dr.zeissler wrote:

Are you sure that this behavior of the solo1 is intel-chipset based?

I am now. On a Chaintech 6VIA5T everything works like it should: there is now sound in Rayman, Quarantine 2: Road Warrior, Crusader: No Remorse... Everything I'm throwing at it in pure DOS just works with ESS Solo-1. And the DOS driver now states that it's using the "VIA DDMA" mode instead of "TDMA" when loaded.

There is even a full-fledged ISA slot 😀 But I'm happy with this wonderful PCI card as it is.

UPD. Too bad the throttling on this chipset (or is it the mobo?) doesn't work right - and it is far more important to me than a couple of "silent" games, so I'm reverting back to i815.

I did additional tests with my YMH744 and all I can say it's much worse then the ess-solo1 in the same machine with the intel-i815e Chipset.
Some games that worked fine with ess-solo1 do not work with YMH744. One of the most problems is that lot's of games require a reboot
after quitting. But the problematic games DO NOT WORK EITHER! Duk3d, Swarrior, Heretc, Hexen, Doom2 (etc.) do report that same issue
of the "DMA playback-problem". In short it's not the Soundcard, it's the chipset! I am pretty sure that the ESS_SOLO1 IS in fact the best
one for my machine, but If I want to play the problematic titles I will have to go for 3thrd-party ports. I think there will no patching possible
whether the sound-carddrivers or the games.

One last attempt will be the ESS1946Solo1E which supports WSS. Some titles would perhaps work with that (e.g. Turrican2) and the ESS1946
seems to have the same ESFM that the ESS1938 has which is REALLY EXCELLENT compared to the real thing (OPL3) . Onley percussion seems
to be a bit less bombastic, the rest is pretty close to the OPL3 (I would think about 95%).

Yeah, the YMF724 I've tested had yielded similar results (but it did enable SFX in at least a couple of games: One Must Fall 2097 and Earthworm Jim 2 in DOS with DSDMA; Doom 1 & 2 worked in Windows with VxD drivers, too).

What I tried was actually a dual-card setup: the line out of the ESS card was connected to the Yamaha card's line in port, and they were configured in Autoexec.bat in such a fashion where the ESS drivers were always loaded by default, and Yamaha was only initializing itself in order to output the sound from the Solo-1, but with a 3-second option (via CHOICE.COM) of pressing the spacebar to load the full Yamaha suite (including the DSDMA thing), bypassing the ESS drivers altogether. This setup has proved to be quite usable, and I think an Aureal Vortex as a secondary card would have done even better (but I don't like 'em for some reason, so I'm not going to bother looking for one).

I will be testing ESS Solo-1 this week (it's already shipped) in my "retro" machine with VIA VT8237S southbridge, so I'm really interested, what games (if any) will be problematic. Of course, I will specifically be testing games with problematic sound engines mentioned here (in patched, as well as unpatched form).

Keep in mind that the Win98se "emulates" a SB16 out of the box.

Should this concerns me, if I will be testing in DOS (7.1)?

NO

Srandista wrote:

....I will specifically be testing games with problematic sound engines mentioned here (in patched, as well as unpatched form).

Patched how?

Well, I mean, I have UFO 1.0 and 1.4, Doom 1.2 and 1.9, Raptor 1.0 and 1.2. So I can test initial release and also patched game with problematic sound engine.

dr.zeissler wrote:

I did additional tests with my YMH744 and all I can say it's much worse then the ess-solo1 in the same machine with the intel-i8 […]
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I did additional tests with my YMH744 and all I can say it's much worse then the ess-solo1 in the same machine with the intel-i815e Chipset.
Some games that worked fine with ess-solo1 do not work with YMH744. One of the most problems is that lot's of games require a reboot
after quitting. But the problematic games DO NOT WORK EITHER! Duke3d, Swarrior, Heretic, Hexen, Doom2 (etc.) do report that same issue
of the "DMA playback-problem". In short it's not the Soundcard, it's the chipset!

All of these games are working for me with X58+Yamaha744 / Core2+i865+Yamaha744 check my list:
Re: X58 PC+ Yamaha744 sound card-pure Dos7.1- compatibility list and research, work in progress- gurus needed Have you tried both IRQ 5 and IRQ 7, have available some BIOS PNP, IRQ testings? WHat about check DMA channels in HW info, have you tried others DMA channel, are you using YMHIRQ X edge lines? Which SB type you are emulating, T4 (SB Pro2/New if not available, select SB Pro, if not available select SB) or other? On such old machine, in theory could maybe even help change PCI slot.

Proven lines, for IRQ7, change line 2+3.

1C:\Drivers\Yamaha\SETUPDS.EXE /s
2C:\Drivers\Yamaha\YMFIRQ 5 edge
3SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P330
4C:\Drivers\Yamaha\DSDMA.EXE

Unless you are really unlucky and its there is something wrong with i815 or you MB implementation it should work. You can check if sound is working right inside yamaha utility. Fro DS.ini settings you can check my drivers and utils package - in first post of link above, there is autoexec config for Vortex1+2,Creative,Yamaha,Cmedia,ESS all in one, you need only select you sound card et the top of your autoexec.

Should this concerns me, if I will be testing in DOS (7.1)?

I did all my testing in 7.1 its better because of FAT32 and newer EMM and HIMEM.SYS which are wise people recommending to use even with 6.22, and if something will go wrong there is still server to virtually change MS-Dos version..

I'll not try the YMH744 again. Some Demos do not work, so I put back the ESS-Solo1. (e.g. the brainslayer stuff http://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=1405)
I tried to configure the ESSSolo1 to IRQ7 but it simply ignores the IRQ7 in the essolo.ini, so I still don't get all of the Music in GODs.

I have ordered some later ESS-Cards for additional testing and I'll keep you up to date.

btw. Rise of the Dragon does not play effects on Setting "Soundblaster" on ESS-Solo, Music is OK, regardless if I slowdown the machine, but Adlib works perfect.
btw. most older Adventures deliver more Music and Sounds/effects when choosing Adlib.

Another interesting chip with perhaps an esfm clon? ist the CIW8738
Within theses drivers there is an interesting program: FIXEPIC.EXE

* FIXEPIC.EXE EPIC DOS games patch program […]
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* FIXEPIC.EXE
EPIC DOS games patch program

We found that there are some EPIC DOS games can not detect PCI audio.
This is due to these games using instruction loop as time counter not a real constant period.
In high speed CPU PC, the loop time become shorter.
That is reason that games can not detect PCI audio.
If you meet this problem, please run patch program to fix.
All of fixed files will backup to *.old.

I am pretty sure that this is perhaps the same problem with my ess-solo1 (ESS1938), but the FIXEPIC
does not work for my ESS-SOLO1 setup. It simply patches nothing and reports nothing.

🙁

CMI8738 in my experience has poor SFX support. The FM sounds pretty good, especially through SPDIF though.

Phils got it working in Dos quite well. i didn, but i have some cheap ebay card, i bough it because has sound in W98-Win10 and has PCI and PCIe variants. Phil mentioned something about that some cheap cards has some components missing.. Its is not working because too new chipsets - i have tried only really new ones like X58,AMD970, X99 etc..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHKa-TE-U4Y&t=1935s

Dos drives package which i integrated in my drivers package is very cryptic (i would say stub state).

So today I finally tried ESS Solo-1 on my 4CoreDual-SATA2 in DOS 7.1, and for games with problematic engines, results are very interesting indeed.
And by interesting I mean, that all those games did work. I didn't try large sample of games, but the ones, that I did, speak for them self:
Doom 1.9, Doom 2, Raptor 1.2, Ufo: Enemy Unknown 1.4 and Xcom: Terror from the Deep.
So it really seems, that problem is not in sound card itself, but in Intel chipset.

Unfortunately, I screwed up. I rush the testing of that card, and I didn't focus on SFX, but only on sound in general... And of course, as the guys previously said, music is working, so I assumed, that with that working, all it's good.

But of course, it isn't and unfortunately I must confirm, that that indeed, SFX in mentioned games doesn't work, they're music only. Sorry for my mess, I apologize to everyone, who had high hopes after my post.

what? sounds like a bug in the intel chipset? what chipset did you use. Plain dos ? XMS EMS?
That's indeed VERY interesting! I think Phil should check the ESS-Solo1 in his VIA ThinClient.

You can find specs for my board here: http://www.asrock.com/mb/VIA/4CoreDual-SATA2/index.asp

In his Yamaha video I suggest him to try ESS Solo-1, and he replied, that yes, he's definitely planning to look for that card in the future. So we'll see, when he will get to it.

dr.zeissler wrote:

what? sounds like a bug in the intel chipset?

Often is not bug, but simply bad coding.. with wrong assumptions or hard coded values. or simply removal of not well known MB feature (which i not in website specs) which almost nobody use.. to why to border with it. Its 2 day, when i tried Voodoo 3 pure Dos Glide on i865 and X58, its working on i865, dont on X58.. and i also dont know why.. because there not official Bios voodoo support feature.

I had to switch from ESS-Solo1 to SB128pci. I cannot get sound working either in plain dos and in dos from within win95. In win95 sound works perfect.
The same sb128pci is working in dos on intel i815e but not on ALI chipset for K6. What can I do to make it work?

The driver installs just fine, everything seems to be OK, but no software detects the card. Either sfx/fm/midi...nothing is working, the card seems to be blocked.
I already tested other IRQ/DMA Settings.

These SBpci cards require EMM to be loaded...are there special adresses which have to be free in order to make the card work?