VOGONS


First post, by tobiasrieper

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I found this modem / gameport / sound card PCI device in my local bin shed. I have installed it and it works. Seems to have midi synth as well. Are these cards any good or worth anything? I did have a sound blaster live but it packed up and went kaput 🙁 I have searched the net but can't find any information on these rockwell cards..

The picture is off a same model card on ebay. (I'm too lazy to remove the sound card and take picture)

At the moment I'm using the line out of my ESS to line in of the Riptide so I can use ESS in dos and Riptide in windows environment. I can provide a better image if anyone wants.

Reply 1 of 6, by dougvj

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HP used these in the late 90s I think it has pretty good sound blaster compatibility and the FM synth isn't too bad, at least to my unsophisticated ears.

I wonder if they're undervalued due to the modem integration

Reply 2 of 6, by stanwebber

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photo is awful. can't read a single letter on a chip.

Reply 3 of 6, by dougvj

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Here's a photo of mine from HP Pavilion

PXL_20240107_024609336.jpg

Reply 4 of 6, by dougvj

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So I decided to spend some time with this, this is from an HP Pavilion XL768 Slot A Athlon machine with Windows ME. I did a restore from the factory CDs and the default drivers do not have any synth support 🙁 I tried to install ones that I saw floating around but they wouldn't take, I wonder if the PCI IDs changed. I was able to get SB PCM working but it was not reliable (wasn't sure if it was the game or the drivers).

I tried running the DOS drivers, they found the device and said it setup the SB legacy mode, but no dice. Unlike windows, the game didn't even see the SB and once again no FM synth.

I have an older HP machine that also has this card, I am positive it has FM synth in DOS mode even, I will have to dig it out sometime and see if I can figure out the differences, but that's a project for another day.

I noticed that there is a firmware loader in the dos driver, the ARM marking on the chip makes me think it must be an ARM core on there, which is pretty cool. Maybe I will open it up the firmware file in ghidra sometime just to take a peek.

Last edited by dougvj on 2024-01-08, 14:41. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 5 of 6, by dougvj

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Against my better judgement I got the legacy drivers to work, I am not sure how, I messed around with the INF files and changed some PCI vendor ids to match the newer driver version, but now I have SB compatability and FM synth!

I will record some samples and upload here

Reply 6 of 6, by dougvj

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I recorded a few demos, looks like Adlib sounds best when given the option (IE, in Doom). OPL3 emulation is perhaps not very good

https://youtu.be/PmiPysnCTWg