VOGONS


Media vision Spectrum sound card—worth rescuing?

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Reply 60 of 75, by cyclone3d

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Marmes wrote on 2026-02-12, 10:59:
After a small examination to this card here's what I got: The design is very similar to Aztech Waverider 32+ Sound Card, no jump […]
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After a small examination to this card here's what I got:
The design is very similar to Aztech Waverider 32+ Sound Card, no jumpers to select addresses, nothing. All is made by the palce20v8 and 2 74LS245.
One of the ls245 with palce20v8 does the function of activating wavefront as described on datasheet, the other ls245 only deals with 2 data lines that go to palce20v8 SD0 and SD1.
We need to know the address that activates the chip. WFLITE software allows to input it manually.

The attachment AN_ICS2115.pdf is no longer available

Ooohhhh, that is the one document I had been looking for. Where were you able to find it? I'll try to get it tested in the next few days. The 80+ pages of info from the ChatGPT driver disassembly examination and that may get us to be able to config this card all the way.

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Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 61 of 75, by Marmes

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PRoblem is that wflite, wavetide sf32wav etc are all coded to the addresses of their supported cards. we still don't know which address MVlite uses. making some software and probing the addresses.

Reply 62 of 75, by Ozzuneoj

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keropi wrote on 2026-02-09, 08:46:
I have asked for help from a Korean buyer of pcmidi.eu stuff - maybe we can get the file through him, when I have some news I wi […]
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cyclone3d wrote on 2026-02-09, 07:41:
I found a Korean bulletin board that has the driver for this card. Problem is, access to the download is only available to membe […]
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I found a Korean bulletin board that has the driver for this card. Problem is, access to the download is only available to members and I am having trouble figuring out how to create an account or request an account:
https://lucyweb.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=pd … wr_id=67&page=4
Name of the file is pawdrv.rar

Found the register page: https://lucyweb.net/bbs/register.php
HTTP_403
New membership registration is currently disabled.

Bah!

I have asked for help from a Korean buyer of pcmidi.eu stuff - maybe we can get the file through him, when I have some news I will report back 😀

edit:
got a reply back, the site is not accepting registrations and there is no way to get the file even if you are located in Korea
probably this BBS site is just dead at this point
he will ask on Korean retro-forums in case someone has this or the original drivers archived...

Just curious keropi, but did this Korean acquaintance of yours ever get back to you regarding any posts on Korean forums?

I also wonder if there is any way to contact whoever uploaded the file on that page. If they bothered to upload it they probably still have it.

Since that page is dated less than 10 years ago, I feel like it's a lot more likely to lead us to the files than, for example, the 30 year old archived copy of the original MediaVision site that only had the driver for maybe one year before it was all gone. That was really not a big window for any data hoarders (of which there were far fewer back in 1997) to have grabbed it, and there is the very real possibility that the one or two people that did so may not even be alive or doing things online anymore. 😔

Also, this seems like an excellent place to ask, but it doesn't look like it's possible to make an account without submitting some really odd personal information such as full name, DOB and phone number? It says if the info doesn't match your ID then they can't verify your account. Very odd. Maybe this is normal in Korea? Anyway, I doubt I would be able to make an account since I'm in the US.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 63 of 75, by keropi

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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-02-12, 19:37:

[...]
Just curious keropi, but did this Korean acquaintance of yours ever get back to you regarding any posts on Korean forums?

no news yet, if I have something I will post about it

🎵 🎧 MK1869, PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 64 of 75, by Marmes

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The last option is to make a new code for the palce20v8. To make it work with 330 or 300 address. But that would kill the purpose of having this original.

Reply 65 of 75, by cyclone3d

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Marmes wrote on 2026-02-13, 11:23:

The last option is to make a new code for the palce20v8. To make it work with 330 or 300 address. But that would kill the purpose of having this original.

Once I get a chance... Maybe this weekend, I am going to make some new scanning code to see if I can get a response. From what it looks like according to the disassembly / code analysis, is that it sends commands to one address and then looks for returns from another address.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 66 of 75, by Marmes

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My friends,
Special thanks to Lucy Lee from Korea, here it is! Please see if it works!

The attachment pawdrv.rar is no longer available

Reply 67 of 75, by keropi

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Marmes wrote on 2026-02-16, 10:51:

My friends,
Special thanks to Lucy Lee from Korea, here it is! Please see if it works!

The attachment pawdrv.rar is no longer available

the elusive driver is finally found! excellent! 😁

The attachment Image2.jpg is no longer available
The attachment Image1.jpg is no longer available

🎵 🎧 MK1869, PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 68 of 75, by Ozzuneoj

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Marmes wrote on 2026-02-16, 10:51:

My friends,
Special thanks to Lucy Lee from Korea, here it is! Please see if it works!

The attachment pawdrv.rar is no longer available

Amazing!! Thank you Lucy Lee! I assume this is the Lucy of LucyWeb that had the file in 2017, correct?

So glad you were able to track her down. Just out of curiosity, are the rest of the files from that site available online anywhere or did she send you this one directly?

Man... after 30 years these cards can finally work again. I will try to get mine tested out as soon as I can. I'll be curious to know whether the Wavefront synth on this card has any or all of the MIDI quirks that people have said the PAS16 and Jazz16 had. I have never heard the issues personally, so I don't really know what to look for.

By the way, would it be possible to have the two threads about this card merged? That might be good since this is basically a continuation of the search started in the other thread.

keropi has bumped that thread in the meantime, so thank you for linking them in that way. 😀

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 69 of 75, by cyclone3d

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AWESOMESAUCE !!!!!!! We finally have it.

edit: deleted my previous comment.

The manual install for without Windows 3.2 (manual.bat) seems to not be able to extract the second disk image. Not sure what the problem is.

Looking at the batch file, it seems like it should work but just throws an error.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 70 of 75, by keropi

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cyclone3d wrote on 2026-02-16, 19:06:
AWESOMESAUCE !!!!!!! We finally have it. […]
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AWESOMESAUCE !!!!!!! We finally have it.

edit: deleted my previous comment.

The manual install for without Windows 3.2 (manual.bat) seems to not be able to extract the second disk image. Not sure what the problem is.

Looking at the batch file, it seems like it should work but just throws an error.

this is indeed weird, it errors out... but with -l you can get the file list...

using the command: compress medvsn.2 c:\some-dir\*.* -d -i will decompress the archive just fine...

Last edited by keropi on 2026-02-16, 20:21. Edited 1 time in total.

🎵 🎧 MK1869, PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 71 of 75, by keropi

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Ok I found the issue
the batch file has wrong commands, it wants to extract files from the 2nd archive that do not exist there - instead they are present in the 1st archive
easiest way is to edit the specific sections to make them use the 1st archive:

%1\compress medvsn.2 %2\system\*.* DLL -o -d
%1\compress medvsn.2 %2\*.* INI -o -d
%1\compress medvsn.2 %1\diag\*.* DIAG -o -d

(instead of medvsn.2 you need to use medvsn.1)

also this command will fail since the 2nd archive does not have files in it's "root directory" :
%1\compress medvsn.2 %1\*.* -o -d

I do not have the card so I cannot really test if the windows driver will work OK after these changes...

🎵 🎧 MK1869, PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 72 of 75, by Marmes

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After all this is corrected , it should be uploaded to vogons drivers. We cannot loose this anymore .😁

Reply 73 of 75, by cyclone3d

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Yeah, medvisn.2 only has Windows files in it.... well, there are some .mid files you could play in DOS. I think the stock batch would work fine if it wasn't run only for DOS. I will upload to vogonsdrivers.

The driver does of course work.

The Wavefront initializes and plays whether or not the MPU jumper is set to enable or disable.

The stock driver doesn't look like it allows for setting the active MPU routing. I already made a utility that lets me select the Waveblaster header or the MIDI out (joystick port). I wonder if the JAZZ16 has another setting that will let us select the Wavefront.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 74 of 75, by JidaiGeki

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Amazing, amazing work - thanks to all of you legends, and extra thanks to Ms Lee! I’ll have a go with it soon too, my USB floppy just died at an inopportune time … maybe someone needs to flag it with the DOS Reloaded guys too!

@cyclone, is this info of any use?

“Media Vision Seeks Connection

Following in the tradition of the old Pro Audio Spectrum sound cards, Media Vision's latest wavetable board is called the "Pro Audio Wavetable PAW-200G." It features a General MIDI synthesizer with 512 KB of sample ROM. It also includes a Yamaha OPL-3 chip, Media Vision's own "Jazz" chipset, a wave port for adding another wavetable card, and a few jumpers. A CD-ROM connection is only available for IDE ATAPI drives.

The software is installed entirely under Windows, and after this procedure, the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files will have a few entries added. The installation software adds a PROS.SYS driver to the CONFIG.SYS file, which initializes the card. Nothing works without this program. Unfortunately, the driver remains resident in memory and does not "remove" itself, as was the case with the old Spectrum cards.

It only uses 7 KB of RAM, which should be available even in a fully loaded system. There's good news regarding compatibility: Adlib and Sound Blaster recognized every piece of software we tested with the card; in Sound Blaster mode, the PAW-200G also supports the "Pro" version with 44.1 kHz, 8-bit, and stereo. The card's MPU interface, however, proved problematic. Unfortunately, Media Vision decided not to connect the General MIDI sound engine to the MPU port via hardware. Therefore, if a game uses the MPU interface, the General MIDI synthesizer on the PAW-200G initially remains silent. The connection is established by the program MVLITE.EXE, which integrates the installation routine into the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. This program also remains resident in memory and consumes approximately 28 KB. Aside from this almost unbearable RAM loss, experience has shown that such drivers cause problems when games run in protected mode. The Media Vision driver is no exception: "Heretic" and "Shadow Caster" run, but the newer games "System Shock" and "Descent" do not. A wavetable board, if connected, will work even without this driver.”

From https://archive.org/details/PC-Player-German- … de/1up?q=mvlite

Reply 75 of 75, by shoyoninja

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WOW I have one of these cards and was looking for the drivers for the last 2 years, mine is the SCSI version, gonna try it asap! Thank you so much!