Hi FesterBlatz (SQ3 YEA!), I did a little digging around for you and found this useful guide for your card/problem. http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulato … s.general/16030

I don't have any particular experience with this card, but I also had a similar problem with a SB16 Pnp (partly PnP as still required Jumpers to be changed), from what I've read the Opus has a couple of Address Jumpers on the board too. The guide by John Hupp describes the process of using SSINIT to test the hardware addresses and the states of the jumpers.

Hope this at least sets you off in the right direction. Good luck Dieter!

Will.

Thanks Will!!

Unfortunately the problem turned out to be a damaged card. I noticed whenever I had it installed my system would become really unstable, and after looking the card over a little better I discovered at least a dozen pins on the OPUS chip were actually popped free from their pads and the whole chip shifted over a fraction of a mm. There were also a few loose pins on the DRAM chips next toe the OPUS. I think the PCB had been twisted pretty severely at one point to cause all those pins to come loose. I carefully re-flowed the OPUS, DRAM, Patch ROM, and 68000 MCU which got the card to initialize and work somewhat, but the wave-table output sounded really garbled especially when emulating MT-32. Space Quest 3 and Heros Quest (QFG1) used to sound awesome on my old Soundscape...not at all like this thing did. So I pushed my luck a little harder and tried re-flowing the OPUS pins once more but now the card fails to initialize again....so I think it's done for.

I may mount the patch ROM on a SO 8/16Mbit ROM breakout board for my device programmer and dump the patch ROM for archival purposes. I wish I could find a dump of a 2MB ROM to try and upgrade one of the 1MB boards to 2MB with a cheap 29F016 FLASH ROM, but I doubt it would be that simple...

Anyway, so the quest for a Soundscape continues...

The Soundscape cannot emulate an MT-32 effectively.

Firstly, games like Space Quest 3 sends sysex commands to the MT-32 to load custom patches (which the Soundscape will just ignore).
Secondly, games like Space Quest 3 requires an intelligent mode MPU-401 MIDI interface. The Soundscape only had the UART mode MPU-401 interface. However, you can use SoftMPU to overcome this problem to a large extent. I also recall some Ensoniq cards being able to "trick" the system into thinking that it had an intelligent mode MPU-401 MIDI interface, but I'll have to look it up again.

The games you mentioned had no direct support for the Ensoniq Soundscape. All the card is doing is to emulate a Sound Blaster 2.0 and/or Adlib sound card (if memory serves).

There's a combo sound card/modem called the NEC Harmony. I've never owned one, but they're quite cheap on eBay. I spotted an Ensoniq Opus chip on the board along with a 1MB patchset ROM. Not sure about which drivers to use.

I think I've mentioned this elsewhere, but PnP cards that are compatible with older non-PnP systems and OSes can usually be configured using a special setup utility that sets the IRQ etc. and stores these settings directly on the card. Such an utility is usually provided on a floppy with the card. Then, you use the DOS/Windows drivers as usual, eventually specifying the IRQ etc. if the drivers need that.

Hello everyone,
I'm not sure if this also works for SQ3, but there's a patch for MT-32/SB-MIDI.
This way, you don't require any MPU-401 interface for certain Sierra titles.

http://sierrahelp.com/Utilities/SoundUtilities.html

The Soundscape boards equipped with an embedded 68000 family MPU on them will emulate an intelligent mode MPU-401 by responding to SYSEX commends with an ACK. Ensoniq designed the Soundscape with MT-32 emulation in mind and provided dedicated samples in the patch ROM for the MT-32 mode which can be enabled in the on-board MCU from a DOS executable (MT32.exe ON/OFF). I have personally played a number of Sierra titles using this MT-32 emulation on a Soundscape S-2000 and they didn't sound half bad. Certainly not true to real MT-32 form, especially considering it lacked the uploaded sound effects, but still perfectly enjoyable.

Once I repaired my damaged Soundscape PnP/"OPUS" referred to in my initial post to a somewhat working state, like the S-2000 I used to own it too responds to SYSEX commands and satisfies the Sierra MT-32 driver. Unfortunately, MT-32 titles don't sound nearly as pleasant as my old S-2000 did back in the 90s. The question is, is this because of the damaged/missing solder pad on the OPUS chip, or because the OPUS is a cost-reduced card with a smaller patch ROM and handicapped MT-32 emulation capabilities? Since General MIDI on it works perfectly, I fear it may be the latter.

I will soon find out since I now have a second OPUS on the way. I also purchased one of the NEC Harmony OPUS/Modem combos boxdepressed referred to, the eBay seller accepted an $8 offer so it was very inexpensive. I found a zip file provided by NEC for the board, and it appears to use the same initialization utilities as the purebred Soundcapes so it will be interesting to see how it works.

Hopefully someday I'll find someone willing to sell an S-2000, I dearly miss mine.

Cheers!

jesolo wrote:

The Soundscape cannot emulate an MT-32 effectively. […]
Show full quote

The Soundscape cannot emulate an MT-32 effectively.

Firstly, games like Space Quest 3 sends sysex commands to the MT-32 to load custom patches (which the Soundscape will just ignore).
Secondly, games like Space Quest 3 requires an intelligent mode MPU-401 MIDI interface. The Soundscape only had the UART mode MPU-401 interface. However, you can use SoftMPU to overcome this problem to a large extent. I also recall some Ensoniq cards being able to "trick" the system into thinking that it had an intelligent mode MPU-401 MIDI interface, but I'll have to look it up again.

The games you mentioned had no direct support for the Ensoniq Soundscape. All the card is doing is to emulate a Sound Blaster 2.0 and/or Adlib sound card (if memory serves).

Glad to hear you had some success with fixing your OPUS Dieter!
I think your hypothesis about the Opus being a cost reduced relative is more than likely to be true. As with many other manufactures at the time it was certainly a trend to make and sell a cut-down card on the back of a previously well received one. Be sure to post your findings when your NEC Harmony OPUS arrives, I have to say I find this all very intriguing.

Cheers W.

Well, I have an update for this topic. A few things have happened since my last post...

Firstly, I received my second OPUS board and wouldn't you know it, it had the same problem as the first with one of the "corners" of the OPUS chip coming loose from the PCB! Fortunately, unlike the first OPUS none of the pins were bent, only lifted from their pads. Either Ensoniq was having PCB assembly quality issues or I experienced one heck of a coincidence! In any event, after a quick dab of reflow flux and a few minutes with a fine-tip soldering iron the OPUS is as good as new again.

Just as I feared it behaves with early Sierra MT-32 titles exactly the same as the first OPUS that came with the damaged pin, so the damage was inconsequential.

Since then I managed to purchase a pair of Soundscapes from an AmiBay member in the Netherlands. One of them is the Soundscape-II (S2016-II-A) which is basically a Soundscape Elite without the ESP board and a "1M2" patch ROM. The other is an SPEA V7 media fx which is a clone of the original S-2000 with the full 2M patch ROM. I just tested both of these boards with the early Sierra titles and they both sound pretty similar to my OPUS...not good.

So I must have completely imagined Hero's Quest and Space Quest 3 sounding half decent on my old Gateway OEM Soundscape S-2000. The only other explanation I can think of is perhaps older versions of the on-board M68000 codefile loaded by SSINIT.EXE processor may have handled MT-32 emulation more eloquently but was later scarified for better Soundblaster 2.0 emulation instead...or something along those lines.

Anyway, I will try to track down older versions of the S-2000 DOS utils/codefiles to see if it makes a difference but at this point I think I'm going to stick with using MUNT on my RPI3 to emulate an MT-32 when playing classic Sierra titles...

FesterBlatz wrote:

Thanks Will!! […]
Show full quote

Thanks Will!!

Unfortunately the problem turned out to be a damaged card. I noticed whenever I had it installed my system would become really unstable, and after looking the card over a little better I discovered at least a dozen pins on the OPUS chip were actually popped free from their pads and the whole chip shifted over a fraction of a mm. There were also a few loose pins on the DRAM chips next toe the OPUS. I think the PCB had been twisted pretty severely at one point to cause all those pins to come loose. I carefully re-flowed the OPUS, DRAM, Patch ROM, and 68000 MCU which got the card to initialize and work somewhat, but the wave-table output sounded really garbled especially when emulating MT-32. Space Quest 3 and Heros Quest (QFG1) used to sound awesome on my old Soundscape...not at all like this thing did. So I pushed my luck a little harder and tried re-flowing the OPUS pins once more but now the card fails to initialize again....so I think it's done for.

I may mount the patch ROM on a SO 8/16Mbit ROM breakout board for my device programmer and dump the patch ROM for archival purposes. I wish I could find a dump of a 2MB ROM to try and upgrade one of the 1MB boards to 2MB with a cheap 29F016 FLASH ROM, but I doubt it would be that simple...

Anyway, so the quest for a Soundscape continues...

Hi do you still work on that topic? I extracted the Ensoniq 2MB ROM.
Currently I am also thinking about extracting all available ROMs. (2M, 1M, 1M2, I doubt that I will extract the Elite ROM, afraid of breaking it)
If you are interested, I can send you the ROM.
Unfortunately my TL866 programmer does not programm the 29F016, but it can read it with an adaptor. But I will us a 27C016 instead. This one sould work. I will check that when I receive a Soundscape with "socket" ROM Chip next week.
Is it possible for you to dump and provide the 1M (8MBit Chip?)