ESS Solo-1 ES1938S PCI Sound Card for DOS Games

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[@CyricFTW]

I know these soundcard videos are not good for the youtube numbers.... but aren't they awesome! thanks Phil... Love these ^.^

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you, I really appreciate that comment!

[@AtariBorn]

But having a KZbin channel with some depth helps in the long run. PhilsComputerLab is a household name amongst retro PC gamers. That's definitely an achievement.

[@tassadar1977]

I'm totally into them!

[@Rickenbacker451]

Yeah this soundcard is a real underdog so to say but for that same reason it's still very cheap to get.

[@HeadsetGuy]

When I first heard ESFM, I fell in love with it. On the other hand, I grew up with a Sound Blaster clone that used a real YMF262-M chip, so true OPL3 is still my favorite. Nothing against ESFM; in fact, I'd say it's a close second.

[@philscomputerlab]

I have tested so many sound cards. In the past I didn't care much about the FM, but now I'm quite picky and really want an authentic OPL3 :D

[@Rouxenator]

Reminds me of 1997 when I had an ESS 1688 and a buddy of mine had a Gravis Ultra Sound. Two cards on different ends of the market. He laughed at my puny card and said they would not be around in the year 2000.... Yeah, now GUS is dead and ESS is still around.

[@dabombinablemi6188]

Especially if you replace the odd failed cap. Replaced the 2x on the line in+out on my ESS 186x brought it back to life.

[@Rouxenator]

@@dabombinablemi6188 sold my ES1688 in 2000, pity about that. Sound was very good, I remember War Craft 2 actually supported the ESFM it had. Sounded amazing on my 486DX2/66

[@Robeight]

Sad story

[@rich1051414]

Let's be real here though, GUS was superior... if the game was coded for it. Sounded simply amazing.

[@Rouxenator]

@@rich1051414 yes, but the horse it was on was too high, so when it fell...

[@thenewretroshow]

I always lean something new with your Videos :D

[@7828191]

Bought one of these Solo 1 cards the other day, among other PCI an AGP cards :), and for a very good price i might add. A Voodoo 5 5500 was one of the AGP cards. But the Voodoo is missing one of it's large caps, top right left one. Otherwise the card looks ok and should be working.

[@Wushu-viking]

Great video. I think the ESS FM chip on that card sounds good. A little Different but good... Still rockin an ESS 688 ISA card in my 3in1 DOS / Pentium machine. Great sounding FM-synth chip ("OPL3 clone") !

[@irinapotoropina4322]

Is there a way to use it with Windows 10? I cannot find a driver...

[@asadityas67]

Capacitors helps in filtering and it compresses the audio, however I'm not sure of it's implementation on this board.

[@alexviralata1356]

You are right! Maybe if we swap those tiny ones for those found in high end PSUs, the audio might be better! jk

[@logipilot]

Hey Phil, have you heard of the Forte-Media FM801 chipset for PCI sound cards? There are a few on yt and the sound and compatibility with old DOS-games is promising. Maybe this is a candidate for another retro sound card review. ;) Cheers!

[@philscomputerlab]

I have such card, but haven't tried it yet :)

[@Aeduo]

Had an ess solo audiodrive-1 or whatever for onbaord audio so some motherboards had it onboard. think it was an Acer from ~2000 with an AMD K6-2 500Mhz. IBM Aptiva branded BIOS. It did have pretty solid DOS support, even avoided crashing Duke Nukem 3D on the start of E1M4. I believe it didn't work with Jill of the Jungle, or that might've been a different PC, don't remember. That's another game that's picky with SB clones.

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice. I've got an IMB Apriva Socket 7 board, it comes with sound from Crystal, which works great.

[@oscarolbaid]

Hi man, I love this soundcard. I still using it today in my main computer that I use with XP. But I have a problem, maybe a retrofan like you can help me. There's no drivers for windows 7 and windows 10 (of course) and I have the 3 systems runing on my PC and I like to use the same card for all of them. Could you help me with that ? Can we find some way to make it work ? Sorry for my english, i'm from Argentina, and I'm doing my best xD Thanks in advance !!!

[@magnum333]

Para cualquier cosa actual usá Linux! Si no estás canchero empezá con Ubuntu... es un viaje de ida. Saludos!

[@dawiekaboutereen]

Hi Phil, I'm commenting on this old video because I'm having trouble installing the drivers for my ESS Solo-1 on Win98SE. I tried the drivers on your site: The Setup file installs and then Windows prompt to restart. After restart, there is no Speaker icon in the bottom right. Under device manager, the device shows as installed, but only shows one device, no DOS device is installed. I have removed the device drivers from device manager and moved the PCI card to another slot and installed again, but it does not work. Is there a way to check in the Windows file structure and remove any driver files for this device? Is there perhaps another driver I can try to install? Is there a generic driver I can install for this Solo-1? Your help is appreciated. Regards.

[@philscomputerlab]

That's a shame. You've already tried a few things. Sometimes certain parts just don't want to work together. Make sure to disable any unnecessary resources in BIOS like parallel and aerial ports.

[@oisnowy5368]

That poor little Lemming you murdered at 16:59! Sniff. Best way to enjoy Lemmings nowadays is to just grab a Raspberry Pi, stick RiscOS on it and grab the Archimedes version straight from the software preservation project.

[@philscomputerlab]

Interesting, Why the Archimedes version?

[@johnrickard8512]

Sounds like the sound card in my DEC PWS 500AU...probably because that one is an ES1888

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea they all should sound the same because of ESFM.

[@bamdadkhan]

can't find this card at all on ebay, neither as 'ess solo-1' nor 'es1398s'.. : ( do you have a reliable link maybe?

[@retropcscotland4645]

Only for sale in Asstrailia

[@philscomputerlab]

Nope, got no links. Just got to be patient and look around.

[@stamasd8500]

I recently got 2 of them in a lot of "sound cards" not otherwise named on ebay. I looked at the pictures, and there they were. Got the whole lot of 6 cards for $15. 2 of the others were the usual CMI chipset ones, an ES1373 and another one I can't remember. But for the 2 Solo-1s it was worth every penny. On ebay you'll be better off if you know exactly what you want and use your eyes to identify it from pictures rather than relying on seller's description.

[@kamerat7689]

If you search for Terratec in the sound card section of ebay you should be able to identify some of their Solo-1 cards by the pictures.

[@gergoszabo9857]

Search it on UK Amazon like: ES1938S - Its a Joke £3.5 from China. Just bought one. Not exactly the same card but the same chipset - ES1938S. Or you can find it the same card on Aliexpress for a fiver.

[@petermaller4207]

I have a ES1938S card(not a Terratec one). The ESS Solo-1 manual says it supports WSS but I cannot manage to get it to work. Does anyone know how to do it?

[@napalmarsch]

is that the same card as the Terratec 128i PCI ?

[@agevenisse3252]

My Terratec card (same PCB) has the wavetable header and amplifier for speaker output (selected with JP1). However, the SB-link pins are missing. All other components are there, so I guess some soldering would fix it. Compatibility in DOS is great. Both PCM and FM works without L1/L2 cache (and without EMM386 as you pointed out). ESS Audiodrive mode sounds a bit muffled compared to SB Pro (just like the original ESS Audiodrive). The only games I've had issues with are Epic Pinball and Pinball Fantasies (crackles/noise), but it happens with many other cards as well. Audigy2 Platinum eX is the best I've heard so far in these games. It's also superior thanks to the SB16 support (of course), but Adlib emulation on Audigy1/2 sounds really bad compared to the Solo-1. I guess you can't have everything. Solo-1 is one of the best PCI cards for DOS when it comes to Adlib/FM.

[@GiSWiG]

This is one of those cards that if I hadn't learned about and heard the difference of all the different OPL chips and clones, this is not a bad card. IDK why but Lemmings seems to be my own audio benchmark. Other cards you have reviewed sound better but this card isn't bad. The margin is small. Again, if I didn't know better, this card would sound pretty good to me except now I have an Audician 32 Plus, S2 Dreamblaster, Soundblaster 32 all thanks to you btw which I do appreciate. If it only had that wavetable header...

[@philscomputerlab]

So I've received a few comments that the WT header can be soldered onto the card, so that's something I will try for sure as I have a few of these ESS cards now :)

[@GiSWiG]

Are there sound cards (decent) that have both SB-Link, wavetable header AND a mobo with a SB-Link that doesn't have ISA slots? BTW, it's a pain to get solder out of a hole on a PCB. If you get it to work, good show!

[@philscomputerlab]

Not sure. The WaveForce YMF card I have, I believe it has PC-Link, but also no WT.

[@Rickenbacker451]

@@philscomputerlab Might be easier to just buy a model that has the header on the board, there are some.

[@armorgeddon]

A soundcard featuring this chip, SB-Link connector, a wavetable connector, comparatively big capacitors & line-out/speaker-out jumpers on what feels like a very solid PCB is the Labway LWHA331D60 or A331-D60, which is available also branded as the Fujitsu Siemens Soundboard D66.

[@RetroAmateur1989]

So, without the isa link cable it can't do dos?

[@logipilot]

This sound chip is standard in a Thinkpad 240 (Celeron 300)!

[@michaelwenek76]

Hello Phil! Long time admirer of your content. I looked at all of my motherboards and my Super Socket 7 Gigabyte GA-5SMM has the ESS Solo-1 ES1938S chip on it. I would assume same-same DOS and related performance? Maybe I will have time to run it through its paces and take sound samples like you did.

[@philscomputerlab]

It should sound the same, and should take the same drivers :)

[@AtariBorn]

I would assume an advantage to SB-Link would be WDM drivers supported in Windows and VXD drivers support in pure DOS. I don't think ISA or PCI would be able to claim both but I could be wrong as it's been years since that was on my mind.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea I haven't actually used the SB-Link properly, I only wanted to see it work, but that was with a YAMAHA YMF card, but if you pick the right motherboard / chipset, then the SB-Link isn't really necessary.

[@stamasd8500]

Umm "VXD drivers support in pure DOS" what is that? VxD is a driver model for early versions of Windows, not DOS.

[@AtariBorn]

You're absolutely right. I don't know why I was thinking VXD was DOS.

[@stealth5508]

Hi Phil! What is the motherboard model no used in the video?

[@rogert151]

My old thinkpad came with ess solo1e 1946 chip, not sure what the difference is but it also has built in dos compatibility, even says so in device manager

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea that one might even work in pure DOS! Good audio chip for a notebook.

[@semloh1870]

I bought a cheap ($5 new) from an Asian website. It is new and has the ESS 1936 chip on it but the board is low profile and has no joystick port. I can't get it to work with Windows 98SE or Windows 2000. Instead of sound a crackling sound comes out the speakers. I downloaded the driver from Phil's website but when I unzip it it says the file ESSSWT.DAT has an unexpected error. I can't find any drivers to work with it.

[@Yukatoshi]

I'm considering an ESS ISA card as my SB16 Vibra has some slight sound problems with certain games such as DOTT, where the voices have minor popping and noise issues.

[@philscomputerlab]

That's the DMA clicking bug / issues as I like to call it :) Many cards have this. You should also hear it in Prince of Persia.

[@Yukatoshi]

@@philscomputerlab Any way to fix it without replacing the card?

[@philscomputerlab]

Nope there are no fixes.

[@Yukatoshi]

@@philscomputerlab Lol. Oh well!

[@Yukatoshi]

Well I bought an ESS 1868F after watching your video on it! :)

[@2007tantrum]

Thanks for information. Also yesterday I was watching video how to configure Sb 32 and awe 64 in ms dos. And also was trying to download ms dos starter pack, but there was something wrong with the website. Hope now everything is ok.

[@Baoran]

I wonder if that Yamaha card would work in those games that you marked red with motherboard supporting d-dma?

[@Henk717]

It would have, basically the YMF cards have DDMA support and run these games just fine. So does the ESS Solo-1. The problem comes with boards that lack DDMA support but have enough support for at least some legacy features. Yamaha and ESS both have their own technology to bypass the lack of DDMA. Yamaha uses a software solution called DSDMA which uses EMS to mimick what is required. The ESS Solo-1 on the other hand has this done in hardware with a technique called TDMA. If you have a chipset that plays well with this then the ESS Solo-1 can have greater compatibility. So i'd say on a DDMA system go with the Yamaha, its the better card. On a system without DDMA that is known to support TDMA go with the ESS if you can find one and mostly want to play dos games. If you have a system that does not support DDMA, and is not from VIA (unless you can't get the Solo-1) or Nvidia/AMD (Lacks legacy features, amd you may have to research) then try the YMF744, that one has great compatibility with most systems but does then need that EMS loader for the soundblaster part.

[@spicydeath82]

i'm pretty sure i have a few of these laying around. snagged them from old PCs i was tearing apart.

[@Rickenbacker451]

I now have three of them, one was thought as spare but I only have the third because I though one was lost in shipping.

[@ltx4096]

There are some cases where ESFM can sound pretty bad, Stunts for example: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eKHUlJWfrsqYqqM My ESS ES1938S card also has poor anti-aliasing filtering compared with a typical Soundblaster or Yamaha.

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks, I will check out that game for sure. I've got something in the works, a bit of a twist and game changer for retro PC fans :D

[@danielgeno6624]

Phil you mentioned pentium4 motherboards with SB-link connector ? are there any known motherboard with it? im interested in something like that

[@philscomputerlab]

I don't have such a board and not sure of exact models, you just got to research and you should find something.

[@stamasd8500]

I have tested several such boards with both YMF cards and with ESS cards, and got good results. The motherboards in cause are pretty rare as by the time of the P4 manufacturers couldn't be bothered with DOS compatibility anymore, but there are a few out there. I have personally tested several boards from QDI, specifically the PlatiniX 4X (chipset 850/socket 423) and several versions of PlatiniX 2E (all with chipset 845/socket 478). Compatibility is great. There are several threads on vogons.org where these were discussed, my results are there.

[@johnmijo]

Curious if you can get the driver loaded using something like QEMM by Quarterdeck ? I seem to recall it had options for being able to mimic EMS configs and still be compatible with many games that don't work with this enabled. My DOS days are long gone so I don't remember the exact details but I had this app and seem to recall it worked really well getting things working properly for gaming.

[@philscomputerlab]

I never felt the need for such software, the good old EMM386.EXE works just fine for me.

[@VShuricK]

AFAIR QEMM have many issues with games, EMM386 have much better compatibility.

[@raulpetruz8212]

compatible joystick gameport ? windows 95 ,win 3.11?? or not?

[@normanwehrle8519]

Hi, you had some (DOS) sound issues (no sound fx) with your thin client TK-3772. Did some of the mentioned cards solve these? Could you please retest? Thanks in advance.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes I believe the YAMAHA YMF and this ESS Solo-1 card work in the TK-3772.

[@normanwehrle8519]

@@philscomputerlab Dankeschön :) If I get some of these I will report because afaik not only the card does matter but the interplay between card and southbridge.

[@frenchfrete]

Where can you buy this?

[@philscomputerlab]

I got mine from eBay.

[@JmanNo42]

Will you do a review on the chinese clone copies?

[@armorgeddon]

Well, all the points talked about in this video also apply to those other cards with the same ESS chip.

[@kazimierzkwireg]

The question is, how it will work on a motherboard with no sb-link intetface present?

[@roguenova6766]

Check the page 7 of the vogons thread "PCI sound cards and Chipsets from various manufacturers..." for more details on compatibility with legacy-free motherboards.

[@philscomputerlab]

I did not use the SB-Link in this video. I only mentioned it.

[@cristiannicolae6309]

@@philscomputerlabIs there any benefit to using the sb-link cable or do DOS games run without it?

[@philscomputerlab]

Cristian Nicolae Yes better compatibility, but better is relative, as the card already has excellent compatibility :)

[@COMATRON.]

i wasted 20h plus to get this card to install on my t5710 hp thin client. NO chance (DOS, freedos, win98SE, ME) ... never wasted so much time on sth :D damn

[@punkcoredz]

Any way to get this working on windows 10 ?

[@philscomputerlab]

Why? Modern onboard audio is very good.

[@punkcoredz]

@@philscomputerlab I have and old gaming computer with a g41 MB and audio jack isn't working anymore. It remembers me of my childhood 😭

[@user-ti6ne2cr2u]

Well it looks like the Terratec Promedia Solo 1 ( TT = TerraTec ) you will find Manuel and (maybe) other drivers here: terratec.ultron.info/Audio/OEM/TTSolo1/ ;)

[@KiriGaiWolf]

Hey Phill! I need a help, i have old super socket 7 system with pentium mmx 200mhz proccessor on it, and i need a PCI video and ISA soundcard that can play dos games!

[@pc-sound-legacy]

I would get a creative soundblaster 16 because of its great dos compatiblity and fair prices on ebay. You csn take any pci vga card you can get for little money. I have one ati with great signal quality. The matroxes are also great but expensive. Some s3 virge are also good but threre are also less good no name cards around. Trident would not be my first choice, but anyway, try it out.

[@armorgeddon]

For speed and compatibility S3 and CirrusLogic are top notch for PCI cards for DOS. Check this: gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

[@AtariBorn]

What's up Phil?

[@drzeissler]

Solo1 has issues with TurricanII/Doom2 on Intel i815e.

[@Rickenbacker451]

But that is rather a problem of the chipset, not the Solo1?

[@Henk717]

@@Rickenbacker451 Doom is a driver issue. Breaks for me as well on a VIA board with the ESSOLO method. A properly tweaked ESSINIT batch file (Unofficial method) works great with Doom). Turrican2 broke for me with the ESSINIT method but worked fine with the ESSOLO method. So i keep both and i have yet to test a game that fails on both.

[@piecaruso97]

you shuld put some han SOLO somewhere in this video

[@georgemaragos2378]

** Edited As When i read Phils I could understand his response from what i wrote Reply Hi All, i got stung with one of those cards ** Edit From the cheap Ebay asian clone card only, NOT THE ONE REVIEWED HERE it is a ESS chip but what they supplied was not the full spec card but one with many features removed still it was $12 shipped and worked fine - just no joy stick ** The joystick connector is there but does not work at all, i rebooted with a Dos 6.22 floppy used used a hardware test program and its just not connected. For the comment about the wavetable pins, i think the pins missing is not the problem it would be the rest of the missing chips and associated hardware and builtin sound fonts Dam, i watched to the end end did not see actually hear purple tentacles transformation and speech

[@philscomputerlab]

The Terratec card shown has fully working gameport and MPU-401, I tested this specifically. DOTT worked fine, it's listed on the compatibility sheet.

[@philscomputerlab]

Ah yes, I actually mentioned that cheap versions might not have working joysticks :) I have such cards, the DOS driver actually reports that there is no gameport.

[@AnonymousPhucker]

i had this card - it sucked ass when i bought it

[@philscomputerlab]

How so?

[@BoGy1980]

wow ..; you act as if ISA cards are better ... they are NOT.... it's just for compatibility in dos games so you cards accepts and can act like a genuine SB/SB16 (soundblaster). (plz read on, i also explained why the capacitors are there for, it's not for audio quality btw!) in case you didn't know, ISA slots are way older then PCI slots, and one thing ISA slots don't have is Plug "n Play capabilities, which means they have dedicated IRQ adressess and so forth, and they do not allow double use of irq's like pci does, which would mean you can max. have about 10 ISA slots (and even less if you want to connect stuff through PS2/serial/parallel ports. ISA soundcards only are much more expensive because back in those days (when there only was ISA) there weren't that many soundcards available... You had like the one that started it all; the famous adlib card, and only a few models of soundblaster. When PCI came around it was much easier to create new cards and by then the market also was a lot bigger, pc gaming was becoming more by then and we saw the advent of windows 95 which was the first real multimedia OS from microsoft (win 3.x also supports multimedia, but it's not as integrated, eg it doesn't have a framework like direct-X) Also, the ISA cards are limited to a 16 bits wide databus at a low speed (7 mhz), playing audio at cd-quality is already quite a reasonal impact on that bus if you want to connect something else to that bus (eg a 4 mbit (token ring) or 10 mbit network adaptor), while pci is running 32bits wide at 33mhz. the problem with a lot of PCI audio cards though, is that, especially the cheaper ones, relied quite a lot on the cpu, just like the later AC'97 codecs did... but a nice AWE32 from soundblaster on pci, or a X-FI on pci-express are both a lot better sounding than those old ISA cards. Note though, in case you didn't knew; the reason why your ESS card may sound "louder' could be because it's set to output to unpowered speakers. Back in the days speakers didn't come with a power-cord, it was only an audio cable and the soundcard had to deliver a stronger signal with more power to the speakers. That's also why you have those two capacitors on the card, it's got nothing to do with audio quality. The problem though with those pre-amped signals was that when someone was using headphones, and just switched the cable without changing the setting on the card, that after a while the headsets' speakers burned up, as they were constantly receiving a too high powered signal. Then the industry decided to use the standard audio signal on the cards an start with pre-amped speakers, so all speakers from then on got a power supply to amp the signal, and when you change the cord to your headphones there is no more risk to end up with expensive earwarmers... Hope you read this, as i think you were filling in a gap with wrong info and it's always better to know how things really are.

[@Rickenbacker451]

I don't know about the integrated amplifier in the chip but there are models that have external amplifiers on the board which you can switch to with a jumper. I tried those and boy those are really loud and sound terrrible (a lot of static). The card I'm writing about is the Labway Soundboard D66. It has one big external stero amp but there are also models with two smaller amps for each channel (I think the earliest Terratec models have those).

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

@BoGy You’re comment is actually rude. He sure knows ISA is older, and prefers it for backwards compatibility. And you should check your facts, there is no AWE32 PCI, they are only ISA.

[@roguenova6766]

If you wonder whether the "WAVETABLE CONN" thing works for MIDI daughterboards if you solder in the missing pins - yes, it works like a charm in all games in both Windows and DOS.

[@kamerat7689]

Also some of the Terratec cards have the wavetable connector already soldered, but lacks the PC/PCI connector. I think all the cards with the wavetable connector also got the circuitry for the onboard amplifier soldered.

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice, that's an easy mod then :D

[@stamasd8500]

I was going to post that, added the connector on one of my Solo-1 cards and it works just fine.

[@Yukatoshi]

Is it worth getting a wavetable add-on for a standard OPL card?

[@roguenova6766]

​@@Yukatoshi​not sure what you mean by "standard OPL card", but in context of the ESS Solo-1 - I believe it is worth it, since it has a very clean and quiet output (no hissing noise even on high volume).

[@GuybrushThriftweed]

Third reason for using a PCI card instead of ISA: you have no ISA cards but a crapload of PCI ones :p

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea good point, after a while they just pile up :)

[@nou9964]

Hey, that ESSOLO.INI file can be modified with a hex editor such as Hexit to change the IRQs and addresses to whatever you want (within the card's limits). You won't have to fight with PNP assigning values again. These are what the bytes do and the values you can enter... 00: SB IO (Little Endian, 20 = 220, 40 = 240) 01: SB IO (Big Endian, 02 = 200 (Cannot be changed)) 02: DMA (00, 01, 03) 03: DMA (Big Endian, not used and don't change, default 00) 04: FM Address (Little Endian, Default is 88 for 388h (Cannot be changed)) 05: FM Address (Big Endian, Default is 03 for 388h (Cannot be changed)) 06: IRQ (05, 07, 09, 10 (0A), 11-14 (0B-0E)) 07: IRQ (Big Endian, not used and don't change, default 00) 08: Gameport Address (Little Endian, default 01 for 201h (Cannot be changed)) 09: Gameport Address (Big Endian, default 02 for 200h, change to anything else to disable) 0A: MPU401 Address (Little Endian, default 30 for 330h, can be 00, 20, 30, 40) 0B: MPU401 Address (Big Endian, default 03 for 300h, change to anything else to disable) 0C: DDMA/TDMA/SB-Link (00 (DDMA), 01 (TDMA), 02 (SB-Link aka PC/PCI)) 0D: DDMA/TDMA/SB-Link (Big Endian, not used and don't change, default 00) 0E: Not Used 0F: Not Used Set "PNP OS Installed" in your BIOS to Yes, so when you run ESSOLO.COM no TSR remains in memory (if using SB-Link). Also, no need to have ESSOLO.SYS in Config.sys. You only need ESSOLO.COM in Autoexec.bat and ESSOLO.INI in your main C:\ directory. (This will allow games that require you to not have a memory manager installed to work such as Zone 66) Hopes this helps someone configure their card! (Psst, Phil, you should mirror the ESSOLO.INI information on your site in your driver/info page for the card!)

[@DeathVortex]

Any tips on how to get the 16 bit/HIGH DMA to work? I have music in Duke 3D but no SFX...I have a SOCKET A with a VIA chipset... I dont know if thats the issue? but ive tried everything, even tried a few things I found on vogons. I tried changing 0C to and from 00>01 but for some reason it seems to be locked for me (VIA DDMA)

[@COMATRON.]

i wasted so many hours on this and now i found this. this is gonna be the last thing i gonna try ...thanx a ton for this sick research

[@nou9964]

@@COMATRON. No problem man! I'm glad I could help! One thing I wanna add: make ESSOLO.INI read only. I've had times where the settings changed on me. I wish Phil would include the info in the video description instead of having people dig through comments looking for this. Cheers!

[@FullMetal-Tech]

I am going to try this, for some reason MPU401/ FM synth is not working with mine ( same model as phil's and using sb-link as well on a 440bx board ) one question though, should I install the 9x driver and then hex edit the essolo ini? Or will the 9x emu driver override my settings? I have tried other drivers to find that happens especially autoexec being overridden.

[@nou9964]

@@FullMetal-Tech Oh hey, also, do you have "PnP OS Installed" set to Yes in your BIOS? That's also important.

[@MarkTheMorose]

I weep for the lemming you let fall to his death. : ( I also fear the Phil Effect will inflate sound card prices on eBay, as well as motherboards with the SB Link. :(

[@NightSprinter]

Not sure if I or someone else mentioned it, but you can actually use the ESFM for passthru in DOSbox, and I believe some ports of games like Doom Classic may have support for a proper OPL-compatible chip.

[@stevehofer3482]

My 1999Compaq Presario had an ESS-1 Solo on the motherboard. It ran pretty much every game and web audio effortlessly. Later I was presently surprised that it could run ASIO4All low latency audio driver, so even with a 759 MHz Celeron processor it could run a DAW if you didn’t push it too hard.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Nice sounding opl copy! The card is good for a hybrid dos / windows 95/98 gaming machine. Fsr better than the soundblaster 128 pci and also cheap to get. For a dos only machine i prefered an isa card like soundblaster 16 or any good and compatible sb clone. I use a miro pc 10 with yamaha opl and analog devices chipset. Have uploaded a vid with a recording if anybody is interested.

[@Aranimda]

I ordered myself a secondhand Toshiba Satellite 4080XCDT laptop with ESS sound card. I hope it will do nice for DOS/Windows retro 9x gaming. ESS ES1978S (PCI audio accelerator); ESS ES1920S Features Hardware acceleration for DirectMusic, ActiveMovie, and Direct Input API 18-bit stereo audio support Yes Maximum sampling rate 48 kHz FM Synthesis support Yes: 64-channel wavetable music synthesis Full duplex function Yes Sound formats supported: SoundBlaster Pro™ V3.01, Windows Sound System V2.0; MIDI 3D Sound Support Yes: HRTF 3D positional audio, DVD AC-3 speaker virtualization Direct3Dsound, DirectSound support Yes: with Windows 98 Game SDK driver from Microsoft Speaker system Stereo Bass-Reflex speaker system Form factor Two top-mounted stereo speakers (28mm, 8 Ω) with volume control

[@JimProfit357]

I was wondering, how would you rate the Aureal Vortex 2 in terms of pure DOS compatibility compared to these two? I know the FM sound is terrible, but since there's a wavetable header, and the Vortex has a few more tricks up its sleeve, I would love to have your final opinion on each pros and cons of the top DOS PCI soundcards you reviewed (including the Live). Anyway great vid and thanks again for all the good work.

[@philscomputerlab]

The two cards shown are my top recommendations for DOS. The Live and Aureal use emulation, so if you slow down the machine to avoid speed issues, the music falls apart.

[@armorgeddon]

Putting an Aureal Vortex 2 in a pure DOS machine makes no sense. If you want a Aureal Vortex 2 in the machine because Windows is also run on the system then put an ISA card as a secondary soundcard in it.

[@kamerat7689]

Loading the ESSOLO.SYS in CONFIG.SYS sometimes helps with IRQ issues, it would either try to change the PCI IRQ to a more appropriate or load a TSR that emulates the SB IRQ. If you got lockups when it loads then make it run before any memory managers. Also the ESSOLO.COM do take care of the SET BLASTER environment variable by itself so no need to set it separately.

[@Rickenbacker451]

Does that mean once set in ESSOLO.COM you never have to change it again in DOS game setups?

[@armorgeddon]

No, the DOS game setups still won't know the IRQ of your soundcard by default

[@Henk717]

For me the .sys wasn't needed, if PNP is enabled in the bios essolo.com was enough.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

There is quite nice package that comes with the ESSONIC Sound card called 3MIX which is very nice indeed.

[@armorgeddon]

Hm, I can't find anything about it. Do you have a link?

[@ruxandy]

The ESS Solo 1 is a great soundcard, I myself have five in my collection. Back in the day, I had a Super Socket 7 MB with onboard ESS Solo 1 sound and I always remembered how good it was - which is why I bought quite a few over the years. Sadly, I sold that motherboard almost two decades ago and I can’t seem to find a similar one anywhere now... Small correction: The Yamaha YMF724/744 only needs expanded memory when using the DSDMA emulation. If you use it on a board that supports either DDMA or SB-Link, it will work without a need for expanded memory.

[@sedrosken831]

Y'know, most people wouldn't notice it, but the little painted notches for the pins on the main IC are *nice*. I would have killed to have those on the ICs in my PlayStation when I was modchipping it.

[@billychristmas]

I have one of these, and installed the drivers for Win98 but it's still not working.

[@linoxyard]

I had this one! It's actually not that bad, especially when you install a wavetable connector

[@Bofklax]

Got Ess Solo, but can’t understand why even BIOS don’t see this card! Tried in all PCI slots :/

[@mamailo2011]

Lemmings on Amiga sounds much better

[@AmstradExin]

By the way, I really love those. The easy driver installation under windows 98 adds DOS sound support and the card works on anything between a 486 and a Pentium 3! You just need the right package and it is a breeze!

[@zemanjekunda7150]

What about Pentium 4? Any known issues? Just asking since you omitted this particular CPU from your list.

[@kamerat7689]

If you got a motherboard with a 440LX or an ICH based Intel chipset and without a PC/PCI connector then stay away from the Solo-1 if you expect any decent compatibility under MS-DOS. VIA chipsets on the other hand usually plays very nice with the Solo-1 under MS-DOS in either DDMA mode (pre V-Link chipsets) or TDMA mode.

[@philscomputerlab]

I just added the system specifications, totally forgot about that :D Yea I used a VIA chipset motherboard of course.

[@stealth5508]

@@philscomputerlab In the video you had mentioned about using a 440bx initially for the test. Let me know otherwise.

[@OvermannOnline]

I wish you would go inside Captain Dread's boat in MI 2. The music doesn't play the same, or even correctly on a few cards I've tried.

[@armorgeddon]

I don't know if it's the same with MI 2 but the first MI also suffers from issues regarding sound on too fast CPUs. So if MI 2 suffers from those too the soundcard might not be the originating culprit. So maybe look into that too.

[@dannyyristenpatt614]

I just built an old system with a ASUS P4S800 motherboard, Pentium 4 @ 2.8 Ghz, 512 MB of RAM, Terratec Solo-1 and a GeForce 4 Ti 4200. I didn't expect this to work at all but Windows 98SE is working perfectly and what's even more surprising is that I get proper sound and music in DOS games, both in Windows and pure DOS mode. 😲

[@jbinary82]

I lost the DOS sound over Windows after a BIOS battery change. Do you have any clue on that? Card gets IRQ5

[@ksabond]

Hi .. I confirm that ESS Solo-1E ES1946S PCI Sound Card also compatible with DOS and WIN95 games .. I used your drivers ..Thanks

[@mailliwagneravla1655]

Hi, can you help me? I also got an ES1946S and installed it in Windows 98 and DOS, however Duke Nukem 3D audio is very bad, the voices are low and without quality. Music sounds normal.. In Doom 2 the same thing happens. Do you have any tips to resolve this? Thanks

[@ksabond]

@@mailliwagneravla1655 I did not test it with Doom and Duke Nukem .. but you can check for your card settings and the audio quality Multimedia in Control Panel

[@mailliwagneravla1655]

@@ksabond Hey. it improved with the installation of another driver, but in 1998 when I played I used a ISA Yamaha OPL3 Sax card and the quality was really incredible, that's why I thought that PCI card was really bad. But with the drivers that I found the quality is acceptable to remember the titles of the time. Thanks

[@PANORAMAPEPSI]

I installed the sound card (ASUS ESSENCE STX 2) on my computer (DELL OPTIPLEX 7060) but the sound was not good! Unlike the wonderful sound in my other old computer (DELL OPTIPLEX 7040), which does not contain a sound card, but an update to the application of sound (DELLAUDIO MAXXAUDIO PRO) ):

[@pentiummmx2294]

those cards are quite rare unfortunately.

[@KJ7JHN]

Perfect for the gravis game pad!

[@romankulik]

How does it compare with Sound Blaster Live! PCI sound card? The Sound Blaster Live! cards have drivers for DOS (non-OEM card versions are easy to find a driver for). The Sound Blaster Live! cards also have very good quality, there is a lot of them sold on eBay for a rock bottom price. Also, what are the system requirements for this card - will they work with original Pentium computers? I know that most Sound Blaster Live! cards do not work well with Pentiums - they are too slow and in games like Duke Nukem 3d the game becomes unplayable when sound blaster Live! is installed (while something like pentium 120 computer will run Duke Nukem 3d just fine with a ISA sound card).

[@roguenova6766]

Solo-1 and its "driver" (which is, essentially, just a file that sets the PCI registers to proper values for the card to work) do not depend on the CPU speed, so I guess there's virtually no minimum requirements for it. However, this is only regarding DOS and VxD in Windows - the WDM drivers do involve some overhead.

[@soylentgreenb]

Good idea. Those cards are so common and so unwanted I've managed to accumulate a bunch of them with zero intention of getting one. E.g. someone selling a bunch of PCI cards untested and there's one or two in there that are super interesting (e.g. a cheap aureal A3D 2.0 or a voodoo 1 or something). Besides the TNT2 M64 and MX440; SB live are one of those things that you don't go looking for, it just finds you.

[@philscomputerlab]

I've done a pretty thorough review of the Live! The Live! is stronger in Windows, weaker in DOS. Exactly the opposite of the ESS Solo-1. So that's how I would choose between them. Like Rogue Nova says, the Live! uses emulation, so when you slow down the CPU to, let's say play Wing Commander, the audio falls apart.

[@sl9sl9]

There's a reason the Live! is not really used for DOS builds, as Phil has pointed out above. Instead the ISA AWE64 Gold is generally considered one of the best DOS gaming sound cards, it just works and sounds great. Only problem is it costs a LOT on eBay, because everyone is buying them for their retro PC's! I would also pair that up with a Roland MT-32 (or other Roland sound card), because some games really need that to sound perfect.

[@rich1051414]

Well, all I know is I had an AWE64 card back in the day for dos, specifically because of the high compatibility and good sound.

[@blooder81]

i have one of that, must test it

[@modlabs]

Did you tested both cards without DDMA? Or SOLO-1 was tested with SB-Link and Yamaha without?

[@philscomputerlab]

I did NOT use the SB-Link cable in this video! I only mentioned it for those interested :)

[@kamerat7689]

On the motherboard Phil used in this video the Solo-1 should run i ESS own TDMA mode. Like DDMA TDMA requires no TSR and in my experience game compatibility is about the same.

[@kztech1319]

How good do you think this card is in retro games? I just realised that I do have such a card installed in my Pentium 4 Dell OptiPlex GX520. However, it is running Windows 10. It worked just fine for me, but I think it is a waste of a retro card lol.

[@FullMetal-Tech]

Got the same card but your drivers are different on your website than what is being shown here. The gameport is disabled in the installer ini, and for some reason the dos driver included in the 9x driver will not initialize the gameport/ mpu401/ FM synth only digital sound works. I am running a PII 333 on a Abit AH6 ( 440bx chipset ) with SB-link connected. I can't figure out how to get it fully functioning under 9x dos.

[@BastetFurry]

I have a SOLO-1 inside an IGEL Thin Client, no chance getting SFX to run, only OPL3 music.

[@eduardoavila646]

How about the ess solo-1 compatibility without the pci link? (Only being plugged in the pci slot)

[@philscomputerlab]

That's what I did in the video!

[@eduardoavila646]

PhilsComputerLab Oh my bad, i confused and tought that it was using the pci link. I can't seem to find it where i live. The soundcards with a via chipset are bad? I can only find them arouns here

[@philscomputerlab]

Hmm I haven't considered sound cards with VIA, they certainly won't be as good in DOS I think.

[@agevenisse3252]

@@philscomputerlab No issues with Via chipset here (VT8601T/VT82C686B). It supports DDMA and Solo-1 works great, even without L1/L2 cache enabled. This motherboard/chipset also has it's own SB Pro emulation, but I disabled it before testing the Solo-1. It even got PCI IRQ 5 (in the correct PCI slot, with USB and other devices disabled in BIOS). I did have a bit of crackle/noise in Epic Pinball and Pinball Fantasies though. All other games worked fine. Also tried the card on my Aopen AX6C (Intel 820) with no luck. Only worked in windows due to the lack of DDMA support. Maybe setting it to TDMA in the ini-file would work though.

[@Henk717]

Finally managed to order one, couldn't find one anywhere and it popped up in my region for a good price (Less than i paid for the NOS YMF744). Ill try to run it side by side with the YMF744, as i think other than DOS game compatibility the YMF744 is the better card given it has EAX, A3D, Genuine OPL3 and the XG midi stuff on board. But i hope the ESS Solo-1 and YMF do not steal each others interrupts if you do not have their drivers loaded. That would allow me to hopefully route the audio of the ESS into the YMF and get me the best of both worlds. Which would be an unknown or disabled device in 98 and XP, and either the ESS and YMF in DOS depending on which game i want to play and the compatibility / FM sound preference for said game. If this setup works i'd basically have setup that mimcs what Voodoo cards do for such a time machine, falling back on the 'accelerator' card only if need be and otherwise using superior hardware.

[@Henk717]

Update on this, i ditched the Yamaha from this build but it did work as planned. Thing was, with some tweaks and a modified version of ESSINIT this card runs far better on my via motherboard than the Yamaha ever could. So the biggest reason i originally went with the Yamaha was now redundant since the ESS Solo with tweaks has a much higher compatibility with the games i want to play and so much weird issues and stability problems in DOS improved when i don't have to run tsr's for most games. The ESSINIT method does break games though so for those i fall back on the normal driver. I only use essinit in TDMA mode and sometimes the essolo.com driver with PNP enabled in the bios. This is enough to make the card work great and both methods put it on the right IRQ. I could not pass trough the card to the yamaha though. The yamaha is silent without its driver. So i went for a Audigy 1 instead. What a dream combination! The two cards compliment each other perfectly. You can either install the solo-1 and then the audigy so the solo-1 handles dos games and the audigy everything else. Or you can not install the solo and install dos support for the audigy for worse FM but better midi support. Then in real mode dos you can still use the ess for the good FM synth by only loading that, combined with a utility on vogons that initializes the audigy's line-in routing driverless. With essinit and that tool combined i have a driverless setup for dos fm and sb support. Plays most games perfectly. And for games that don't like Duke Nukem 3D you can load essolo afterwards which resets the card and loads itself as a tsr. Then consuming ram and fixing some issues (while creating others that for example prevent doom from working, doom works perfectly on a modified ESSINIT but the public version has a LOT of issues due to one mistake from the author. He puts the card in 10-bit mode, change this to 16-bit mode and it will work as well as mine if your motherboard is tdma compatible). I do not think ill change from this setup, but if you want to replicate it go with the Audigy 1 and not the 2. Because only the live and audigy 1 have the dos utility for line in routing availible.

[@nik4520]

The exact card is right next to me on my desk and I didn't even notice until halfway through the video

[@raulpetruz8212]

gameport in the this sound blast compatible windows 95 ???

[@Notarget1337]

Can you please have mirror links for the drivers at least somewhere (Like Google Drive)?

[@danielgeno6624]

Please do a review of the media vision pro audio spectrum 16

[@eklipsegirl]

Phil, is there any chance your website will be back online anytime soon? I'm building a retro PC and stumble upon many links to useful materials from your website, but the links don't work because the site is down.

[@philscomputerlab]

I'm seeing no issues.

[@piecaruso97]

You should also check your mothern motherboards, i have my asus h81 motherboard with an sb link interface, so check it, maybe you can have a better dos i7 machine with a pci sound card with sb link

[@philscomputerlab]

No that doesn't interest me. Just use DOSBox on such a modern PC.

[@mutatedgeek8040]

It's like a adlib but better!

[@memadmax69]

These ESS cards are about as common as cockroaches, but they get the job done. But the sound quality of just about any sound blaster card is far superior to one of these things.

[@Rickenbacker451]

Did you actually compare the two?

[@memadmax69]

@@Rickenbacker451 Ummm....... Yes? >_>

[@stealth5508]

Seems like they are now as extinct as dinosaurs. Not able to find a cheap generic Solo-1 on ebay!!

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

What’s a good PCI mobo to go with those sound cards for DOS games? A PII?

[@Rickenbacker451]

VIA Chipsets up to KT266 have a good compatibility.

[@armorgeddon]

Information for people trying to find such a soundcard: A soundcard featuring this chip, SB-Link connector, a wavetable connector, comparatively big capacitors & line-out/speaker-out jumpers on what feels like a very solid PCB is the Labway LWHA331D60 or A331-D60, which is available also branded as the Fujitsu Siemens Soundboard D66.

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you for the tip! I found a listing on eBay Germany and bought a few!

[@armorgeddon]

You're welcome, glad that I could help you. Greets from Germany! (no I'm not the seller ;-) )

[@JmanNo42]

I saw the AOPEN CMI8738 video and just bought one of those chinese 4 dollar CMI8738 at ebay, "just for pure dosgaming", but seeing this video i start to wonder should i bought a Solo-1 based instesad they also cost 4 dollar?

[@philscomputerlab]

Those generic Chinese cards are all rubbish! You will likely be disappointed.

[@JmanNo42]

@@philscomputerlab Well it is just for dos gaming so i just want a descent fm or fm emulation + sample audio. I mean they can't actually do it so much different then on the orginal cards. Possibly there can be big difference in implementation of 3D sound. But this is just for a late 90's computer without iSA card to be able to enjoy some retrogaming in DOS. I did understand that the SOLO-1 have some sort of opl/fm emulation in hardware? So is the CMI8738 only software emulation? For me the CMI8738 almost sounded better in "FM Sound?" in Lemmings in your video?

[@JmanNo42]

@@philscomputerlab I bought the CMI8738. And i mean for 4 dollar each and free freight what could go wrong, i thinking of buying the solo also, and check out and compare their compability in DOS. I report back about their compability ***if i get them to work in dos*** ;), i have a SB0100 "SBlive" and some audigy larying around that i tried in my semi retrocomputer, but i just can't get them to work with SBinit "the dosdrv". The computer is a dell 2400 late 90's early 2000? and thee seem to be a compabliity issue. I lload dos 98 plain with just himem.sys and emm386.exe before i try load set environment and load SBinit, the card shows up configured with SBcfg and you set the IRQ and DMA with SBset. But it is stubborn refusing loading SBinit. "Could not allocate code/patch RAM below 4 Mbyte, boundary" Well maybe it is a topic 4 a video because there seem to be more people then me having problem "google" But it also can be the fact that i put in two GB ram, but since it is in dos i can't see how it could matter. I actually tried HimemX.exe instead of himem.sys to limit the ram but SBinit was not keen on it. So why do i have 2GB ram, well the HDD actually run XP, it is my music computer with an emu1212, yeah i have removed it to check it is not IRQ problem. So the win98 is actually on a USB stick, but that should not matter for the driver load in dos. "I think" Maybe you could do a video on howto get a SBlive up in pure DOS boot mode under win98 using SBinit , because it surely isn't as easy that one would beleive, or i simply happen to got a DELL with sblive compability issues. Ok that was way more info then you needed or have the patience to read. Cheers and keep up with the soundcard videos i like them!

[@JmanNo42]

Did any of Ess solo-1 and CMi8738 based cards you tried had wavetable support in dos? I guess that DLS wavetable is windows implementation beyond any DOS because i do not ever think i saw a game support "DLS wavetable" in DOS or am i wrong? www.hardwaresecrets.com/datasheets/CMI8738LX_MX.pdf Would be kind of a miracle if you could simulate SB AWE32 wavetable synthesis in DOS using DLS, i guess fast ram on the actual soundcard must be there to do the emulation. I guess i have to hook up my soundcanvas SC-7 to midi for wavetable sound.

[@philscomputerlab]

The cheap cards often have interference and are noisy. When considering the CMI card, I like to think of it as a PCI Adlib card. The FM is great, and should work in pretty much any game! Sound Blaster though, will not work in most games.

[@boomerkuwanger3700]

I'd say I like the YMF744. In principle it's nice having the slightly higher DOS compatibility, but you're basically still stuck getting yet another sound card for troublesome games. The truth is I'm more inclined to play DOS games in Windows 98 which already limits the no-EMS games (AFAIK) and YMF's midi synth is just awesome. Having said that, I'd take the SB Live's soundfont midi synth over that. Now, if you could find a PCI card with 100% DOS compatibility... Actually, if you could find an ISA card with 100% DOS compatibilty... :)

[@ianhanschen]

Phil - great video. It looks like you were using the ESS in their awesome TDMA mode. In this mode the SB-LINK cable isn't required - DMA is accomplished by the card snooping DMA register writes to the 8237 and completing them using standard PCI DMA. Legacy IRQ mapping is done using the ESS .sys driver - so no SB-LINK. This makes this card the most awesome (in my opinion) DOS-compatible PCI sound card.

[@sbomba1973]

there are no drivers for windows 10 for this card. AVOID BUYING

[@philscomputerlab]

LOL who cares, the highlight is for DOS Gaming!!!