Question:ESS Sound Card

I have a sound card, manufacturer Shark. I don't really have much specs on it, well I know it's 16bit.
The driver is ESS1681. I'm wondering what kind of problems I'll encounter and if it's at all possible to even get this card working.

I'll probably try the OSS (4 Front) drivers since they seem the most stable , at least from what I've read.

Anyone ever tried this type of card? Any suggestions? Any help?

Thank you
Stuart Felenstein

In my experiences with the 18xx series, the ESS chips are a cheap and nasty SBPro clone. (No flames please... this is just IMHO).

The only reason I used one for so long was the ability to run an old Panasonic 2x drive off it on the /dev/sbpcd device.

The OSS (commercial/time-limited trial) drivers detected the ESS chip I had, and loaded a specific driver for it. But I never did get the full (unlimited) driver for it, since the SB driver in the kernel seemed to work just as well with it (and the kernels were changing versions quite a bit at the time... a real hassle to upgrade the OSS drivers all the time).

I'm not so familiar with the 1681 chip (err, not at all actually), so your milage may vary. (I'll never touch them again, btw).

Cheers
Tony

You should be able to use it pretty easily, using the SB driver.

Bill