside a game manual of an Apogee's game.

What is the summary. No Sound until Windows 95?
I have sound in ST-Tracker and Games like Jill. I tried everything , even flash old BIOS for W31... It's even worse, no sound in 95 then 😀
So back to 95 (4.01) BIOS, I have ESS1688 though, not 688.
ESSCFG with parameters like 220 I5 D0 - hanging the machine... 🙁
DOS prompt from win 95 works good for those games which are not hungry for memory. I guess that's only option?
Adlib like in DOS
SB PRO like in Win95, including DOS prompt.
Isn't it?