Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-03-25, 15:06

by

by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

You probably wouldn't need a memory chip, the FPGAs that can hold a NIOS or other softcore will have plenty of RAM in them to implement program and work memory, and since you're pretty much emulating a 8052 or some other similar thing there wasn't much of RAM or ROM to begin with. Simple linear …

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Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-03-24, 21:10

by

by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

It's exactly why I have mentioned "a few 74xx ICs"... Also looked into CPLD + MCU scenario - still possible to get 5V tolerant CPLDs... "Soft" MCU inside of FPGA seems most logical, but requires a lot of LEs AND memory - up to a need of external memory chips. Smaller FPGA + MCU seems more logical, …

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Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-03-24, 20:15

by

by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yup, I am !

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Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-03-24, 18:47

by

by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

MCU or CPU is not gonna be enough on its own, you will need at least a CPLD to handle all the address decode and DMA tasks. You'll burn tremendous amount of CPU time by trying to do bus cycles and other things, turning your multihundred MHz thing into single digits stuff barely able to do other …

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Re: About removing and replacing barrel batteries..

Posted on 2018-03-23, 11:54

by

by Tiido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The charging circuit on the mobos (if present at all) is only single current limit resistor, nothing beyond that. There's no overcharge protection or any other things. I haven't had any problems using rechargeable lithium batteries even after multitude of years. For rarely used stuff I install AA …

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Re: Sound Blaster 16 Bugs and Deficiencies Summary

Posted on 2018-03-20, 17:59

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by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

On my AWE64 the hanging note originates from FM side. Every once in a while during a game a constant tone gets triggered and it stays there until restart or when you mute FM. It seems doing full init on OPL3 doesn't silence it and doing note offs on all notes on all channels on MPU-401 doesn't have …

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Re: Question on No-bezel Floppy Drives

Posted on 2018-03-20, 12:05

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by Tiido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some drives have the flap mounted on the metal bits rather than the bezel, finding such a drive is possibly the least painful way to do it. It wouldn't be very hard to get the flap mounted on the metal bits or perhaps even on the chassis of the computer itself. I have found the eject button to be …

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Re: Can I use a pencil to make a circuit over torn off SMDs ?

Posted on 2018-03-16, 14:20

by

by Tiido

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

You can try but it probably won't help, ideally you just replace the broken components.

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Re: Internally routing one sound card's output to another?

Posted on 2018-03-14, 16:15

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by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have just soldered wires directly to some nearby filter capacitors and route the output to CD-ROM input of another card. Normally I use one of those small white connectors that I snip off from regular CD-Audio cables, perfect length for card to card stuff.

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Re: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 vs Trident 8900D - disappointing

Posted on 2018-03-11, 07:36

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by Tiido

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

That looks like 1MB indeed. Also -3 on the model number, maybe that's some enhancement done to it. Datasheet for just TVGA9000i does clearly say 512KB and there's no address lines for more. Two banks of 256KBytes possible (9 address lines per 8bit bank). Seems to be 4x 8bit banks on it.

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Re: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 vs Trident 8900D - disappointing

Posted on 2018-03-10, 10:31

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by Tiido

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I have both 9000i and 8900D and according to datasheet 9000i is limited to 512KB and 8900D can do 24bits and on my 486 I can use those modes too (as slow as they are).

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Re: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 vs Trident 8900D - disappointing

Posted on 2018-03-10, 07:02

by

by Tiido

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

9000 series was the low end stuff limited to 512KB, 8900 higher end that supports 1MB VRAM and 24bit color modes. One would think bigger number is better but that's not the case here.

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Re: Any broken sound cards due to OC ?

Posted on 2018-03-10, 03:20

by

by Tiido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cards simply tend to stop working when the bus speed reaches some point, though some will complain when they get close (clicks and noises happen). I have had one ISA sound card (Awe64) stop working for good when it ran off 14MHz bus. I susppect the that was due to the PnP EEPROM on it getting …

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Re: ISA Sound card noise frequency origin, modifications, etc.

Posted on 2018-03-09, 09:51

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by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

There is a voltage regulator on the card, that transistor like thing near gameport which is used for analog side. Now if you added another regulator for digital side, and a regulator for VREFI there will be good improvements. Power draw is something near 100mA at most, heatsink wouldn't be necessary …

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Re: ISA Sound card noise frequency origin, modifications, etc.

Posted on 2018-03-09, 03:05

by

by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

From my experience, half the noise comes from power rails and other half is result from pollution on the silicon level and most particularly in the mixer sections. Supplying VREF for a chipset capable of accepting external VREF from a high PSRR voltage regulator can do wonders and also increase …

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Re: Using a full-slot (16-bit) ISA Sound card in half-slot (8-bit)?

Posted on 2018-03-08, 03:18

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by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Hahahaha, that pic is nothing, there's "worse" every once in a while :P Hello. What motherboard is that?!?! And what did you add to it (daughterboards)? It is a heavily modified MSI MS-6368. It started as a sort of a no-cost media center project, with goal to make it fully passive and fit in 4cm …

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Re: Using a full-slot (16-bit) ISA Sound card in half-slot (8-bit)?

Posted on 2018-03-07, 14:36

by

by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

YMF71x based sound cards will work in 8bit slot, you will lose DMA0, IRQ10 and 11 but rest will work.

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Re: Sound Blaster 16 Clones

Posted on 2018-03-06, 04:15

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by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

After I'm done with my current project (that I will present soon) the next one involves something that will have SB16 compatibility among other things, but that's at least a year away due to other obligations.

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-02, 15:04

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by Tiido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have that board in my 386, with the same ULSI 387 and 20MB RAM. 64KByte SRAMs are physically larger so they will not fit the sockets but with mods it would be possible to have up to 512KB cache (I have seen industrial boards with the chipset that have 512KB cache). Now if pinout could be located …

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Re: My PAS and YMF cards produce garbage noises instead of proper playback.

Posted on 2018-03-01, 12:33

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by Tiido

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Perhaps the ISA speed is too high, on my 486 I could set the ISA speed and pretty much all sound cards stopped working on it at about 13MHz point (66/5) but 11 (66/6) and lower worked, but that board had lots of options around ISA speed. Too fast speeds didn't function even with wait states added. …

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