VOGONS


IBM PS/1 Audio Card.

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Reply 20 of 91, by jmk

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Myloch wrote:

'm looking for some old tape recordings of Ps/1 songs I made when I was a little child (yes, I was a crazy maniac), if they are not lost in time, that could help.

Dunno if it can help jmk, I have got some old ibm hardware pieces (one of them is the ps/1 audio/joystick card), I can snap some hires photos of the board front/back and post them here.

I can think of two possibilities (for a partial explanation):

1. I read on an old Sega document that the SN chip has a slight degree of error that can have a slight effect on frequency. (I can't find the document that gave the exact values just now).

2. The master clock frequency is slightly off.

Now, I can imagine that quite a few people on and off this forum would be very interested to see pictures of the audio card! I've certainly not seen any example of it anywhere on the web. (Do you have a Covox Sound Master as well? 😉 )

Another thing you can do is look for the SN76... chip and see the exact model number. Secondly, look for a silver component (possibly with a small x printed on it) which is a crystal. Using the writing on that component it should be possible to work out the exact master frequency.

Many thanks for these things. 😁

Old tapes of computer music... Yes, I made a tape of Sinclair Spectrum music when I was young. 😊

Reply 21 of 91, by Myloch

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Here are some photos (I will do better ones when I'll have some free time, if it's necessary):

http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/433/photo0263ey7.jpg
http://myloch.altervista.org/_altervista_ht/DSCN8599.JPG
http://myloch.altervista.org/_altervista_ht/DSCN8600.JPG
http://myloch.altervista.org/_altervista_ht/DSCN8604.JPG

...and sorry, no Covox Soundmaster for me 😉

Reply 22 of 91, by jmk

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Great, thanks, I can see what I'm emulating. 😀

Sadly, there are no chips on there that look like the SN chip or even a clone of it. Probably simulated with logic inside one of those bigger chips (I'm not a hardware expert).

As for the crystal, the only thing that could be it is the blue thing with the silver top (near the bottom-left "CR1" on the upper side of the board, listed as CR1X on the lower side of the board). Are there any numbers or letters written on it anywhere?

As for the idea of a register which modifies the output frequency slightly, there is port 0204 which is mysterious, possibly related to its recording ability, but not used in Bush Buck at all and is mostly set to 0.

Reply 24 of 91, by Myloch

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Here is the Ps/1 motherboard.
http://myloch.altervista.org/_altervista_ht/DSCN8605.JPG
The sound card was connected to this mobo via one of the two "24 pins".

yes, there is a "D" on the soundcard "CR1" component.

Hope this can be of some help.

Reply 25 of 91, by jmk

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Thanks...

Now, if the silver part near the connector marked 143NDK1X is a 14.318180 Mhz crystal and we divide that by 4 to get the most likely master clock... then it would be 3.579545 Mhz... which is the same as what I've got! (I copied it from the Tandy sound core). 😕

Reply 27 of 91, by jmk

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Sorry, I was tired! 😵

"if the silver part marked 143NDK1X (near the 34-pin connector) is a 14.318180 Mhz crystal and we divide that by 4 to get the most likely master clock... then it would be 3.579545 Mhz."

Of course, that is making an assumption, since I can't follow the tracks directly into the 34-pin connector.

Reply 28 of 91, by Myloch

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I'm not a programmer or a hardware expert, but maybe those pitch/speed problems due to the fact that the real Ps1 audio card doesn't use real SN/DAC chips but similar and not perfectly compatible with tandy ones used in the emulation.

However with this second beta, emulation is awesome: no more sound repeting/skipping in disney games, sound card is always properly detected and no more garbled samples in Silpheed.

New tested games:
World class chess (sargon V) - OK
Red Baron - OK

Reply 29 of 91, by jmk

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It is possible that there could be subtle hardware differences, even some versions of the actual chip have been reported to have slightly different performance and white noise/feedback differences.

Time for a test list of everything so far, including my observations and Myloch's.

PS/1 Audio Card List (OK unless specified):

  • Prince of Persia (v1.0 and v1.3) - SN, DAC (IRQ).
    Prince of Persia 2 - SN, DAC (IRQ).
    Space Quest IV (VGA) - SN, DAC (Manually fed).
    King's Quest V (EGA) - SN.
    Bard's Tale III - SN.
    Mario Andretti's Racing Challenge - SN.
    BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks Revenge - SN.
    Galleons of Glory - SN, DAC (IRQ).
    Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Enhanced - SN, DAC (IRQ).
    Joe Montana Football - SN.
    F-14 Tomcat - SN, DAC (samples sound odd, needs to be looked at).
    Stunt Island - DAC (Manually fed).
    Bush Buck - SN.
    Roger Rabbit 2 - DAC (Manually fed).
    Sargon V - SN.
    Red Baron - Reported OK.
    Silpheed (PS/1 Version) - Reported OK.
    Rocketeer - Reported OK.

Not working:

  • A-Train (mentions PS/1 sound, but doesn't work).
    Ghostbusters II (listed on MobyGames, but no sign of support).

Reply 30 of 91, by Kippesoep

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About Ghostbusters II... it also supports Sound Blaster, even though that is not found in the setup program or on the original box sticker. It just autodetects the card. That support is buggy as heck as it has an infinite loop in its IRQ handler (for which I've written a patch) causing most ppl to think the game just crashes in PCs (or DOSBox) with SB support enabled.

Maybe something similar is going on with PS/1 audio (have you tried using the PC speaker version or Tandy support while having the Tandy ports disabled? -- daft, but I wouldn't put it past the original programmers of that game).

My site: Ramblings on mostly tech stuff.

Reply 31 of 91, by Myloch

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there is an inaccuracy in the gamelist: King's quest 5 also uses DAC, start a game and go 2 or 3 screens to the west (where there are the gypsies) and wait, you'll hear a cow bellow sometimes.
Larry 5 & 6 😊 and Castle of dr.brain work flawless with ps/1 (SN/DAC) apart some subtle dac pitch differences with soundblaster counterpart (like I previously said about KQ5, but maybe it even occurs on real machine, I dunno). Leather goddesses of phobos 2 has some random background noise.

yeah I had that problem with ghostbusters 2, if you use adlib/soundblaster it crashes in the intro with "Vigo the scourge of Carpathia" (it used to crash on real hardware, not only dosbox), an old patch is available for that (GB2FIX.EXE)

P.S: However I don't think GB2 and A-train support Ps/1 audiocard! 😳

Reply 32 of 91, by Myloch

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It's february 2011 and the last experimental build version begins to show his age. It's good level emulation and (I think) it uses more or less the same code as the tandy 3voices. Imho it would deserve his little space in the main dosbox betas or at least an update to the latest dosbox version/tandy code updates. It would make happy all the ps1 fans out there 🤣 😉

Reply 33 of 91, by ykhwong

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Thanks for letting me know this, Myloch. 😀

The source that jmk released cannot be simply applied to the latest SVN of DOSBox. Lots of things have been changed since 0.72.

I am not sure if this new patch works fine.
[EDIT] Removed the attachment. A newer patch is available.

Last edited by ykhwong on 2011-04-01, 05:18. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 36 of 91, by Myloch

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happy to hear new interest on this project!
Soon we'll able to play some games like silpheed using mt32 and ps1 digital effects at the same time!

So far I tested Stunt island, prince of persia, prince of persia 2, Sargon V, roger rabbit, rocketeer, silpheed, red baron and bushbuck on ykhwong's test build and nothing seems broken.

Even old bugs like some metallic/static sounds on the background in "leather goddeses of phobos 2" and weird noise when you pickup objects on king's quest five. This affects italian and french floppy disk versions. English talkie edition is working flawless.

update: I discovered new game that supports Ps/1 audio card, it's King's quest 6 (music and sound), works ok with ykhwong testbuild.

Reply 37 of 91, by ykhwong

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Fixed a tiny bug in amstrad graphics. This would be my last update of the patch.

Attachments

  • Filename
    ps1.diff
    File size
    46.31 KiB
    Downloads
    488 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 38 of 91, by Mau1wurf1977

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That's awesome!

Maybe you guys can help with getting Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum to work?

I opened a thread here: Re: Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum and Pro Audio Spectrum 16?

But not much came out of it. I attached a SDK if that helps...

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