As this soundcard is quite rare then would like put effort to resurrect it to the life.
Two issues:
1) Missing GAL
2) VCC/GND short.
So firstly I have to find broken IC which causes short. Not capacitors as I already lifted them.
Any ideas which ICs should desoldery firstly ?
Lots of tantalums / maybe one of them first . Also don't see buck converters so i think you can take the minimum voltage ( see the ic's data sheets) an inject that voltage (high current) ..see what gets hot. Saves allot of time with soldering/desoldering/soldering again . If you are not a fan of that you can use a ohmmeter to approximate the location of the short on the pcb , thou in this case i think injecting is the fastest way to go.
holy GAL batman, that is one messy design from a crazy company 😀 I dont envy you. Do you have a plan for cloning missing GAL16V8s?
>Hey Gary, do you think we should optimize this design? maybe tapeout an ASIC?
>>Nah Lary, we might be losing money on every card sold, but we will make it up in volume!
fun facts - MediaVision wasnt making money on products and cooked the books until caught in 1994. The best thing that came out of them was 3dfx (founders hired via acquisition, saw thru house of cards and bailed to fund own company) and Aureal/A3D post bankruptcy.
Wow that is great ! I only know a few who have such a card. I got mine back late 90's and kept it due to it rarity even then....not sure how you can decode the GAL but good luck !!
added: Sorry your picture is not very clear but I do see a missing bolt/nut on the one LM317, it should be bolted down. Also J1 should be changed to third jumper IRQ5, is currently on 7. I cannot see any shorts.
Note: Actually when PAS16 was first introduced it was better than anything from any other card maker at the time for a few short years, is why games from same era have a choice for PAS. Is also why Creative sued them even though Creative lost but that is what put MV into bankruptcy more than making cards at 0 profit....I still hate Creative Corp for that even if I do use their products. Just my observation on the truth and my opinion.....
Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun
Afaik it was a minor copyright lawsuit, and MV settled quickly screwing all the other companies (creative sued almost everybody making sound cards) just as the lawsuit was leaning against Creative (meaning of the word "Compatible"). Settlement involved licensing Creative DSP code. This is not what killed MV. Securities fraud by executives pretending company was making profit did.
rasz_pl wrote on 2023-02-23, 01:50:holy GAL batman, that is one messy design from a crazy company :) I dont envy you. Do you have a plan for cloning missing GAL16V […]
holy GAL batman, that is one messy design from a crazy company 😀 I dont envy you. Do you have a plan for cloning missing GAL16V8s?
>Hey Gary, do you think we should optimize this design? maybe tapeout an ASIC?
>>Nah Lary, we might be losing money on every card sold, but we will make it up in volume!fun facts - MediaVision wasnt making money on products and cooked the books until caught in 1994.
The best thing that came out of them was 3dfx (founders hired via acquisition, saw thru house of cards and bailed to fund own company) and Aureal/A3D post bankruptcy.
Except for the Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum 16, maybe.
It also was sold by Logitech, under another name.
The PAS16 was the arch enemy of the SB16. At least in terms of features and according to how I perceived it back in the 90s. 😁
Okay, originially, the PAS16 rivaled the somewhat poor SB Pro, I do admit, not the SB16.
The PAS16 also had better built quality, a fine microphone pre-amp, 3D Sound effects and a software-driven configuration.
All in all, it was a way cleaner product, I think.
I'm really glad to have been a PAS16 owner back then, I never had the DOS sound issues that are commonly remembered.
The PAS16 simply worked. Old games that required the dead, primitve and obsolete Sound Blaster standard worked, too. 😉
Because the PAS16 had a Thunderboard built-i n. The Thunder Board was a SB 1.5 clone with added DSP commands (44,1Khz sampling rate mode etc).
What's also notable and forgotten these days: The SB16 was good as an OS/2 soundcard. Because Win-OS/2 had audio issues, if OS/2 used sound on its own.
And that's where it gets interesting - the PAS16 has two soundcards built-in. The Thunder board chip is independant working from the PAS16 native hardware.
That's why it can be disabled/enabled on the fly. Also, the SB emulation uses IRQ5, and doesn't conflict with LPT1 on IRQ7.
So if you're on OS/2, which uses IRQs (I think) for LPT1, you theoretically can choose either card as the OS/2 or WIN-OS/2 side if you like.
Also, the Multimedia Presentation Manager component in OS/2 has support for PAS16 and a few other cards.
Meaning that the Trantor SCSI controller likely is supported by the few CD-ROM drivers contained in OS/2 2.1x or Warp 3, as well.
(Alternatively, the setup files must be on another HDD. The OS/2 diskette scans all drives for the setup files, btw.)
That's another reason why I'm a bit sad that emulators only support ATAPI CD-ROMs these days, by the way, and not the classic stuff.
The Mitsumi LU005s/LU002 interface card and the PAS16 SCSI interface were required for these early 90s things.
Edit: About this PAS.. Maybe the GALs do have the same programming? At least in a certain section?
If so, the programming could be dupliacted. The Genius G540 programmer claimed to have a GAL/PAL reading capability (AFAIK).
Not sure if that's helpful, though. Wished I could say something more substantial here.
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