RE: The Unofficial AudioPCI/PCI64 Support Page

[Erik H. Bakke]

On 19-Oct-99 Marc van Woerkom wrote:
>> The Vibra128 (which is PCI) uses the Ensoniq chip, but I'm not so sure
>> the PCI128 does. 
> 
> 
[Some lines deleted]
> Then Creative came up and bought Ensoniq to get some decent PCI 
> card. The PCI 128 seems to be more or less the same like the Audio
> PCI (I am not 100% sure, because the latest greatest Win drivers
> do not work for me anymore), the PCI 64 is reported to have at
> least a lesser quality code.
The PCI 128 uses the original ES1370, and is indeed the same card as the
original Ensoniq one.  I have three of these cards in different computers, and
one of them has a SoundBlaster sticker on top of the original Ensoniq marking.

The PCI 64's I have seen (Have one PCI64 and one PCI64V myself) are based on
ES1371 and 1373 chips.
I believe both these chips are AC97 compatible, and can be mixed and matched.
I have picked these cards out of my FreeBSD computers now, but I seem to recall
that the card with the 1373 chip identified itself with the same PCI ID as the
1371, but I am not 100% sure about this.
I needed a variety of these cards for a driver development project I was doing.

> 
> And more fun: recently people reported an ES1374 chip - I have
> no clue yet where this one is different.
> 
It probably isn't.  It will probably have the same programming interface as the
earlier ES1371/1373 chips.  The differences is probably mostly in the
physical interface.  (Lower power consumption, etc.)
Unless you design sound cards around these chips, this will probably not matter.

This is purely my own understanding of the chips, and I may very well proven to
be wrong, so don't go betting all your money on this :)

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Erik H. Bakke  || To be or not to be...
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The Unofficial AudioPCI/PCI64 Support Page

[Marc van Woerkom]

> The Vibra128 (which is PCI) uses the Ensoniq chip, but I'm not so sure
> the PCI128 does. 

Walter Lord has set up (and still maintains) a home page when the
Ensoniq Audio PCI came out:

http://www.netexcite.com/audiopci/index.html

You find lots of drivers, the 8 MB wave table sets for the Windows driver
and other useful information there.

Wish we could use that wave tables for a midi device.. 

To make a long story short. The original Ensoniq Audio PCI card used 
the ES1370 chip (PCI & control) and the AK4531 codec for AD/DA.

Later they made Audio PCI cards with the ES1371 chip. This one seems 
to be able to use lots of different codecs (that is where the driver 
fun comes in) that comply to some Intel spec (AC 97), among them
the AK4540.

All this time, Ensoniq also sold their chips to OEMS, who in turn might
have used the same codec or even other stuff.

Then Creative came up and bought Ensoniq to get some decent PCI 
card. The PCI 128 seems to be more or less the same like the Audio
PCI (I am not 100% sure, because the latest greatest Win drivers
do not work for me anymore), the PCI 64 is reported to have at
least a lesser quality code.

And more fun: recently people reported an ES1374 chip - I have
no clue yet where this one is different.


Specs for ES1370 and ES1371:

   http://www.ensoniq.com/multimedia/semi_html/index.htm


Specs for Ashai Kasei AK4531 and AK4543:

http://www.akm.com/Text/pdflist.html
http://www.asahi-kasei.co.jp/akm/english/p_i/pdf/EK4351.pdf
http://www.akm.com/pdf/4543.pdf


Specs for Audio Codec '97:

http://developer.intel.com/pc-supp/platform/ac97


Regards,
Marc




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