Moar pics...

When I tested the card briefly today it was detected with the Add Non-PNP Hardware Wizard in Windows 98SE and mostly works with the default drivers. Sound effects are all good... all of the playback modes tested in DXdiag worked perfectly. OPL3 music works fine. However, unsurprisingly, when I tried to play back a .mid file with the MPU-401 selected the system would just repeatedly freeze until I forced it to reboot. If I pull the DISMPU jumper it no longer freezes when I do this, but I just get some odd ticking\static sound with no playback. I'm assuming the DISMPU jumper disables the wavetable header and the external MPU-401 interface. When you pull it off, those are enabled and the Wavefront chip is disabled. Putting it back on enables the Wavefront chip... which apparently Windows 98SE does not like with it's default Jazz16 drivers.

If there are any Media Vision collectors or driver hoarders out there that may have drivers for this (DOS or Windows), here are the leads I have on finding them...

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

JidaiGeki wrote on 2023-01-09, 07:40:

Nice one! The MV Jazz Wave (aka MediaVision PAW-200 Pro Audio) looks like a pretty complete sound card, would be interesting to see how wavetable sounds.

However, the driver for the wavetable might be hard to find - the DOS Reloaded guys were looking for it (https://dosreloaded.de/forum/index.php?thread … -1995/&pageNo=3). From magazine reviews, the driver file seems to be called "MVLITE.EXE" (https://archive.org/details/Pcmania36/page/n43/mode/2up and https://archive.org/details/PC-Player-German- … de/2up?q=mvlite). I've got one of these without the backplate, but haven't been able to start the wavetable. Been on the lookout for random MediaVision floppies but nothing so far.

...aaand, that's about the best info I have found so far. Any help would be much appreciated!

Some more tidbits of information I've dug up...

The ICS2125M-001 "waverom" on my card is apparently a 512KB ROM, where as other ICS Wavefront devices may use 4MB (2 x 2MB ROMs), 2MB, or 1MB sets.

I have attached the datasheets for the chips on this card. I'm not sure if there is a difference between the 2125M and the 2125, so I have included datasheets that mention both.

It looks like the 1MB and 2MB ROMs use a 44pin SOP... I wonder if that is what would go in the empty 44pin location on my card? If so, it's interesting that they bothered designing the card for either ROM and yet opted to sell it only with the cheapest one. Unless of course someone out there has one with a larger ROM?

1WaveFront Sounds are masked ROMs that serve as the
2wavetable for the ICS2115 WaveFront Synthesizer. Each
3sound set, 4 MB, 2 MB, 1 MB and 512 KB, contains the
4musical data needed to synthesize the instruments from the
5General MIDI specification. The 4 MB sound set consists of
6two 2 MB ROMs, the ICS2124M-001 and ICS2124M-002.
7The 2 MB sound set consists of one 2 MB ROM, the
8ICS2122M-001. The 1 MB sound set consists of one 1 MB
9ROM, the ICS2121M-001. The 512 KB sound set consists of
10one 512 KB ROM, the ICS2125M-001.

1• Complete set of General MIDI sounds, which contains 128
2instruments and 69 drum sounds.
3•• Available in four sizes, 4 MB, 2 MB, 1 MB and 512 KB,
4to provide the optimal balance between price and
5performance for many applications.
6•• 16-bit linear wavetable (ICS2124-001/-002), compressed
7wavetable (ICS2122-001 and ICS2121-001), or full-
8featured wavetable (ICS2125-001).
9•• ICS2121 is footprint-compatible with the ICS2122.

Nice one, and I'll follow this thread with interest!

Other sound cards also use the 2115 chip, including TB and Aztech, but also this oddity - Need help with a strange soundcard (SB16+ICS wavetable) - there are drivers posted in page 1 (ctsb16.zip), could be worth a try. The driver package contains WFLITE.DRV, which seems to be a Windows driver for the WaveFront, but if it needs to be initialised in DOS and the MediaForte drivers don't work then the search will continue.