Agreed completely, I've used ESS186x cards in dozens of DOS builds. Always been pleasantly surprised with games that are often hard to get sounding correct on other cards, even later SB16s. Nice to know some more technical reasons why it works!
The Audiodrive is my favorite retro sound card. Yeah, Creatives have the name recognition, the cachet, etc, but really, I only really like the SB Pro 2.0, AWE64 and Audigy2 ZS. Otherwise, ESS all the way. I even like it better than the Audician32 (which is also quite good). It's fortunate that these cards are common as dirt, then! (They were in production for a long time. I remember seeing Pentium II and even some Athlon machines with ISA ESS1869s built into the motherboard. They were almost as common as Ensoniq 1371, and more common than ESS Solo-1.)
Haha good old AudioPCI, these cards just find me somehow, they pop up all over the place :D Yes these AudioDrive cards are cheap AND good. A real gem for anyone frustrated with higher prices on some retro parts.
I had one ES1868 on my first computer. The configuration was: Cyrix 4x86 40MHz (a little beautiful green cpu) / 8MB SIMM / 400MB WD HDD / Cyrus Logic 1MB / ESS 1868 / MS-DOS. Later, when I've installed Windows 95, installing the driver for this card was my first challenge with MS Win 95. Also was the first driver I ever installed. Very very satisfactory sensation when I've managed to hear first Windows 95 sound :). Lost so many nights playing with this computer... great memoryes. You are doing a very nice job reviewing this old stuff. Keep up the good job, best wishes.
thanks Phil for going over the dos driver install , i was also using that same driver and couldn't change any settings, i will try the drivers you found when i get around to working on my pII machine, as always, awesome video, thanks again
That was my favourite ISA sound card back in the day. I actually miss it lol. The last time I used it was on a Duron 1000 and the motherboard had a single ISA slot.
Oh, I had one of those but without the IDE CD-ROM and Wavetable connectors. I used to use it as my go-to sound card for OPL3 FM stuff until I switched to a Yamaha YMF724F when I found out that it had genuine OPL3 integrated into its chipset. The FM synth accuracy on the ES1868 is pretty close to a genuine OPL3 but there are some inaccuracies that are most notable when playing music that uses certain OPL3 tricks that take advantage of 4-op mode (such as OSKARI.A2m included with Adlib Tracker II, drum instruments sound like noise on ES1868). It was certainly more accurate than a Crystal sound card and Creative Lab's cards that use a CQM chip (their own OPL3 clone) instead of a proper OPL3 chip for FM synthesis.
Nobody can convince me that any early ISA sound card even came close to my 1994 REVEAL Sound Blaster compatible sound card! That REVEAL sound card stood the test of time and lasted until the very last ISA slot in 2004. I miss that sound card. I would still use it today if I could.
Quality video as always! Thanks Phil. This was my very first soundcard, back on my 386, carried on till the Pentium era. Now I got one for my DOS build. Great card, highly recommend it for its value.
My very first sound card was its older brother, an ESS688 based unit. I bought it for my Am486DX2-80 machine when I was 15 years old. I had to deliver a few papers to be able to afford it but it was one of my best purchases ever. Of course it's easy to please a 15 year old but my life changed because of this card. DooM came to life and I played it even more often ;-)
Phil, as always great advice and excellent support to the community by way of the very useful driver files on your website. Thanks for your many contributions to the vintage PC community. I for one certainly appreciate your work!
It's very interesting to see you showing these things side by side with other cards, because in their day I remember frequently running into issues with ESS cards. Mostly it would be problems with drivers in win 9x, and earned them the title "extremely shitty sound" in the local circle. Maybe we judged them unfairly?
They in fact were shitty sounding cards. But it depends what you are comparing to. ESS cards were affordable and to have one was much, much better than PC speaker. But compared to the proper (and sadly, much more expensive) cards, ESS was just at the bottom. We got what we paid for.
@@n646n it isn't a bad device as such just the cheapest of the cheap and sound accordingly. Once you compare it to something more decent like a SoundBlaster card, the difference is striking. Back in 90s I had it my PC for at least 3 years, because I couldn't afford any better.
@@tdebug1 Striking? Yes, all those hanging notes and DMA clicks and duke nukem slowdowns really show how much better soundblaster cards are. Not to mention how much better ESFM is compared to regular OPL. The only tradeoff is slightly inaccurate regular FM, but even that sounds better to some as well and is barely even noticeable.
Just had to chime in and say I also love these, my first computer I personally owned was a Compaq LTE with one of these in it and that’s what I grew up playing DOS games on, and I still think it’s my favorite FM synth of them all
Just spent two days installing a Sound Blaster VIBRA16 into my main system. I was very disappointed about it's limited compatibility. I found your channel watching the SB16 ASP (CT1740) video. I now ordered a ESS. Thanks a lot Phil, I subscribed =)
Mostly problems with Doom. Other games work fine. Doom does have music but no FM effects in DOS 6.22, and has FM effects but no music in DOS 7.1 and Windows 98. I tried all Doom releases from 1.1 to 1.19, shareware and full versions.
I really liked the AOpen AW 32 Pro that I had in my first computer. Good compatibility and a built in wavetable. I still remember the moment I switched Tie Fighter from OPL3 to General Midi for the music. The difference was amazing.
I actually installed this exact card in to a machine yesterday. I quite like the ESS based cards, and there are lots of variants - I've got some with clipping LED's and much more complex output stages too.
I really do not understand how you are still stuck with below 100k subs. TH-cam algorithm and clickbairts suck so hard. I just want to let you know that you deserve a ton more subs. By the way will you review fx5900xt?
Thank you! We'll get there, I rather do videos that we enjoy, than chasing views and subs. Yes I will review the FX5900XT soon, but I've got a few videos I got to produce first.
I was aiming to buy a cheap audio card and bought this for 10$, back in the 96'. I had no idea it was good. My expectation at the time was: sb pro>sb16>ess1868 🙂
+PhilsComputerLab 1:58 That's actually a pre-amp input designed for a spread spectrum equalizer addon. The reason you could hear sound but at a very muffled volume is because that input expects a higher power input.
Sold a lot of those cards in my computer shop between 1997 and 1999, never had compatibility problem. One of the best, if not the best soundblaster emulation for dos gaming.
I won a lot of clients over other computer shops in the city. First, I was the only one to stay open in august. Second, I changed a lot of bad sound cards, like advance 100, OPTi, SC6600, and replaced them with ESS, or for the more wealthy real sound blaster.
wow, this is crazy man! i didnt have an isa sound card back then, do you remember onboard sound blaster? lol! port 220 dma1 irq 7 LOLOL those were the days!
Mine doesn't have the ide controller sadly, but it does still show up in devices for some reason. This is a really good sound card, thanks for encouraging me to use mine that I've had for 17 years in storage and providing the drivers on your website!
Watching this video again, after finally getting around to putting my 98 rig together (Aopen AX6BC, P3 1GHz, 120GB SSHD, 256MB RAM, SBLive, ESS AudioDrive 1868)... not there yet, but looking to set up in the next week. Don't stop doing what you're doing with these superb videos. Thank you man!!
@@craigpilkington4323 Ah ok that makes sense! For Windows 98 I would go with something else though... Aureal Vortex 2, SB Live, Audigy or Audigy 2 and maybe Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. All of them have basic DOS sound.
@@philscomputerlab yep, if you look at the spec above, I have the SBLive in the 98 rig :) Cannot wait to replay my 2 favourite games ever: Thief the Dark Project and Thief the Metal Age. I'm actually looking at the Creative Live Drive right now on eBay to hook up to the SBLive.... hmmm, decisions :)
I should have said, I bought the ESS AudioDrive to put into one of the ISA slots, figuring that it would be great for when I run DOS games under DOS mode in Win98. What do you think? I've based that on the fact that you recommended the ESS in a previous video as being fantastic for DOS gaming? I've also got a Dreamblaster S2 to add onto the Wavetable header.
Are you 100% sure have you tried it? Because the PC speaker signal is quite "hot" and I have fried stuff because of it before. The PC SPK is usually just a 2 pin header.
There are 4 pin PC SPK headers, I even remember having bought a few cases that used one and came with adapters to the far more dominant 2 pin format. I suspect brand new these cards prolly came with a 4 to 2 pin adapter if Whiskey's right, for similar reasons that most cases that had 4 pin speakers had the adapter for motherboards with 2 pin headers.
@@philscomputerlab Those might be pins for volume controller, like ESS Es1698 had. Picture of that card: newauctionstatic.com.ua/offer_images/2016/10/12/02/big/4/4hIy8OVJb89/zvukovaja_karta_ess_es1698fc_isa.jpg
I picked up the Labway version of the same ESS ES1868F after watching this video. The Labway version is a little more robust and has metal audio connectors vs plastic. Not a big deal but I always loved when they were metal :) This chip is fantastic. It sounds so good in everything. I was using a SB16 previously but it has the MPU-401 bug which is very annoying since I use a SoundCanvas. This card is just as good (actually to me it sounds better) and no bug. Excellent card and I would never have known without your video Phil. And, of course the drivers you found and thankfully have shared with everyone work perfectly. Thank you again!
Hey, Phil! Looking at my Union brand ES1869F, the three CD audio inputs are labeled: the bare four-pin header is "Sony" while the two white, caged inputs are labeled "Mitsumi" and "Panasonic" respectively... my guess is that the card is expecting different source levels from those different inputs and that's why you only barely heard any audio when you plugged your CDROM into the second white port. As always, great video! Thanks for making it!
Happen to have that exact AudioDrive ES1868F variant in my sound card collection, heh. As much as I'm a stickler for genuine OPL3, ESFM isn't half bad, and I'd much rather use that than CQM, which has far more numerous and more obvious imperfections compared to genuine OPL3. One thing I noticed with the ES1868F and ES1869F-based sounds cards is that there could be some pretty wild variances between different cards. My ISA sound card collection contains six different ES1868Fs and ES1869Fs, some of which have noticeable differences in their overall output. A few of them has some noticeable high-pass filtering, and they are lacking in bass as a result. One ES1868F, in particular, which looks like some cheap generic crap on a thin, orange PCB actually has the loudest audio output of any of these, so loud that if I set the mixer volume too high, the sound clips quite horribly. It looks to me like a card with a speaker amp that cannot be bypassed, but I'll tell you what, this is my AudioDrive of choice. Unfortunately, I haven't had very good results with the wavetable header. Most of these have really stupidly placed headers, but in every single one of these that I remember testing, the volume of the wavetable header was EXTREMELY high and would cause distortion on my XR385. Perhaps adding a voltage divider, or at least a pull-down resistor directly at the input, would have been a good idea on these cards. The way all 6 of my cards are designed, the wavetable header inputs have the potential to pick up a fair amount of noise from the lack of any pull-down resistors to prevent the inputs from floating.
I've only briefly tested with the DreamBlaster S2. The X2 has flash memory, and you can program the volume it outputs. I'll check the next ESS card that I want to test, it's a 1869, for DOS there shouldn't be any difference, in Windows it does a higher sample rate and it has some 3D processing, but apart from that it should be similar. Actually that card, doesn't even have a wavetable board LOL It's s super minimalistic Compaq Premiere Audio card :D
One of my friends had his gpu die on his C2D desktop, and while we were hunting for a suitable replacement, he came to me with a bag full of components, so I had a look at them, him being totally clueless about anything related to PC's, I had to break the bad news to him that all of the stuff was way too old and could not be used to help him. However for me, that bag of hardware was a gold mine. Mobo + Pentium 133 MMX + RAM, a Diamond Voodoo 2, a couple of old HDD's and some other misc stuff. Needless to say that told him I'm more than happy to take them off his hands. Haven't had a chance to test them out yet though because I don't have a suitable power supply. What PSU would you recommend and where should I look for one?
A cheap one. I'm not kidding, you could look for some older PSUs or get one of these no-name brands as they usually come with a strong 5V rail. Just... Be careful, don't want them blowing up on you.
Also the 93C66 slot is for an optional EEPROM for storing PNP settings. The empty QX2130 spot is for a "Sound Expander" for "widened" or "spatial" audio. It also includes a bass boost. Adding this would need a few extra electrolytic capacitors.
Thank you Phil for the tip! Really a good ISA soundcard for a low price. Together with a Dreamblaster S2 it is simply amazing. Thank you, thank you very much. My Win98-Rig is now complete: Abit VH6-II Motherboard 1000 MHz Pentium III 256 SD-RAM GeForce2 MX400 (GeForce 256 is to expensive) ES1868F ISA Soundcard + Dreamblaster S2
Great Video. I just ordered myself an ES1869F. Should I expect any differences? Also I have a question. I see some of these cards have an empty space for an ES692. Is that something can be added on to these cards if a source is found for those chips?
I just took my beloved Audigy out and put an ESS 1869 in for DOS games and I ordered some mpu401 cable to try midi music in games. (Any recommendations?) I am still searching for a terratec xlr8 with A3D. (I sold one 20 years ago, oh my...)
Phil, now that is another trip down memory lane. My brother's Pentium 90 had one of these bad boys, before that he had an ESS688. It worked flawlessly for our DOS games. FM sound was spot on. I am surprised that this actually performed better than the SB16. Before the ESS, we had a MediaVision Thunderboard. That was a total POS
The ES688 CODEC uses an external FM synth. Usually it used a genuine OPL3 or an illegal clone (which actually sounds exactly the same), so ES688 cards are quite nice..
My first ever soundcard(1997) was from BTC,a ISA soundcard,model name was 1815 it had an Opti sound chip on it,sounded ok back then,also using a ESS 1869 chip ISA soundcard in one of my windows 95 retro machine.
Nice! I haven't heard of them before, but their site is awesome as they still have all the drivers. I downloaded ever single one of them, because you never know when they pull them,
I used to own the SB16, and I never had any issues with clicks or weird sounds. Can you upload or direct me to some examples? you mentioned Wolfenstein 3D which at that time was exactly what I was playing (a lot).
My DOS machine has an SB16 Vibra. For the most part it's fine, but some games have slight issues. DOTT has some minor sound quality issues with voices. Nothing terrible though.
I found one of these in an old Compaq years ago. I just had it in a draw because I thought it was a cheap card. It is the ES1869 variant and has Compaq written on it, but I just put it in one of my old systems and it sounds great.
My dad gave me an old mid-tower box with an AMD 386 DX-40Mhz CPU along with a monochrome monitor (1995). So I went to work right away in upgrading, starting with a color monitor (SVGA). I bought a soundcard that ended up being an ESS-based model. It had a music synthesizer program that had a graphical piano keys that were mapped to the keyboard. I played Wolfenstein and Panzer General. Once I got a hold of Doom and X-Wing, then it was clear that I needed a major upgrade. I didn't have a lot of money, but I manage to find a decent 486 motherboard and loaded it with an AMD 486DX-80 Mhz CPU, along with a flightstick. Now Doom and X-Wing playable. I later upgraded it to an AMD 486-120Mhz CPU, Windows 95, and SCSI CD-ROM drive and played MYST. Good times.
i think these cards sound better than the Sb16! also check out the terratec profimedia gold 16/96. it's an ess 1868 card with much better quality, i think a built in wavetable chip as well as better looks!
What LCD monitor are you using on your retro builds? I was at a thrift store and bought a Dell LCD and thought it would be really nice for retro gaming because its horizontal resolution was 1280, so 640 and 320 were evenly divided and so pixel scaling might work. Unfortunately it was 1280 x 1024, or 5:4 and not 4:3. Is your monitor 4:3? Because I can't seem to find ANY LCD monitors that are 4:3 @ 1280, ie: 1280 x 960...
They are all 5:4 with 1280x1024. The only 4:3 are the very old 1024x768, but they ghost a lot and look bad, or high end 1600x1200 screens, they are huge, 20" and a bit harder to find. I've done a video on this: th-cam.com/video/u3AG97NhNkY/w-d-xo.html
I just bought a jumper-tastic, non-pnp, ESS1688F that I'm hoping to use as a secondary soundcard for when the SB Live's SB16 emulation fails me. Hopefully it sounds as nice as the ES1868F does. Really I just cannot get WC:Privateer, Win3.x and a few others to use that fake SB16.
I just happen to have this card in my collection tho never knew much about it till now. I am adding this one in along side my SB16 CT2290. Don't suppose would be any conflicts. Thanks for this great video and providing the drivers.
In the nineties I was always told to get a Creative SoundBlaster or YAMAHA based card instead of ESS. ESS were rumored to have some inaccuracies with the games. So never had one to verify whether the statements were true.
I liked the way you pronounced Wolfenstein. Speaking of Wolfenstein, doesn't Wolfenstein 3D use FM sounds for things like collecting ammunition and health and other items and only use digitised sounds for things like gunfire and enemy sounds and things like that?
Nice review, I'm thinking about getting the Sound Blaster 16 2290 or this card. Off topic questions regarding the monitor you're using. How does it handle 320*200@70hz? Im guessing its a native 1280*1024 resolution lcd?
I have a COMPAQ PREMIERE SOUND ISA card that is ESS, almost sure that the same chipset. They came with the Deskpro 2000 Desktop Series, probably a bit old for a PCI machine, but, yep, nice sound and the Compaq comes with a 3.5W amplifier as well.
Hi, Phil. I just got my hands on one of these cards. The layout is slightly different, and it came with the MIDI extension daughterboard. If it at all helps the two analog audio inputs on mine are labeled CREATIVE and MITSUMI. There is also an audio interface for Sony as well.
That jack that you could only get faint audio from with your cd-rom is actually an output header for internal speakers, common on some hp and packard bell computers
I actually had the ES1869 “AudioDrive” soundcard in my old 350Mhz Pentium II...It seemed to producer very pleasant and “warm” sound, even better than my SB16, which seemed clinical and soulless ..Later I tried a RightMark Audio Test, and it seemed that the card was adding way too much even harmonic distortion, which actually sounds good.. Guess it proves how subjective “good” sound is.. One big issue though was the lack of WaveTable synthesis...The Microsoft GS Wavetable synth was absolutely hopeless. Remedied it with Yamaha YSXG100 SoftSynth and Roland Sound Canvas VSC 55..Those days internet was slow..31.6KBPs is what I generally used to get on a good day, and instrumental midi files were a great option.
after my SB vibra16 died on me and i had to get another for a fortune which turned out to be the PnP variant and setting it up was a pain in the arse.. this should work wonders in my DOS+Win95 buid. cheers Phil. : )
It would be great to to hear your thoughts on this card with the wave table implementation. I spotted one on ebay yesterday that has the vacant spots on your card filled with ESS midi chip and rom. I haven't seen many of these so needless to say I snapped it up and I'm looking forward to receiving it in a few days.
@@philscomputerlab Thanks Phil. I’ve seen that, and was wondering if I should get one. I’ve just been drooling over his Dream Blaster x16GS. I didn’t see the McCake thing you mentioned recently, so I’m looking forward to your review. I really like his wave table cards and have an S2, X2 & X2 GS. I like the S2 for its simplicity and great value. I hope your relocation is going well. B/w.
15:30 - "It's not a soundblaster, it's not 100% soundblaster compatible" Honestly... I just got back into DOS gaming and was thrilled to find an old 486 system with a Soundblaster 16 and a real OPL3... But then I started learning about the problems with the Soundblaster cards and I feel kind of let down by them, like I finally met a childhood hero and learned that they're actually kind of disappointing. Like the DMA popping in audio playback, or the slowdown when using MIDI and digital audio... Back in the 90s I had a Gravis card, I enjoyed it but compatibility was always a problem, and I thought if anything would be trouble-free it'd be a good ol' Sound Blaster... And it really doesn't seem like that's the case. I don't regret picking up the Sound Blaster 16 cards that I've got, but here I am looking into alternatives...
Ditto. The problem with Creative ISA cards is you can't win. Every single model has some drawback. As everyone has mentioned, the AWE64's are about as perfect as they get, but you lose two things that every previous AWE and even SoundBlaster had: a wavetable header and in the case of AWE, easy memory expansion. Of course the ESS cards are not completely perfect (most of them have sbpro reversed audio bug like many clones and even some of creatives own cards) but that's actually fixable with some ESS cards.
I was looking for sound cards and I found a Genius Ess Audiodrive Es1868f Isa for USD 2 plus USD 2,85 shipping. Surely I will buy it to have sound with doom, duke3D, screamer rally, tyrian 2000, sim city 2000, and others.
@@philscomputerlab Finally I negotiated with the seller, and he sold me an amd 5x86 processor with a motherboard, and 16mb of ram, a pentium 233 with a motherboard, the sound card, the cable for audio cd, an AT to PS2 adapter, all working, all by USD 8.33 plus USD 3,50 of shipping
I have this sound card in my Pentium 200 MMX retro Windows98 machine and in Windows it just works with the default drivers from Windows98, both sound and music but when I open a DOS game like Doom I only get sound but no music. I then installed the DOS drivers with the setting you are showing in the video and then both music and sound are working in DOS but as I boot on Windows and run Doom i only get music but no sound anymore. Thank You for the great job you're doing helping us retro hardware sick :)
Hey Phil I just got the same card I think. Is it worth putting in over a Soundblaster 16? It recently appeared in a pentium 233 machine I bought just floating around in the case
Hmm that's an interesting question. As always, both have their advantages. The SB 16 is better for the more modern games with 16 Bit support. If the SB16 works well for you, I would just keep it :)
I just got one of these today. Works great for DOS games on my 286! Only weird thing is I can't seem to get Windows 3.1 to work. Drivers install fine - show up as ESS Audio Drive and ESS MPU401 in the drivers menu in control panel - but no sound plays and the system sounds in the control panel are all greyed out.
I had a question for you Phil, about the SD to IDE adapters: Could you do a video on those? I'm curious to know what types of SD cards are supported, and if SD card speeds make a difference. Are there other limitations with those? I know you did a previous video about basic usage of the SD card adapters, but it didn't have as much content as some of your newer videos.
I could re-visit them, but the ones I like to use have disappeared from eBay it seems. Anyway, I reviewed 2 models a while ago: th-cam.com/video/Yn9vwOf19XE/w-d-xo.html The speed matters of course, especially under Windows.
Back in the day I always went with Creative brand cards (even those without SB chips) just cause I new they would work better when it came to drivers, however I knew the ESS cards were good quality so if I didn't have the option to get a Creative card I'd settle for the ESS cards. However, by the time I was building computers nobody I knew really used DOS for gaming anymore so I never had to fiddle around with all the config.sys & autoexec.bat settings cause Win95 would handle all the settings... I do remember the first time I went from a basic sound card to a high end one with a good midi wave table built in and game music or even .midi files went from sounding like electronic music to sounding like real instruments though and that's when I realized there was more to sound card quality than just the drivers...
Personally, I think the Tropez Plus was the best all around DOS soundcard. It sounded better than any other ISA card that I owned. Although, configuration was a bit of a pain at times & finding one in late 2017 could prove to be a bit difficult.
Hey Phil, i have a compaq soundcard with that same chip, ess audiodrive ES1868F. But the compaq card has kind of extendet ISA contacts, do you know what is that for? I testet the card in a generic 16bit ISA slot without any issues but i wonder what is the story behind it. Greetings from Germany and the dosforum:-)
I have the older ESS 1688i n my DOS PC. I really like the OPL3 sound is this "Clone". DOS games sounds like my first PC back in 95 with a SB Pro 2 (the real Yamaha OPL3) The MPU401 is great option in the ESS.
Just bought 2 Sound blaster pro 2.0 CT1600 own 3 total now. Might recapp them with some good Nichicon audio caps in the future. Might be a interesting project
I always go for the ESS cards. They are cheaper than the sound blaster and are compatible with pretty much everything in DOS and windows. Compaq computers used them in a lot of their computers. If you have a P2 or P3 compaq with onboard sound, it's probably an ESS chip. I'm using an ESS 1869 in my DOS machine and have had zero issues with it.
Neat, I just found a card at my local flea market, I got it for around $1.46, I think I got a good deal :) Now I just have to test it and see if it works. So far I haven't encountered a sound card that didn't work so I'm not really worried about that.
If it's similar to another ES1868F board that I see on eBay, the reason that one of the white plugs didn't work is that it seems they're all specific to one pinout, since I guess not all CD audio cables were the same. One is labelled Mitsumi and one is Creative. There is also a non-shrouded one is for Sony, and I can't read the others. The one I am looking at is FCCID# L6NS611
Okay, I have it in hand. I was incorrect in guessing that they were more than 3 CD Audio connectors. The other headers on my card (the ones that aren't Sony, Creative and Mitsumi, beside the audio jacks) are actually headers for each corresponding jacks; they are not populated on your card there. They just put left and right on the outer two pins (except mic), and ground on the inner two pins of each header.
My compaq 7106 has this built in on the motherboard! I tried getting an awe32 to work but it still conflicts with the ess audio drive and there is no jumpers to disable it besides software so I just reverted back, it is a decent card but it's amplifier on my model is quite poor...
Another possibility for the unknown header could be a TAD (Telephone answering Device) connector. You could wire the sound card up to a Voice Modem card directly this way, And it seems reasonable given the time period for the ISA cards. Interestingly i couldn't find any info on the M418 model, and most other models I found don't have the header. I wonder if this could have been a special OEM part that was in a prebuilt machine?
Hey Phil, don't know if anyone wrote allready in those 271 comments so I'll do it: the audio header that did not work for your optical drive is not an input. It is a speaker output for mpc. Greetings, Tom
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Agreed completely, I've used ESS186x cards in dozens of DOS builds. Always been pleasantly surprised with games that are often hard to get sounding correct on other cards, even later SB16s. Nice to know some more technical reasons why it works!
LGR! Good to know you're into Phil's content as well.
Im currently building a Pentium 2 Wind98 machine and Compaq but ESS AudioDrive ES1868F on the motherboard ;)
The Audiodrive is my favorite retro sound card. Yeah, Creatives have the name recognition, the cachet, etc, but really, I only really like the SB Pro 2.0, AWE64 and Audigy2 ZS. Otherwise, ESS all the way. I even like it better than the Audician32 (which is also quite good).
It's fortunate that these cards are common as dirt, then! (They were in production for a long time. I remember seeing Pentium II and even some Athlon machines with ISA ESS1869s built into the motherboard. They were almost as common as Ensoniq 1371, and more common than ESS Solo-1.)
Haha good old AudioPCI, these cards just find me somehow, they pop up all over the place :D Yes these AudioDrive cards are cheap AND good. A real gem for anyone frustrated with higher prices on some retro parts.
Eric Sprague Very interesting! Thanks for the info!
"If you want to see more videos like this, please let me know" Affirmative!
I had one ES1868 on my first computer. The configuration was: Cyrix 4x86 40MHz (a little beautiful green cpu) / 8MB SIMM / 400MB WD HDD / Cyrus Logic 1MB / ESS 1868 / MS-DOS. Later, when I've installed Windows 95, installing the driver for this card was my first challenge with MS Win 95. Also was the first driver I ever installed. Very very satisfactory sensation when I've managed to hear first Windows 95 sound :).
Lost so many nights playing with this computer... great memoryes.
You are doing a very nice job reviewing this old stuff.
Keep up the good job,
best wishes.
thanks Phil for going over the dos driver install , i was also using that same driver and couldn't change any settings, i will try the drivers you found when i get around to working on my pII machine, as always, awesome video, thanks again
Thank you for being such an amazing information resource for us retro computing folks!
Thank you 👍😊
That was my favourite ISA sound card back in the day. I actually miss it lol. The last time I used it was on a Duron 1000 and the motherboard had a single ISA slot.
Oh, I had one of those but without the IDE CD-ROM and Wavetable connectors. I used to use it as my go-to sound card for OPL3 FM stuff until I switched to a Yamaha YMF724F when I found out that it had genuine OPL3 integrated into its chipset. The FM synth accuracy on the ES1868 is pretty close to a genuine OPL3 but there are some inaccuracies that are most notable when playing music that uses certain OPL3 tricks that take advantage of 4-op mode (such as OSKARI.A2m included with Adlib Tracker II, drum instruments sound like noise on ES1868). It was certainly more accurate than a Crystal sound card and Creative Lab's cards that use a CQM chip (their own OPL3 clone) instead of a proper OPL3 chip for FM synthesis.
WHLCHAIR.DFM on ESS seems to have more of a dramatic difference than real OPL
Nobody can convince me that any early ISA sound card even came close to my 1994 REVEAL Sound Blaster compatible sound card! That REVEAL sound card stood the test of time and lasted until the very last ISA slot in 2004. I miss that sound card. I would still use it today if I could.
I have a Reveal CD-ROM drive. Wonder if it came as a pack in with that card. It’s a Panasonic interface drive.
Quality video as always! Thanks Phil. This was my very first soundcard, back on my 386, carried on till the Pentium era. Now I got one for my DOS build. Great card, highly recommend it for its value.
+Telepatok Yes they are amazing value :D Not everything retro needs to be expensive!
My very first sound card was its older brother, an ESS688 based unit. I bought it for my Am486DX2-80 machine when I was 15 years old. I had to deliver a few papers to be able to afford it but it was one of my best purchases ever. Of course it's easy to please a 15 year old but my life changed because of this card. DooM came to life and I played it even more often ;-)
*Right! Let's go adventuring!* _Right! Let's go adventuring!_ *Right! Let's go adventuring!* _Right! Let's go adventuring!_
Phil, as always great advice and excellent support to the community by way of the very useful driver files on your website. Thanks for your many contributions to the vintage PC community. I for one certainly appreciate your work!
It's very interesting to see you showing these things side by side with other cards, because in their day I remember frequently running into issues with ESS cards. Mostly it would be problems with drivers in win 9x, and earned them the title "extremely shitty sound" in the local circle. Maybe we judged them unfairly?
They in fact were shitty sounding cards. But it depends what you are comparing to. ESS cards were affordable and to have one was much, much better than PC speaker. But compared to the proper (and sadly, much more expensive) cards, ESS was just at the bottom. We got what we paid for.
I had some kind of ESS card and remember the similar problems back in the day.
@@tdebug1 It doesn't sound very shitty to me.
@@n646n it isn't a bad device as such just the cheapest of the cheap and sound accordingly. Once you compare it to something more decent like a SoundBlaster card, the difference is striking. Back in 90s I had it my PC for at least 3 years, because I couldn't afford any better.
@@tdebug1 Striking? Yes, all those hanging notes and DMA clicks and duke nukem slowdowns really show how much better soundblaster cards are.
Not to mention how much better ESFM is compared to regular OPL. The only tradeoff is slightly inaccurate regular FM, but even that sounds better to some as well and is barely even noticeable.
I used to have one of these back in the days. Brings back memories :) I remember that I loved this card.
Just had to chime in and say I also love these, my first computer I personally owned was a Compaq LTE with one of these in it and that’s what I grew up playing DOS games on, and I still think it’s my favorite FM synth of them all
Just spent two days installing a Sound Blaster VIBRA16 into my main system. I was very disappointed about it's limited compatibility. I found your channel watching the SB16 ASP (CT1740) video. I now ordered a ESS. Thanks a lot Phil, I subscribed =)
What compatibility issues did you encounter? The Creative cards do have their flaws, but compatibility is usually 100%.
Mostly problems with Doom. Other games work fine. Doom does have music but no FM effects in DOS 6.22, and has FM effects but no music in DOS 7.1 and Windows 98. I tried all Doom releases from 1.1 to 1.19, shareware and full versions.
I've done the same lol.
I had ESS internal soundcards in my old (notebook/laptops) in the (19)90s.
I like how every game sounded different with other soundchips :D
I really liked the AOpen AW 32 Pro that I had in my first computer. Good compatibility and a built in wavetable. I still remember the moment I switched Tie Fighter from OPL3 to General Midi for the music. The difference was amazing.
I actually installed this exact card in to a machine yesterday. I quite like the ESS based cards, and there are lots of variants - I've got some with clipping LED's and much more complex output stages too.
I really do not understand how you are still stuck with below 100k subs. TH-cam algorithm and clickbairts suck so hard.
I just want to let you know that you deserve a ton more subs.
By the way will you review fx5900xt?
Thank you! We'll get there, I rather do videos that we enjoy, than chasing views and subs. Yes I will review the FX5900XT soon, but I've got a few videos I got to produce first.
PhilsComputerLab alright! I just bought fx5900xt for my athlon xp 2000+ and i wonder what are your opinions about this card :)
PhilsComputerLab start doing 15 min let's play videos.
The algorithm is completely useless now. Nowadays I have to literally click random people in comment sections to find new small channels to watch.
I was aiming to buy a cheap audio card and bought this for 10$, back in the 96'. I had no idea it was good. My expectation at the time was: sb pro>sb16>ess1868 🙂
+PhilsComputerLab
1:58 That's actually a pre-amp input designed for a spread spectrum equalizer addon. The reason you could hear sound but at a very muffled volume is because that input expects a higher power input.
I was lucky to have an ESS AudioDrive 1868 in my 486DX2 in the 90s. Good times.
Sold a lot of those cards in my computer shop between 1997 and 1999, never had compatibility problem. One of the best, if not the best soundblaster emulation for dos gaming.
Thanks for the info!
I won a lot of clients over other computer shops in the city. First, I was the only one to stay open in august. Second, I changed a lot of bad sound cards, like advance 100, OPTi, SC6600, and replaced them with ESS, or for the more wealthy real sound blaster.
wow, this is crazy man! i didnt have an isa sound card back then, do you remember onboard sound blaster? lol! port 220 dma1 irq 7 LOLOL those were the days!
Mine doesn't have the ide controller sadly, but it does still show up in devices for some reason. This is a really good sound card, thanks for encouraging me to use mine that I've had for 17 years in storage and providing the drivers on your website!
Watching this video again, after finally getting around to putting my 98 rig together (Aopen AX6BC, P3 1GHz, 120GB SSHD, 256MB RAM, SBLive, ESS AudioDrive 1868)... not there yet, but looking to set up in the next week. Don't stop doing what you're doing with these superb videos. Thank you man!!
That is a very fast machine for DOS :) What games are you looking at playing?
PhilsComputerLab this will be my 98 rig. I’ve got a HP T610 for DOSBox and ScummVM (running under Windows 7) 😃
@@craigpilkington4323 Ah ok that makes sense! For Windows 98 I would go with something else though... Aureal Vortex 2, SB Live, Audigy or Audigy 2 and maybe Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. All of them have basic DOS sound.
@@philscomputerlab yep, if you look at the spec above, I have the SBLive in the 98 rig :) Cannot wait to replay my 2 favourite games ever: Thief the Dark Project and Thief the Metal Age. I'm actually looking at the Creative Live Drive right now on eBay to hook up to the SBLive.... hmmm, decisions :)
I should have said, I bought the ESS AudioDrive to put into one of the ISA slots, figuring that it would be great for when I run DOS games under DOS mode in Win98. What do you think? I've based that on the fact that you recommended the ESS in a previous video as being fantastic for DOS gaming? I've also got a Dreamblaster S2 to add onto the Wavetable header.
Great video - loved the demonstrations that showed how incompatibilities sound, that's a great touch.
PhilsComputerLab That un-amplified four pin header connector is the PC speaker pass-through port.
Are you 100% sure have you tried it? Because the PC speaker signal is quite "hot" and I have fried stuff because of it before. The PC SPK is usually just a 2 pin header.
There are 4 pin PC SPK headers, I even remember having bought a few cases that used one and came with adapters to the far more dominant 2 pin format. I suspect brand new these cards prolly came with a 4 to 2 pin adapter if Whiskey's right, for similar reasons that most cases that had 4 pin speakers had the adapter for motherboards with 2 pin headers.
@@philscomputerlab Those might be pins for volume controller, like ESS Es1698 had. Picture of that card: newauctionstatic.com.ua/offer_images/2016/10/12/02/big/4/4hIy8OVJb89/zvukovaja_karta_ess_es1698fc_isa.jpg
Been waiting for this video since you mentioned it on Facebook. Thanks Phil!
I agree. All of my ESS cards work flawless in dos. I always found the sound blasters very finicky. ESS are the best!!!
I picked up the Labway version of the same ESS ES1868F after watching this video. The Labway version is a little more robust and has metal audio connectors vs plastic. Not a big deal but I always loved when they were metal :)
This chip is fantastic. It sounds so good in everything. I was using a SB16 previously but it has the MPU-401 bug which is very annoying since I use a SoundCanvas. This card is just as good (actually to me it sounds better) and no bug. Excellent card and I would never have known without your video Phil. And, of course the drivers you found and thankfully have shared with everyone work perfectly. Thank you again!
This was my first sound card. I ran that in my AST Advantage 486 SX 33 with MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1!
This was my first sound card. I grew up listening to Doom, Heretic, and Hexen on this card. Great sound!
Love your videos, thanks. Keep up the great work mate!
Hey, Phil! Looking at my Union brand ES1869F, the three CD audio inputs are labeled: the bare four-pin header is "Sony" while the two white, caged inputs are labeled "Mitsumi" and "Panasonic" respectively... my guess is that the card is expecting different source levels from those different inputs and that's why you only barely heard any audio when you plugged your CDROM into the second white port.
As always, great video! Thanks for making it!
Yea, not sure why I didn't make the connection back when I filmed the video :D The connectors also have different pinouts it seems.
Happen to have that exact AudioDrive ES1868F variant in my sound card collection, heh.
As much as I'm a stickler for genuine OPL3, ESFM isn't half bad, and I'd much rather use that than CQM, which has far more numerous and more obvious imperfections compared to genuine OPL3.
One thing I noticed with the ES1868F and ES1869F-based sounds cards is that there could be some pretty wild variances between different cards. My ISA sound card collection contains six different ES1868Fs and ES1869Fs, some of which have noticeable differences in their overall output. A few of them has some noticeable high-pass filtering, and they are lacking in bass as a result. One ES1868F, in particular, which looks like some cheap generic crap on a thin, orange PCB actually has the loudest audio output of any of these, so loud that if I set the mixer volume too high, the sound clips quite horribly. It looks to me like a card with a speaker amp that cannot be bypassed, but I'll tell you what, this is my AudioDrive of choice.
Unfortunately, I haven't had very good results with the wavetable header. Most of these have really stupidly placed headers, but in every single one of these that I remember testing, the volume of the wavetable header was EXTREMELY high and would cause distortion on my XR385. Perhaps adding a voltage divider, or at least a pull-down resistor directly at the input, would have been a good idea on these cards. The way all 6 of my cards are designed, the wavetable header inputs have the potential to pick up a fair amount of noise from the lack of any pull-down resistors to prevent the inputs from floating.
I've only briefly tested with the DreamBlaster S2. The X2 has flash memory, and you can program the volume it outputs. I'll check the next ESS card that I want to test, it's a 1869, for DOS there shouldn't be any difference, in Windows it does a higher sample rate and it has some 3D processing, but apart from that it should be similar. Actually that card, doesn't even have a wavetable board LOL It's s super minimalistic Compaq Premiere Audio card :D
One of my friends had his gpu die on his C2D desktop, and while we were hunting for a suitable replacement, he came to me with a bag full of components, so I had a look at them, him being totally clueless about anything related to PC's, I had to break the bad news to him that all of the stuff was way too old and could not be used to help him.
However for me, that bag of hardware was a gold mine. Mobo + Pentium 133 MMX + RAM, a Diamond Voodoo 2, a couple of old HDD's and some other misc stuff. Needless to say that told him I'm more than happy to take them off his hands. Haven't had a chance to test them out yet though because I don't have a suitable power supply. What PSU would you recommend and where should I look for one?
You should have charged him a nominal fee for "disposal"
A cheap one. I'm not kidding, you could look for some older PSUs or get one of these no-name brands as they usually come with a strong 5V rail. Just... Be careful, don't want them blowing up on you.
Bought one of those adapters for a 486 rebuild that has a fried PSU, finding a replacement PSU would be impossible without it.
Bought one of those adapters for a 486 rebuild that has a fried PSU, finding a replacement PSU would be impossible without it.
Also the 93C66 slot is for an optional EEPROM for storing PNP settings. The empty QX2130 spot is for a "Sound Expander" for "widened" or "spatial" audio. It also includes a bass boost. Adding this would need a few extra electrolytic capacitors.
Thank you Phil for the tip! Really a good ISA soundcard for a low price. Together with a Dreamblaster S2 it is simply amazing.
Thank you, thank you very much.
My Win98-Rig is now complete:
Abit VH6-II Motherboard
1000 MHz Pentium III
256 SD-RAM
GeForce2 MX400 (GeForce 256 is to expensive)
ES1868F ISA Soundcard + Dreamblaster S2
Nice, it really is a great combo.
Great Video. I just ordered myself an ES1869F. Should I expect any differences? Also I have a question. I see some of these cards have an empty space for an ES692. Is that something can be added on to these cards if a source is found for those chips?
Only under Windows, higher 48 KHz and some 3D processing. Not sure about adding an ES692, could be interesting though!
I just took my beloved Audigy out and put an ESS 1869 in for DOS games and I ordered some mpu401 cable to try midi music in games. (Any recommendations?) I am still searching for a terratec xlr8 with A3D. (I sold one 20 years ago, oh my...)
Great video. I was about buying an expensive Soundblaster 32 but now I've got this one for 9€ on eBay :-D
Hi Phil liked your video. I have a similar sound card but with a 1869F chipset is there any difference.
Phil, now that is another trip down memory lane. My brother's Pentium 90 had one of these bad boys, before that he had an ESS688. It worked flawlessly for our DOS games. FM sound was spot on. I am surprised that this actually performed better than the SB16.
Before the ESS, we had a MediaVision Thunderboard. That was a total POS
Nice :D
The ES688 CODEC uses an external FM synth. Usually it used a genuine OPL3 or an illegal clone (which actually sounds exactly the same), so ES688 cards are quite nice..
Badass! Now just have to find a dealer that has these highly illegal sound chips!
My first ever soundcard(1997) was from BTC,a ISA soundcard,model name was 1815 it had an Opti sound chip on it,sounded ok back then,also using a ESS 1869 chip ISA soundcard in one of my windows 95 retro machine.
Nice! I haven't heard of them before, but their site is awesome as they still have all the drivers. I downloaded ever single one of them, because you never know when they pull them,
No wonder Phil likes this sound card.. it has his name written on it!
I always wondered why the digital sound crashes in Duke Nnukem 2 on my Audician 32, now i know.
I used to own the SB16, and I never had any issues with clicks or weird sounds. Can you upload or direct me to some examples? you mentioned Wolfenstein 3D which at that time was exactly what I was playing (a lot).
Good idea, I have plans to make a video about this. Thanks for reminding me! The clicks can be quite subtle.
It depends on the model of the sb16 you are using. There are differences accordingly to the models. It's very annoying.
My DOS machine has an SB16 Vibra. For the most part it's fine, but some games have slight issues. DOTT has some minor sound quality issues with voices. Nothing terrible though.
Yey to videos about cheap options that allow us to enjoy old games!
I found one of these in an old Compaq years ago. I just had it in a draw because I thought it was a cheap card. It is the ES1869 variant and has Compaq written on it, but I just put it in one of my old systems and it sounds great.
Yes the Compaq ESS cards are very solid.
My dad gave me an old mid-tower box with an AMD 386 DX-40Mhz CPU along with a monochrome monitor (1995). So I went to work right away in upgrading, starting with a color monitor (SVGA). I bought a soundcard that ended up being an ESS-based model. It had a music synthesizer program that had a graphical piano keys that were mapped to the keyboard. I played Wolfenstein and Panzer General. Once I got a hold of Doom and X-Wing, then it was clear that I needed a major upgrade. I didn't have a lot of money, but I manage to find a decent 486 motherboard and loaded it with an AMD 486DX-80 Mhz CPU, along with a flightstick. Now Doom and X-Wing playable. I later upgraded it to an AMD 486-120Mhz CPU, Windows 95, and SCSI CD-ROM drive and played MYST. Good times.
Great instructions, great video! Thanks for this.
You're welcome!
I just cracked open a computer which had one in it! Looked it up and this is the first video I stumble on.
i think these cards sound better than the Sb16! also check out the terratec profimedia gold 16/96. it's an ess 1868 card with much better quality, i think a built in wavetable chip as well as better looks!
What LCD monitor are you using on your retro builds? I was at a thrift store and bought a Dell LCD and thought it would be really nice for retro gaming because its horizontal resolution was 1280, so 640 and 320 were evenly divided and so pixel scaling might work. Unfortunately it was 1280 x 1024, or 5:4 and not 4:3. Is your monitor 4:3? Because I can't seem to find ANY LCD monitors that are 4:3 @ 1280, ie: 1280 x 960...
They are all 5:4 with 1280x1024. The only 4:3 are the very old 1024x768, but they ghost a lot and look bad, or high end 1600x1200 screens, they are huge, 20" and a bit harder to find. I've done a video on this: th-cam.com/video/u3AG97NhNkY/w-d-xo.html
I just bought a jumper-tastic, non-pnp, ESS1688F that I'm hoping to use as a secondary soundcard for when the SB Live's SB16 emulation fails me. Hopefully it sounds as nice as the ES1868F does. Really I just cannot get WC:Privateer, Win3.x and a few others to use that fake SB16.
I just happen to have this card in my collection tho never knew much about it till now. I am adding this one in along side my SB16 CT2290. Don't suppose would be any conflicts. Thanks for this great video and providing the drivers.
In the nineties I was always told to get a Creative SoundBlaster or YAMAHA based card instead of ESS. ESS were rumored to have some inaccuracies with the games. So never had one to verify whether the statements were true.
I liked the way you pronounced Wolfenstein. Speaking of Wolfenstein, doesn't Wolfenstein 3D use FM sounds for things like collecting ammunition and health and other items and only use digitised sounds for things like gunfire and enemy sounds and things like that?
Yup I think that's what's happening!
Nice review, I'm thinking about getting the Sound Blaster 16 2290 or this card. Off topic questions regarding the monitor you're using. How does it handle 320*200@70hz? Im guessing its a native 1280*1024 resolution lcd?
I have a COMPAQ PREMIERE SOUND ISA card that is ESS, almost sure that the same chipset. They came with the Deskpro 2000 Desktop Series, probably a bit old for a PCI machine, but, yep, nice sound and the Compaq comes with a 3.5W amplifier as well.
I use one that is IBM branded on my OS/2 machine. It works great in OS/2, WIN/OS/2, and DOS/OS/2.
Hi, Phil. I just got my hands on one of these cards. The layout is slightly different, and it came with the MIDI extension daughterboard. If it at all helps the two analog audio inputs on mine are labeled CREATIVE and MITSUMI. There is also an audio interface for Sony as well.
Thanks. Yea I think with the CD input, they are wired differently. So that's why there are several of them.
Can you do a video comparing sb16 card CT 2890 Vs the Ess1868, Vs Yamaha 71X , Vs Aztec 2316, and Vs the Awe32 and Awe64
Years ago, when I was young and dumb (it persists) I was underestimating these ESS, 'cos it is not a Soundblaster.' :D
That jack that you could only get faint audio from with your cd-rom is actually an output header for internal speakers, common on some hp and packard bell computers
@OhilsComputerLab, can you share DOS drivers (config utils) again? Link not alive. Thanks!
Same question here 🖐️
I actually had the ES1869 “AudioDrive” soundcard in my old 350Mhz Pentium II...It seemed to producer very pleasant and “warm” sound, even better than my SB16, which seemed clinical and soulless ..Later I tried a RightMark Audio Test, and it seemed that the card was adding way too much even harmonic distortion, which actually sounds good.. Guess it proves how subjective “good” sound is.. One big issue though was the lack of WaveTable synthesis...The Microsoft GS Wavetable synth was absolutely hopeless. Remedied it with Yamaha YSXG100 SoftSynth and Roland Sound Canvas VSC 55..Those days internet was slow..31.6KBPs is what I generally used to get on a good day, and instrumental midi files were a great option.
after my SB vibra16 died on me and i had to get another for a fortune which turned out to be the PnP variant and setting it up was a pain in the arse.. this should work wonders in my DOS+Win95 buid. cheers Phil. : )
It would be great to to hear your thoughts on this card with the wave table implementation. I spotted one on ebay yesterday that has the vacant spots on your card filled with ESS midi chip and rom. I haven't seen many of these so needless to say I snapped it up and I'm looking forward to receiving it in a few days.
Afaik Serdaco sells a wabetable board with ESS...
@@philscomputerlab Thanks Phil. I’ve seen that, and was wondering if I should get one. I’ve just been drooling over his Dream Blaster x16GS.
I didn’t see the McCake thing you mentioned recently, so I’m looking forward to your review. I really like his wave table cards and have an S2, X2 & X2 GS. I like the S2 for its simplicity and great value. I hope your relocation is going well. B/w.
This is my favorite video ever, just because of the kindle... My god, that display.... So good.
+Brett Prior LOL I might use it more often. I finally found a use for it, it was gathering dust :(
3:26 That sound gave me chills & flashbacks to a different time. Loved this video!
So, should I keep an OPTi 82C930 + YMF262-M card or an ESS Audiodrive ES1869F card like you have in this video?
15:30 - "It's not a soundblaster, it's not 100% soundblaster compatible"
Honestly... I just got back into DOS gaming and was thrilled to find an old 486 system with a Soundblaster 16 and a real OPL3... But then I started learning about the problems with the Soundblaster cards and I feel kind of let down by them, like I finally met a childhood hero and learned that they're actually kind of disappointing. Like the DMA popping in audio playback, or the slowdown when using MIDI and digital audio... Back in the 90s I had a Gravis card, I enjoyed it but compatibility was always a problem, and I thought if anything would be trouble-free it'd be a good ol' Sound Blaster... And it really doesn't seem like that's the case.
I don't regret picking up the Sound Blaster 16 cards that I've got, but here I am looking into alternatives...
Ditto. The problem with Creative ISA cards is you can't win. Every single model has some drawback. As everyone has mentioned, the AWE64's are about as perfect as they get, but you lose two things that every previous AWE and even SoundBlaster had: a wavetable header and in the case of AWE, easy memory expansion. Of course the ESS cards are not completely perfect (most of them have sbpro reversed audio bug like many clones and even some of creatives own cards) but that's actually fixable with some ESS cards.
I was looking for sound cards and I found a Genius Ess Audiodrive Es1868f Isa for USD 2 plus USD 2,85 shipping. Surely I will buy it to have sound with doom, duke3D, screamer rally, tyrian 2000, sim city 2000, and others.
Nice bargain!
@@philscomputerlab Finally I negotiated with the seller, and he sold me an amd 5x86 processor with a motherboard, and 16mb of ram, a pentium 233 with a motherboard, the sound card, the cable for audio cd, an AT to PS2 adapter, all working, all by USD 8.33 plus USD 3,50 of shipping
I have this sound card in my Pentium 200 MMX retro Windows98 machine and in Windows it just works with the default drivers from Windows98, both sound and music but when I open a DOS game like Doom I only get sound but no music. I then installed the DOS drivers with the setting you are showing in the video and then both music and sound are working in DOS but as I boot on Windows and run Doom i only get music but no sound anymore. Thank You for the great job you're doing helping us retro hardware sick :)
Hey Phil I just got the same card I think. Is it worth putting in over a Soundblaster 16? It recently appeared in a pentium 233 machine I bought just floating around in the case
Hmm that's an interesting question. As always, both have their advantages. The SB 16 is better for the more modern games with 16 Bit support. If the SB16 works well for you, I would just keep it :)
@@philscomputerlab thanks for the advice :)
I just got one of these today. Works great for DOS games on my 286! Only weird thing is I can't seem to get Windows 3.1 to work. Drivers install fine - show up as ESS Audio Drive and ESS MPU401 in the drivers menu in control panel - but no sound plays and the system sounds in the control panel are all greyed out.
Maybe the Windows 3.1 driver requires 386 enhanced mode?
You know, I never test Windows 3.1, so I don't know I'm afraid...
any examples of games that dont work with this card? I just bought one of those on ebay and now I'm curious 🤔
I had a question for you Phil, about the SD to IDE adapters: Could you do a video on those? I'm curious to know what types of SD cards are supported, and if SD card speeds make a difference. Are there other limitations with those? I know you did a previous video about basic usage of the SD card adapters, but it didn't have as much content as some of your newer videos.
I could re-visit them, but the ones I like to use have disappeared from eBay it seems. Anyway, I reviewed 2 models a while ago: th-cam.com/video/Yn9vwOf19XE/w-d-xo.html The speed matters of course, especially under Windows.
Back in the day I always went with Creative brand cards (even those without SB chips) just cause I new they would work better when it came to drivers, however I knew the ESS cards were good quality so if I didn't have the option to get a Creative card I'd settle for the ESS cards. However, by the time I was building computers nobody I knew really used DOS for gaming anymore so I never had to fiddle around with all the config.sys & autoexec.bat settings cause Win95 would handle all the settings...
I do remember the first time I went from a basic sound card to a high end one with a good midi wave table built in and game music or even .midi files went from sounding like electronic music to sounding like real instruments though and that's when I realized there was more to sound card quality than just the drivers...
Hi Phil, you should check out Reality Adlib Tracker when testing sound cards under DOS.
How does this compare to Yamaha (OPL3-SAx) ISA card?
Check out my video on that card.
I have one of these cards. Mine is the 1869, I think. It has compatibility with multiple sound cards, adlib, galaxy, sb and sb pro.
Hi! I want to buy laptop with Ess1878, what are you think about this ess chip?
I thought turtle beach topez plus was the best should i be looking elsewhere? What about the sound blaster pro 2.0 CT1600 LGR reviewed?
Personally, I think the Tropez Plus was the best all around DOS soundcard. It sounded better than any other ISA card that I owned. Although, configuration was a bit of a pain at times & finding one in late 2017 could prove to be a bit difficult.
I haven't reviewed any of these cards yet!
No denying that the LAPC-1 sounded great since it's a MT-32 in ISA format. Although, for all around use as a DOS gaming card, it's far too limited.
Hey Phil, i have a compaq soundcard with that same chip, ess audiodrive ES1868F. But the compaq card has kind of extendet ISA contacts, do you know what is that for? I testet the card in a generic 16bit ISA slot without any issues but i wonder what is the story behind it. Greetings from Germany and the dosforum:-)
I'v seen this before, likely something proprietary in that Compaq PC.
Awesome card and video! My first sound car was the ES 1688, used it for many years.
I have the older ESS 1688i n my DOS PC. I really like the OPL3 sound is this "Clone". DOS games sounds like my first PC back in 95 with a SB Pro 2 (the real Yamaha OPL3)
The MPU401 is great option in the ESS.
Just bought 2 Sound blaster pro 2.0 CT1600 own 3 total now. Might recapp them with some good Nichicon audio caps in the future. Might be a interesting project
Recap just for fun or did they fail?
I always go for the ESS cards. They are cheaper than the sound blaster and are compatible with pretty much everything in DOS and windows. Compaq computers used them in a lot of their computers. If you have a P2 or P3 compaq with onboard sound, it's probably an ESS chip. I'm using an ESS 1869 in my DOS machine and have had zero issues with it.
I will check out the 1869 soon, but want to review a Sound Blaster 16 under DOS. Demonstrate some of the issues you can run into.
Neat, I just found a card at my local flea market, I got it for around $1.46, I think I got a good deal :) Now I just have to test it and see if it works. So far I haven't encountered a sound card that didn't work so I'm not really worried about that.
I gave recently bought a Pentium 133 pc and need a sound card i have found this exact card for 20€ is it worth it ?
If it's similar to another ES1868F board that I see on eBay, the reason that one of the white plugs didn't work is that it seems they're all specific to one pinout, since I guess not all CD audio cables were the same. One is labelled Mitsumi and one is Creative. There is also a non-shrouded one is for Sony, and I can't read the others. The one I am looking at is FCCID# L6NS611
Okay, I have it in hand. I was incorrect in guessing that they were more than 3 CD Audio connectors. The other headers on my card (the ones that aren't Sony, Creative and Mitsumi, beside the audio jacks) are actually headers for each corresponding jacks; they are not populated on your card there. They just put left and right on the outer two pins (except mic), and ground on the inner two pins of each header.
I have ESS Edison Gold... That was awesome time.
My compaq 7106 has this built in on the motherboard! I tried getting an awe32 to work but it still conflicts with the ess audio drive and there is no jumpers to disable it besides software so I just reverted back, it is a decent card but it's amplifier on my model is quite poor...
Another possibility for the unknown header could be a TAD (Telephone answering Device) connector. You could wire the sound card up to a Voice Modem card directly this way, And it seems reasonable given the time period for the ISA cards. Interestingly i couldn't find any info on the M418 model, and most other models I found don't have the header. I wonder if this could have been a special OEM part that was in a prebuilt machine?
+ichael Burgwin It could also just be an output, to connect to another device. I will test that theory the next time I work on a DOS project :)
Hey Phil, don't know if anyone wrote allready in those 271 comments so I'll do it: the audio header that did not work for your optical drive is not an input. It is a speaker output for mpc.
Greetings,
Tom
Thanks for the correction!