Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Cute article about the PAS on the left!

The PAS demonstration the reviewer mentions is a bit, eh... poorly done. That said, the panning race car sound-effect is nifty. Judge for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-lWP2fxfGk

schlang wrote:

how to get archon ultra to run with the PAS? 😀

Archon Ultra really shouldn't be in that list...

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.p … ee?dmode=source

Sol_HSA wrote:

...but PAS was "just" an incompatible SB clone. Or was I mistaken?

Over its lifetime, the PAS(/16) had a decent amount of native, and in some cases, PAS-specific support. Given that the hardware SB compatibility was provided by a separate chipset, the PAS16 can perhaps be thought of as two cards in one. Furthermore, Media Vision ended up licensing the SB "technology" from Creative. Where does the incompatibility supposition come from (excluding the Creative SDK fiasco)?

Cloudschatze wrote:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.p … ee?dmode=source

awesome 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I never understood what would be the reason to buy a PAS/PAS16 over SB. LAPC1 had a different approach, GUS was a demoscene sweetheart, but PAS was "just" an incompatible SB clone. Or was I mistaken?

I think we need to look at the timeline...

Cloudschatze wrote:

Pro AudioSpectrum - Released April, 1991
Sound Blaster Pro - Released August, 1991

Creative played catch-up with Media Vision for a number of years, and basically threw the SBPro out the door to compete with the PAS (which, unsurprisingly, resulted in buggy hardware and a ridiculous number of revisions).

This explains things pretty well. I doubt creative was in any danger though, but it must have felt like a threat to them regardless.

I missed that bit of the PC hardware wars, probably because I was looking at it from the demoscene point of view (i.e., you basically had to have GUS, and possibly SB too).

Thanks.