What sound card is this?

Posted by Top-Security-1258@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 12 comments

I through this card I had laying around in a new build I'm working on because it has a Yamaha YM series FM chip. But.....I can't seem to find working drivers anywhere for it because I don't actually know what card it is. I looked it up by the P057-01-A0A0B and can see it's an ESS Audio drive .....but past that I don't know which one. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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LindsayOG@reddit

Wow that’s a throwback to days I’ve forgotten.

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QuestionDue7822@reddit

Soundcard, FDA and IDE on an ISA board, what more could a man want.

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Moist_Glass1778@reddit

Its a ESS audiodrive ES488F 👍 says it on the main chip 👍

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Suturb-Seyekcub@reddit

👍

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delta__vee@reddit

Layout and connector labelling seems to match this: https://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/i/C-D/51343.htm

(I don't know how this mystery meat SB compatible ended up labelled as a creative labs card in there...)

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denali42@reddit

White box sound card made by Aspar Technology Co Ltd.

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computix@reddit

What a fun little card. It has 16 bit ISA for those CD-ROM controller connectors, the other stuff on it is 8 bit. The ESS488 is an 8 bit (!2 bit) sound chip with 8 bit Sound Blaster compatible PCM audio. FM synthesis is provided by the Yamaha OPL-2 chip in your card.

Very likely it will work with a Sound Blaster driver if you can find the right IRQ, port and DMA channel. Possibly this thread will help you, especially the small "blaster" tool provided in the last comment on the first page, it might be able to detect the card's settings.

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NightmareJoker2@reddit

Aspar Technologies AudioDrive P057 ES488-F. There are different variants of this card, all sold under the same name to OEMs who sold them with PCs, with and without certain types of CD-ROM interfaces, missing or different OPL, newer ESS chips. The card you have is the variant that has all the CD-ROM interfaces for Sony, Mitsumi and Panasonic, but is missing the CD audio header for Mitsumi interface drives and the PCB variant without IDE, comes with an OPL2 (there’s an OPL3 and an OPN variant) and an ES488 PCM sound chip. Newer variants of this card feature ES688, ES1488, and ES1868 PCM sound chips, IDE interfaces, no OPL (replaced by ESFM in the ESS chip), or, if you are especially lucky, two OPL chips or an OPL4 complete with jumper switchable Yamaha PCM sample sound banks and sound bank RAM to load your own samples into. That last one’s got real OPL FM, ESFM, and sample based MIDI all on one card and is virtual unobtanium now. Though, also not very sought after, because you can’t use the modes at the same time and they are controlled with a jumper.

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