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Thread: ESS688FC No Sound in Win 98SE

  1. #1
    Bronze Member Island_Boy_77's Avatar
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    ESS688FC No Sound in Win 98SE

    Hi All
    I'm having a play with an old Cyrix PR333 computer that has a 6GB HDD and 64MB of RAM. While the PC-Chips mobo (an old M575) does have on-board sound, the rear bracket is missing. So, the previous owner had installed an ISA ESS688FC (Eagle brand) sound card. Now it's been a while since I've had to dick about with IRQ and DMA settings, so I'm more than a little rusty. Further, while I have the "official" driver CD, there is no manual so I'm not sure about jumper settings on the card (although since the card had to have been working at some point, I'm picking that the jumpers are in the right place). I note that one of the jumpers is specifically for PnP (or not), but a couple of posts on the 'net indicated that PnP on ISA cards usually doesn't work. Anyway, I've fiddled with the BIOS settings and tried PnP on / off (both BIOS and card), but can't get Win 98SE to recognize most of the card. I say most, because for some weird reason it WILL pick up the MPU-401 part of the card (at 330). Thinking that perhaps this card is one of those nasty ones that needs DOS drivers before it goes into Windows, I tried using the DOS drivers off the CD. The setup program ran fine, identified the card (so obviously it can see it), and would let me change the settings. I left it at 220, 5 and 1. The data saved ok to Autoexec and Config, but when the computer rebooted a message came up saying that the ESS1868 card could not be found. I am presuming that the 1868 and 688 are of the same family. I downloaded the "official" driver for the 688 from the ESS website and the setup ran with no errors, but still Win 98 refuses to pick up more than the MPU-401 part of the card. Oh, and I tried a different ISA slot to make sure the one I was using wasn't NGB.

    Clearly, the easy thing to do is bung in a PCI sound card, but this has turned into a personal challenge now and I'm damned if I'll let a 11-year old OS beat me! So, what do you think? Where should I look to try to get sound up and running? The mobo is quite well featured for it's age. Should I have "Plug and play Aware O/S" set to yes or no? DMA channels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6 & 7 can be set to PnP or ISA/EISA - which should it be? With the card theoretically on DMA 0, should that be set to ISA? IRQ's 3 - 15 can also be individually set - should 5 be ISA/EISA or PnP?

    Any help appreciated.

    cheers
    Peter

  2. #2
    Titanium Member efc's Avatar
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    I found a driver for that isa card. After re-reading your post I realized that you have one with the CD. I vote for replacing it with a pci card.
    Linux Mint Debian Edition

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