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[redelon]

Hi all!

I recently dug up my old laptop for MS-DOS games and trackers. He looks like this.

Dell Latitude XPi CD
Pentium 150Mhz, 64mt

It had Windows 95 installed with all the drivers but I wiped it and installed Win98 instead because it supported the network adapter I had for this beast. Well the network works now all fine but the soundcard isn't working.

Windows Device Manager says the card is ESS Audiodrive 1887, which is (according to Wikipedia) a SoundBlaster compatible chip. I found some WDM drivers for it but they don't seem to be working. Anyway it was DOS games I wanted to play, so no worries about drivers then. But the only game I can hear the digitzed samples is System Shock, all other just play silent.

My current BLASTER -environment variable declared in autoexec.bat looks like this:

SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T3

The musics in all games work real fine, so no problem with the adlib stuff. Oh and I'm able to get sound from Cubic Player and it finds these cards:

devpESS : ESS688 AudioDrive............... (#5 p220 i5 d1)
devpSB  : SoundBlaster.................... (#7 t2 p220 i7 d1)

Tried setting the IRQ-address to 5 in the autoexec.bat but it had no effect.
So, I'm asking your help: is there a way I can get the sound working in all games? (Tried bruteforcing all SoundBlaster settings in Duke Nukem 3D, didn't work!)

[Scatty]

Originally Posted by redelon

:

SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T3

Originally Posted by redelon

devpESS : ESS688 AudioDrive............... (#5 p220 i5 d1)
devpSB  : SoundBlaster.................... (#7 t2 p220 i7 d1)

Have you tried to change the T3 to T2 in the Set Blaster variable?

[Japo]

Originally Posted by redelon

Windows Device Manager says the card is ESS Audiodrive 1887, which is (according to Wikipedia) a SoundBlaster compatible chip.

Which Wikipedia article is that? Is it compatible itself, or does it come with a driver that emulates a virtual Sound Blaster? Which Sound Blaster model is it compatible with, or which does it emulate?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/124944

The "T" entry on the Set Blaster line indicates what type of card you
have.

This T Entry Means you have this card type
------------------------------------------------

T6 All 16 bit Sound Blaster cards are type 6.
T5 The 8 bit Pro card is type 5.
T4 (card #1600) The SB PRO is type 4.
T3 (card #1350) A parameter of type 3 indicates an old
Sound Blaster card
T2 (card #1330) All 8 bit cards are type 2.

[KrazeeXXL]

omg I remember this dang ESS 1887 Soundcard!

A friend of mine also got a P150 (bigtower) with Win95. Must've been in '97. Everything worked but the Soundcard. IIRC didn't install the setup the correct drivers or the drivers even were corrupt.

So I searched the Internet for some newer version and had to install it manually. (choose the correct inf instead of the automatic search&install).

then it worked

[arete]

Pff, I prefer a more elegant weapon, from a more civilised age...

Had the same issue on my XPi P133ST.
See if this helps - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/195895

Originally Posted by Glen85

Had the same issue on my XPi P133ST.
See if this helps - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/195895

Actually I have to say that I am having issues getting the SET BLASTER to work in autoexec while in DOS mode. Sure I have sound in Windows 98, but there is no way I need to load all that Windows junk just to get KGen working!

I have just managed to hear sound in MS-DOS for the first time in a long time.

I have an ESS 1888 and my settings were set up by ESSCFG.EXE and not the usual SET BLASTER in autoexec.bat.

ESSCFG.EXE /A:230 /I:5 /D:0 /B:330 /M:E

Just for anyone else who comes across this in the future...
I picked up my drivers through the Dell website entering my service tag and selecting MS-DOS. Be warned though, the drivers messed up my win.ini and system.ini entering some drivers that wouldn't load in windows, turns out it makes a backup of your system.ini under system.ess, so just go through and delete out the drivers that cause erroneous pop ups everywhere.

Good luck to all!

[redelon]

I am terribly sorry for bumping up a thread as old as this, but I honestly forgot about it completely, and just recently found it via Google Search. Silly me!

Thanks for all the replies, I just wanted to say that the sounds work now flawlessly on MS-DOS too!

I googled and found ESSCFG.EXE as Glen85 suggested, but it told me it was incompatible with ESS1888. Then I went to dell.com and downloaded the ESS1888 Win98/DOS drivers for Dell Latitude XPi CD, and after I installed them and rebooted, ESSCFG.EXE started to work and everyone lived happily ever after!

[Eagle of Fire]

Do not worry, special rules of this forum allows starter of threads to resurrect their own threads.

With your permission, however, since this subject seem to be quite finished I'd like to close it now. If you don't mind.