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Anyone use an ES1868-based sound card on a PC XT?

Chuck(G)

Chuck(G)

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I've got a couple of Acer FX-16 sound cards here and I was wondering if anyone's tried them on a PC XT. They're ISA PNP and use the ESS ES1868 chip, whose datasheet claims that 8-bit operation is fine with it.

I'm thinking that using that and the onboard IDE port in 8-bit mode with a CF card should save me a slot. Space for a ROM is no issue, as my network card has an empty BOOTP ROM socket on it.

I'd like to hear if anyone has had any luck with this sort of setup before I go and waste my time trying to get it to work.
 
Not if you run the CF card in 8-bit mode (you can't do that with most IDE hard drives, but it's been my experience that all CF cards support the mode. Probably has something to do with their application in mobile devices and digicams.
 
As far as I know, there's no code in the BIOS for that.

And this is what's been puzzling me--if you make a card that handles CF only, you can simplify the design greatly--basically all you need to do is buffer the data lines and decode the address lines. You could even map the data register into 512 consecutive addresses in the space for the BIOS ROM. That way, the transfer becomes REP MOVSB.

When you add IDE hard drives, things get more complicated.
 
I found a very informative site regarding the ES1868 and DOS:

http://www.daqarta.com/intro.htm

Lots of good information--among which is that the 1868 does support 8 bit ISA for sound. So, it looks as if I'm good for this--all I need to do is write some code for the IDE CF card interface. Should be pretty slick--if I can get the 1868 configuration EEPROM to remember addresses across power cycles.
 
I don't see why not. I've suggested it in another thread.

In fact, if you wanted to use a 16-bit IDE+Floppy card, you could use the trick to host both a CF hard drive and a high-density floppy controller.

But the idea seems to have gathered little traction. So I'll do it to satisfy my own curiosity and other people can re-discover it later.
 
I'm with Anonymous Coward, for me it is a really interesting idea for saving a slot in a 5150
 
Chuck(G) said:
I've got a couple of Acer FX-16 sound cards here and I was wondering if anyone's tried them on a PC XT. They're ISA PNP and use the ESS ES1868 chip, whose datasheet claims that 8-bit operation is fine with it.

I'm thinking that using that and the onboard IDE port in 8-bit mode with a CF card should save me a slot. Space for a ROM is no issue, as my network card has an empty BOOTP ROM socket on it.

I'd like to hear if anyone has had any luck with this sort of setup before I go and waste my time trying to get it to work.
Click to expand...

So just to confirm, the ES1868 chip itself has 8-bit interface and works properly in a 8-bit slot. The only problem is that its PnP enabler utility uses 80186+ instructions, so it doesn't work on 8088 CPUs, but works nicely on NEC V20.

As for IDE support - ES1868 merely generates two CS (chip select) signals, inverted reset signal, and also routes IDE interrupt line to one of the IRQ lines on the ISA bus. All other signals are connected directly to the IDE bus. So 8-bit portion should work. It will be a problem with BIOS support though - the ES1868 will need to be configured by a PnP utility before it will be possible to use it (including the IDE part).
 
So, I'd guess that I'd run the config utility in a 16-bit slot and then move the card to an 8-bit one. Unless, that is, I want to suss out the configuration utility (I don't).

Okay, that figures.
 
Chuck(G) said:
So, I'd guess that I'd run the config utility in a 16-bit slot and then move the card to an 8-bit one. Unless, that is, I want to suss out the configuration utility (I don't).

Okay, that figures.
Click to expand...

It is not about the 16-bit slot. PnP utility will work with the card in 8-bit slot. It just that the PnP configuration is volatile, it won't be preserved across (hard) reboots or power offs, and card needs to be configured before the XT-IDE BIOS will be accessing it.
 
sergey said:
It is not about the 16-bit slot. PnP utility will work with the card in 8-bit slot. It just that the PnP configuration is volatile, it won't be preserved across (hard) reboots or power offs, and card needs to be configured before the XT-IDE BIOS will be accessing it.
Click to expand...

But is it? The ISA PNP cards that I've seen (e.g. the Acer FX-16 ESS card) all use a 256x16 serial EEPROM (e.g. 93L66, X2444, etc.) to hold configuration information. The datasheet (72-page one, not the little product brief) indicates that configuration data is contained there. The useful item in the datasheet is that the reference circuit pretty closely matches (including the IDE port) the FX-16 board.

At any rate, I know how to find what I need now.

What am I missing?
 
I have an ESS 1868 in my Toshiba T5200/100. I'm not sure if mine remembers the audio settings but it (and my other ESS and ALS cards) definately forget the IDE setting on cold boots - there is an ESS IDE Enabler file you normally need to put in your CONFIG.SYS file before the CDROM driver. I guess it really depends on the card though, ESS1868 being just the chip, so you'll just have to try it and see how you get on.
 
Chuck(G) said:
As far as I know, there's no code in the BIOS for that.

And this is what's been puzzling me--if you make a card that handles CF only, you can simplify the design greatly--basically all you need to do is buffer the data lines and decode the address lines. You could even map the data register into 512 consecutive addresses in the space for the BIOS ROM. That way, the transfer becomes REP MOVSB.

When you add IDE hard drives, things get more complicated.
Click to expand...

I'm interested in the ESS1688 chip too; is it still available?

Re the CF idea, the universal BIOS supported 8-bit transfers up to change 361 (single-port adapter type). Would need to confirm port mappings & control port base (I've not looked through the docs for the board btw).

Off topic, but for my CF board I'm sticking with buffered 16-bit transfers because my goal is BIOS and CPLD code portability between the CF and 40-pin boards (DPv2). rep movsw is also a bit faster, if I can ever make memory-mapped IO work - 25 cycles per word vs 34, on the 8088 I think.

If OTOH a through-hole/74xxx board were the goal, of course simpler logic would be great. Probably worth noting that I couldn't find any generally available though-hole CF sockets though, and that the SMT thing seems to be killing my boards unfortunately (they're available now, can't even give them away).

But anyway, re-using these sound cards in this way would be very cool if it can be made to work with the PnP thing.
 
I have a Pine Technologies ES1868 card in a machine here. The IDE controller needs ES1868.COM in config.sys to setup resources on non-PnP machines before any CD-ROM device drivers. Another thing to keep in mind is that it can't be set to the normal hardware addresses of a primary or secondary IDE channels, 168h and IRQ10 worked for me however which I think is the loosely defined quaternary IDE channel. The VIDE-CD.SYS driver worked best for me.

ESSCFG.EXE is used to setup the rest of the sound card resources are can be run from the command line.
 
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