OS/2 e-Zine! - The Need For Speed

The Need For Speed

- by Jon Cochran

Creative Labs and More Sound Cards

You know, it seems that whenever the OS/2 community receives a boost, something has to come along to negate it. You could even write a paper on it. Seriously.

Case in point: the last month or so. First of all, OS/2 users everywhere let out a collective thanks when Netscape Navigator/2 went GA. Finally we had a web browser that is part of a universal standard. And as an added bonus, IBM gave us a native plug-in package for Navigator/2, with software MPEG! It seemed it couldn't get a whole lot better than that.

But, to support my thesis, some bad news had to come along, and it did. Creative Labs, the main supplier of the sound card community, discontinued support for OS/2. They will no longer be developing new drivers, or refining existing drivers. From what I can gather, they seem to be merely holding the line.

Creative went on to blame IBM for their decision to drop OS/2 support, and attacked MMPM/2 in general, saying it couldn't support features such as full-duplex sound cards.

Wow. Sounds impressive. Too bad Creative didn't do their homework.

Other Options

For starters, there are at least two sound cards with full duplex support under OS/2. The MWave would be the first of these cards, and the second is a nifty little card that you probably haven't heard of, and that's a shame. Actually, to call it a card is wrong; it's really a chip. And the cards based on the chip can be bought for less than US$50 at most computer stores.

The chip is from ESS: the 1868. The card I worked with was sold by a company called Precision Instruments, who seem to take goods, slap their own name on them, and ship them out the door. But, as long as you know it's the ESS chip, you're in business.

When I first saw this package, I was a bit dubious. "How good could it be, it's only $50?" I thought. But seeing the promise of OS/2 support right on the box, I decided to give it a try.

"OS/2 support out of the box" is a bit misleading. The card comes with instructions on how to install it under OS/2, but comes with no drivers in the box, which is a unpleasant. However, OS/2 itself comes with drivers for the ESS 1868, and you might even want to use them. Notice I said might. It seems that the drivers that come with Warp 4 are designed to work with VTD, and don't support the full duplex features of the sound card. So if you want VTD, you've got to use the Warp 4 drivers but if you're not using VTD, go to the ESS website and download their drivers. Not only are their OS/2 drivers full duplex, but they're WinOS2 aware, and they'll share the sound card with Windows applications. Those are two very nice bonuses for a $50 sound card.

To install the card, I simply backed up my config.sys and my mmpm2.ini, took out the old Sound Blaster, and inserted the new card. I rebooted, ran the install program, and rebooted again. No problems, no worries, no hassles. And it sounds as good as the old SB16 it replaced. Peaches and cream, right?

Wrong. Being the intrepid soul that I am, I decided to try the IDE port on the sound card. I hooked up my CD-ROM and rebooted. Or tried to reboot. The system wouldn't boot with the CD-ROM attached to the card. I took the CD-ROM off; no problems. Quite odd.

I checked DMAs, IRQs, and ports, and still had no luck. The IDE interface wasn't something that was necessary, but it bothered me that the card wouldn't work entirely right. I sent a message to ESS Technical support and received no reply. I tried calling Precision Instruments, got a feeble response about checking a page in the manual (which has nothing to do with OS/2). I played around with the DOS configuration program. Nothing.

My final conclusion? Apparently, the configuration program stores its options directly onto the chip (when you run it, you'll see it telling you that it's "WRITING 512 BYTES TO CHIP" or some such nonsense). Evidently, OS/2 destroys whatever information is stored on the chip when it boots, which is no problem because the OS/2 drivers take care of everything -- except the IDE port. Of course, it could be a hundred different other things, but after days of experimentation, this is all I can seem to come up with. Disappointing.

So, if you need a new sound card, and don't need the IDE connector included with most sound cards, by all means go get an ESS 1868 based card. If you do need that IDE connector, you're still better off with a SB16 (or getting a separate CD-ROM interface card).

Jon Cochran is a full time student at Rider University majoring in History/Secondary Education. He hopes (or at least his parents do) to graduate soon.

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