IBM EGA and Commander Keen 4-6, Keen Dreams

Posted on 2019-05-12, 02:39

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

My IBM EGA card, fully upgraded to 256KB, has an issue with Commander Keen's later graphics engine. The issue is randomly wrong-colored pixels appearing in the main game. These pixels can be "corrected" in many places by scrolling the so that they are no longer visible on the screen and then …

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Re: Replicas of Covox Speech Thing, FTL Sound Adapter and SiliconSoft SoundJr

Posted on 2019-04-15, 20:12

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have added an additional resistor pack to the FTL Sound Adapter replica for short circuit prevention. FTL_Sound_Adapter_replica_3d.png Without these additional resistors that are connected in series with the control lines, using the joystick port could potentially damage CMOS-based parallel ports …

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Re: Tandy 3 Voice Sound - SN76489 ISA Soundcard Project

Posted on 2019-04-13, 17:10

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

If you use a SN76496 with the clone card, shouldn't its audio input pin be grounded to avoid picking up noise?

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Re: Tandy 3 Voice Sound - SN76489 ISA Soundcard Project

Posted on 2019-04-13, 16:30

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

It seems to me that unless one of these testers was using a genuine NCR8496 chip, that you may get lucky with a chip marked TI SN76489 if you want the behavior that makes Maniac Mansion and some other games sound like they would sound on a later Tandy 1000. Either Texas Instruments changed the …

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Re: OPL3LPT : OPL3 FM Synthesis on parallel port

Posted on 2019-02-27, 20:13

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I just bought one, anxiously waiting for it to arrive. Do you know how much current does OPL3LPT draw/needs? The only way I can think of to draw 5V from my 486DX laptop is via the PS/2 port. A quick check online shows that the VCC connector supplies 5V with max 275mA. The other alternative solution …

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Re: Replicas of Covox Speech Thing, FTL Sound Adapter and SiliconSoft SoundJr

Posted on 2019-02-16, 00:23

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I've often wondered if the FTL joystick adapter really worked and Dungeon Master's PC port actually supported it. The adapter is really simple, one of the parallel port grounds is connected to the common ground of an Atari-style joystick. Then each of the five "buttons" on that joystick is connected …

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Re: IBM PS/1 Audio Card.

Posted on 2019-02-15, 21:49

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by Great Hierophant

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

I have a PS/1 with PS/1 Audio Card now and test some Stuff. Is there anyway to access MIDI Devices from DOS ? i only get it working on Windows 3.x. Are you trying to play a SMF via the PSG on the PS/1 Audio Card or are you trying to access the MIDI ports to send SMF data to a MIDI module? The …

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Re: VCS - A capture utility for certain Datapath capture cards

Posted on 2019-02-12, 18:10

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by Great Hierophant

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

I learned that alias mode requires a comma after each number, so 534,472,720,400 should work.

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Re: Trying to add Amstrad PC1512 special video mode.

Posted on 2019-02-12, 17:10

by

by Great Hierophant

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

It is not impossible, but the Amstrad PC-1512 was like the Tandy 1000 of many European countries, the first IBM PC compatible that was close to 100% compatible and sold for consumer-affordable prices. Amstrad hit it big as a result. The PC-1512 has its quirks when it came to CGA graphics, so putting …

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Re: VCS - A capture utility for certain Datapath capture cards

Posted on 2019-02-02, 19:32

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by Great Hierophant

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

I can't get the alias setting working with VCS 1.2.5. I have followed the readme's instructions. I created a text file with only the numbers 534 472 720 400 and the program refuses to load the file. The terminal states that "Expected a 4-parameter row in the alias file". Any ideas?

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Re: List of SBPro (CT-1330) stereo YM3812 supported games?

Posted on 2019-01-11, 13:58

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

ripsaw8080 beat me to it. I must have used Cloudschatze's Quest Studios post because I list the same games as he did. I did touch up the language on the list. I had no idea there was some kind of Wayback Machine archive of the Quest Studios' forum. So much was lost when that forum went down, so I'm …

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Re: MediaVision Thunderboard

Posted on 2019-01-06, 04:42

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The Thunderboard is a cut-down clone of the Sound Blaster 1.5 with DSP v2.00. It does not have upgrade sockets for Game Blaster chips and cannot communicate with MIDI devices at all through the joystick port. The only advantage it has over the Sound Blaster 1.5 and its successors is that it has …

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Re: Nice 8-bit Soundcard

Posted on 2018-12-24, 16:52

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by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

This no-name Adlib clone has a very nice PC Speaker passthrough. It's superior to the PC Speaker inputs on the Sound Blasters, which apply some filters that do ugly things to the sound.

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Re: IBM PS/1 Audio Card.

Posted on 2018-12-22, 19:47

by

by Great Hierophant

in DOSBox Development

in DOSBox Development

Is there any Documentation how the DAC works ? :) Ahh i see.. These two activate the IBM PS/1 Audio Card. It is always situated at ports 0200, 0202-0204, so there's no need for a "base" value. is it dma driven ? or more like a covox device ? It's an in-between, think of it like a more capable …

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Re: 3DFX cards - too expensive

Posted on 2018-12-03, 15:31

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I think you really need to set your sights more on what you can afford vs. what you want. Voodoo 5s and Voodoo 2s seem to be the ones going for the most, so you may need to accept and embrace the less-expensive Voodoo, Voodoo Rush, Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo 3 cards. However, we are fortunate that …

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Re: Covox Sound Master Reverse Engineering / Replica

Posted on 2018-11-11, 14:48

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I think your current layout is "close enough", I'm definitely on board with one. I like that an AY-3-8910 or YM2149 can be used for the sound chip with only a slight reduction in game support. I'll fix that joystick error in my article. These Covoxes become more mysterious as we learn more about …

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Re: Covox Sound Master Reverse Engineering / Replica

Posted on 2018-11-10, 15:07

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

But for the "original replica" what should be done? 1) Component placement and routing: a) should be left as close to original as possible (even if it degrades output quality and looks bad); b) can be re-done in some places to get some improvements; c) should be fully made from scratch (as an …

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Re: Covox Sound Master Reverse Engineering / Replica

Posted on 2018-09-29, 15:50

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

matze79 wrote: Are there Games supporting AY Music Features ? Yes, my list is reasonably comprehensive : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/09/t … nd-devices.html

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Re: Tandy 3 Voice Sound - SN76489 ISA Soundcard Project

Posted on 2018-09-14, 12:50

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The differences between a true TI SN96489/96 and a clone NCR8496 or Tandy PSSJ are discussed here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-journey-of-pcjrtandy-sound-chip.html I assume everyone is using TI marked chips in their cards, but different chips appear to exhibit different behavior …

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Re: Tandy 3 Voice Sound - SN76489 ISA Soundcard Project

Posted on 2018-09-10, 12:27

by

by Great Hierophant

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

What do I need softwarewise? Can I simply fire up Zak McKracken or Maniac Mansion and it will detect the card? If you have the card configured for address C0h, it will just work as-is (on PC/XT class machines at least, ATs and newer have the second DMA controller at address C0h, in which case using …

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