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Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-05-19, 09:29

Have some time issues, so not too much to report... Anyway, managed to finish new test card design and started the PCB tracing (hate this part !).

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-04-17, 17:45

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

Official number for the smallest NIOS II - around 750 LEs. Kind of "Hello world" NIOS II project takes around 1300 LEs (on MAX10). 4K MAX10 in QFP package is around $15. But it has only a bit more than 16K of memory - could be not enough...

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-04-16, 17:19

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

If a combination of FPGA and uC is on the table, I'd like to put forward the Zynq family again. Just the ability to reduce parts count is very attractive. First of all, I have exactly ZERO experience with Xilinx, so not looking into Zynq at all... Also, it's very possible that using FPGA+hard CPU …

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-04-15, 12:10

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

you need a CPLD or FPGA anyway and those will be 3.3V so there's no point going with any 5V parts, just use 3.3V parts exclusively behind level translators. Much more parts to choose from and much better cost on them too. Exactly, it's what I'm planning to do When you say MIDI interface, are you …

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-04-14, 12:41

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

Oh, well. My condolences.. :( I hope you can fix it somehow.. It's a good opportunity to make upgraded card with MIDI and CODEC. Just annoying to be delayed with the firmware development... Which kind of optocouplers do you use, if I may ask ? Already had 6N136 Since you're looking for a new MCU …

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-04-13, 18:22

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

Unfortunately, killed my card while connecting the optocoupler interface, wasn’t careful enough 🙁 Will take some time to update the card with MIDI interface and make new one.

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-04-10, 00:22

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

Jo22 wrote: How about the Zilog 80 ? It's old, had been copied a thousand times and it's an eternal classic. 😀 It’s not MCU - will require at least external ROM/RAM. Also can find a number of other reasons not to use it. Most important one for me - I don’t like Z80 😀

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-04-08, 19:22

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

I would prefer that over ARM, because of the openness, OK, I will repeat my question again :) - what does "openness" mean in this situation ? Just trying to understand how this RISC-V is different from, for example, STM32 ARM MCU in our particular case ? Would you mind to provide some example why …

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-04-07, 19:45

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

For the music part, personally I would like to see original hardware used as much as possible, particularly the OPL3 chips and the Tandy compatible sound chips. I already have mentioned before, that with this approach everything is WAY easier And we wouldn't have to start from scratch here. We …

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-04-02, 17:11

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

Is the objective to duplicate the hardware as closely as possible or is the priority on duplicating software compatibility and audio output (with select improvements) irrespective of how this is accomplished? Exactly... Personally for me just making an accurate replica of SB is not interesting. And …

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-04-01, 15:56

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

There is another project from the same time, but a bit different approach - it’s very close to the original SB, uses Russian clone of 8051. BTW, I have completed and tested a firmware for all DSP 2.0 commands (no ADC part yet, just DAC). Everything is written without any NIOS-specific things, so …

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-03-25, 17:29

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

Tiido wrote: TLV320AIC3204 caught my eye. Looks very nice ! For now will stay with 8731 (have some experience with it), but use TLV if need more analog inputs. Thanks !

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-03-25, 15:44

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

Simple linear interpolation will fail badly with FM output, all the noise type sounds (such as precussion) will sound very different from my experience, elaborate methods are required to get output that doesn't add any flavor and it can be hard to achieve. Any chance you can point me at proper …

Re: Sound Blaster 16 Clones

Posted on 2018-03-25, 14:26

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

Woolie Wool wrote: A fully functional, clean-sounding SB16 with a good MPU-401 and wavetable header would be the ultimate DOS sound card for anyone but a GUS diehard. Being discussed right now - Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-03-25, 14:22

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

I'm not a super big fan of a soft core in an FPGA, especially when it makes no economic sense. Some small ARM chip + FPGA will cost way less than just FPGA that can hold equivalent of that ARM chip also. Especially if a soft core requires additional external memory chip... But for experiments I …

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-03-24, 19:02

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

you will need at least a CPLD to handle all the address decode and DMA tasks. It's exactly why I have mentioned "a few 74xx ICs"... Also looked into CPLD + MCU scenario - still possible to get 5V tolerant CPLDs... FPGA only or FPGA + MCU/CPU is the way to go. "Soft" MCU inside of FPGA seems most …

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-03-24, 18:04

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

Would a modern Cortex M4 have enough performance to emulate SB, SB Pro, and SB 16 with sufficiently low latency to be acceptable? Pretty sure, M4 is WAY MORE than enough for SB Pro/16. BUT - if we talk about some other stuff mentioned at the beginning of this thread, we may need extra ICs (for …

Re: Why not recreate the "perfect" 8-bit Sound Blaster clone as a project?

Posted on 2018-03-24, 16:18

by newold86

in Marvin \ Sound

Half an hour ago finished testing first part of firmware for SB (commands available at DSP rev 1.0) It’s written in C, so easily portable to (almost) any MCU. At the moment, I’m doing this on my FPGA card, using “soft” CPU NIOS II - extremely flexible approach. Biggest issue - a have never written …