VOGONS


First post, by Thermalwrong

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I got hold of this recently since it looks so similar to a soundblaster 2.0 card. Anchor Electronics along with a whole bunch of other names sold this as the "Media Concept 2.0".

MediaConcept20-front.jpg
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This is the J98MF-002 card, I know there's a later smaller one as well called the MF-002BR, which has smaller chips and a smaller PCB.
It's also got a marking of J5QMF-002, but there's even less information about the 'princeton' / 'preton' media concept 2.0 card. It was sold as the "Media Concept Sound Board", for a whole 20 bucks less than the real soundblaster.

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There's a similar clone made by Anchor Electronics mentioned in TubeTime's video about recreating the soundblaster 1.0, with the firmware including that copyright: https://youtu.be/xyged8Vk8uk?t=638

Jumpers: Can be found in the TH99 as a Master Boomer or Media Concept card: http://www.uncreativelabs.de/th99/i/P-R/51311.htm

Manual: The vogons drivers link had the manuals in chinese, I've attached the translated versions that detail how to set up the jumpers & install the software

Drivers: The best drivers are on the mpoli site as "LD_MEDC2.ZIP 1992-05-01 00:00 1.7M Laser Digital Media Concept 2.0 drivers": http://files.mpoli.fi/hardware/SOUND/OTHER/
There's another older version in the vogonsdrivers archive: http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=821
The truth is though, this is a soundblaster 2.0 clone, a proper one that doesn't need any driver initialisation to operate. It just works.
I habitually install drivers before using a card, but after spending many hours figuring out how to install these, I found that it wasn't necessary. The 'drivers' are really just an equivalent of "SET BLASTER" and a sound test program, along with some other applications like a sound recorder.

Installing the drivers: The driver installer is bad. It just about works but it's a basic DOS installer and not helpful when things aren't right. It prompts for Disk #1 when I tried copying the disk contents onto 2 disks on my gotek.

It seems that information and drivers for this card have started falling off of the Internet. Driverguide deleted their copy of the driver, but while hoping to find it I was checking the reviews and one comment said the disks must be called "MC_1" and "MC_2".
I was going to try disassembling the mcinst.exe application to try to find that, but oh well. I later ran 'strings' on the file to find ASCII strings in the application and MC_1 & MC_2 were referenced right after the disk error message text.
The problems with the installer didn't stop there. First I found my gotek wipes the disk labels I set when I disconnect & reconnect the USB stick. So I had to set the labels with the label command each time. Then I was getting file access errors - the installer falls over if any files have the read-only attribute set, which they all did.

Using the drivers: Once it's all installed, you can run "mcdemo.bat" to watch a very 90s video of the "Media Concept" logo in 3d text fly around with some music. You can also run mctest.exe to test the FM & sound, but this requires mc.cfg which is made when the drivers finish installing. MC.CFG is really just the contents of SET BLASTER i.e. A220 I5 D1 T3.
There are some voice recorder and synthesiser applications but I didn't try those yet.

Sound Quality: Sounds like a soundblaster 2.0 to me. It powers some little Panasonic RP-SP18 passive speakers really well. No compatibility problems with the games I've tried it with so far. Descent detects it as a soundblaster 2.0 card.

FM Quality: This is the same as the shenanigans with the ALS100's LS245 chip, the SC801 and SC802 chips are clones of Yamaha's YM3812 and DAC. If I run the oplclone test, it makes the sine wave sound. But I don't want to take the card apart to check whether the parts are interchangeable 😀

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  • Filename
    j98mf-002-software-setup.txt
    File size
    42.17 KiB
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    92 downloads
    File comment
    Media Concept 2.0 manual - software
    File license
    CC-BY-4.0
  • Filename
    j98mf-002-hardware-setup.txt
    File size
    18.05 KiB
    Downloads
    110 downloads
    File comment
    Media Concept 2.0 manual - hardware
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • Filename
    LD_MEDC2.zip
    File size
    3.3 MiB
    Downloads
    108 downloads
    File comment
    Driver repack with notes about disk labels
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 1 of 4, by Grzyb

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So I'm bringing the discussion over here, so it doesn't get lost in that huge "What retro activity did you get up to today?" thread...

I also have such a card - got it bundled with speakers and a microphone, it's all branded "Pink", and the card itself is referred to as "SOUND MAN 2.0".
It came with two diskettes - see the attachment.
The curious thing is that my manual claims that CMS is not supported, while the other manual (in the post above) states otherwise, and - from Thermalwrong's experiments - CMS indeed does work.

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    pink.rar
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    81 downloads
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    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Nie tylko, jak widzicie, w tym trudność, że nie zdołacie wejść na moją górę, lecz i w tym, że ja do was cały zejść nie mogę, gdyż schodząc, gubię po drodze to, co miałem donieść.

Reply 2 of 4, by Jo22

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Thanks a lot! It sounds really interesting!
Is it looking any similar to the "Sound Machine" card (*link*), by any chance? 😀

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Reply 3 of 4, by cyclone3d

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Jo22 wrote on 2020-12-13, 19:35:

Thanks a lot! It sounds really interesting!
Is it looking any similar to the "Sound Machine" card (*link*), by any chance? 😀

The "Sound Machine" is literally a relabeled CT1350B (Sound Blaster 2.0). There are a few different revisions though. Some have sockets for CMS and some don't. The later ones don't have the sockets.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 4 of 4, by Thermalwrong

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I have an unfortunate but interesting update to this, regarding the FM audio on the card. This has been installed on my little test PC and I found that sometimes when plugging in speakers, the whole computer would power off.

Last night I was testing it out since I haven't in a while and found that the FM audio was silent and there was more bus noise than usual. Cranking up the volume I found that I could just make out the audio still. I'm not sure if it was my mishandling of the card or some surge, but it's awful that bits of the card are breaking with recent use.

From reading the Snark Barker CT1320 thread and troubleshooting my own CT1320 build, I worked out that everything else on the card still worked. Digital audio still sounds great, the CMS chips still output sound, just the FM is silent. It's still making sound slightly so I blamed the FM DAC.

The "SB802" chip is what I reasoned to be the DAC and I brought up the YM3014 OPL2 DAC datasheet to compare it with. Here's what I found on the card, some gaps got filled in quickly once I realised what they'd done:


YM3014:
5V VCC---1|||||8---MP
To Buff--2|||||7---RB
LOAD-----3|||||6---GND
SD(data)-4|||||5---CLK

SC802:
5V VCC---1|||||14---MP (?)
N/C------2|||||13---N/C
To Buff--3|||||12---RB (bias)
N/C------4|||||11---N/C
LOAD-----5|||||10---GND
N/C------6|||||9----N/C
SD-------7|||||8----SC801 Pin4 (CLK)

VDD 5v
MP Exponential analogue value, 1/2 VDD?
ToBuff Analogue Output goes to op-amp
RB High precision 1/2 VDD reference
SD Serial data

Haha, I'm glad they're lazy chip copiers 😁 They just spaced out each row of pins with some not connected pins inbetween. That means I can just put a YM3014 DAC in its place, which I did:

AnchorMediaConceptSC802-2.jpg
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SC802 to Y3014 adapter
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AnchorMediaConceptSC802-1.jpg
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AnchorMediaConceptSC802-1.jpg
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New chip installed
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Now the card makes great FM sound again!

I tested the SC802 on the card again to see if the problem followed the DAC and it definitely does, the SC802 must have failed internally as the chip gets really hot now.