Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-06-24, 15:40:

I think I've got it working now:<snip>

Cool...

ESSOLO.COM is not cooperating with me today at all... I am testing on a BX motherboard, and it is just telling me that it needs to be configured in Windows... I tried adding it to the SETVER table as a DOS 6.22 app, that didn't help.

What are your system specifications please?

Thanks

mockingbird wrote on 2022-06-27, 18:50:

What are your system specifications please?

It's pretty much this rig with the YMF744 swapped out for the Solo1. And since I'm no longer actively using that system, I've removed the AWE64 and the Voodoo3 from it as well. There's currently a Permedia 2 graphics card in there, not that this matters much for SB-Link.

What does matter is the "Passive Release" option in the BIOS. I noticed that both my YMF744 and my Solo1 would sometimes hang when connected via SB-Link if this setting was disabled. No issues whatsoever if it is enabled though. The OS I'm using on that system is Win98SE with no unofficial service packs, third-party patches or anything like that.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-06-27, 19:24:

mockingbird wrote on 2022-06-27, 18:50:

What are your system specifications please?

It's pretty much this rig with the YMF744 swapped out for the Solo1. And since I'm no longer actively using that system, I've removed the AWE64 and the Voodoo3 from it as well. There's currently a Permedia 2 graphics card in there, not that this matters much for SB-Link.

What does matter is the "Passive Release" option in the BIOS. I noticed that both my YMF744 and my Solo1 would sometimes hang when connected via SB-Link if this setting was disabled. No issues whatsoever if it is enabled though. The OS I'm using on that system is Win98SE with no unofficial service packs, third-party patches or anything like that.

Thanks, so ZX chipset machine... Ok, I'll run a stock install and look for that setting and report back.

mockingbird wrote on 2022-06-27, 18:50:

ESSOLO.COM is not cooperating with me today at all... I am testing on a BX motherboard, and it is just telling me that it needs to be configured in Windows... I tried adding it to the SETVER table as a DOS 6.22 app, that didn't help.

You're possibly missing the essolo.ini file in C:\ which is where the COM file reads config info from.
You will find one in the archive attached to this post, or you can use the BAT file to initialise your card.
Re: ESS Solo-1 easy(ish) setup with ESSOLO.INI (No Windows/ESSOLO.SYS Required!)

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-06-24, 18:14:

Those registry tweaks would be nice to have, feel free to share.

I also noticed that my AUTOEXEC.BAT and DOSSTART.BAT get overwritten if I place a custom SET BLASTER entry there. Would be great if that could be avoided as well.

The usual warnings about editing the registry apply, but here are the Win 98 keys for the stopping the Windows ESS driver from changing your DOS configuration.

"AddParaToESSOLO",01,ff
"Add ESSOLO.COM To Autoexec.bat",01,FF
"Add DEVICE=ESSOLO.SYS",01,FF
"Add Game Port",01,00 ;01,01=True, 01,00=False

These are in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\MEDIA\0000\Config but might also be under 0001, 0002, etc. depending on how many hardware profiles you have and which is the current one in use. Change the FF's to 00. I think the first one controls writes to the C:\ESSOLO.INI file. Change the fourth key from 00 to 01 to enable the joystick port if yours hasn't.

I am not experienced in editing INF files but the keys above are used in the C:\WINDOWS\INF\OTHER\essoemsetup.inf file, taken from the driver setup files? If you edit the INF file before installing the card it might fix the problem permanently, and for future hardware profiles.

Action Replay wrote on 2022-06-29, 15:54:

You're possibly missing the essolo.ini file in C:\ which is where the COM file reads config info from.
You will find one in the archive attached to this post, or you can use the BAT file to initialise your card.
Re: ESS Solo-1 easy(ish) setup with ESSOLO.INI (No Windows/ESSOLO.SYS Required!)

When ESSOLO.INI is present in the root directory, the error message changes and states that this card must be configured in Windows for dos compatibility. Is it scanning my Windows install or something? Is there any way to block ESSOLO.COM from being Windows aware?

The card is not installed at all in Windows.

mockingbird wrote on 2022-06-29, 21:10:

The card is not installed at all in Windows.

This could be the cause of the issues that you're experiencing. For reference, I'll summarize all the steps that I went through to get SB-Link working on my system:

• I installed the Solo1 in a specific PCI slot which ensured that the card would get assigned IRQ 5 (it might take some trial and error to find this slot)
• I then physically connected the card's SB-Link header to the corresponding pins on the motherboard (pin 1 to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2 etc.) using jumper wires
• Next, I powered on the system, entered the BIOS, and then ensured that "Passive Release" is set to "Enabled" and that "PnP OS Installed" is set to "Yes"
• Under Win98SE, I installed the 4.12.01.1165 drivers available from Phil's website by running the supplied SETUP.EXE and restarting the system when prompted
• After the card drivers got installed, I manually restarted the system one more time which allowed the drivers to create a fresh copy of ESSOLO.INI in C:\
• Next, I copied ESSOLO.INI from C:\ to C:\TEMP
• I then used a hex editor on C:\TEMP\ESSOLO.INI in order to enable SB-Link as instructed here
• After editing C:\TEMP\ESSOLO.INI I made the file read-only and then copied it to C:\ overwriting the existing version there
• Finally, I restarted the system in order for Win98SE to acknowledge the changes that I made to ESSOLO.INI

From that point onward, the message "DMA mode is PCPCI" started appearing during boot. It also appears when selecting Start > Shutdown > Restart in MS-DOS mode as seen in the screenshot that I posted here.

I have two of these cards,

TTSOLO1-S that has a G139 rev chip with the older markings, wavetable header, no SB-LINK header, and has every connector populated.
TTSOLO1-SL (128i boxed, with documentation and driver CD) that has a H170 rev chip with the newer markings, SB-LINK header, no wavetable header, and has some connectors unpopulated

For science, I can test DOS compatibility with them but you need to point me towards what needs to be tested.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-06-30, 10:06:

For science, I can test DOS compatibility with them but you need to point me towards what needs to be tested.

Personally, I'm mostly curious about the AudioDrive and native ESFM capabilities of older Solo1 models in DOS games.

Both can be tested with a single game: Heroes of Might and Magic 2 + Price of Loyalty expansion pack. It's necessary to have both of these installed to get the latest Miles Sound System driver support. In setup, try to select "ESS AudioDrive" for digitized audio and "ESS Technology Enhanced FM Audio" for music and see if that works.

I'll assemble my Socket 7 MMX166 test bench and see how each card works sometime, and report back.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-06-30, 10:06:

I have two of these cards, […]
Show full quote

I have two of these cards,

TTSOLO1-S that has a G139 rev chip with the older markings, wavetable header, no SB-LINK header, and has every connector populated.
TTSOLO1-SL (128i boxed, with documentation and driver CD) that has a H170 rev chip with the newer markings, SB-LINK header, no wavetable header, and has some connectors unpopulated

For science, I can test DOS compatibility with them but you need to point me towards what needs to be tested.

Thank you for offering to test the cards appiah4! I am interested if they both behave the same after initialising the cards then running ESSVOL.EXE. Either the mixer settings can be read and set, or they will report that the AudioDrive cannot be found. I suspect that your 1999 G revision chip will work correctly, but not sure about the year 2000 H revision chip. We shall wait and see!

If you don't have it ESSVOL.EXE can be found in the archive on this post by henk717:
Re: ESS Solo-1 easy(ish) setup with ESSOLO.INI (No Windows/ESSOLO.SYS Required!)

Action Replay wrote on 2022-06-30, 13:08:

Thank you for offering to test the cards appiah4! I am interested if they both behave the same after initialising the cards then […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2022-06-30, 10:06:

I have two of these cards, […]
Show full quote

I have two of these cards,

TTSOLO1-S that has a G139 rev chip with the older markings, wavetable header, no SB-LINK header, and has every connector populated.
TTSOLO1-SL (128i boxed, with documentation and driver CD) that has a H170 rev chip with the newer markings, SB-LINK header, no wavetable header, and has some connectors unpopulated

For science, I can test DOS compatibility with them but you need to point me towards what needs to be tested.

Thank you for offering to test the cards appiah4! I am interested if they both behave the same after initialising the cards then running ESSVOL.EXE. Either the mixer settings can be read and set, or they will report that the AudioDrive cannot be found. I suspect that your 1999 G revision chip will work correctly, but not sure about the year 2000 H revision chip. We shall wait and see!

If you don't have it ESSVOL.EXE can be found in the archive on this post by henk717:
Re: ESS Solo-1 easy(ish) setup with ESSOLO.INI (No Windows/ESSOLO.SYS Required!)

I will check. Please note that the newer card is the one that is boxed and has its own driver CD, so even if that fails to work I am almost certain to have working DOS drivers in the driver CD which may actually include a newer version of ESSVOL.

Actually, I believe I HAD uploaded that CD to vogonsdrivers. Let me see..

Yes, yes I did: http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … 485&menustate=0

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-06-30, 03:57:

<snip>
This could be the cause of the issues that you're experiencing. For reference, I'll summarize all the steps that I went through to get SB-Link working on my system:

Ok,

What I realized was that any other setting in bit 'c' than 00 and 01 gives this message with ESSOLO.COM version 2.31D ("for soundblaster audio compatibility on this system...").

Interestingly, setting it to "1" results in ESSOLO.COM showing "wbdma16" mode (and not tdma).

Oddly, when I first ran setup.exe, the card installed and ran fine in Windows, and two devices showed up in device manager, the ESS card and a second emulation device. But then the second emulation device disappeared on reboot and there's no sound in Windows anymore...

Very strange shenanigans with ESS.

Ok, a discovery:

With version 2.11I of ESSOLO.COM, it shows PC/PCI (SBLINK) as set and doesn't output the error "("for soundblaster audio compatibility on this system run applications from Windows...").

And ESSVOL works fine (I tested with two different chip revisions)...

Version 2.31D will output that error with the same exact ESSOLO.INI on the system root that works with verison 2.11I.

Version 2.11I is just assigning whichever IRQ the card is being assigned by the system, and maybe that's what's causing the problem. I noticed with my Yamaha YMF724, the serialized IRQ is always different than the actual IRQ. I may experiment with PCISET to see if I can force that. I tried with two variants of cards, one with and one without the EEPROM (and yes, with two different chip revisions, and they both worked with Zeissler's essvol when version 2.11I of essolo.com was loaded beforehand).

And Monkey Island Talkie Edition just shows a black screen unless I start it with text mode only, and then only the music plays in the back. Joe, can you please test with that?

I should also add that I am doing this without loading ESSOLO.SYS as PC/PCI mode should work without a TSR.

mockingbird wrote on 2022-07-01, 02:09:

Ok, a discovery:

With version 2.11I of ESSOLO.COM, it shows PC/PCI (SBLINK) as set and doesn't output the error "("for soundblaster audio compatibility on this system run applications from Windows...").

And ESSVOL works fine (I tested with two different chip revisions)...

Interesting. Which driver version is this ESSOLO.COM from? Can you link to it?

I tried with two variants of cards, one with and one without the EEPROM (and yes, with two different chip revisions, and they both worked with Zeissler's essvol when version 2.11I of essolo.com was loaded beforehand).

Can you link to that version of ESSVOL as well? I'm currently using the one from Phil's Solo1 DOS driver archive. Maybe the one that you have is newer?

And Monkey Island Talkie Edition just shows a black screen unless I start it with text mode only, and then only the music plays in the back. Joe, can you please test with that?

Will do. I remember the first Monkey Island being speed sensitive and needing L1 cache to be disabled on some systems. I'll run some tests tomorrow.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-01, 02:27:

Will do. I remember the first Monkey Island being speed sensitive and needing L1 cache to be disabled on some systems. I'll run some tests tomorrow.

No, because it works with my YMF724/SBLink without issue. (edit: just to clarify, I'm referring to the talkie edition. Yes, the vanilla edition is speed sensitive).

I don't think 2.11I is doing anything, I think it's just saying it's enabled without really enabling it.

Please see this post for a plethora of different Solo driver revisions.... I think I used the Windows 3.1 version.

edit:Can you please check if essolo.sys is running as a TSR for you with PC/PCI mode?

mockingbird wrote on 2022-07-01, 03:13:

No, because it works with my YMF724/SBLink without issue. (edit: just to clarify, I'm referring to the talkie edition. Yes, the vanilla edition is speed sensitive).

Oh nice! I didn't even realize that this existed. I used the build tools to create the DOS ultimate talkie edition from SE. It's working fine on my Solo1. FM synth music plays properly as do the voice clips.

Please see this post for a plethora of different Solo driver revisions.... I think I used the Windows 3.1 version.

I checked that archive and the ESSVOL.EXE from there seems to be the same one that Phil has on his website. Sadly, neither of them work on my particular Solo1 revision, regardless of which version of ESSOLO.COM I use (I tried several including 2.11l).

edit:Can you please check if essolo.sys is running as a TSR for you with PC/PCI mode?

Nope. TSR doesn't get loaded on my setup. Checked with MEM /A /C /P.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-01, 04:11:

Nope. TSR doesn't get loaded on my setup. Checked with MEM /A /C /P.

Wow, you're fast.

I would love to know the magic sauce you're using to get it working... The Yamaha is nice, but I'd like to use the Solo for the onboard wavetable header and ADPCM support.

Can you please attach your autoexec.bat and config.sys, as well as your actual essolo.ini from your system? I want to transplant your files into my system... There's got to be something I'm missing here. ESSOLO.COM should even work with Windows not present at all... I don't think the whole process of installing the VXD driver is even necessary. Theoretically all o ne would need is the ESSOLO.INI file in the root directory for it to run properly. There's something missing here. One thing I did notice is that the Windows driver added essolo.sys to my config.sys but with a string of characters and numbers after it.

You say passive release should be enabled, correct?

Does your card model have an EEPROM on it and are you able to dump it?

Thanks again.

mockingbird wrote on 2022-07-01, 06:07:

Can you please attach your autoexec.bat and config.sys, as well as your actual essolo.ini from your system?

Sure, I've attached everything below. There isn't much in the files though, just what the driver installer placed there. I didn't add any of these entries manually.

I want to transplant your files into my system... There's got to be something I'm missing here. ESSOLO.COM should even work with Windows not present at all... I don't think the whole process of installing the VXD driver is even necessary.

Maybe trying several versions of the drivers messed something up on your system? I would suggest the following: run SETUP.EXE from driver version 4.12.01.1165 and then select "Uninstall Drivers". When they get uninstalled, manually delete ESSOLO.INI from C:\ along with any other leftover files. This should give you a fresh start. After that, follow the steps that I outlined in this post and you should get the same result as I have on my rig.

You say passive release should be enabled, correct?

Yes.

Does your card model have an EEPROM on it and are you able to dump it?

I think it does, you can see a picture of my card here. As for dumping it, I'm not sure how I would go about doing that. Is there a program that can do it?

mockingbird wrote on 2022-07-01, 02:09:

And ESSVOL works fine (I tested with two different chip revisions)...

Hi mockingbird, thank you for testing. What revisions of ES1938s chips are on your cards? Letter and numbers if you are able to please.