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Dream/Unfeasible ISA Sound Card Ideas

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First post, by thepirategamerboy12

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My apologies if this is a dumb topic, but it's something I've been wanting to mention here for a bit. Something I occasionally imagine to myself about are things like ISA sound cards that would be really cool if they existed back in the day or now, though especially now would be unfeasible to make for various reasons. Has anyone else thought of things like this before?

For me, a dream ISA sound card would be one using Konami's SCC sound hardware that they used in a number of their MSX games like Snatcher, Metal Gear 2, Quarth, etc. I really love the sound of it, and I think it would be super cool if there was a PC ISA sound card based on the hardware. It'd be totally unfeasible to make now, though, mainly since SCC chips are long out of production custom Konami parts. You'd have to sacrifice expensive Konami MSX carts to do it. I don't really imagine it ever being a thing Konami themselves would have wanted to make back in the day, either. I think the card would have to contain Konami's SCC chip, an AY-3-8910 (because Konami SCC MSX games used it for things like drums), and perhaps at least some 8-bit DAC for sample playback to be more competitive with an OG Sound Blaster.

By the way, if you guys have never heard SCC music before, here's some good examples:
https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/metal-gear-2-solid-snake-msx2
https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/quarth-msx2
https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/snatcher-msx2

Reply 1 of 8, by Tiido

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Your main issue with such a card is that not one PC game can make use of it so you're gonna have to write your own to be the first 🤣.

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 3 of 8, by Tiido

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Konami SCC in particular is roughly same as what is in TurboGrafix 16 / PC Engine. It is the real Wave Table, a small looped sample (in this case 32 samples long), enough for one period (or perhaps two) of some waveform. What is often called wavetable in PC circles is not but just sampler/ROMpler business 🤣.

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 4 of 8, by thepirategamerboy12

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Joakim wrote on 2021-10-02, 15:56:

Interesting sound. Did you have an msx? They seem to have been quite popular but I have no relation to it myself.

Nah, I've just messed around with it a bit through emulation. My PC-9821 Cs2 is the only JP computer I currently own. Fyi, SCC games came on both floppies and carts. The cart based games literally just has the SCC chip built in along with the game, but floppy based ones like Snatcher came with both the floppies and a separate cartridge for the sound.

Reply 5 of 8, by Joakim

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Interesting. It must have been quite an expensive solution to put a lot of hardware in the cartridge. (I never reflected upon what a cartridge really is until recently.)

Reply 6 of 8, by Thermalwrong

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If you're after a music player rather than a games player, the MegaGrrl player is a good option - my one can play Megadrive YM2612, OPL3 YMF262 and PC98 YM2608 through different boards. The ESP32 at its core can do all of the PLL / clock generation, analogue audio and 8-bit data bus through its GPIO pins: https://hackaday.io/project/169129-megagrrl-desktop and https://git.agiri.ninja/natalie/megagrrl

The soundtrack to snatcher sounds pretty awesome on the YM2608, less crunchy but improved with the extra FM channels and PCM channel playback

Reply 7 of 8, by thepirategamerboy12

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Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-10-03, 01:04:

If you're after a music player rather than a games player, the MegaGrrl player is a good option - my one can play Megadrive YM2612, OPL3 YMF262 and PC98 YM2608 through different boards. The ESP32 at its core can do all of the PLL / clock generation, analogue audio and 8-bit data bus through its GPIO pins: https://hackaday.io/project/169129-megagrrl-desktop and https://git.agiri.ninja/natalie/megagrrl

The soundtrack to snatcher sounds pretty awesome on the YM2608, less crunchy but improved with the extra FM channels and PCM channel playback

I like the PC-88/YM2608 Snatcher music, though I prefer the MSX SCC version. I think it sounds a bit thin by comparison. The YM2203 mode sounds remarkably similar from what I remember. Gameplay-wise PC-88 is better, though, because the MSX version is unfortunately hampered by atrocious loading times.

Reply 8 of 8, by SuperDeadite

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SCC chip has been perfectly cloned in FPGA for a good 20 years now, as it's a very simple device. The various MSX flashcarts all use SCC clones now.

There are rom hacks now that even support 2xSCC for say adding voice samples to Gradius.

MSX Snatcher has long been hacked to support HDD installation. So floppy loading isn't an issue anymore.

MSX has one of the most active communities out there. The amount of custom hardware available is insane. I recently picked up a Darky, which contains 2x ePSG chips and a Spin FV-1 effects processor. Combined with SCC and OPLL and here is what you get.
https://youtu.be/PU9ojTPeaPE

Modules: CM-64, CM-500, SC-55MkII, SC-88 Pro, SY22, TG100, MU2000EX, PLG100-SG, PLG150-DR, PLG150-AN, SG01k, NS5R, GZ-50M, SN-U110-07, SN-U110-10, Pocket Studio 5, DreamBlaster S2, X2, McFly, E-Wave, QWave, CrystalBlaster C2, Yucatan FX, BeepBlaster

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