VOGONS


First post, by Jonas-fr

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Whow I never heard about this one before, she's a beauty !

UwRXRqk.jpg
Hn8HBjK.jpg

(source: https://www.ebay.com/itm/283304030390)

Does someone have more info on it ?

Last edited by Jonas-fr on 2018-12-17, 07:19. Edited 3 times in total.

Reply 1 of 8, by Tiido

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A friend of mine showed it to me a little ago and I think it is some test equipment instead rather than a sound card per so, such as a waveform generator. There's on reason the CPU to be on it otherwise, there's only IO access and 2x IRQs, no DMA and for a covox type thing you wouldn't need that CPU either.
I do hope the bond wires of those exposed EPROMs are intact, or the program is inaccessible or worse yet, suffered bit rot...

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 2 of 8, by treeman

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It looks like a engineering model / test model like tiido said. Before and if mass production is done usually its assembled by hand to test and make future revisions

Reply 5 of 8, by Ozzuneoj

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Hmm... I messaged the guy about this and he said this:

Hi, […]
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Hi,

Yes, this is definitely a sound card. These sound cards were used in '90s here at Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics as a synthesized speech output for people with visual impairment. They were not meant to be used with computer games. They are not compatible with other sound cards, as it is an original design.

I got it from my former coleague when I worked there. I don't have any documentation or software coming with it. I thought I would be able to reverse engineer it, but I have somewhat different priorities now.

Best regards,
Rado

Seems kind of odd to even mention sound blaster in the listing and to leave out all of this vital information. Basically, it was maybe used to output speech for visually impaired people in a specific environment in Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s. So, while it looks really neat, it has nothing to do with PC sound, music or anything else and will likely never make noise unless someone has the original software and equipment from that facility.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 6 of 8, by Tiido

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If it is a speech synthesizer card then the CPU on it makes sense, the program only has to write text to the card and speech comes out and IRQs just signal when a letter/word/sentence completes.

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 7 of 8, by Phreeze

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Ozzuneoj wrote:

Hmm... I messaged the guy about this and he said this:

Hi, […]
Show full quote

Hi,

Yes, this is definitely a sound card. These sound cards were used in '90s here at Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics as a synthesized speech output for people with visual impairment. They were not meant to be used with computer games. They are not compatible with other sound cards, as it is an original design.

I got it from my former coleague when I worked there. I don't have any documentation or software coming with it. I thought I would be able to reverse engineer it, but I have somewhat different priorities now.

Best regards,
Rado

Seems kind of odd to even mention sound blaster in the listing and to leave out all of this vital information. Basically, it was maybe used to output speech for visually impaired people in a specific environment in Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s. So, while it looks really neat, it has nothing to do with PC sound, music or anything else and will likely never make noise unless someone has the original software and equipment from that facility.

for me, this makes it useless and not even collectible. Wouldn't pay 20 bucks for that

ArGUS Parts list: http://bit.ly/2Ddf89V

Reply 8 of 8, by Ozzuneoj

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Wow, someone bought it.

Maybe a collector of late Eastern Bloc computer devices would be interested in such a thing, but it is completely useless. And its not like speech synthesis was unheard of in 1989... the Macintosh, TI99 and other computers could do text to speech synthesis in the early 80s.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.