ESS AudioDrive Sound Card
![[LinuxMall]](http://www.LinuxMall.com/Images/mallrfr6.gif)
The ESS AudioDrive is commonly found in inexpensive "Mom and Pop" and OEM/"on-the-board" sound cards. Mine is the BTC 1831 from Behaviour Technology Corporation. These cards use a VLSI chip from ESS Technology which performs the functions of all sorts of multimedia hardware. All versions of the ESS series are compatable with each other and use similar drivers.
NEW! ESS now has a web site of their own at www.esstech.com complete with drivers for their chips!
First, answers to two common questions:
1) No, ESS is not related to Ensoniq in any way. Ensoniq makes the
SoundScape card which people sometimes refer to as "the ESS" but the
AudioDrive is a completely different beast.
2) No, the most commonly used ESS chips (the 488, 688, 1488 and 1688)
do not support full duplex (dual-DMA) for "Internet Phone" type
applications. Sorry.
I am in no way related to or speaking for ESS or any other company. I just thought I'd share this information with the web. If you have more info to contribute, please let me know. Please don't write asking me for serious tech support. ESS Technology might be able to help you locate the manufacturer of your card.
The ESS AudioDrive 1688 chipset incorporates the following functions:
ESS apparently makes certain programs to go with cards based on the chipset and the vendors then can put their name on them. Some vendors include more or less of these and some modify them more. BTC ships a near-unadulterated set, while Multiwave's are quite modified. These applications include:
All of the ESS AudioDrive chips are very similar and can use the same applications. They all come bundled with the same software, so any of the following packages should be of interest to anyone with any AudioDrive-powered sound card. They all come with lower-level drivers for each chipset, too.
ESS Technology provides drivers for all of their chipsets on their web site's drivers page. Try there first!
The ESS
driver page included the latest (4.05.02) drivers for Win95 in the
file called
WIN95DRV.ZIP
This is the file you want. Unzip it to a temporary directory, go to
the "Device Manager" in the "System" control panel, select your
AudioDrive, select the "Drivers" tab, click "Change Driver", click "Have
Disk", enter the name of the directory where you unzipped the drivers
and click "OK".
Quantex Computers has new Windows 95 ESS
drivers available. These may cause problems, though. I have
received newer drivers dated 3/22/96 in email from a fellow ESS user
who claims they work better than Quantex's, but haven't tested them
and don't have FTP space for them.
Compaq also has Windows 95 drivers
for the 1788 set in the file, SP1335.EXE.
Multiwave has files
claiming to be new drivers.
Digital Australia also has a set of Windows 95 drivers
here claiming to be version 4.01, which adds support for the 1888
chipset and improves "ESFM" sound for the 1688 and up. The latest
drivers on the ESS BBS (as of this writing) are dated 5/1/96.
CB2ES3D1.EXE and
CB2ES3D2.EXE. This is version 3.03 of the drivers and
software.
Compaq also offers drivers in the
file SP1187.EXE, though these are a bit older (3.00) than
the applications which came with my card (3.05). For those with a
hacking flair,
Toshiba
also offers an old set of drivers and applications (2.12) for the 688
which are in Visual Basic. Get ESSDISK1.EXE and
ESSDISK2.EXE.
ESSCFG program.
There is a new version of this on the ESS BBS and I
have placed it here
for downloading. Just run it with a "/?" flag and it'll tell you
their parameters.
- SET BLASTER=[Axxx] [Ixx] [Dx] [Tx]
- A = I/O Port Address (220 default)
- I = IRQ Setting (5, 7, or 10 default)
- D = DMA Channel (1 default)
- T = Sound Card Type (4 for SoundBlaster Pro)
ESS ES1688 and ES688 'AudioDrive' based cards --------------------------------------------- Support for these two ESS chips is embedded in the SB Pro driver. Configure these cards just like SB Pro. Enable the 'SB MPU401 MIDI port' if you want to use MIDI features of ES1688. ES688 doesn't have MPU mode so you don't need to enable it (the driver uses normal SB MIDI automatically with ES688). NOTE! ESS cards are not compatible with MSS/WSS.
I have heard a report that Toshiba's Sattelite Pro (2150, 2155) notebooks have troubles with their 688 chips conflicting with their 5.00 BIOS. Apparently the default DMA channel for the ESS conflicts with something else in the BIOS, resulting in a lack of audio. This isn't really a surprise since DMA channels are particularly strange beasts. If you have this problem, I reccommend the trying the following before shelling out $300 to get Toshiba to fix it: Grab the ess configuration program and use it to set the DMA channel to something other than the default (1) in your autoexec.bat. I had a Toshiba 2150CDT myself with the 5.00 BIOS, though, and I never ran into this problem.
ESS Technology now has a web site at www.esstech.com.
ESS Technology, Inc. 48107 Landing Parkway Fremont, CA 94538-6407 USA +1 (510) 226 1088 phone +1 (510) 226 8868 fax +1 (510) 492 1937 BBSWhen calling the BBS, set your serial port's top speed to 19200 even if you have a faster modem. Their software interprets faster connections as 300 bps!
| JP3 | |
| IDE Enabled | 1-2 |
| IDE Disabled | 2-3 |
JP2, JP4 - IDE IRQ Select
| JP2 | JP4 | |
|
IRQ 14 Primary |
2-3 | 2-3 |
|
IRQ 15 Secondary |
1-2 | 1-2 |
JP12, JP13, JP14 - CD Audio In
| Pin 1 | Pin 2 | Pin 3 | Pin 4 | |
| JP12 | Left | Ground | Ground | Right |
| JP13 | Ground | Left | Ground | Right |
| JP14 | Right | Ground | Left | Ground |
JP8 Pins 1-4 - Sound Card DMA
| Pins 1-2 | Pins 3-4 | |
| DMA 0 | open | closed |
| DMA 1 | closed | open |
| DMA 3 | closed | closed |
JP8 Pins 5-8 - Sound Card IRQ
| Pins 5-6 | Pins 7-8 | |
| IRQ 9 | open | open |
| IRQ 5 | open | closed |
| IRQ 7 | closed | open |
| IRQ 10 | closed | closed |
JP10, JP11 - Sound Card I/O Address
| JP10 | JP11 | |
| 220H | 2-3 | 2-3 |
| 230H | 2-3 | 1-2 |
| 240H | 1-2 | 2-3 |
| 250H | 1-2 | 1-2 |
Comp.:BEHAVIOR TECH COMPUTER CORP. Address: 12F,No.18,Chang An E. Rd. Sec.1, Addres2: Taipei Country: Taiwan Tel: 886-2-523-6266 Fax: 886-2-523-3114 Activities: Manufacturer, Exporter Prodlines: Input Devices Multimedia Add-On Cards Brandname: "BTC" Ceo: Steel Su Contact: Miranda Ho Capitals: NT$ 630,500,000. Yrsales: US$ 110,000,000. Market: Europe 25% N.America 35% Asia 40% Dateestab: Oct. 1982 Factorysz: 142,280 Sq.Ft. Numberempl: 750 Remarks1: One of the world's 3 largest keyboard makers. Also produces VGA Remarks2: cards, scanners, TV tuner cards, cases and SPS. Offices in the USA, Remarks3: Holland, France, Germany, UK, and Korea. ISO 9001 approved.And from the Thomas Register Supplier Finder (guest/guest):
Behavior Tech Computer (USA) Corp. Fremont, CA 94538 USA 510-657-3956 FAX: 510-657-3965 Microprocessing PC Boards, Keyboards, Computer AC Power Supplies.
sfoskett@slf.gweep.net Back to my hardware page Back to my home page