Re: Newly made PCMCIA sound card

Posted on 2021-03-17, 06:36

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

okay got it, so for sure there is a use. I did not think about the slightly newer machines that have windows only cards. Would it be acceptable if I were to implement the capabilities of the original sound blaster generally? this is the easiest path given there is a lot of information out there on …

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Re: Newly made PCMCIA sound card

Posted on 2021-03-17, 04:31

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

okay sorry to reply to myself again, not sure proper protocol, edit previous post anyway, I think there is actually a possibility I can do this, it would not use the ibm drivers as it is a bit too complex I think to emulate a card enough. It would need to be my own enabler/tsr which I have started …

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Re: What's the difference between HardMPU and PCMIDI?

Posted on 2021-03-15, 21:01

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Does SoftMPU (and by extension HardMPU) not support recording? I know very little about this, but if PCMIDI is a direct replica of an old card, does it run into the issues of overflowing MT-32 etc when run on faster machines?

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Re: Newly made PCMCIA sound card

Posted on 2021-03-15, 19:37

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Absolutely perfect, thank you! Okay so easy part so far, I reconstructed the cis and I can get detected like the card, and resources get configured to it etc. some of the other stuff though I can see it attempting to load that DSP code, so I am trying to trick it into thinking that worked as all I …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-15, 19:34

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I recently got hung note using HardMPU and a midi score (SamnMax Hit the Road), using multiple external midi devices. Switching to the MT32 score and MUNT and the issue went away. No idea if HardMPU is the problem, have used it without issues on many other games. The creator of HardMPU would need …

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Re: Newly made PCMCIA sound card

Posted on 2021-03-15, 18:43

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

What would be quite helpful would be if somebody could dump the CIS off the ibm card, with that along with the drivers I could work backwards to make something compatible with the existing software. I don't mind doing this, but I have no idea how. As for the drivers, here they are. I include the …

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Re: Newly made PCMCIA sound card

Posted on 2021-03-15, 08:32

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

You've probably seen the IBM patent related to the IBM card? https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/93/f0/eb/61bab7d9c6055e/US5768631.pdf I'm not an expert unfortunately, but looks like there are a lot of technical details expalining how it all works, and it can be useful for someone who is …

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Re: Newly made PCMCIA sound card

Posted on 2021-03-15, 07:49

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have the PCMCIA Intellegent MPU-401 fully working now, and no issue to have onboard general midi chip. same with the OPL3 it was no issue. I am currently trying to implement a method compatible to that of the mwave ibm card, to get soundblaster compatibility without dma. This is awesome! Do you …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-15, 07:42

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

sorry to reply to myself. So I think I have taken this as far as needed for now, I did notice what I think you call a "hung note" during playback. I will look at rebuilding the hardmpu software this week so I can extend the width of the /IDW signal, currently I think I measured it at around 250ns …

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Re: Newly made PCMCIA sound card

Posted on 2021-03-15, 00:37

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

no major issues I know of regarding pcmcia sound cards aside from the fact we just cant get them. so the goal here is to produce a compatible card that can be used. space is not that big of a deal these days, components are so small I actually look for bigger options I can reflow at home myself and …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-14, 01:23

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I had some other signal issues I fixed and it is now working including the old sierra games. I have to apologize to that poor VLSI chip, it actually is not that bad.

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-13, 04:32

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I found a schematic from 1987 of a roland ISA card for interfacing the MPU-401 and it showed the interrupt connection how I thought it should be so I implemented that change and I was also able to assign my card 330h and IRQ9 on a normal laptop with regular card services and I am able to open the …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-13, 03:35

by

by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I found a schematic from 1987 of a roland ISA card for interfacing the MPU-401 and it showed the interrupt connection how I thought it should be so I implemented that change and I was also able to assign my card 330h and IRQ9 on a normal laptop with regular card services and I am able to open the …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-12, 07:10

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

So I have run into an issue of sorts. The SCP55 enabler for dos from Roland allocates 330h and IRQ5 for the MPU-401 interface. The enabler that has been written for the HP100/200LX sets 330h and IRQ3 I believe, which I attempted modifying to use IRQ2/9 but I do not understand how to deal with the …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-09, 08:51

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Basically, we would need to find framekit, receptacle and plug that are available. I would much rather this not be a fixed cable as I did have the use case in mind where it is strictly playing out of the laptop speaker. Here's what I found in terms of connectors. Digikey has 49 of these plugs …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-09, 08:32

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

adding the external midi connection does not create a technical issue beyond the mechanical aspect. I could use two pins on the connector to detect when external dongle was plugged in and disable the onboard synth, or maybe I make a utility to disable it, all of that is easy just have to decide what …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-08, 22:05

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I guess I thought because it was for a laptop nobody wanted external midi. I think in this case we would go with a "regular" card connector, and can have some options for various audio as well as the midi and potentially analog gameport. the issue with those connectors, I am able to buy the …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-08, 08:31

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Impressive stuff. Just realised I saw it in my twitter feed too when LGR commented. I'm curious about this sentence: not sure about exposing external midi port, but anybody can adapt this as desired. Do you mean that by default, your design won't have a MIDI out port to drive an external module? My …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-08, 07:46

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Currently identifies itself like a Roland SCP-55 so I could use the same drivers / enabler. I am still unclear on this interrupt implementation, I will need to spend more time understanding the MPU-401 It seems to work however, although I do not have any midi device as I ordered the incorrect …

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Re: HardMPU, anyone?

Posted on 2021-03-07, 09:21

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by yyzkevin

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

While I was writing the equation for the gate array I was having some trouble understanding the interrupt mechanism. I am not sure if I am missing something, but can the board only drive the interrupt line during a read on the command port, is that the intended behavior? Now that will be awesome. …

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