one man's crap is another man's treasure.... 🤣 🤣 🤣

^Pretty much!!

Ok, someone has to tell me what is the big deal about the Adlib Gold? I only ever had a Soundblaster Pro and an AWE 32 so I have no experience with the Adlib cards.

And as to why this stuff is rare, whoever said gold recovery probably nailed it. Gold went for something like $800 an oz back in 2008 and pretty much doubled within a short space of time. Plus, all this stuff is being processed for non precious metals, too.

I had an old IBM XT that someone gave me that I wish I had hung onto (this was wayyyyy after even the 486 and gen 1 Pentium was obsolete) it sat in the garage for a couple years and since I didn't really have a use for it and no room to store it at the time, I had to get rid of it.

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Didn't you have opportunity to get a better soundcard by tossing a AdLib with reduced price at that time?
I could find some by searching old newspaper archives, and I think AdLib was already gone before Windows 95 out.
So Adlib is rare because It would only available who was not tempt any compensate sale.

If we forget AdLib's amp dial, technically even a PCI sound card(YMF7x4, Cmi or FM801) can be a AdLib.
If I should buy a AdLib over hundred dollars, better buying a arcade PCB which have a YM3812. (Rygar, Snow bros or Seibu cup soccer.)

snorg wrote:

Ok, someone has to tell me what is the big deal about the Adlib Gold?

Sound Card which used a Yamaha YMF262 (OPL3) for FM synthesis, a Yamaha YMZ263B (MMA) for PCM and even an optional Yamaha YM7128 on an external surround module you could attach to the card. Card manufactured by Yamaha. Sounded pretty awesome (for a FM card) when a game supported it, and it's PCM was superior to the Sound Blaster or Sound Blaster Pro. Not to mention that it should be less noisy as well.

http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php?topic=2885.0

ik777 wrote:

Didn't you have opportunity to get a better soundcard by tossing a AdLib with reduced price at that time?

Nope, i never owned an AdLib.

ik777 wrote:

If we forget AdLib's amp dial, technically even a PCI sound card(YMF7x4, Cmi or FM801) can be a AdLib.

True, but the point is that it's not an AdLib by AdLib.

ik777 wrote:

If I should buy a AdLib over hundred dollars, better buying a arcade PCB which have a YM3812. (Rygar, Snow bros or Seibu cup soccer.)

Umm, no. My interest is AdLib on IBM PC and compatibles, so i don't care about arcade PCB's regardless of whatever chips they have on them.

The Adlib Gold does have a certain appeal, its rare and there are very few substitutes around for the "total package". A YMF-262 card is not necessarily a substitute for an Adlib Gold. Despite its name, there is probably as much Gold content on the card as any other high-end consumer sound card. Contrary to the hopes of its marketing, it brought not "Gold" but bankruptcy to its creators. However, other than one, maybe two games, I do not know of any truly compelling reason to seek one out.

The Adlib is on the other end of the scale, a generic card defined solely by the freely-available sound chip found on it.

The original Adlib was still being sold AFTER the Adlib Gold had disappeared from advertisements of the era, so the Gold must have really tanked.

Thing is, if you put a Sound Blaster with the YMF3812 chip in a system, it might as well be an Adlib playing the music and sound effects. And you also have the advantage of having digital voice capability of the SB card.

And once it is inside, it won't be seen. Unless one wants to build a system without the case just to see the card and the motherboard and any other vintage component in action.

Seeing Adlib survived out of the Yamaha chip, any card that uses it can act as one.

Unlike other singular and specialized components, like, say, Voodoo 5500, and LAPC-I, the presence of other soundcards with the same chip have negated the need to own a real Adlib.

EDIT : And with current outrageous price for something that is very common (the YMF3812 OPL2 tech) and can be obtained with better cards using the same chips it has become pointless to get one for using it in a classic system. Unless of course, if one wants to display it in a showcase.

Do I sound like the fox already? 🤣

For me the Adlib holds sentimental value hence why I value it so much. First sound card I ever owned after drooling over it in Sierra catalogues, and still want to upper cut myself today when I threw out a boxed Adlib over 10 years ago because I didn't have a use for it *sigh*.

Just a question. Why don't you get some blank pcb cards, silk screen the adlib logo on it and get the skematics for the chip arrays and build your own, then buy a box (empty and make yor own adlib card.

dosquest wrote:

Just a question. Why don't you get some blank pcb cards, silk screen the adlib logo on it and get the skematics for the chip arrays and build your own, then buy a box (empty and make yor own adlib card.

Because i wouldn't trade a real girl for a blow up doll. 🤣

I also had a real Adlib card, but as I never had any use for it back then I sold it quite cheaply to a classmate, and now I wish I didn't.

I understand the feeling of having an original card, but I am also tempted to get a cloned card because it uses the same parts, so essentially it would sound the same as original card when it was new. As I already have two different OPL2 cards already, I am too lazy to get an Adlib clone to just get the identical analog audio path. I bet the OPL2 SoundBlaster cards I have do not have as good DAC reconstruction filter, if any at all, so I can't be sure if it would sound better or different, but I acquired the OPL2 cards for digital capturing anyway.

I am also tempted to make or hack an "improved" clone, with better or switchable op-amps, better separation of analog and digital portions of the card to battle noise, and perhaps additional high quality line output without the speaker amplifier in the path. It would also be simple to add an audio ADC and SPDIF transmitter for digital output with standard sampling rates, as direct digital output would require some CPLD/FPGA stuff to receive "floating point" audio and convert the sampling rate. Anyway, it might not be an "improvement" to other people.

As many older PCs today still don't have an ISA slot to put the card into, by poking around with game music drivers (or by making some IO port-trapping protected mode thingy), it could be possible to put the Adlib clone into IDE slot. Or just recreate the Adlib as PCI card that would sit in the standard Adlib address. I know people have put Adlibs to parallel printer ports and hacked some music players to support it.

^ there is the ISAOPL2 card in case you want to build your own...
http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/isa-opl2-card

I have the pcb and half the parts , sadly I can't order from mouser (need 11e parts, will get charged 35e with mandatory shipping....) to get the rest *correct* parts so I just wait for an opportunity to arise... :\

keropi wrote:

^ there is the ISAOPL2 card in case you want to build your own...
http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/isa-opl2-card

I have the pcb and half the parts , sadly I can't order from mouser (need 11e parts, will get charged 35e with mandatory shipping....) to get the rest *correct* parts so I just wait for an opportunity to arise... :\

That's a nice project and the card looks cool.

I read somewhere that original AdLib cards have problems with faster machines from 386 up. Is this true or only applies to the 1987 version maybe, or only some games?

The problem is a feature of the OPL2 chip itself, it requires long enough delays between IO port accesses (register index writes and register data writes). So on a faster PC the delays are also faster, and if too fast, the delays are not long enough.

So it is not card version specific, and it of course depends on how the software (game) does the delay. (OPL3 chip needs shorter delays so therefore many old games on newer faster PCs work fine on OPL3-based cards).

The problem can also be almost always solved by increasing ISA bus wait state value in BIOS to a high enough number that works.

carlostex wrote:

Is this true or only applies to the 1987 version maybe, or only some games?

From what I understand, the only different b/w the '87 and '90 model is the size of the speaker jack (the '87 has the big one).

Jepael wrote:

The problem is a feature of the OPL2 chip itself, it requires long enough delays between IO port accesses (register index writes and register data writes). So on a faster PC the delays are also faster, and if too fast, the delays are not long enough.

So it is not card version specific, and it of course depends on how the software (game) does the delay. (OPL3 chip needs shorter delays so therefore many old games on newer faster PCs work fine on OPL3-based cards).

The problem can also be almost always solved by increasing ISA bus wait state value in BIOS to a high enough number that works.

The problem should be the same for other OPL cards as well then.

keropi wrote:

carlostex wrote:

[...] Imagine an AdLib Gold...

now that's a card I've personally never saw on eBay 🤣

In September'2013 a NOS boxed one (box quite battered but contents really new) was sold on ebay for $170 BIN. Whoever got it is a lucky bastard! I do not know though if surround DB was included, probably it wasn't.