VOGONS


Reply 40 of 125, by keropi

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
bertrammatrix wrote on 2024-09-11, 16:30:

Thanks for that...now I can be driven to insanity some more 😁

Was this on dos or windows xx? Right, so the MK just works with the generic drivers then

pure DOS, using unisound
ESS driver refuses to pass any arguments on the IBM ValuePoint system I am testing because it has an early "pnp bios" and you are supposed to use that to allocate resources (and ofcourse it's not possible on the IBM bios 🤣 )

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 41 of 125, by quigonhu

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Great job guys!
Having the O2LT & O2RED this year. Magnificent cards, both of them!

I have really good memory of using ESS chipped sound cards decades ago. Can't wait for getting this top quality level ES1869 card.
If there is a special version plan, which could make me more eager to obtain one, please let me know-_^

BTW, I don't know if it's proper to ask, do you have any plan on retro PCI sound cards? May AU8830?? 😁

Reply 42 of 125, by keropi

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
quigonhu wrote on 2024-09-13, 03:38:
Great job guys! Having the O2LT & O2RED this year. Magnificent cards, both of them! […]
Show full quote

Great job guys!
Having the O2LT & O2RED this year. Magnificent cards, both of them!

I have really good memory of using ESS chipped sound cards decades ago. Can't wait for getting this top quality level ES1869 card.
If there is a special version plan, which could make me more eager to obtain one, please let me know-_^

BTW, I don't know if it's proper to ask, do you have any plan on retro PCI sound cards? May AU8830?? 😁

thanks for the ongoing support quigonhu!
we do not have any plans currently for a PCI soundcard, can't say we never do it though 😀

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 44 of 125, by Paul_V

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
Marmes wrote on 2024-09-02, 12:27:

3) No SPDIF I/O unfortunately. We decided to keep this out due to cost. But there will be an I2S interface on expansion 😀

Did you happen to run any tests on I2S interface of es1869 ?
I always wondered if it would be possible to use it as an input for MT32pi on a pc/104 soundcard project I'm working on.
Did not have enough spare time to test that idea still.

Reply 45 of 125, by stacker139

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
Marmes wrote on 2024-09-02, 12:27:

1) Same filter as stock ESS cards.
2)This is solved here
3) No SPDIF I/O unfortunately. We decided to keep this out due to cost. But there will be an I2S interface on expansion 😀

GUS emulator on a add-on module with RP2040 (or PicoGUS without DAC):
Can the i2s input interface of the ES1869 (DAC inside ES1869) be used instead of a PCM5100 DAC in front of the i2s output (GPIO pins) of the RP2040?

Project: SB-XXXL, Extensive Sound Cards System

Reply 46 of 125, by bertrammatrix

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
keropi wrote on 2024-09-11, 17:07:
bertrammatrix wrote on 2024-09-11, 16:30:

Thanks for that...now I can be driven to insanity some more 😁

Was this on dos or windows xx? Right, so the MK just works with the generic drivers then

pure DOS, using unisound
ESS driver refuses to pass any arguments on the IBM ValuePoint system I am testing because it has an early "pnp bios" and you are supposed to use that to allocate resources (and ofcourse it's not possible on the IBM bios 🤣 )

Thanks. This makes sense, I'm thinking that when I did get it to work under pure dos and got a freeze after it was perhaps something else I overlooked. Looks like the no sound issue under windows is probably something to do with a driver bug or something similar, or the game implements something in a way the ess driver doesn't like

Reply 47 of 125, by bertrammatrix

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
quigonhu wrote on 2024-09-13, 03:38:
Great job guys! Having the O2LT & O2RED this year. Magnificent cards, both of them! […]
Show full quote

Great job guys!
Having the O2LT & O2RED this year. Magnificent cards, both of them!

I have really good memory of using ESS chipped sound cards decades ago. Can't wait for getting this top quality level ES1869 card.
If there is a special version plan, which could make me more eager to obtain one, please let me know-_^

BTW, I don't know if it's proper to ask, do you have any plan on retro PCI sound cards? May AU8830?? 😁

PCI would be interesting.... I wonder if it would be "easy enough" when working with sound card chips that were designed to work with the SB-link interface for perfect dos compatibility. Then again, most motherboards that have SBlink have ISA anyways, so not sure what there would be to gain

Reply 49 of 125, by mockingbird

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
bertrammatrix wrote on 2024-09-15, 17:56:

PCI would be interesting.... I wonder if it would be "easy enough" when working with sound card chips that were designed to work with the SB-link interface for perfect dos compatibility. Then again, most motherboards that have SBlink have ISA anyways, so not sure what there would be to gain

YMF724 with SBLink and a wavetable header would be nice.

mslrlv.png
(Decommissioned:)
7ivtic.png

Reply 51 of 125, by Kahenraz

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Subscribing here for future notifications.

I love-love-LOVE the ES692 and the SOLO-1 is itself a fabulous chip. Looking forward to seeing this card come out. I hope that there will be a healthy amount of stock for this chip for lots of new owners.

The SB Pro channel swapping has been mentioned before. I've also read that some games compensate by swapping the channels, but this can conflict with cards that also do this in hardware, causing them to be flipped back wrongly.

Is it feasible to make swapping the channels configurable by a command-line utility for use in a batch file?

For example:

mk1869.bat /stereo LR
mk1869.bat /stereo RL

Reply 52 of 125, by Duffman

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

@keropi

Any chance you could implement something like this on the card? (the CD-ROM emulation part)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L59Bp61Je4Y

Would be useful for getting CD Audio in DOS without an actual CD-ROM drive.

MB: ASRock B550 Steel Legend
CPU: Ryzen 9 5950X
RAM: Corsair 64GB Kit (4x16GB) DDR4 Veng LPX C18 4000MHz
SSDs: 2x Crucial MX500 1TB SATA + 1x Samsung 980 (non-pro) 1TB NVMe SSD
OSs: Win 11 Pro (NVMe) + WinXP Pro SP3 (SATA)
GPU: RTX2070 (11) GT730 (XP)

Reply 53 of 125, by keropi

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
Kahenraz wrote on 2024-11-23, 22:52:
[...] Is it feasible to make swapping the channels configurable by a command-line utility for use in a batch file? […]
Show full quote

[...]
Is it feasible to make swapping the channels configurable by a command-line utility for use in a batch file?

For example:

mk1869.bat /stereo LR
mk1869.bat /stereo RL

the ESS chip does not support channel swapping like this from what I have seen :\

Duffman wrote on 2024-11-25, 15:23:

@keropi

Any chance you could implement something like this on the card? (the CD-ROM emulation part)

this is one of the reasons we have the isa passthrough and usb connector on the card - so anyone can develop any addon they want freely
once this is ready we will also release the specs and files for addon development

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 54 of 125, by keropi

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

New production samples arrived from factory - fresh from the oven 😁

We needed some layout adjustments with the major difference being that the USB port is now a USB-C one , this is was necessary because otherwise in most cases the USB-A port would be obscured. Keep in mind these are samples and we did not want to wait longer to get them - so not all parts are optimal: for example there will be color coded jacks on the black card and some passives will be upgraded - there was no stock but they are on order now)

So the MK1869 looks like this now:

fXQ7t3i.jpg

Pt494Fs.jpg

And now for something new: taking inspiration from the original Gravis UltraSound EXTREME card let me present you the MK1869 XTREME
The main obvious change other than color is that the ES690 wavetable gets replaced with a Gravis InterWave 4MB setup.
This one took quite some time to figure out routing so everything fits on a PCB that does not exceed the length of the 16bit ISA slot.
MK1869 XTREME was designed to be a compact yet very capable soundcard and I think that this goal is met 😀

t3I0wNp.jpg

pSps9LT.jpg

ppATYIb.jpg

so that's it for now - next step is manufacture a proper stainless steel bracket and ship some preview units so we get some more feedback on both
thanks for looking!

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 56 of 125, by Aladim

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
mockingbird wrote on 2024-10-20, 14:07:
bertrammatrix wrote on 2024-09-15, 17:56:

PCI would be interesting.... I wonder if it would be "easy enough" when working with sound card chips that were designed to work with the SB-link interface for perfect dos compatibility. Then again, most motherboards that have SBlink have ISA anyways, so not sure what there would be to gain

YMF724 with SBLink and a wavetable header would be nice.

YMF724 would be a fantastic choice for a PCI card, and it runs a lot of DOS tittles perfectly. It can be used on later generation motherboards. Most don’t have WT headers, it would be a nice project for a non isa card.

Reply 57 of 125, by Kahenraz

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
Aladim wrote on 2024-12-24, 18:16:

YMF724 would be a fantastic choice for a PCI card, and it runs a lot of DOS tittles perfectly. It can be used on later generation motherboards. Most don’t have WT headers, it would be a nice project for a non isa card.

I have been casually looking out for these for the past couple of years and have only ever found one, so they do exist. They are just exceedingly rare.

The only caveat is that I don't think there are any YMF7xx drivers for Windows 3.1. DOS, 9x (VxD) and WDM drivers exist though. You can probably still get some sound in Windows 3.1 using the DOS drivers, but this is not optimal.

Reply 58 of 125, by mockingbird

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Kahenraz wrote on 2024-12-24, 20:27:

I have been casually looking out for these for the past couple of years and have only ever found one, so they do exist. They are just exceedingly rare.

Care to back that up with a pic? I have never seen one, and I have seen pics of many variants.

I'm not concerned about Win 3.1... For Win 3.1, build a 486.

mslrlv.png
(Decommissioned:)
7ivtic.png