Hi everyone,

Another video "How to connect a serial and PS/2 mouse to your HP Palmtop" is following this one and will go into premiere at 10am western european time 😀

Cheers,
Radiance

Use to play EoB 1 for hours on cold winter nights in barracks on my new 286/16 clone system down in Shelly Bay, Wellington when station at Air staff HQ. I have still got the boxed software.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-12-22, 02:35:

Use to play EoB 1 for hours on cold winter nights in barracks on my new 286/16 clone system down in Shelly Bay, Wellington when station at Air staff HQ. I have still got the boxed software.

You still have the boxed copy ? That must be worth a pretty penny for collectors, it's an official Dungeons and Dragons game,
so it's very collectable 😀 I'd keep it for another one or two decades, then you'll get a nice amount for it on ebay 😀

Do you have any feedback about the actual review video ?

Cheers,
Radiance

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-22, 02:38:

You still have the boxed copy ? That must be worth a pretty penny for collectors, it's an official Dungeons and Dragons game, so […]
Show full quote

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-12-22, 02:35:

Use to play EoB 1 for hours on cold winter nights in barracks on my new 286/16 clone system down in Shelly Bay, Wellington when station at Air staff HQ. I have still got the boxed software.

You still have the boxed copy ? That must be worth a pretty penny for collectors, it's an official Dungeons and Dragons game,
so it's very collectable 😀 I'd keep it for another one or two decades, then you'll get a nice amount for it on ebay 😀

Do you have any feedback about the actual review video ?

Cheers,
Radiance

Yip still have it and a lot of other early 90s lat 8s software. I personally don't really care about there market value. It's the memories that matter.

The video seemed just fine from what I could see.

Here are some pics of where you'll be at.

Thanks for another nice video, radiance32!
There is no sound patch for EoB, and what about OPL3LPT TSR that redirects 388->378? Does it work on 200LX?

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-12-22, 04:47:

Here are some pics of where you'll be at.

Looks like a nice garden to pitch my tent in 😀
Talk soon!,

Terrence

Bondi wrote on 2021-12-22, 08:34:

Thanks for another nice video, radiance32!
There is no sound patch for EoB, and what about OPL3LPT TSR that redirects 388->378? Does it work on 200LX?

No, unfortunately the TSR requires a 386+ CPU...

Radiance

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-22, 09:46:

Bondi wrote on 2021-12-22, 08:34:

Thanks for another nice video, radiance32!
There is no sound patch for EoB, and what about OPL3LPT TSR that redirects 388->378? Does it work on 200LX?

No, unfortunately the TSR requires a 386+ CPU...

Radiance

I see. Did you consider manual patching? I've looked through the eob.exe there are like 10 or 11 in/out commands to 388h
I wonder is simple hexediting (chaging 388 to 378) would do the trick. I don't have an OPL3LPT to try...

Hetfield approves.

Bondi wrote on 2021-12-22, 10:56:

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-22, 09:46:

Bondi wrote on 2021-12-22, 08:34:

Thanks for another nice video, radiance32!
There is no sound patch for EoB, and what about OPL3LPT TSR that redirects 388->378? Does it work on 200LX?

No, unfortunately the TSR requires a 386+ CPU...

Radiance

I see. Did you consider manual patching? I've looked through the eob.exe there are like 10 or 11 in/out commands to 388h
I wonder is simple hexediting (chaging 388 to 378) would do the trick. I don't have an OPL3LPT to try...

Yes, I and 2 others tried this, and we could'nt get it to work...
We've managed to get Budokan and the Gold Box D&D games to work with the S2P by patching the executables,
but after several people tried, nobody could get it to work.
Maybe you can ? Give it a go ?

Terrence

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-12-22, 18:32:

Hetfield approves.

That's great 😀
But, who's hetfield ? The singer from the band metallica ?

Cheers,
Radiance

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-22, 23:18:

Yes, I and 2 others tried this, and we could'nt get it to work... We've managed to get Budokan and the Gold Box D&D games to wor […]
Show full quote

Bondi wrote on 2021-12-22, 10:56:

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-22, 09:46:

No, unfortunately the TSR requires a 386+ CPU...

Radiance

I see. Did you consider manual patching? I've looked through the eob.exe there are like 10 or 11 in/out commands to 388h
I wonder is simple hexediting (chaging 388 to 378) would do the trick. I don't have an OPL3LPT to try...

Yes, I and 2 others tried this, and we could'nt get it to work...
We've managed to get Budokan and the Gold Box D&D games to work with the S2P by patching the executables,
but after several people tried, nobody could get it to work.
Maybe you can ? Give it a go ?

Terrence

I tried to patch it, but without the OPL3LPT I cannot really see if it works. If I connect covox, I can hear some clicks and ticks, so it outputs something...
I can also see that EOTB outputs both to 388 and 389 port. Whereas 379 port is read only AFAIK. Thus we have to know more about how OPL3LPT works to make correct patching.

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-23, 06:26:

That's great :) But, who's hetfield ? The singer from the band metallica ? […]
Show full quote

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-12-22, 18:32:

Hetfield approves.

That's great 😀
But, who's hetfield ? The singer from the band metallica ?

Cheers,
Radiance

You got it!

Bondi wrote on 2021-12-23, 16:30:

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-22, 23:18:

Yes, I and 2 others tried this, and we could'nt get it to work... We've managed to get Budokan and the Gold Box D&D games to wor […]
Show full quote

Bondi wrote on 2021-12-22, 10:56:

I see. Did you consider manual patching? I've looked through the eob.exe there are like 10 or 11 in/out commands to 388h
I wonder is simple hexediting (chaging 388 to 378) would do the trick. I don't have an OPL3LPT to try...

Yes, I and 2 others tried this, and we could'nt get it to work...
We've managed to get Budokan and the Gold Box D&D games to work with the S2P by patching the executables,
but after several people tried, nobody could get it to work.
Maybe you can ? Give it a go ?

Terrence

I tried to patch it, but without the OPL3LPT I cannot really see if it works. If I connect covox, I can hear some clicks and ticks, so it outputs something...
I can also see that EOTB outputs both to 388 and 389 port. Whereas 379 port is read only AFAIK. Thus we have to know more about how OPL3LPT works to make correct patching.

That's approximatey how far we got, and it did'nt work... 🙁
It checks to see if there is an adlib card present, instead of just assuming there is one if configured and writing music data to it, like the easier to patch games.
Unfortunately my knowledge of assembly and low-level x86/DOS is too low to help here, you'd need an OPL2LPT or OPL3LPT to continue... 🙁

Radiance

Bondi wrote on 2021-12-23, 16:30:

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-22, 23:18:

Yes, I and 2 others tried this, and we could'nt get it to work... We've managed to get Budokan and the Gold Box D&D games to wor […]
Show full quote

Bondi wrote on 2021-12-22, 10:56:

I see. Did you consider manual patching? I've looked through the eob.exe there are like 10 or 11 in/out commands to 388h
I wonder is simple hexediting (chaging 388 to 378) would do the trick. I don't have an OPL3LPT to try...

Yes, I and 2 others tried this, and we could'nt get it to work...
We've managed to get Budokan and the Gold Box D&D games to work with the S2P by patching the executables,
but after several people tried, nobody could get it to work.
Maybe you can ? Give it a go ?

Terrence

I tried to patch it, but without the OPL3LPT I cannot really see if it works. If I connect covox, I can hear some clicks and ticks, so it outputs something...
I can also see that EOTB outputs both to 388 and 389 port. Whereas 379 port is read only AFAIK. Thus we have to know more about how OPL3LPT works to make correct patching.

Maybe you could try to do your best in patching it, and then send me a .zip file of your changes,
and I will test them out for you!
Are you ok with that ?

Radiance

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-24, 00:26:

Maybe you could try to do your best in patching it, and then send me a .zip file of your changes, and I will test them out for y […]
Show full quote

Bondi wrote on 2021-12-23, 16:30:

radiance32 wrote on 2021-12-22, 23:18:

Yes, I and 2 others tried this, and we could'nt get it to work... We've managed to get Budokan and the Gold Box D&D games to wor […]
Show full quote

Yes, I and 2 others tried this, and we could'nt get it to work...
We've managed to get Budokan and the Gold Box D&D games to work with the S2P by patching the executables,
but after several people tried, nobody could get it to work.
Maybe you can ? Give it a go ?

Terrence

I tried to patch it, but without the OPL3LPT I cannot really see if it works. If I connect covox, I can hear some clicks and ticks, so it outputs something...
I can also see that EOTB outputs both to 388 and 389 port. Whereas 379 port is read only AFAIK. Thus we have to know more about how OPL3LPT works to make correct patching.

Maybe you could try to do your best in patching it, and then send me a .zip file of your changes,
and I will test them out for you!
Are you ok with that ?

Radiance

I would not mind doing that. Yet, it has not much sense. Having read the article on writing patches, if I understand correctly, it's not just about changing the port addresses.
https://github.com/pdewacht/adlipt/wiki/Makin … ADPATCH-patches
Adlib uses 0388 (hex) - Address/Status port (R/W) and 0389 (hex) - Data port (W/O). And I still don't quite understand waht the equivalent OPL3LPT ports are, given the 379 is a read-only port.
Maybe someone on the forum has a better understanding of this?

I got to thinking about this.
My thinking was, if you could connect the serial port of the 200lx to a midi adapter, you could connect it to a midi device; an MT32 or PMA-5 or some other synth, and have audio for it.
The PMA-5 is about twice the size of the 200lx, but will run on batteries...
So I started looking up RS232 to MIDI... I guess it's not all that easy because MIDI uses an unusual baud rate and some electrical difference.
But I did discover that the gameport MIDI adapter on most sound cards puts out TTL on pins 12 and 15 (iirc) and then the MIDI cable adapter translates it into the type of signal needed by MIDI devices.

But, further, I stopped by Adafruit, and came across this featherwing MIDI adapter...
Adafruit MIDI Featherwing Kit
Theoretically, you could connect the RS232 to this device, and this device to a midi synth, and have audio (for whatever games/programs support MIDI), but you still have the baud rate issue.
So... you could connect the Featherwing to this Teensy 3.2 + Header, which has 3 UARTS, one of which could talk to the 200lx (or other device with an RS232 port) and another to the MIDI device. It would take some programming, but I think is theoretically doable.They have other, similar boards which may work better; I dunno cause I'm not very knowledgeable (yet) about electronic circuity like this.

I've also seen posts on making a midi controller from an arduino, but I'm not sure that's what's needed here. I like the Teensy because even with the featherwing adapter, it's... tiny.

Almost as small is making a midi synth from a Raspberry PI Zero 2 W. The setup here communicates via USB, but the Zero W does have UART pins and should be able to talk to the 200lx at whatever speed the 200lx wants.
The nice thing about this solution is that it will work with pretty much any vintage hardware with an RS232 port and software/games that support MIDI. Theoretically, you could even add a character lcd to the device so it would say "Insert Buckazoid" while playing Space Quest (will Space Quest play on the 200lx? I hope so...)

I apologize if my previous message is inappropriate to this thread or forum. If the moderators decide to move my message, please let me know where to?
I just got to thinking while typing, and that's always a bad idea 🙁