Sound Blaster 16 PnP CT2950 with genuine OPL \ VOGONS

Sound Blaster 16 PnP CT2950 with genuine OPL

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First post, by ChrisR3tro

Posted on 2022-04-09, 14:23

ChrisR3tro Offline

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Hey all,

I found a CT2950 with OPL and I believe it is not at all common.Browsing eBay and looking at old gear is a hobby of mine and I can say, that I didn't come across such a thing in the past. Infact, it's the first CT2950 with genuine Yamaha OPL chip (YMF289B specifically) I have seen. Suffice to say, I couldn't resist to buy it. It was slightly overpriced, but came with a one year warranty (lol), so I thought, meh why not.

The upper image is mine, the lower one is by AmoRetro.de, which is the variant I usually see.

Chris

for more Retro-related tidbits follow me on X under @ChrisR3tro.

Reply 1 of 4, by keropi

Posted on 2022-04-09, 16:54

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good catch!
it makes the card more usable under DOS when one is an FM enjoyer 😁

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

Reply 2 of 4, by ChrisR3tro

Posted on 2022-04-09, 17:16

ChrisR3tro Offline

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Yes, I thought the same. Usually I prefer Yamaha YMF-based soundcards for DOS, but it's a nice curiosity I guess. I think it will have the hanging note bug though. Of course, you could always put in another MPU-401 card, which I generally do. Creative's MPU-implementation is crap.

And of course, like all Sound Blaster 16-based cards, it is not SB Pro compatible which is really dumb.

for more Retro-related tidbits follow me on X under @ChrisR3tro.

Reply 3 of 4, by Yoghoo

Posted on 2022-04-09, 19:29

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Nice card indeed. Got a CT2940 myself also with an OPL3 chip. Got it quitte cheap a couple of months ago. Sound quality is much better then I expected.

Reply 4 of 4, by Gmlb256

Posted on 2022-04-09, 19:36

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ChrisR3tro wrote on 2022-04-09, 17:16:

Of course, you could always put in another MPU-401 card, which I generally do. Creative's MPU-implementation is crap.

The MPU-401 hanging note bug varies between SB16 revisions. The ones that aren't prone to this and has real OPL3 are the ones with DSP version below 4.11, followed with revisions that has the CT-1747 chip which mostly mitigates the bug no matter which DSP version is used.

And of course, like all Sound Blaster 16-based cards, it is not SB Pro compatible which is really dumb.

SBPro compatibility is overblown IMO, there aren't really many games (try naming one if you can) that supports the SBPro stereo playback but not the one used by SB16 cards. Wolf3D and its derivatives is often cited but the sound positioning is handled thru the mixer which works with SB16-based cards.

Anyway there are workarounds for these two problems. There is FixMPU for SB16-based cards suffering the MPU-401 hanging note bug and if SBPro compatibility is needed check MIDIto which has the /dsp command line parameter for that purpose. Both programs require EMM to work though.

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