VOGONS

Search

Common searches

Creative Sound Blaster Pro 2, CT1600, some questions

Topic actions

First post, by retro games 100

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I notice on a CT1600 card, there is the PCB datestamp revision of 0894xx, meaning that it's revision 8 (in 1994). Were there really this many revisions specifically for the CT1600 card?! Perhaps this number is higher than 8, on some cards? If it was higher than 9, then Creative's datestamp revision numbering format would look different, as it would break the xxyyzz format, where xx=revision, eg 08 for the 8th revision, yy=year, eg 94 for 1994, and zz for the week number in that year, eg 01 for the 1st week in 1994.

2) I see on this card that there are 3 main chips, clustered around the right hand side area of the CD-ROM interface. What do these 3 chips do?

Thanks a lot for any comments people!

EDIT: BTW, does the Yamaha OPL3 chip play Adlib music perfectly? In other words, does its "built in" OPL2 YM3812 technology remain totally unchanged as far as Adlib music compatibility is concerned?

Reply 1 of 9, by gerwin

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Hello Retro Games 100, good to see you around again.

1) Here is the "CT1600 revision" topic, and 8 it is indeed:
Sound Blaster Pro 2 CT1600 Revisions

2) Maybe the Sound Blaster book I have at home has a schematic with some basic info...

3) I never heard anyone nag about the backward comaptibility of the OPL3. Only about the OPL3-L low power model, since it uses a different sample rate.

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 3 of 9, by Scali

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
retro games 100 wrote:

EDIT: BTW, does the Yamaha OPL3 chip play Adlib music perfectly? In other words, does its "built in" OPL2 YM3812 technology remain totally unchanged as far as Adlib music compatibility is concerned?

Technically: no.
The OPL2 had a rudimentary 'speech synthesis' mode, known as CSM (composite sine mode).
For some reason, this was not implemented on OPL3 and later chips.
However, I don't know of any software that ever used it, so in practice, you probably will never notice the difference.

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 4 of 9, by gerwin

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Here is scanned page of the Sound Blaster book, to answer your second question.

Attachments

  • SBPro_CT1330+CT1660.png
    Filename
    SBPro_CT1330+CT1660.png
    File size
    196.15 KiB
    Views
    580 views
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 5 of 9, by keropi

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

"the Sound Blaster Book" ? never heard of that , where does one get it?

🎵 🎧 ⏳ ⚡ PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 6 of 9, by Scali

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
keropi wrote:

"the Sound Blaster Book" ? never heard of that , where does one get it?

It was quite a popular book in the day: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL21932982M/The … und_blasterbook

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 7 of 9, by gerwin

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

We were talking about the SB book in This Topic.
To avoid wrong expectations: The book is technically rather shallow. The scan above is about the most technical thing of the entire 660 page book.

The one Scali kindly linked to seemingly has a different cover. Below is the one I have here. ISBN 0-07-882000-6.

Attachments

  • Sound-Blaster-Book.png
    Filename
    Sound-Blaster-Book.png
    File size
    72.68 KiB
    Views
    548 views
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 8 of 9, by retro games 100

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Very interesting info people, thanks very much. So the main chip is called the bus interface chip. On an AWE32 for instance, where you have the E-MU 8000 chip, would that also be a bus interface chip, or might it be called a chipset chip, (or processor chip), even though there's only 1 chip in question here, because a "set" of chips, like Northbridge and Southbridge for instance, would refer to more than one chip - a pair of them in fact.

Go to top of page Go to top of page
Back to Sound
Close window
Close window