wrote:My latest acquisition: the Turtle Beach Maui wavetable upgrade card.
It's a great looking card - does it need drivers? Or does it just present itself at 330 like an SCC1?
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wrote:wrote:My latest acquisition: the Turtle Beach Maui wavetable upgrade card.
It's a great looking card - does it need drivers? Or does it just present itself at 330 like an SCC1?
Card needs to load the OS. After that it works ok. That is what I recall from mine.
I have Turtle Beach Tropez which is the same card with SB compatibility.
And yes, to get it work you need to run a TSR at the beginning.
As far as I understand, it loads patches to card's RAM memory (like in GUS, the patches are not kept in the ROM).
It's not actually a driver - as the hardware MPU-401 interface of the card does not require any particular drivers to run.
So, on the MIDI side, the tools from Turtle Beach allow manipulation of the wavetable element but are not resident?
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
wrote:I have Turtle Beach Tropez which is the same card with SB compatibility. […]
I have Turtle Beach Tropez which is the same card with SB compatibility.
And yes, to get it work you need to run a TSR at the beginning.
As far as I understand, it loads patches to card's RAM memory (like in GUS, the patches are not kept in the ROM).
It's not actually a driver - as the hardware MPU-401 interface of the card does not require any particular drivers to run.
Similar thing happens with Turtle Beach Multisound Classic: you have to run an utility, which is not TSR, but programs the soundcard internal processor to a certain patch map. The pathes themselves, however, are stored in soundcard's ROM. TB Multisound Classic doesn't support MPU-401, so it is impossible to run it with games that rely on MPU. A game must directly support TB Multisound Classic for it to work. That limits its usage to the very few titles of early 90s.
Hardware comparisons and game system requirements: https://technical.city
Yeah, this is why I consider otherwise excellent Multisound series totally unappealing. I remember reading about some project of a specific driver that was to be made in order to make the card more useful in DOS games. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I own only the Pinnacle from the Multisound series. I don't have the DOS drivers (and would like to get them if anyone has them), but I really like the GM music from it when running DOS games from a Windows DOS box. To me, the 4MB ROM Kurzweil patch set is in the same league as Roland and Yamaha.
wrote:I own only the Pinnacle from the Multisound series. I don't have the DOS drivers (and would like to get them if anyone has them), but I really like the GM music from it when running DOS games from a Windows DOS box. To me, the 4MB ROM Kurzweil patch set is in the same league as Roland and Yamaha.
I doubt there are any DOS drivers for Pinnacle. The Kurzweil synth works out of the box through MPU-401, albeit the PCM part is supported by no games. It may be fixed by creating custom AIL/MSS-compatible drivers (I had such an idea, but my drive to do that is nearly inexistent, given the numerous obstacles provided by complicated and whimsical Pinnacle PCM part architecture).
Last time I tried to run my Pinnacle on my main retro-PC (that is, P4-3066 on an iBase MB800H running Windows 98SE), I failed miserably. Whatever I tried, there always was a memory range conflict between Pinnacle and GeForce FX5700. I tried different video cards but in vain. Perhaps I need a yet older PC.
Hardware comparisons and game system requirements: https://technical.city
I have the original install CD for the Pinnacle, and I read somewhere on Vogons that the CD-ROM install process creates a directory of DOS drivers. However, I can't progress to that point because the Turtle Beach setup process requires a serial number, which didn't come with my card and CD-ROM.
wrote:wrote:My latest acquisition: the Turtle Beach Maui wavetable upgrade card.
It's a great looking card - does it need drivers? Or does it just present itself at 330 like an SCC1?
Yes, it defaults to 330, but you can change the address with jumpers.
There does seem to be a ROM patchset on the card, but you do have to run an initialization program that loads an OS. The default OS is only 100K, so I don't think that they are patches.
No TSR is loaded.
I love the simplicity of the jacks on this card: line in, line out, midi.
wrote:I have Turtle Beach Tropez which is the same card with SB compatibility. […]
I have Turtle Beach Tropez which is the same card with SB compatibility.
And yes, to get it work you need to run a TSR at the beginning.
As far as I understand, it loads patches to card's RAM memory (like in GUS, the patches are not kept in the ROM).
It's not actually a driver - as the hardware MPU-401 interface of the card does not require any particular drivers to run.
Thats not right. The Tropez and also the Maui don't require any TSR to operate.
wrote:Yes, it defaults to 330, but you can change the address with jumpers. […]
wrote:wrote:My latest acquisition: the Turtle Beach Maui wavetable upgrade card.
It's a great looking card - does it need drivers? Or does it just present itself at 330 like an SCC1?
Yes, it defaults to 330, but you can change the address with jumpers.
There does seem to be a ROM patchset on the card, but you do have to run an initialization program that loads an OS. The default OS is only 100K, so I don't think that they are patches.
I love the simplicity of the jacks on this card: line in, line out, midi.
The card has an onboard wavetable ROM with 2MB size. It is the VoiceCrystal Lite soundset. Can't compete with the 4MB soundsets available from Korg, Yamaha and Roland (like boxpressed and I wrote earlier in this thread), but has overall good quality samples. Also the Turtle Beach cards are quiet cards. Especially the Maui is a great companion card for any soundcard you have already installed. Great along your favourite FM music card (Yamaha, SoundBlaster, SoundGalaxy, AudioDrive,..).
Waht you have to load every cold boot is the firmware for the synth. This is processed by the onboard motorola chip, hence the .MOT ending of the firmware files. There is also a MT32 bank switch file available, which works nice with games that use the MT32 default patches like Monkey Island.
www.AmoRetro.de Visit my huge hardware gallery with many historic items from 16MHz 286 to 1000MHz Slot A. Includes more than 80 soundcards and a growing Wavetable Recording section with more than 300 recordings.
Latest addition to the collection: the AOpen AW35 Pro.
I was happy to snag this example because it was new in box for only $7 and uses a wavetable that I didn't have until now: the CS9236.
This is a highly integrated sound card with only two ICs: the CS9236 wavetable and the CS4237 chipset. It came with the original CD-ROM, so DOS installation was a snap. It belongs to the S23 family of cards because the remarks in the new autoexec.bat and config.sys file identify it as such.
SB Pro compatibility is good, and the wavetable is below average. At times it sounds a lot like FM synth. Still, a valued card in the collection for being the only wavetable of its kind.
It loads a tiny 112-byte TSR.
wrote:Yes, it defaults to 330, but you can change the address with jumpers. […]
wrote:wrote:My latest acquisition: the Turtle Beach Maui wavetable upgrade card.
It's a great looking card - does it need drivers? Or does it just present itself at 330 like an SCC1?
Yes, it defaults to 330, but you can change the address with jumpers.
There does seem to be a ROM patchset on the card, but you do have to run an initialization program that loads an OS. The default OS is only 100K, so I don't think that they are patches.
No TSR is loaded.
I love the simplicity of the jacks on this card: line in, line out, midi.
BTW I've been looking for a pinout for the MIDI connector on the Maui card, can't seem to find one anywhere.
I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O
I have this CS9233-CQ based wavetable card, similar to your AOpen card above. The SB Pro voice is fantastic and the GM quite good too, I think. If it weren't for the revolting sounding OPL3 clone it would be a winner. So close yet so far.
Life? Don't talk to me about life.
"AW32 Pro" - That is awesome.
wrote:I have this CS9233-CQ based wavetable card, similar to your AOpen card above. The SB Pro voice is fantastic and the GM quite good too, I think. If it weren't for the revolting sounding OPL3 clone it would be a winner. So close yet so far.
I have almost that exact same card (photo on p. 1 of this thread). I like these off-brand wavetable cards. They're cheap and fun to play around with, and sometimes you find a nice one with a real OPL3 and decent wavetable.
I'm assuming that the S23A with the onboard wavetable chipset cannot be modified to also support using a wavetable daughterboard...
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
wrote:I'm assuming that the S23A with the onboard wavetable chipset cannot be modified to also support using a wavetable daughterboard...
You could solder in a wavetable header block I guess but who knows if it would work - there'd be no point to it really given the range of clone SB Pros out there with a working wavetable header that you could pick up for peanuts.
I'd love to find an AudioDrive based card with a GM chipset on it like this S23A has - that would be a handy little number.
Life? Don't talk to me about life.
It might be interesting to have two different wavetable engines to choose from (Crystal/Dream and Yamaha, for example), but I suspect the card implements just one MIDI audio input to the mixer.
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
wrote:It might be interesting to have two different wavetable engines to choose from (Crystal/Dream and Yamaha, for example), but I suspect the card implements just one MIDI audio input to the mixer.
The Turtle Beach TBS-2000 card I profiled earlier in the thread assigns a different address to its native wavetable than to its MPU-401. So, you could attach an external module and access two different wavetables. This is something that you can do with the AWE32 (EMU8K + external module) only if a game natively supports the AWE32, plus you have to deal with Creative's buggy MPU-401 implementation.
