From Tauritz's FAQ on ARIA:

Appendix D: How to contact Aria soundcard manufacturers […]
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Appendix D: How to contact Aria soundcard manufacturers

Diamond Computer Systems, Inc.
1130 East Arques Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94086, U.S.A.
Phone: +1-408-325-7000
Fax : +1-408-730-5750
WWW : http://www.diamondmm.com/

They are still on-line, maybe they could have something?

There is an Aria 16 driver for OpenBSD, I think it should be open source:
http://nixdoc.net/man-pages/OpenBSD/man4/aria.4.html

Besides Tauritz's FAQ I also found this (some links at the end):

When Diamond was bought out years ago they dropped all support for the legacy stuff and pointed you towards some other places that MIGHT still have stuff for them.

They never had anything to do with the SSDK or LSDK anyway. Those were only originally available directly from Sierra Semiconductor Inc.

The only place the SSDK was available for download for free was from the place I listed in my first post.

I have attached a zip will every single FAQ and Support List for the ARIA cards. The only one that isn't complete is v1.00.

On another note, I am still looking for the v1.97 driver set. I saw reference to it in an old old forum post, but there is no link to download it and the forum post on the internet archive lists it out as just a bunch of text.

Anybody know how to rebuild a .zip from text? I already tried just taking the text and removing all CRLF and then renaming it to .zip but that didn't work. Guessing there is something missing.

EDIT: Was able to get the .zip file from the message using UUDWIN. Apparently, you can post files by uuencoding them. Then you have to just copy the text out and use a decoder to decode them.
http://www.marks-lab.com/

The file version file shows it as version 1.87 though so maybe it was a typo on the old message board message.

I have seen a version as high as 1.91 from other downloads I have.

cyclone3d wrote:

I am in search of the SSDK and LSDK for the Sierra Semiconductors ARIA 16 based cards. […]
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I am in search of the SSDK and LSDK for the Sierra Semiconductors ARIA 16 based cards.

So far I have been unable to find them anywhere. The SSDK and accompanying documentation was only ever released for free on a single ftp and the files are not on the internet archive.
Daniel R. Tauritz
The Aria Internet Department: ftp.wi.leidenuniv.nl/pub/audio/aria

I was able to get into the apparently renamed ftp by logging in through a web browser, but alas, the audio directory no longer exists.
https://helpdesk.strw.leidenuniv.nl/wiki/doku … d=anonymous_ftp

I also think I found current contact information for Dr. Daniel R. Tauritz, but have not received a response.

Those URLs belong to the Dutch University of Leiden, and it's unlikely they were official repositories for a sound card manufacturer... 😀 However, it is quite possible that the SDK was actually someone's university project.

To clarify: If Daniel Tauritz had a webpage on the Leiden University site, he must have worked for them. Students could not get webspace there.

cyclone3d wrote:

On another note, I am still looking for the v1.97 driver set. I saw reference to it in an old old forum post, but there is no link to download it and the forum post on the internet archive lists it out as just a bunch of text.

Don't know which driver you are talking about, but I meant open source driver for Aria 16, where you can get info about Aria's registers and programming examples as a weak alternative to official programmer's reference (see attachment). It's author is Roland C. Dowdeswell <roland@imrryr.org> (very old source), maybe he has what you need.

Of course it wasn't an "official repository"... but it was the place where the SSDK was hosted after Sierra Semiconductors stopped selling the SSDK and LSDK.

The SDK was not a university project.
Daniel Tauritz just had a personal page there.
https://web.archive.org/web/19961221195844/ht … tz/myindex.html

The specific archived ARIA page is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/19970606170816/ht … niv.nl:80/aria/

From what I can gather according to a few different mailing list posts was that after Sierra Semiconductors ran out of stock of physical media for the SSDK that they were selling, Daniel was able to get them to allow him to host it on his site for free.

https://web.archive.org/web/19970617131525/ht … a/msg00310.html

> I'm kind of irritated that I had to spend $50 for the SSDK when all that > I really wanted to do was to look at the manual. If […]
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> I'm kind of irritated that I had to spend $50 for the SSDK when all that
> I really wanted to do was to look at the manual. If you could have kept a
> copy online in PostScript form, I could have downloaded a copy and looked
> at using Ghostscript (which you can get for free). If Sierra isn't going
> to make the SSDK available, can't they allow an electronic version to be
> available online?

That is one of the possibilities we are discussing, cross your fingers 😀

> Unfortunately, I don't have a scanner. Might someone be able to scan the
> manual and upload the information for everyone else?

That is prohibited by Sierra's license and might anger Sierra sufficiently
to stop supporting this users group, which would be a great loss. I ask you
all to exercise some patience while I'm negotiating.

Daniel

https://web.archive.org/web/19970617131005/ht … a/msg00312.html

Hi, […]
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Hi,

I just received a very pleasant letter from Sierra Semiconductor granting me
the exclusive non-transferable right to distribute the Aria SSDK via the
Internet. The conditions are as follows:

1. The Aria SSDK will ONLY be available from sites maintained by D.R. Tauritz
2. A large disclaimer will be added making sure Sierra Semiconductor is not
to blame when your computer blows up because of you using the Aria SSDK
3. Sierra is not providing technical support for the Aria SSDK

This amounts to the following:
1. Please don't upload the Aria SSDK to any other Internet site
2. Don't blame Sierra or myself when you blow your computer up 😉
3. Refrain from contacting Sierra; if anyone wants some piece of info
from Sierra then please ask me, not directly Sierra

I'll ready the source code included in the Aria SSDK for uploading and will
upload it this coming Tuesday at the latest. Sierra has promised to send me
the Aria SSDK manual in machine readable format next week or the week after
at the latest. As soon as I receive it I'll upload it of course.

Trusting you'll all keep to the conditions Sierra has stated I am sure the
coming weeks will see much progress for our cause.

Yours Sincerely,

Daniel

https://web.archive.org/web/19970617130149/ht … a/msg00315.html

Hi, […]
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Hi,

I'm happy to announce the first release of the Aria SSDK including all the
software found on v2.5 of the Aria SSDK disk distribution. Please read the
accompanying text file carefully before downloading the Aria SSDK. You can
find the files SSDK0_01.ZIP and SSDK0_01.TXT in the programming subdirectory
of the Aria FTP Department. Enjoy!

Daniel

https://web.archive.org/web/19970617124520/ht … a/msg00321.html

Hi, […]
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Hi,

I just uploaded the Aria SSDK Manual (I believe it is in Word format). The
file can be found in the usual place and is called 'ssdk_man.zip'. Don't forget
to read the file 'ssdk_man.txt' prior to downloading the manual. I'll clean
up the programming directory this coming week and put the Aria SSDK in its
own subdirectory. I can convert the manual to some other popular formats
such as WordPerfect, PostScript and perhaps FrameMaker, let me know what would
be convenient. As soon as I get this done I'll also release the next edition
of the Aria FAQ. Enjoy!

Daniel

The big bummer is, is that none of the files that were hosted there are available as they apparently were not archived.

I haven't actually looked at any of the open source drivers that are available. I wasn't necessarily wanting to try writing an updated driver for it. I am more interested in just having the SSDK and SSDK documentation for possible development of other stuff for use with the ARIA16 DSP.

Here is some interesting info:
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/13004

The disk in question contains:
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream … _FLS_HMOUNT.txt

Aria_AIL_6-30-93 d/d 3: ARIA-AIL 1993.06.29 16:21:46 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 512 0 0 + d/d 229 […]
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Aria_AIL_6-30-93
d/d 3: ARIA-AIL 1993.06.29 16:21:46 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 512 0 0
+ d/d 229: DIG 1993.06.29 16:21:48 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 512 0 0
++ r/r 245: ARIADIG.ASM 1993.06.09 01:03:06 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 106460 0 0
+ d/d 230: MIDITSR 1993.06.29 16:21:48 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 512 0 0
++ d/d 261: TSR 1993.06.29 16:21:50 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 512 0 0
+++ r/r 277: MTSR.ASM 1993.06.09 01:40:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 4390 0 0
+++ r/r 278: COMPTSR.BAT 1993.06.09 01:40:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 132 0 0
+++ r/r 279: MIDITSR.C 1993.06.09 01:40:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 71860 0 0
+++ r/r 280: MIDITSR.EXE 1993.06.09 01:40:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 25337 0 0
+++ r/r 281: MIDITSR.H 1993.06.09 01:40:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 25722 0 0
+++ r/r 282: PITCHES.H 1993.06.09 01:40:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 20769 0 0
++ d/d 262: ADV 1993.06.29 16:21:50 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 512 0 0
+++ r/r 293: ARIA.INC 1993.03.10 16:30:30 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 21864 0 0
+++ r/r 294: ARIATSR.INC 1993.03.03 17:06:46 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 2600 0 0
+++ r/r 295: ARIATSR.ADV 1993.03.10 16:30:34 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 8792 0 0
++ r/r 263: README.TXT 1993.06.09 01:55:12 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 1741 0 0
+ d/d 231: XMID 1993.06.29 16:22:16 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 512 0 0
++ r/r 9397: README.TXT 1993.06.09 01:03:32 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 1839 0 0
++ r/r 9398: ARIA.INC 1993.06.09 01:03:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 23967 0 0
++ r/r 9399: PITCH.INC 1993.06.09 01:03:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 7830 0 0
++ r/r 9400: AXMIDI.INC 1993.06.09 01:03:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 126785 0 0
+ r/r 232: ARIADIG.ADV 1993.06.09 01:03:02 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 5931 0 0
+ r/r 233: ARIAXMID.ADV 1993.06.09 01:03:02 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 45563 0 0
+ r/r 234: MIDITSR.EXE 1993.06.09 01:40:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 25337 0 0
+ r/r 235: ARIATEST.EXE 1993.06.02 14:11:36 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 64997 0 0
+ r/r 236: GM1.BNK 1993.06.09 01:03:02 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 23907 0 0
+ r/r 237: GM2.BNK 1993.06.09 01:03:02 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 24273 0 0
+ r/r 238: MT2.BNK 1993.06.09 01:03:02 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 23679 0 0
+ r/r 239: MT1.BNK 1993.06.09 01:03:02 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 23451 0 0
+ r/r 240: README.TXT 1993.06.09 01:03:04 (EST) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 0000.00.00 00:00:00 (UTC) 1759 0 0

Anybody near the University of Texas at Austin want to go check it out? 🤣

cyclone3d wrote:

The SDK was not a university project.
Daniel Tauritz just had a personal page there.
https://web.archive.org/web/19961221195844/ht … tz/myindex.html

Leiden University only gives web pages to employees (including PhD's, but not normal students) that have the need for one, in this case a scientist. It is not a open web host.

What such people usually do is host their personal (actually, professional) website at their employer of the time, moving the site to their new employer's hosting when they change to another job. So you could try tracking where Daniel Tauritz had sites, which should be a fairly easy thing to do because he also hosted his scientific projects on his website, implying that if you can access his publications the URLs of his personal sites will be given therein (try Google Scholar to find the publications). Maybe one of the other hosts of his website is still up and still contains the software downloads.

It's quite possible that the reason you don't find them with regular Google Search is that a host has blocked indexing by web crawlers, because some university FTPs are not suitable for the high traffic that being indexed by Google would generate and are mainly meant for internal use.

He was a student at Leiden during the time when his ARIA16 and other various pages were there.

His current site is:
http://web.mst.edu/~tauritzd/index.html

None of his old stuff is there.

I have already emailed him but have not heard anything back yet.

I thought I had maybe hit the jackpot when I came across an archive of the first place his stuff was hosted, but it would have been before the SSDK was hosted.. and the internet archive doesn't go back quite far enough and so his folder was not there.

To all ARIA soundcard owners, I just uploaded the first public release of SBInit (v0.2) to ftp.wustl.edu in the (well known) di […]
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To all ARIA soundcard owners,
I just uploaded the first public release of SBInit (v0.2) to ftp.wustl.edu
in the (well known) directory /pub/MSDOS_UPLOADS/aria under the name of
'SBINIT02.ZIP'. Thanks to Sierra Semiconductor Corp. for their generous
support of the maintainer of the ARIA Support List & the ARIA FAQ.

Using SBInit v0.2 enables you to reset your ARIA soundcard to
SoundBlaster Emulation Mode without resetting your computer. This can be
useful if you want to use a program in SB mode after using a program in ARIA
mode which didn't reset the soundcard to SB mode as it should have. A widely
used program which doesn't reset the soundcard to SB mode is Otto Chrons'
'Dual Mod Pla6yer v2.89'. Bug reports, remarks, comments, etc. can be
E-mailed to 'tau...@stpc.wi.leidenuniv.nl'.

Daniel

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Daniel R. Tauritz (tau...@stpc.wi.leidenuniv.nl) |Home Address: |
| Maintainer of the ARIA Support List & the ARIA FAQ|D.R. Tauritz |
| Department of Mathematics & Computer Science |Teylingerhorstlaan 13-b|
| University of Leiden |2244 EJ Wassenaar |
| The Netherlands |The Netherlands |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://web.archive.org/web/19961220142529/ht … /MSDOS_UPLOADS/

Yeah, it's probably key to track down and communicate with Daniel R.Tauritz.

Still, it might be worth contacting some of the other names mentioned in the FAQ.

Just curious if you were ever able to find what you were looking for cyclone3d.

There are some aria related files on this ftp that another poster discovered a month or so ago:

ftp://ftp.dyu.edu.tw/pub/Hardware/vendor/Diam … ltimedia/sonic/

File:00_index.txt
2 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:ariatest.exe
20 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:ariawn.exe
53 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:fdfdisk.zip
275 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:fparia.exe
53 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:mixmastr.exe
24 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:sb.zip
18 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:scsi240.zip
294 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:ssnd21.exe
731 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:ssnd22.exe
886 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:ssnd_1.exe
464 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:t7garia.exe
327 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM
File:termdemo.zip
2358 KB 9/11/1999 12:00:00 AM

index file:

1ARIATEST.EXE    19985  02-12-93  Aria Test for Sonic Sound (DSP)
2
3ARIAWN.EXE      53697  04-15-94  Aria Windows Drivers v1.95
4
5FDFDISK.ZIP    281508  09-25-93  RomLess DDSCI v1.00 Driver
6
7FPARIA.EXE      53963  09-27-93  Freddy Parka's Audio Driver
8
9INDEX.TXT         142  06-02-94  File Library #5 contenets - Sonic Sound (DSP)
10
11                               | related files
12
13MIXMASTR.EXE    24576  04-20-93  MixMaster update (4/20/94)
14
15SB.ZIP          18089  12-14-93  New Sound Blaster emulation code
16
17SCSI240.ZIP    300724  11-08-93  SCSI Device Drivers v2.40
18
19SSND21.EXE     748338  06-16-94  Install v1.00 (Jumperless) Disk 1/2
20
21SSND22.EXE     906662  06-16-94  Install v1.00 (Jumperless) Disk 2/2
22
23SSND_1.EXE     475056  06-15-94  Install v1.00 (Jumpered) Disk 1/1
24
25T7GARIA.EXE    334498  09-27-93  The 7th Guest patch
26
27TERMDEMO.ZIP  2414378  07-21-93  Terminator Demo

Probably not what you're looking for, but there could be some other useful stuff there. Aria16 files seem rather hard to find these days. I have a Prometheus Aria16 and 4 driver disks coming to me soon, and I'm looking forward to tinkering with it. 😀

I do already have those... but it has been a while since I did any active searches for more stuff.

On another not, I did hear back from somebody that says they have the SSDK.. but not sure if they are going to be willing to let me have a copy of it.

I would definitely be interested in having the contents of those disks though.

cyclone3d wrote:

I do already have those... but it has been a while since I did any active searches for more stuff.

On another not, I did hear back from somebody that says they have the SSDK.. but not sure if they are going to be willing to let me have a copy of it.

I would definitely be interested in having the contents of those disks though.

Here are the contents of the disks:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=16uTz1ppo5jC … cNusNcDKBH9XBhm

For some reason I couldn't get winimage to read all the disks, so I had to settle for just copying the contents to folders. They all read perfectly that way.

I think they're picky about the naming of folders and such, but I don't have my card yet so I can't really test the installation programs. Some folder renaming or file editing is probably needed for each program to install properly.

If someone has a chance to test and reorganize these so they install easily, feel free to re-upload them or upload them to vogons drivers.