ESS Allegro-1 ES1988 PCI Sound Card with EXCELLENT DOS compatibility

I bought a few of these cheap PCI Sound Cards online with ESS Allegro-1 chip for $9 per card and wasn't sure what to expect. Turns out these are EXCELLENT for DOS compatibility and if you come across one, do not hesitate!

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[RuruFIN]

Phil's retro soundcard review is far more interesting than those overpriced 4080's reviews. :D

[FuJhen]

Every tech channel: RTX 4080
Phil: PCI Sound Card. Nice!

[maturaseven]

all ESS PCI sound controllers have TDMA (Transperant DMA) feature, which means they have their own Intel i8237-style DMA controller build-in the chip, i.e. they are like PCI-to-ISA bridge, hence the excellent DOS compatibility.

[akaJughead]

I would suggest adding Tyrian or Tyrian 2000 to your list of games used for testing sound cards. It has a great setup program, and features an excellent MIDI soundtrack that sounds good in GM and FM. It's also super picky about it's Sound Blaster compatibility, and will produce distorted sound effects on many SB clones.

[MarcoGPUtuber]

FINALLY no more looking for semi modern boards with ISA. Unicorns they are!

[repatch]

That PCB was made at the end of 2015, incredible!

[Rouxenator]

I love ESS. My first was an ES1688 - even impressed a friend of mine that had a GUS.

[KaitenKenbu]

Your channel is quickly becoming my favourite tech channel. So many good tutorials on legacy systems.

[Fahrenheit]

Not gonna miss out on stuff like this anymore. I don't have a use for it now but I'm gonna buy a few to toss in the parts bin. When I started watching your videos I didn't think I needed a win 98 machine for old games and missed on all the cheap compatible mobos and GPUs. Had to over pay to catch up. Not anymore!

[joaoc_PT]

What i find amazing on those cards, is that they "compressed" several dozen components into that one chip plus a few more simple components to make it work. A pure example of miniaturization.
Btw, noticed another simmilar card on sale, with the yamaha XG chip also very cheap. Would be interesting to test if yamaha audio tools work on it.

[berkant_k]

Nice to see a video about a pci soundcard :)

[DavisMakesGames]

My Compaq Presario 1685 laptop has one of these ESS chips on the motherboard. It's great for DOS gaming compatibility.

[Arachnoid_of_the_underverse]

As you have a few of the cards it might be worth soldering on some pins or leads to the CD audio header and see if the internal header is actually programmed into the chip.

[the_beefy]

Nice find! It might be nice to take time in future videos to cover the history behind some of these companies. This one is particularly notable in my mind, because it's one of the only sound card makers in the 90s that weren't eventually acquired by Creative Labs. :)

[definitelycasualpcs]

Yea i looked at mine.
Much older and I thought they were the same but I have an allegro with ess1988s and 2 with maestro-3 chips. Definitely going to be testing them out at sound point now lol

[intelDX]

the best sound card for DOS is Sound Blaster and compatibles, I have one little 8 bit ISA Sound Blaster clone and it works in DOS without any additional drivers, the games just works with it :)

[techdistractions]

The Allegro is an early AC’97 solution often bundled with a modem and this looks like chip stock from older laptop parts.

It would be interesting to learn more about the OPL emulation. It’s not ESFM but I wonder what it uses instead.

[andyastrand]

That’s a very cool looking PCB, bright colours, cool shape. I mean that’s a piece of art.

[fungo]

Did anyone else notice how the FM music is higher pitched?

[Henk]

Been absolutely loving the ESS Solo-1 based off your recommendation precisely because of its equally good dos compatibility, but it also has the ESFM that sounds very much like the OPL but better when games have been specifically programmed for it.

I use it in parralel with an Audigy 1 to get the best out of both worlds with my PC that has no ISA slots.

Based on my findings I got a few things to report back that viewers may find useful. The Solo-1 (And probably allegro) does not need interrupt 5 and 7 as long as these are not occupied by anything else. The driver is able to use plug and play to route IRQ5 or 7 to its real IRQ. It is an IRQ sensitive card however. I had games fail on one IRQ, the other half on another IRQ and then eventually I found an IRQ working for all of them. And this is despite of the driver using a consistent IRQ for the emulation. So you will keep having to bump up the IRQ by one until it works.

Why not just have the IRQ on 5 or 7 like in this video you ask? Because in a dual soundcard system with plug and play this gives you the ability to have either card automatically assigned to IRQ5. So in Windows I have the Audigy 1 installed including DOS support. That gives me soundblaster 16 compatibility with midi soundfonts. In DOS i then use the ESS Solo-1 instead without them conflicting on IRQ5 since I only use one at a time. I do use a tool that initializes the audigy's mixer so that I can hook up the CD-Rom and ESS Solo-1 to this card resulting in a very seamless experience. Note, this can only be done with the Audigy 1, not the 2.

I hope that dual soundcard setup helps others achieve this fantastic balance between DOS compatibility and EAX on their PCI systems to.