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IBM ThinkPad 760XL ESS 1688 Audio Issues

S

superorc

Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2011
Messages
18
Location
Cleveland, Ohio
I recently bought a ThinkPad 760XL laptop off craigslist for $35. Im really impressed with the machine over my other Pentium w/ MMX laptop which is a Gateway with an awful passive matrix screen. The battery even holds a charge and works for roughly 2 hours at the minimum I would guess. I've been having issues with the ESS 1688 chip that's built in to the laptop. Some times it works just fine, and other times it just doesn't work but it shows up in the Windows 98 device manager screen with a yellow exclamation mark. I've been trying for awhile now to fix the audio as I would like to use this laptop to play some older DOS games as the screen on this laptop is pretty nice for the time frame it came out as it is an active matrix screen. Does anyone have any ideas I could try?
 
If you just want to run dos games just bypass Windows altogether. It's been a while but I do remember running some dos games through win9x. It'd work for the first one then have a paddy on the next with sound. This happened even though the first game had been shut down correctly.
 
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Ok I finally got an old evaluation version of Paint Shop Pro installed so I can screenshot device manager. I'm running Win95 right now, but it had the same exact information in Win98SE. In both Win95 and Win98SE the default drivers included with the OS were installed. There are no resource conflicts at all. Here are the screen caps:

ess.jpgess2.jpgess3.jpg

I tried running under plain DOS and it works somewhat or the game just crashes. In Doom I get music but no sound, and in Wolf3D it crashes when the first sound effect is played whereas before everything worked fine. I'm thinking the chip is somehow bad. Sucks too as I did get it working a few times as witnessed here:

 
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Well I've come to the conclusion that the audio board is bad. I've ran the bios test on audio and get an error message. But I was browsing eBay and found a replacement ess audio board for my 760XL for $8 so looks like I can fix this cheap.
 
superorc said:
Ok I finally got an old evaluation version of Paint Shop Pro installed so I can screenshot device manager
Click to expand...

Totally off topic, and I have no advice on the sound issue that hasn't already been suggested, but....

FYI the Print Screen key has taken screen shots in Windows since NT3.5 & 95, on up to current versions, no 3rd party software required. Print Screen = whole screen, ALT-Print Screen = Current window. Copies to clipboard, then you can paste into MS Paint or whatever graphics enabled application you want.
 
I recieved the replacement ESS sound board for the 760XL, and had my brother-in-law help me replace the board. Sound is working great now!! Now I wish I could upgrade the paltry 2.1GB drive in the ThinkPad, but it has a case enclosing the entire drive and I'm not sure if it's possible to put a CF card + CF -> IDE adapter in the case.
 
Unknown_K said:
You can use a bigger EIDE laptop drive.
Click to expand...

Yep, for sure.

I have cracked open a few of those thinkpad drive caddies before, I don't recall the 760XL's BIOS limits specifically, but you can probably go 8.1GB before you need to install DDO software (like ontrack) to overcome that limit. 2.5" PATA to CF adapter board should be just fine keeping in mind the likely 8.1GB BIOS limit if you try to use a larger card.

Just be careful of the ribbon and connector once you open the case, they are somewhat fragile when the drive and case are not protecting them.
 
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