First post, by digger
- Rank
- Oldbie
With all these cool and neat retro sound hardware recreation projects going on and being mentioned here lately (OPL2LPT, Resound OPL3, TNDLPT and even an Ultrasound clone), I'm frankly surprised that I'm not seeing anyone proposing to recreate a Sound Blaster clone. There is even a debate going on about which sound card has the best OPL3 implementation and more and more people are lamenting the increasing scarcity of Sound Blaster cards and high quality clones. The demand for a card like this seems very obvious to me.
So why not do some brainstorming about how to create the "perfect" Sound Blaster clone? What I have in mind is an 8-bit sound card, with maximum hardware compatibility timing-wise, being compatible with any system with ISA slots, from the original IBM PC 5150 all the way down to the last modern motherboard that still has full ISA support (including DMA).
What I would like to see in such a card:
* Sound Blaster Pro compatible DAC
* OPL3 Synthesizer
* No DMA clicking bug
* MIDI controller with full MPU-401 compatibility, including intelligent mode
* Tandy 3 voice synthesizer
* Waveblaster-compatible internal daughterbord connector
* Joystick/MIDI port
* Dual RCA stereo output connectors, like in WSS cards (instead of a flimsy 9.5mm minijack output)
* Emphasis on output, perhaps no recording (ADC) features at all, at least not in the first iteration
* No built-in amplifier or volume knob
* Software mixer for the various inputs
* No IDE or CD-ROM controller, to keep the card as simple as possible and reduce the risk of hardware conflicts
* High-quality components, durable capacitors, etc
* Internal input for CD-ROM audio and
* Internal input for redirecting the internal speaker output
* Low-noise design, perhaps even a metal shield (which would also make it look pretty sleek)
* An as small as possible form factor (as in: an as short as possible card length)
Optionally, it would be nice to have a secondary OPL2 or OPL3 synthesizer on-board (in addition to the main OPL3 chip), so the card could switch between original Sound Blaster Pro (CT1330) compatibility and Sound Blaster Pro 2 (CT1600) compatibility.
As another nice-to-have, perhaps support could be added for 4-channel OPL3, in a way that would be hardware-compatible with the Resound OPL3 card. But given that the goal of this envisioned card is optimal support in existing MS-DOS games, Resound compatibility would not have the highest priority.
To keep the card as simple and "plug-and-play" as possible, it could be made to be opinionated about its hardware configuration. Simply hard-wire it to base I/O port 220 and DMA 1. The whole point of such a card after all is maximum compatibility, so why allow it to be configured in a way that would prevent it from working with many older games? At most, make the IRQ switchable between 7 and 5 and make the Tandy synthesizer switchable between I/O port C0 and 1E0, to allow that part of the card to work in 286+ systems as well.
So why isn't anybody talking about an open source design for the ultimate Sound Blaster clone? SBPro, MPU401 and Tandy 3 voice support, all on a single 8-bit sound card. Wouldn't that be sweet? 😎
I'm not a hardware expert, but this seems doable. Perhaps a first design could also be a little less ambitious: first start with just a Sound Blaster Pro 2 (CT1600) compatible design without the recording (ADC) and IDE/CD-ROM capabilities, then add a Tandy 3 voice synthesizer, a fully-fledged MPU-401 clone and CT1330 compatibility in later iterations, etc.
Okay, enough dreaming. Time for everyone else to punch holes in this crazy idea. Please go easy on me. 😊