In order for this sound card to be configured and used I had to use a program called sndconfig from Red Hat. To have the program installed during the Mandrake installation you have to tell the installer to install support for ISA sound cards. At a command prompt (as root) type sndconfig and press enter, if you have the program installed it will bring up a graphical interface which asks you to allow it to search your computer for soundcards- press ok (this may take up to a minute or more to search be patient). In my case the sound card was not detected and I was given the option of choosing it from a list. I had to choose the Sound Blaster Pro entry (the Sound Blaster entry did not allow my particular DMA entry) and I selected the following entries: I/O port=0X220, IRQ=5, DMA=0. If you're succesful you will hear a sound recording press ok and the program will edit your modules.conf for you, if you do not hear a sound select no and you can go back and try other settings.

As with Grasshopper I used sndconfig on Mdk no probs.

ON slackware 9.1
a) edit /etc/rc.d/modules file to UN-comment the line for OSS support and it becomes a sound blaster compatible snd card and just needs a reboot

b) or go to alsa-project to see how to use alsaconf to run it. Note that I am not an experienced kernel hacker so have yet to get it to work with 2.6

others may feel free to comment.

SUMMARY

this card is no longer available new and is to be avoided is has poor quality sound

It is very easy to get this card working. Simply run alsaconf, and the program will detect and modprobe the appropriate driver module. That's as easy as they come...

Note: this card can be found in old Compaq AP400 Professional Workstations.

I am a few months late, but saw this. I am running Mandrakelinux 10.1 with KDE 3.2. I have an ESS 1869 ISA sound card. I had to run alsaconf for it to be recognized. It will play sounds when tested in KDE Sound System, but other than that I get no system sounds, CDs or anything. I noticed Midi does not test in KDE 3.2 Sound System and that there is no way to select a midi device. Any ideas? Thanks

I have FC2 installed on an old Compaq Deskpro EP 6350 (PII). The ESS 1869 ISA pnp AudioDrive card is the one that comes with this PC.

FC2 does not get this card working with the normal install, and sndconfig and alsaconfig are not available with FC2.

To get this working (thanks peacedog for the tips!) manually modprobe the necessary modules.

In a terminal as root, enter:

modprobe snd-es18xx;modprobe snd-pcm-oss;modprobe snd-mixer-oss;modprobe snd-seq-oss

This should return a prompt if successful.

You can edit /etc/modules.conf, or /etcmodprobe.conf to load the modules by default at bootup.

Once the modules are loaded, you'll need to run aslamixer or right click on the speaker tray icon and select Open Sound Volume. Be certain nothing is on MUTE, and adjust upwards the volume controls for CD. Doing so in either the OSS tab or the ALSA tab worked for my config.

Running Slack 10.1 on Compaq EN 6350. The modprobe suggestion did not work for me, what did work however was having alsaconfig probe IRQ ports. Sound working great now.

Driver snd-es18xx
Description: ESS ES18xx AudioDrive
Author: Christian Fischbach , Abramo Bagnara
License: GPL

For 2.4 kernel
install alsa and compile the driver for this card as a module ( kernel/sound/isa/snd-es18xx.o.gz)

then either run or
For 2.6 kernel
compile alsa and snd-es18xx into the kernel for autoloading or as a module that would require the above steps for manual load

Hardware tested :
Compaq Professional Workstation AP400

Specs :
Sampling rate 4 KHz to 48 KHz (adjustable)

Maximum Voltage (rms)
Microphone-in 0.030
Line-in 0.7
Headphone-out n/a
Line-out 0.7

Impedance (nominal)
Microphone-in 1-K ohm
Line-in 20-K ohms
Line-in 20-K ohms
Line-out 20-K ohms

Data Types
alaw 8-/16-bit
mlaw 8-/16-bit
mono/stereo 16-bit