VOGONS


First post, by Gordo

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Hey all

A while back I picked up this unidentified 8bit sound card. It looks like some type of Sound Blaster 2.0 clone?
Does anyone know what it is? Are there drivers/software for it?
I threw it in an old PC and games seem to think its a OPL2. Pictures attached.

Reply 2 of 4, by zuldan

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You don’t need drivers. Are you getting any sound from the card? If not, make sure the settings your using are what the jumpers are configured to and set the blaster environment variable in autoexec.bat. Make sure the PSU is providing the card with -5v.

Reply 3 of 4, by Gordo

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Yep it works without any drivers. OPL2 clone. Need to do a few more tests and play more games to see how good the sound quality is.

Reply 4 of 4, by Jo22

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You don’t need drivers.

Yesn't. The card itself doesn't - it's a Protac, which is a ThunderBoard compatible.
So it's Sound Blaster 1.5 with extras, essentially. Almost Sound Blaster 2.0, so to say (can do auto-init DMA). The Pro AudioSpectrum 16 has an on-board ThunderBoard, too.
Windows 3.1 has a ThunderBoard driver shipped. So it's not just another SB compatible. It has historic value! 🙂

However, there are DOS drivers for AdLib and 8-Bit Sound Blaster cards.

There's sound.com, for example, which shipped with the AdLib Music Synthesizer card.

The Sound Blaster counterpart is sb-sound.com, which is an alternative but not fully compatible with sound.com.
Because it may use SB FM i/o ports rather than AdLib FM i/o ports, among other differences.

Some of the Legend Games (Spellcasting series, Erik the Unready etc) required them.

(In case you wonder, sbfmdrv.com is another FM Music driver, for PLAYCMF.EXE, a CMF music file player.)

Last and least, there's ct-voice.drv for sound effects.
Some games rely on this to have sound effects.

More information:
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/12/s … -dos-games.html
SB drivers: http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1692
Protac/TB drivers: http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=514
AdLib drivers: http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=145

PS: These drivers can come in handy in emulators, too.

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