Compaq Business Audio - DOS drivers?

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq (More info?)

Pleeease someone here can help me with these "oldies" problem:

Recently I got two *Compaq Deskpro 4/33i and 4/66i* Workstations
(80486DX2, 33MHz, 16MB) which are in pretty good shape and one of
them has a quad speed CD-ROM build in.
Both machines were given away with low level formatted harddisks,
so I had to start with a completely new OS... say, Caldera DOS
7.01. Even the CDROM was finally recognized and it works fine -
wow, after ten years!

My idea was thus: Building a "rugged" CD/MP3-player by installing
the famous MPXPLAY on the machine. Especially taking benefit from
the onboard AD1848 Soundchip. As far as I found out, this is also
referred to as "Windows Sound System". MPXPLAY even detects the
WSS and seems to decode continuously - but the sound is totally
chopped and distorted.
Of course I have probed almost all possible IRQ- and DMA
assignments, buffer configurations of the player and such. With no
success.
But now I know, that the soundchip is definitely o.k. after I
temporarily installed minimized Win'95 (on that small 200MB HDD!)
Windows immediately detected "Compaq Business Audio" and installed
something like "soundblaster SB16 emulation" ... pretty
interesting... all the system sounds (.WAV) played fine now!
And even WINAMP 2.6 was able to decode some MP3 - but not
continuously at all... :-(

Seems to me, that Win95's multitasking is quite too heavy for that
thin machine? On the other hand, realtime decoding could be
possible - but I guess there is some precious piece of driver
stuff or TSR necessary? Any help & hints appreciated!!!

Greets,

Julien