Hi,
Sorry for the delay, I was fiddling with all that old stuffs but I finally succeeded !
Let me tell you the whole story of this journey to THE sound !!!
Starting point - What to look for ?
As I mentionned above I'm nostalgic about some GM sounds from my old windows 95b Packard Bell PC, back in the days in 1998. I was 11-12 years old and was spending hours playing at The Incredible Machines 3, Duke Nukem 3D, and Voyetra MIDI Orchestrator!
Not that these sounds were outstanding but I remember I was learning the piano for a couple of years when I begun to be interrested by other electronic instruments (synthesizers and organs). By the way, Microsoft released an excellent software called "Musical Instruments" in which you could here a Hammond Organ and a Prophet 5 analog synthesizer (many years before Youtube)! So many hours spent on this soft too...
But let's get back to the main topic! 3 GM sounds in particular left their mark on my mind :
17 - Drawbar organ (and also 19)
81 - Square Lead
87 - Fifth Lead
I want to hear again these GM presets.
After the PC was sold, I never heard exactly the same GM sounds on the next win98 machine I had. A SB PCI128 was installed (and the crappy Microsoft GM softsynth).
After some research, I found that the machine I had was a Packard Bell CL 1110. This was a "french machine". At that time in 97/98, we had in France a Packard Bell factory in the city of Angers, in the west of Paris. Packard Bell computers sold in France were manufactured here.
This machine was close to the UK model 9030.
Its characteristics were :
- Intel NV430VX "Orlando2D" motherboard (also known as PB68x depending on GPU)
- Pentium 166MMX
- 16MB RAM
- 2.1GB hard drive
- S3 Trio64V+ GPU with 4MB
- 20x CD-ROM drive
- Floppy drive
and...
- Sound 16C SRS pnp sound card
From what I found, worldwide Packard Bell PCs were regrouped in "systems". In my case, it was the "Hermes" system (http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/faq/model.htm)
Each "system" had its proper restoration CD, the famous "MASTER CD". There were also a "paired" boot floppy disk for each MASTER CD to launch the restoration procedure.
Back to the sound card...
This sound card is almost unknown. This is a PB-rebranded version of the AZTECH Multimedia Pro-16 IIIS+ PnP with an AZT2320 sound chip. It has a "true" FM synthesizer (OPL2/3). I remember the sound when I tweaked sound parameters in Duke 3D. I hated the FM synth sound. GM wavetable was clearly the way to go for me (at least at that time!).
As said in my previous post, this sound card has no "hardware" wavetable, so the GM synthesizer should be software based.
The (in)famous Brooktree/Rockwell/Conexant Wavestream Synthesizer
Since the GM synthesizer is software based I had to find some hints regarding this softsynth. I found some answers here on Vogons (see the link in my first post) and on https://retronn.de/ on the AZTECH Waverider Platinum 3D PnP page (https://retronn.de/imports/hwgal/hw_sound_car … 38-mmsn853.html).
It was about an obscur Brooktree/Rockwell/Conexant WaveStream Synthesizer but nothing about the installation procedures, the compatible sound cards, the supported OS...
The links provided here above by Pierre32 also helped me a lot, espacially the MAKO III 64 ISA Sound driver CD, in which a file "wstream.txt" gave me some additional informations about the compatible sound cards drivers with the WaveStream softsynth :
- ESS AudioDrive 18xx drivers
- Crystal 423x audio driver v1.65 or greater
- Aztech Rocky II/III 4.0 or later
- Rockwell WaveArtist v2.35 or later
One word on Brooktree/Rockwell/Conexant : this is in fact the same company. Founded in 1983 and originally named Brooktree, it has been bought by Rockwell in 1996 and became Conexant in 1998.
We go forward! Like I wrote above I managed to find a HP MM Pro 16V-A which seems to be the almost exact clone of the "Sound 16C SRS..." with the AZT2320. Moreover, I own a 440BX Slot 1 motherboard with an ISA slot, so the hardware should be OK to give a try.
Aztech Rocky II/III seem to use AZT2316/2320 so the "MAKO III 64" wavestream files should work with it...
Virtualizing
In the meanwhile, I found on https://archive.org/ a version of the Master CD very close to the one used with the original system. I also discovered an amazing website (in french sorry...) : https://www.passion-pb.fr/index_accueil.php
I won't go further in details but it helped me a lot to understand the file structure of the Master CDs (for the "Hermes" platform) and how to deceive the restoration software to re-install the system on a machine with non-genuine Packard Bell parts. Thus, it is now possible to restore the whole system... on a virtual machine !
So I finally succeeded in restoring the original system on a 86box clone... but without sound : no sound card with AZT2320 is emulated in 86box. Many other sound card models are available but I didn't know in which direction to go since I couldn't use straightforwardly the audio drivers from the Packard Bell Master CD.
The bargain !!!
I found in the classifieds almost exactly the same system I had 25 years ago, a near mint Packard Bell GL 1331, which was at the time an upgraded version of my model : faster CPU (233MHz, 166MHz in the original) and much more RAM (64MB instead of 16MB), and even an FM radio card !
Too easy, I finally could hear again my favorite sounds !! OK, it works quite well but it is full of crappy softwares and it will need a fresh restoration (and maybe an SSD to replace the noisy hard drive). There is also quite a lot of hiss through the line output with headphones.
Now I can go further by looking more deeply at the used drivers in the windows device manager for the sound and especially the wavestream synthesizer. The goal would be to find a compatible emulated sound card in 86box and make it sound "virtually" on a modern computer.
The drivers appearing in the device manager tabs are "aztaudv.vxd" and... "vwstream.vxd", the same file already seen in the "MAKO III 64" drivers CD.
In the "Multimedia" tabs, there is an entry "MIDI for Sound 16 SRS PnP & Wave Table".
Virtualizing again...
As I said before I have a more modern hardware for the HP MM Pro 16V-A. So I gave a try with 86box, selecting more recent pieces of hardware : PII 400MHz, i440BX...
Once again, the restoration with the Master CD works perfectly! Very promising for the future "real" restoration on more "powerfull" (but not so!) and recent hardware.
I also got my hands on the original Master CD I had with the machine. Before selling it, my father made a copy of the original Master CD and boot floppy disk!!
The burnt CD is quite old and some data needed to be recovered with the help of the other Master CD (from archive.org). But finally I have now a perfectly working original Master CD copy as well as the boot floppy disk with the original "tattoo" of the machine...
Here again, the restoration on a 86box virtual machine with the original Master CD is working.
The "wstream.txt" file I talked about before was mentionning that Crystal 423x chip-based sound cards are compatible with wavestream synthesizer. Fortunately, 86box allows to emulate CS4535 and CS4236B sound cards.
Besides, Rockwell WaveArtist sound cards are compatible with this soft synthesizer. They are based on the RWA010 sound chip. I found a RACC010 chip-based sound card (Rockwell/Conexant Riptide), which is the successor of WaveArtist range. The datasheet of the RACC010 says it is compatible with WaveStream synthesizer. And it's a PCI card which make it suitable for more modern hardware. To be tested...
I choosed the CS4236B emulated sound card and I found the appropriate drivers. It installs well on the virtual machine. Windows sound system works well but only the FM synthesizer is available in the MIDI parameters. Wavestream synthesizer also appears in "Multimedia" tabs but "it doesn't work for an unknown reason"...
"genmidi.wsl"
When looking at the files in different sound card drivers embedding the wavestream files, we find always the same kind of files : .inf, .vxd, and a big (more than 8MB) .wsl file.
This .wsl (genmidi.wsl) file is the sample bank of the wavestream synthesizer. It gathers the 128 instruments of the GM bank. Depending on the sound card manufacturer and the period, the size of this file may differ from one another. That means that the samples are probably different... And they are !
Once the CS4236B emulated sound card is installed, I used the wavestream drivers provided by retronn.de for the AZTECH Waverider Platinum 3D PnP.
To install the wavestream synthesizer you have to go in the control panel, add new hardware, sound video and game controllers, have disk and point to the folder where softsynth files are located (.inf and .vxd files).
After a reboot I was able to hear MIDI sound from the wavestream synthesizer but it was not the sound I was expecting. I replaced manually the genmidi.wsl file which is located in C:\windows\system (you have to do it in safe mode because the file is used) with the genmidi.wsl in the .cab files in the original Master CD. It worked !!! It played the "right" sound!!!
I finally did again the procedure with the AZTECH drivers files from the original Packard Bell Master CD. It installs the drivers for the "Sound 16C SRS PnP" but also for the wavestream synthesizer. Actually, the peripheral 'Sound 16 SRS PnP" is not working because it doesn't exists but you can remove it from the device manager. The wavestream synthesizer stays in place!
Here we are !!!!
Now I can hear these marvellous (!!) old wavestream Packard Bell MIDI sounds from a modern computer, through a virtual machine. Next steps are :
- to externally play these sounds with a midi keyboard
- to build a PII 400MHz based machine with the HP MM Pro 16V-A (maybe it will be seen as a Sound 16C SRS PnP...)
- to do a clean restore on my old PB GL 1331
Epilogue
That was a bit long but what a pleasure to recover these old MIDI sounds and share the whole story with people who may look (and hear) after them 25 years later. These MIDI sounds were among the first electronic sounds I played with when I was learning stuffs about computer music (and musical instruments in general). These sounds and also all the songs from old games left their mark on my mind.
I will try to record a midi file playing these sounds and share it here.
On last question about these genmidi.wsl files. I would love to convert it in the soundfont format but I don't know how to proceed. The .wsl format is probably a Rockwell proprietary file format. I tried to open it with an hex editor but except the header of the file, nothing is usable. Is there anybody here able to extract sound samples from these .wsl files ?
Cheers,
JB
