Hello Alan,
On 26-Feb-97 17:16:10, Alan Zisman wrote to All
about: Ess 688
 AZ> I've got an ESS ES688 sound card on my notebook-- it works as advertised 
 AZ> under W95 (IRQ5, IO 220, DMA 1)... but I'm unable to get it to work 
under 
 AZ> NT 4.0 Workstation.
 AZ> I've tried both the drivers on the NT CD, and from ESS's website-- with 
 AZ> equal lack of success... installing from Control 
 AZ> Panel/Multimedia/Drivers/Add gets me a dialogue box with the proper IO 
 AZ> setting... but the next dialogue, choosing all IRQ possibilities results 
 AZ> in an error beep and nothing goes any further.
I have a ESS688 audiodrive soundcard to on my desktop machine.
It works perfectly fine in Windows NT 4.0 Worstation.
I have a friend (we bought the cards together) that also has the
same ESS soundcard, he has totally no problems in W95, but in NT
workstation he can't get it working...
He tries all io adresses but the card isn't found on anyone of
them. And sometimes it does work, the ESS is found at IO 230, the
next time he boot, no soundcard ....
I used to have the same problem, well not the same, it always
worked, but it always 'moved' to another IO adress...
I disabled PnP in my BIOS and all the problems were solved...
It's a shame, that not all bioses support this (AMI does,
AWARD doesn't).
Greetz,
Rob Vandeweyer (2:292/401.115) - 
--- Terminate 4.00/Pro
(2:292/401.115)
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** A related thread FOLLOWS this message.

FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 206 WINDOWS 32BIT Ref: E3422681 Date: 03/04/97
From: GREG HOLLAND                                          Time: 02:44am
\/To: ROB VANDEWEYER                                      (Read 7 times)
Subj: R: Ess 688

Rob,

RV> I have a friend (we bought the cards together) that also 
  > has the same ESS soundcard, he has totally no problems in 
  > W95, but in NT workstation he can't get it working... 
  >
  > I disabled PnP in my BIOS and all the problems were solved...
  > It's a shame, that not all bioses support this (AMI does,
  > AWARD doesn't).

Perhaps your friend needs to update his BIOS? The Award BIOS boards that 
were out around the time Win95 came out had many problems with 32-bit 
operating systems. From what I hear, they've solved the problem. So he 
*might* be able to solve the problem with a new BIOS, or at least be able 
to turn off Plug 'n' Pray.

If he wants to get one, he ought to be able to get it from here (this 
info is several months old, so the phone numbers may have changed):

NOTE: Be sure to 'grab' the current information of your BIOS when
you boot your PC, so they will know exactly which one you will need. 

 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

Source for Award Bios:

  Award Software International, Inc
  777 E. Middlefield Road
  Mountain View, California  94043-4023

  BBS: 415-968-0249
  Voice: 415-968-4433
  FAX: 415-968-0274

 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
                                                                                                                            

 ÄÄÄÍÍðäÆ *Greg* µäðÍÍÄÄÄ

    @ 11:49PM, 03-03-97

 * #1755 CMPQwk 1.42 running on Win95
 * Brought to you by the Department of Repetitive Redundancy.

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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> LAST Message In Thread <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 206 WINDOWS 32BIT Ref: E3300014 Date: 03/02/97
From: CHRIS HOLTEN                                          Time: 10:08am
\/To: JEFF FOY                                            (Read 6 times)
Subj: DOS PROGRAMS UNDER NT???

 CH> Could be you have something else screwed up Jeff. I've been using
 CH> Telix here with NT for years. It works quite well, including Zmodem
 CH> downloads and is my Text based comm program of choice in NT.
 JF>                          ^^^^^^^^^^
 JF> I was referring to Telix 1.15d *for Windows* which is definitely not a 
 JF> text-based application. :-)  Sorry for the confusion.  Seems all my 16- 
 JF> bit windows applications crash and burn under NT for some ungodly 
 JF> reason. The DOS-based applications, however, have been running like 
 JF> always ... no troubles.
Hmmm...I've really not had any problems with any of the 16 bit Win apps that 
I run including Telix for Windows. Delrina Winfax Pro 3.0, MS Office 
4.0/4.2/4.3, Visual Basic 3.0, MS Publisher, Quickbooks 3 and 4, Quicken, 
Foxpro, all kinds of 16 bit internet apps, the list goes on and on. The only 
difficulties I've had is with Worperfect 5.2 and 6.0. WPwin won't fax and 
smashes my delrina wfp setup such that I have to re-install it if I ever try 
to fax from WPwin. That's because WPwin uses it's own print processor (dumb 
way to insure upward compatibility) and is just flat not Windows Printmanager 
(any version) "compatible). Those versions of WPwin screwed up faxing with 
Winfaxpro 3.0 in Windows 95 also.
No doubt there are 16 bit windows programs that just flat out won't work in 
NT,but that is because those programs don't and never have "followed the 
rules" of Windows with any kind of thought for "upwards compatibility in 
mind". Fortunately as time goes one, software companies are learning to keep 
thier programmers from doing 8 bit programming mentality crap that bypasses 
the Operating System and directly accesses hardware and other Dave letterman 
stupid dog type "tricks". There really isn't all that much 16 bit Win 
software that doesn't work fine in NT, so if all your 16 bit win stuff is 
crashing, most likely you have a problem with your system somewhere. When 
really strange things like that happen, the first thing I'd suspect is the 
video driver. 
 CH> with the DOS version that you want to get into Telix's comport setup
 CH> and set it to default irq's (COM1,COM3=IRQ4,COM2,COM4=IRQ3). I found
 CH> when I had Telix setup for the non-standard IRQ's 
 CH> that were physically
 CH> present on the modems (COM3-IRQ5,COM4-IRQ2/9), Telix bombed.
 JF> I have two serial ports and they're both on standard IRQs (i.e. as you 
 JF> listed above) so that can't be the problem.
No, I don't think so either now. Could be you have a mess in your SYSTEM.INI 
file (only for 16 bit win apps in NT) and some bad acting 16bit .DLL or other 
drivers is the problem. You could edit your system.ini file and get rid of 
everything in it you can and start over. It's a real pain in the butt, about 
the only really reliable way to ferret that out is to delete your \windows 
directory, re-install NT and start over. 16 bit win apps can be very good at 
littering the \windows and \windows\system directory with crap that some of 
that crap could pop up and cause wierd problems. I went through the evolution 
of DOS, Win 3.10, WFWG 3.11, Win NT 3.10,W95 beta, 3.50,3.51 and bukus of 
services packs, many installed and deleted 16 bit windows apps in that 
evolution. Finally just backed up and re-formatted the hard drive, install NT 
3.51 and restored every directory except the Windows directory. I did have to 
re-install several of my 16 and 32 bit WIN apps to get NT correctly 
configured to run them. I picked up over 150meg of disk space by losing all 
the junk that had accumulated in the \windows directory over a 5 year period. 
I couldn't believe how much faster NT ran when I got rid of all the junk with 
a "fresh" install. I converted all drives to NTFS and have never looked back. 
My system.ini file is 1/5 (5k vs 24k) of the size that it was "before" and I 
have at least 15-20 16 bit Win apps installed on the NT system we are talking 
about. Everything, 32 bit, 16 bit Win, DOS, I use runs smoother than cat's 
snot and has for almost 2 years now. It's almost 3 gig of apps and data. If 
you have evolved through 16 bit WIN,WFWG,NT,95,NT like I have, you might be 
amazed at how much better performance you will get by starting over.
I'm not on the NT system I am referring to, but I am on my NT 4.0 system at 
home. We run a very broad mix of 16 bit win and 32 bit apps on that computer 
also. Here is the -total- system.ini file that it needs:
START:
______________________________________________________________
 
; for 16-bit app support
[drivers]
wave=mmdrv.dll
timer=timer.drv
[mci]
[386enh]
woafont=dosapp.FON
EGA80WOA.FON=EGA80WOA.FON
EGA40WOA.FON=EGA40WOA.FON
CGA80WOA.FON=CGA80WOA.FON
CGA40WOA.FON=CGA40WOA.FON
-------------------------------------------------------------
END
That's it. Amazing ain't it? 
--- Maximus/NT 3.01b1
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