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Enabling an LT sound card ?

Micom 2000

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2004
Messages
1,284
Location
Manitoba North of 50 degrees Latitude
I recently picked up an HP Omnibook 4000 LT. According to the specs it has an ESS soundcard installed, but the Bios Setup doesn't respond to any indication of a sound card altho it has provisions to do so.

An HP diagnostic program responds in the sound check with a melodius sound and the multitude of DOS games on it happily give all sorts of synthesized sounds, whether configured for ad-lib or soundblaster. I haven't been able to find any sort of ESS sound driver for it. It has Win4WGs installed on it. It won't play any sound-extension file however.

It's been some time since I configured a DOS system for a sound-card, usually following the instructions of what to add to the "autoexec" file. In the autoexec.bat and config.sys there is no reference to a sound card. Could it simply be missing some entry to enable it ? These plug-n-play systems really spoil you with their mindless installs.

SB= IRQ X and some other format options tweak my mind. Likely on the HP/ESS install driver if I could one.

I found it fun to rediscover how to use the DOS games, many of which pushed the free DOS memory to it's limits, some even using EXT memory. I had to check my books to recall the various methods to maximise lower memory. "Smart drive" was an obvious casualty. A big change from the present voluminous extended memory of Point'nClick.

I'll likely be installing Win95 on it once I rescue, by removing, the DOS games since it only has a 250M HD on it and hopefully it will recognise the sound card as well as a PCMCIA modem which it ignores since "card services and sockets" isn't installed.

Lawrence
 
Hmm, all my ESS sound chips seem to end up as "WDM compatible". Do a google of "ess wdm", looks like tons of info available.
 
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