koolnESS - an ESFM music disk for PC/DOS

Posted on 2024-05-06, 21:25

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by wbc

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Hey there again! I would like to present here a tiny and totally sporadic project i've been working recently - a musicdisk (or, in other words, an executable compilation of tunes) for ESFM - an enhanced FM synthesizer found in ESS AudioDrive/Solo-1 series of audio cards. I've been researching retro …

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Re: Crystal Dream II set list

Posted on 2024-04-14, 13:19

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

here are ripped .mods from the demo: https://files.scene.org/view/demos/compilatio … ystaldream2.zip

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Re: FastDoom. A new Doom port for DOS, optimized to be as fast as possible for 386/486 personal computers!

Posted on 2024-04-11, 18:57

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by wbc

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Definetely there is a bug in the DOS Extender, DPMI function 0800H. It fails if we try to map more than 8Mb. This issue also happens on other games, and it turns out that's why NOLFB program was created ( https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=467 ). There are cards that limit the amount of VESA …

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Re: Tool to adjust the memory clock on Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x graphics cards

Posted on 2024-02-03, 21:58

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

that's looking neat - does the utility work on all Cirrus Logic BIOSes? I recall my GD5420 ISA also being able to tweak the MCLK (albeit since it uses 100ns VRAM, there is no headroom for proper overclock), but the Video BIOS resets the memory clock at each mode set - thus I made a TSR which does …

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TNDYBP - Tandy Sound redirector ISR powered by x86 hardware I/O breakpoints

Posted on 2024-01-29, 17:38

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by wbc

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

hey there again! I've recently experimenting with 386+ hardware debugging features, and especially with Debug Extensions, available on Intel Pentium/AMD K5 and later, which allow (with some limitations) to implement simple I/O port trapping in pure real mode. As an example, I've made a TSR to …

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Re: SB PnP 32 CT 3620 and DOOM 1 sound issue

Posted on 2024-01-05, 23:08

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'm afraid there could be an issue with ISA DMA on this motherboard. Could you please run T8237 utility first without any ISA sound card installed, and then with sound card initialized? Another possible way to test ISA DMA is to check if you can boot from floppy disk, as floppy transfers use DMA. If …

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Re: SB PnP 32 CT 3620 and DOOM 1 sound issue

Posted on 2024-01-05, 12:58

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If SpeedSys screenshot is correct, you have an Matrox Impression VGA card, which is far from being fast in DOS/VGA modes. Try swapping it with other PCI video card such as S3 Trio64 and check if everything is running fine - at least DX2-66 with all caches enabled and VLB\PCI graphics should be fine …

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Re: PicoGUS: ISA sound card emulator with Raspberry Pi Pico (Gravis Ultrasound, AdLib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS)

Posted on 2023-12-30, 22:22

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

oh, by the way, I have built a pair of PicoGUSes a couple of weeks ago and can't stop playing with them, as they could not only work as sound card, but are basically a very capable ISA8 field-programmable devboards! a certain spoiler here - coming soon ;) https://i.imgur.com/379CwrRh.jpg stool not …

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Re: List of UNLOCKED Pentium II CPUs - A Quick Glance

Posted on 2023-12-30, 19:40

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by wbc

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I remember my PII-333 (that one from this thread), with 4ns cache was able to boot at 4 x 100, but had no luck at 4.5 x 100 - crashes early during POST at stock VCore, and hangs at WinXP desktop at 2.4V. My board (Lucky Star 6ABX2V) can't tweak the VIO voltage, I might try that later with better …

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Re: PicoGUS: ISA sound card emulator with Raspberry Pi Pico (Gravis Ultrasound, AdLib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS)

Posted on 2023-12-15, 10:07

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Only the original GUS (GF1) reduced the output sample rate when more channels were enabled. The AMD Interwave (used on the Orpheus) still uses the lowered rate for input but then resamples to the fixed output rate. if I am reading the OrpheusII page correctly, the Interwave chip analog output is …

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Re: AVR Sound Source: A Covox/Dss/Stereo-in-1 auto-switching LPT sound card

Posted on 2023-12-14, 12:24

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

sounds very promising, I once built a similar PWM stereo Covox on a EPM3032 CPLD, and it sounded way better than any R-2R based DACs I've tried, and now this one loks like an ultimate and cheap Covox solution! looking forward for the updates, and would be nice to have a PCB schematic to make …

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Re: PicoGUS: ISA sound card emulator with Raspberry Pi Pico (Gravis Ultrasound, AdLib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS)

Posted on 2023-12-14, 12:11

by

by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'd bet that with a proper wiring and PIO hackery it's more than possible to output S/PDIF through MIDI Out header/jack :) the only issue is GUS emulation drops sample rate wien using more than 14 channels (down to 19 kHz for 32 channels), and I am not sure if SPDIF receivers will handle those rates …

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Re: OPL3LPT : OPL3 FM Synthesis on parallel port

Posted on 2023-12-10, 18:52

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Hey there! I am particulary interested in supporting the OPLxLPT devices in my OPL applications, as they seem to be a decent choice for laptops. Is there any possibility to detect in software if the OPLxLPT device is present on particular LPT port? For example, Stereo-on-1 devices (dual stereo Covox …

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Re: dISAppointment - LPC to ISA adapter - ISA on modern motherboards

Posted on 2023-11-20, 14:08

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by wbc

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

On the other hand, people have reported success with SBEMU on AMD chipsets (including AM4 ones), although it works in a way different from legacy PCI sound cards. I think I'll take a look at its code to see if there is any workaround involved for AMD chipsets. SBEMU uses 386+ I/O port trapping …

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Re: PicoGUS: ISA sound card emulator with Raspberry Pi Pico (Gravis Ultrasound, AdLib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS)

Posted on 2023-11-19, 22:38

by

by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Adding USB mouse support is on my list but I don't think I'll be going the route of emulating a serial mouse, which always seemed slow and unresponsive to me. theoretically, it's possible to emulate the 8250 UART in a way it ignores baud rate settings stored in DLAB, and just firing "receive ready" …

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Re: RdosPlay 0.21b (final) WITH sample modules included

Posted on 2023-11-12, 12:47

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

dj_pirtu wrote on 2023-10-19, 06:30: Won't start on Toshiba T3200SX, gives black screen. Is the display mode something else than 640x480 with 16 colors? it seems to run in 360x480 Mode-X, which may not been supported on laptop integrated graphics.

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Re: SBEMU: Sound Blaster emulation on AC97

Posted on 2023-11-10, 12:02

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

anyone know if the SBEMU-X fork is the most recent and updated version of SBEMU? original version seems to have no updates since April, and I would like to help with testing and improving it (including code contributions, of course :). In particular, if time constant set by DSP command 0x40 matches …

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Re: Windows 3.11 and a Nvidia FX3500 card - how to get 32k, 64k, or 16M color support?

Posted on 2023-11-06, 10:13

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Theres no proper drivers for anything newer then a tnt2 by nvidia for win 3.x, it would be a massive downgrade though to goto a s3 virge or similar, Guess it depends what you plan on using the pc for, ...unfortunately, these TNT/TNT2 drivers are very unstable, with font corruption bugs and DCI not …

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Re: Using Hercules Driver and Software on an S3 Virge DX with VESA 2.0 and solved the brightness bug black becomes gray

Posted on 2023-10-14, 15:00

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Is there perhaps another way to get the Herclues drivers and software working under DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 with a bios of s3 Self I suppose Hercules utilities either check for PCI Subsystem ID or Video BIOS content, and refuse to install if these do not match. As these BIOSes predate VBE 3.0, I …

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Re: Snow on ISA vga card

Posted on 2023-09-25, 19:37

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by wbc

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

S3 cards (up to ViRGE/DX, Trio3D/Savage seem to fix that) do have palette corruption at PCI bus speeds above 44-45 MHz; this is especially apparent in Mode 0x13, since S3 cards actually use pixel clock halved (25.12/2 = 12.6 MHz) in this mode, and the RAMDAC seems to not being able to properly …

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