First post, by MrKsoft
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Yes, strange request, especially since we're on a primarily DOS/gaming board. It's relevant though.
I picked up an old Compaq system (Celeron 500, 128mb, Intel 810 chipset) at a garage sale last spring (had to take it with the monitor I actually wanted from the sale) , glanced it over and thought it was useless junk. Recently I looked over it again and realized it has an ESS Solo-1 (ES1938S) chip onboard. That means I can have acceptable DOS FM music on a system with all PCI slots. The case is extremely small, and so I'm trying to get it up and running as something that I can sit right under my desk.
Anyway, my usual setup for newer computers that run DOS games is a combination DOS/Windows NT 3.51 dual boot setup. I use the Windows for file management and some Windows games, and can get the retro 3.1 interface I like without the instability, but also utilize long file names and slightly newer software (hell, Firefox 2.0 even runs). Typically this works well.
Found an issue this time though. I've managed to grab drivers for the video and network, but that Solo-1 that I set this up for is eluding me. I've got it set up in DOS properly with a package I found on this forum but no luck for NT 3.51. I did some searching and, between several sites with completely fake, nonexistant links, found some that were labelled for NT 3.51, but they're actually just NT4 drivers. The NT4 drivers have a version number of 4.x and won't load if you try them.
I know for a fact that NT 3.51 drivers exist, because I found reference to them on Lenovo's site, regarding the old IBM computers they bought out: http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbb … top/zn7t01a.txt
"Version 3.00.02
IBM ES1938 Windows NT 3.51 Driver
10/18/98"
I found the original file this readme as attached to, zn7z01us.exe, and indeed it does include a 3.x versioned driver. However, this one doesn't work. I get a configuration screen to pick the "IRQ Mask" and no matter what I pick it says I have insufficient memory to install the driver. So it won't install. I'm going to guess that a different version would work fine, and this one is just bugged up.
I was hoping somebody that has actual Solo-1 driver disks sitting around might happen to have NT 3.51 drivers bundled in that would work. Although I'm not sure if it "officially" came with such drivers-- the IBM file above might have been their own work. It's not really a disaster if I can't find anything though... I can just pop in a spare AudioPCI for when I'm in Windows if I can't find anything, but this would keep me from having to switch around the speaker cable.
