Re: PCB destroying adhesive found in my Roland Sound Canvas SC-55mkII (inspect your synthesizer!)

Posted on 2022-01-22, 00:46

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

It make me wonder... I have hardly used (let alone maintained) the MT-32 I bought back in 2009. Is that model also prone to this type of corrosion? Or were they simply built better in the (even) earlier days? Maybe I should just open it up and take a look inside, one of these days.

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Re: what will you do when your last hardware fails?

Posted on 2022-01-22, 00:42

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

It might be a fun project to try sourcing radiation-hardened industrial grade variants of retro components. Considering those are meant to be used in satellites, space probes and Mars rovers, and must withstand the hazardous environment of space for years or even decades, they're designed and …

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Re: Can NVME drives be partitioned as MBR and boot in Legacy mode?

Posted on 2022-01-21, 23:56

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

is it possible to migrate a disk image of an installed Windows 10 system from a MBR drive to a UEFI one? Yes, I successfully performed such a migration once. However, you need to do this on a system that can boot in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS mode. (Although it might work in something like …

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Re: Why is YouTube decreasing video resolutions?

Posted on 2022-01-21, 23:50

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Knowing YT and Google's interest in gathering information, I like to think that all the 8K material is still on the servers, at least. Because, once in a blue moon, YT likes to restart converting (re-encode) the original source material to a shiny new codec that's currently in fashion. Something …

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Re: Getting the Roland UM-1EX USB-to-MIDI Adapter Working with DOS Games under 98SE - Possible?

Posted on 2022-01-21, 23:41

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If you're willing to use an NT-based Windows version, you could try VDMSound, which emulates an MPU-401 interface for DOS games and allows you to map Windows MIDI devices to it. I don't have any actual experience with it myself, though.

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Re: The frustrations of the GPU market

Posted on 2022-01-21, 23:25

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

But what will arrive first, too cheap to meter fusion power or Ethereum switching from PoW? ... I jest, but both have been meant to arrive "real soon now" for ages. Point taken, although there's a difference between waiting half a decade and waiting half a century. :joy: However, the Beacon Chain, …

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Re: The frustrations of the GPU market

Posted on 2022-01-21, 22:36

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

I still believe in the potential of blockchain technology, including cryptocurrency and DeFi. It's just that the energy demand of the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism has become too big to justify anymore. It looks like Bitcoin is (unfortunately) not switching to Proof-of-Stake any time soon, but …

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Re: PCI or PCI Express Sound Card for DOS Sound Blaster Sound Effects working on Intel Sandy Bridge Z68 or newer chipset

Posted on 2022-01-19, 12:25

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Both the PCI and PCIe specifications along with the companion bridge specifications cover legacy VGA devices and address decoding. It's definitely a special case that the bus was designed around. Thanks for the info. I guess that makes perfect sense. Legacy VGA compatibility remained necessary even …

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Re: OPL2LPT

Posted on 2022-01-18, 23:23

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by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I was wondering: instead of hard-coding it, how hard would it be to make the I/O base port dynamic in some (or all?) of these patches? Perhaps by obtaining it from the BIOS Data Area (which would be 0040h:0008h for LPT1)? That would allow it to work, regardless of whether LPT1 is located at 0x3BC or …

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Re: PCI or PCI Express Sound Card for DOS Sound Blaster Sound Effects working on Intel Sandy Bridge Z68 or newer chipset

Posted on 2022-01-18, 19:50

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

see attachment! Once again, the community came through. Thanks for sharing this, mihai! :smiley: I uploaded it to the Internet Archive . And ruthan, yes, this particular document talks about parallel and serial ports, but the exact same limitation would apply to any de-facto hardware standard that …

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Re: PCI or PCI Express Sound Card for DOS Sound Blaster Sound Effects working on Intel Sandy Bridge Z68 or newer chipset

Posted on 2022-01-17, 00:55

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Subtractive decoding on the PCIe-to-PCI bridge is required to enable the ability to access legacy resources (which are always below the PCI card's base I/O address). Otherwise, the audio card's legacy functionality (such as FM synth @ 388h) will not function, even under Windows or Linux. That PDF …

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Re: Games with better Disney Sound Source support?

Posted on 2022-01-17, 00:29

by

by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Something more that I could add to the former list: Quest for Glory III demo (non-interactive) from the Sierra Sneak Peeks 1993 CD-ROM , confirmed by digger on 2022-01-17 Quest for Glory IV demo (non-interactive) from the Sierra Sneak Peeks 1993 CD-ROM , confirmed by digger on 2022-01-17 Detailed …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2022-01-16, 22:05

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Congrats on finally getting the DSS! Did you test it? Does it work? Yep, it gets detected and it works flawlessly, "out of the box". And this is on an Asrock J3710M motherboard from 2016. :slightly_smiling_face: Thanks again for pointing out the eBay offer by the way, Bondi. That's why I have this …

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Re: Games with better Disney Sound Source support?

Posted on 2022-01-16, 22:00

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by digger

in Milliways

in Milliways

Shall we start curating a proper list? Perhaps a Google Sheet? Several people here have a Disney Sound Source (including myself, since recently).\ I propose we maintain two lists: Games that we have confirmed to have out-of-the-box support for the Disney Sound Source Games that we have managed (and …

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Re: I got Dune II working with the Disney Sound Source!

Posted on 2022-01-16, 21:02

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

By the way, I just tested it again, this time on actual hardware. :slight_smile: I used a Disney Sound Source that I recently obtained on eBay, on a fairly modern post-ISA PC with a motherboard that still has a header for a legacy printer port. Works great! :smiley: The audio quality of the digital …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2022-01-16, 17:24

by

by digger

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So, I finally have the Disney Sound Source I won in an eBay auction last month. IMG_20220116_173444_HDR_1_disney_sound_source.jpg Like Bondi, I'm interested in studying game compatibility with this device in further detail, particularly on newer PCs. This particular piece of hardware has fascinated …

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Re: Can anybody with AC'97 audio please help me test a DOS player? 😊

Posted on 2022-01-11, 15:28

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Nice to read that there is definitely demand for such a driver or emulator. :slightly_smiling_face: I haven't gotten around to working on this further lately. I've been juggling multipole retro programming hobbies on the side occasionally. Let's see if I can find some time to pick up this project …

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Re: Choosing a good ADC for recording from MIDI synthesizers?

Posted on 2022-01-03, 00:53

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Maybe because instruments are often not used on their own, and syncing up multiple digital sound outputs is not possible with plain spdif. Their are other solutions for that. At first I was a bit confused by your answer, but then I realized that by "instruments" you meant the entire MIDI modules, …

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Re: Roland MT32 - Direct Connection to Serial / COM1 SoftMPU

Posted on 2022-01-02, 17:40

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by digger

in SoftMPU

in SoftMPU

Well, to be fair to you, it was indeed confusing that Roland decided to include a serial cable with a male 25-pin connector instead of a female one, which would have made much more sense, and wouldn't have required either another cable or a gender changer.

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Re: Choosing a good ADC for recording from MIDI synthesizers?

Posted on 2022-01-02, 14:07

by

by digger

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Needless to say, in the case of a (fully) digital synthesizer, such as wavetable synthesizers, the ideal mode of recording would be to find a way to tap into the rendered digital stream before it gets converted to analog. Of course that would likely require some soldering. That also makes me wonder …

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