Can you recommend any DOS games that show off the full capabilities of these chips?

The problem is that most games that supported the Game Blaster also supported the earlier, superior and more widespread Adlib card. Guess which card developers tuned their games for. I would guess that few games that supported both have particularly impressive sounding Game Blaster tunes. You may want to try Times of Lore though. Sierra was easily the card's biggest supporter, but several titles from Origin, LucasArts and Accolade also supported it.

Airball is a rather unique game in that it seems to support the Tandy and the Game Blaster but not an Adlib (according to Moby Games anyways.)

Most games that support nothing more than a Tandy sound chip tended to be ports of games with better music (Commodore 64's SID) on other systems except for Sierra's AGI games.

I always wondered why MESS listed 2x SAA 1099 chips along with 1x YM3812 in its emulation of the IBM PC. Now I know, Adlib and Game Blaster.

Great Hierophant wrote:

The Game Blaster and early Sound Blasters have two sockets for their relabeled SAA 1099 chips (which may or may not be pin compatible with the standard Phillips chips.)

I've been working on reverse engineering the PAL on CT-1350B's w/ CMS upgrades. The PAL controls how/when the SB 2.0 switches from FM Synth on the Yamaha chip to AM Sound on the pair of Phillips SAA-1099 chips depending on the data received on the ISA port (typically 0x220). I can say definitely that the SB 2.0 sockets are indeed pin compatible with genuine SAA-1099 chips. In fact, the CMS-301 upgrade chips themselves are Phillips brand SAA-1099 chips with a paper adhesive "CMS-301" label over them in most cases.

HunterZ wrote:

Can you recommend any DOS games that show off the full capabilities of these chips?

Hunter, try Secret of Monkey Island. It has command line options to specify between PC Speaker, Tandy, Game Blaster, & Adlib. The intro title song really makes good use of the Game Blaster and is one of the better compositions for the Game Blaster / SAA-1099 I've heard. In any case, this game is great for comparing the same songs on some of the older sound standards. To see the different command line options run "monkey /?" at the prompt.

QBiN: Thanks for the suggestion. Does it matter whether I use the old 16-color EGA version or the newer 256-color remake? I think I have both versions, but I'll have to check.

QBiN: Thanks for the suggestion. Does it matter whether I use the old 16-color EGA version or the newer 256-color remake? I think I have both versions, but I'll have to check.

No, you can hear Game Blaster music on either the 16 or 256 color disk version. Interestingly, you cannot hear Roland MT-32 music on the 16 color version, which suggests to me that it came out before the 256 color version. Weirdly, you can select Tandy Sounds in the 256 color version even though the game does not support Tandy Graphics. In order to use it you would have to upgrade a later Tandy 1000 with an EGA or VGA card. The early Tandys are not upgradeable and the Tandys after the 1000 line longer use the Tandy Sound Chip.
(Loom does not support the MT-32 without a patch and Indy TLC doesn't support the MT-32 at all and the Game Blaster only with the 256 color version.)

I've been working on reverse engineering the PAL on CT-1350B's w/ CMS upgrades. The PAL controls how/when the SB 2.0 switches from FM Synth on the Yamaha chip to AM Sound on the pair of Phillips SAA-1099 chips depending on the data received on the ISA port (typically 0x220). I can say definitely that the SB 2.0 sockets are indeed pin compatible with genuine SAA-1099 chips. In fact, the CMS-301 upgrade chips themselves are Phillips brand SAA-1099 chips with a paper adhesive "CMS-301" label over them in most cases.

Well, if the sockets of the SB 2.0 are pin compatible with the non-rebranded SAA 1099s, then the sockets of the Game Blaster, SB 1.0 and SB 1.5 should be as well. Why the need for the PAL in the first place? Crossfire Design's PC Soundcard history states that it was always there on the older SBs and removed for economy on the SB 2.0. I suppose thats how earlier games could still support the Game Blaster chips on a Sound Blaster and send the data to the chips rather than to the DSP. (It wouldn't conflict with the Adlib because that card used port 388 while the Gam,e Blaster used ports 210-260.)

I think there may be a patch for the 16 color version that adds Roland support. I know there was for Loom (as you mentioned).

Also, I'm pretty darn sure that you can access the OPL chips on SB cards at the 0x220 port range. I remember lots of games using that as the port for music instead of 0x388 (unless I'm confused and 0x220 is used for accessing the DAC and 0x388 for OPL).

The patch to add Roland support to the 256 colour version on LucasArts' website works just as well on the 16 colour version.

SB ports base and base+1 map to the OPL, just as if you had used 0x388 and 0x389. The DSP uses ports base+6 base+A, base+C and base+E.

220h is for DAC 😀

Actually, no, it's FM. On SB Pro, it's the left channel only (if stereo mode is enabled).

So, for a Sound Blaster 1.0, which had always had Game Blaster chips, how would you be able to send the data to the right chip? If both chips used port 220H, it would not work properly. Both the CMS and OPL chips would output sound and it would sound terrible. How do you disable the one but not the other?

I believe that games accessed the OPL chip, the same one as on the Adlib card at port 388H for a Sound Blaster 1-2. If they wanted to access the CMS chips, they used port 220H (user selectable.) If the CMS chips were not present, then the card would probably default back to the OPL chip. For a Sound Blaster Pro 1-2 and later models, they would access port 220H or 388H for the dual OPL2 or OPL3 chips. Later games may have forgotten the significance of the CMS chips an defaulted to port 220 while using the basic "Sound Blaster" selection in the install programs.

I know that on my SoundBlaster 2.0, you had to not only install the chip, but also set a jumper to enable it. It's possible that the jumper actually selects whether the OPL or CMS chip is active on port 0x220.

That jumper does not seem to exist on the Sound Blaster 1.0 and 1.5. Also, I don't see any PAL chip on Crossfire Design's Sound Blaster 1.5 photo.

Great Hierophant wrote:

That jumper does not seem to exist on the Sound Blaster 1.0 and 1.5. Also, I don't see any PAL chip on Crossfire Design's Sound Blaster 1.5 photo.

Because the CMS capability was built into the 1.0 and 1.5, the PAL logic was designed into the PCB with discrete components. As it is optional on the 2.0, CT needed a way to provide the same functionality in a field upgradeable way. The answer... design the two-level logic in a PAL and make it a drop in upgrade.

Great Hierophant wrote:

I suppose thats how earlier games could still support the Game Blaster chips on a Sound Blaster and send the data to the chips rather than to the DSP.

That's right. (credit to Snover for correcting my typo). since there's no appreciable hardware mixer on the CT-13xx series, sending both DAC data and AM sound data to 0x220 would be... well... bad. As that would have been considered a "don't care" situation for the logic design.

The PAL has specific logic to deal with this. Since this logic was built into the SB 1.0 and 1.5 as necessary to support the AM functionality, no PAL was needed as it would have been redundant.

I have a CT-1350B with the CMS upgrade if anyone is really that curious. I'm currently looking for a PLD reader to determine if the PAL used in the CMS upgrade has the security bit set, or whether I can read the contents straight away. It's been a few years since I've had access to one. I really don't want to have to resort to mapping out a truth table for the whole PAL space.

QBiN, could you check a game that allows a separate configuration for music and soudn effects, and set:

game blaster for sound,
adlib for music

and check whether they play simultaneously?

robertmo wrote:

QBiN, could you check a game that allows a separate configuration for music and soudn effects, and set: […]
Show full quote

QBiN, could you check a game that allows a separate configuration for music and soudn effects, and set:

game blaster for sound,
adlib for music

and check whether they play simultaneously?

I wish I could. I don't know of any such game that supports game blaster and adlib simultaneously. There could be one out there, but I don't know of it.

You have to understand, the Game Blaster was quickly eclipsed by the Adlib. And the idea of digital (sampled) sound effects weren't mainstream until the Sound Blaster came out (Creative's answer/rebuttal to the adlib). So prior to that, most, if not all, games of this generation gave you only the choice for one sound option or another, but rarely a combination.

Games with distinct music vs. effects sound choices didn't really become commonplace until General Midi hit the scene (most notably with the Sound Canvas SCC-1 and SC-55 series) where you needed distinct choice to be able to benefit from both. You see this in early games like Doom, Descent, and Star Wars: Dark Forces.