🤣, blue! 😁

it's a shame that they are extreme rare 😒

Cloudschatze wrote:

http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/pas_x2_s.jpg […]
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schlang wrote:

I still want cloudschatze's 8bit PAS 😀

Black caps, or blue? 🤣

What are those anyway?

8bit pro audio spectrum sound card

schlang wrote:

8bit pro audio spectrum sound card

Reading the wiki, it sounds like Media Vision had an ahem...interesting history 😜

Thanks for posting this, I never even knew these existed 😉

Btw, feel free to inform us about it's performance 😉

well, it's like a soundblaster, only without all the noises, no hissing, no popping and no cracking 😀

Just got CPUs #1, 6 and 7 in the attached photo for ~15 EUR, and successfully tested the Cyrixes on an ISA-386C board.

I still have to figure out how to tell for sure if the 1KB L1 cache is enabled or not, or what the turbo button on this board does exactly... with turbo on the CPU benchmarks just above halfway between a 386DX-40 and a 486DX-33 in NSSI, while turbo off takes it somewhere between 386DX-25 and 386DX-33; the FPU benchmarks the same (twice as much as ULSI 387DX-40) no matter the turbo setting.

Weird readings about this setup are the 13MHz for the CPU reported by Speedsys and the 8KB of L1 cache and no L2 cache reported by NSSI (also regardless of the turbo setting).

I just got a PAS16 card. Are they any good? I can't test it at the moment, because I haven't got any spare time.

in native support it's the 16bit audio card with the best quality you can get

schlang wrote:

in native support it's the 16bit audio card with the best quality you can get

Have you compared the PAS16 to an Mjazz 16 by any chance? I have an MJazz 16 which is basically a SB 16 compatible manufactured by media vision, so no PAS support, but it's a media vision card with SB16 support (and I believe pro as well). Oddball card. I haven't tested it yet though and can only compare it to an Awe64 Gold, a CT32 PNP, and a few SB 16 compatibles.

SavantStrike wrote:

a media vision card with SB16 support (and I believe pro as well).

Are you sure about that? SB16 compatibility was never licenced to competitors. Only the CMI8330 and maybe the ALS100 and their successors are SB16 compatible.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

First off, there's an Asus ISA-486 board. It is, as one might guess from the model name, an ISA 486 board.

I am curious about the ISA-486 mainboard.

1) What does that osciallator do, in the top right hand corner?
2) Are the cache chips not socketed? If so, are you going to desolder them?
3) What is that ISA slot at the bottom of the board, the one that differs from all of the others?
4) What do you intend doing with an ISA only 486?

Also

5) What is special about a slot A mobo, compared to a board such as the Gigabyte GA-7IXE4? Do all slot A mobos use the AMD 750 (751 / 756) chipset? The GA-7IXE4 uses this chipset, but it is socket A, and supports up to a Palomino 1500+ rated CPU. It's got 2 ISA slots.

retro games 100 wrote:

3) What is that ISA slot at the bottom of the board, the one that differs from all of the others?

I expect it's same as on the asus isa-386, a slot for some kind of propietary memory board. The isa slot part is just an isa slot.

retro games 100 wrote:

I am curious about the ISA-486 mainboard. […]
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Old Thrashbarg wrote:

First off, there's an Asus ISA-486 board. It is, as one might guess from the model name, an ISA 486 board.

I am curious about the ISA-486 mainboard.

1) What does that osciallator do, in the top right hand corner?
2) Are the cache chips not socketed? If so, are you going to desolder them?
3) What is that ISA slot at the bottom of the board, the one that differs from all of the others?
4) What do you intend doing with an ISA only 486?

Also

5) What is special about a slot A mobo, compared to a board such as the Gigabyte GA-7IXE4? Do all slot A mobos use the AMD 750 (751 / 756) chipset? The GA-7IXE4 uses this chipset, but it is socket A, and supports up to a Palomino 1500+ rated CPU. It's got 2 ISA slots.

What's special?

The cpu's are in slots man! Slot based processors are retro awesome.

3) What is that ISA slot at the bottom of the board, the one that differs from all of the others?

Probably some sort of memory expansion. I've got a couple of 486 boards with a similar slot. I belive they were proprietary to that motherboard manufacturer although I've never seen one.

In fact looking at Stason it has a picture of one down the bottom of the page:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/AS … 86-ISA-486.html
although the connectors on it look a bit strange, the diagram claims that S1 is in fact a memory expansion slot.

Yep, the slot is for a proprietary 32-bit memory card, basically just adds 8 more SIMM slots. I don't have the card for it, and I'll probably never find one... not that I'm really looking for one to begin with, since the existing 8 SIMM slots are plenty enough.

The oscillator in the corner works just like the oscillator on pretty much every early-'90s board, it controls the CPU speed. To change the processor speed, you change the oscillator. Though one interesting thing about this board is that it has a jumper to switch between 1:1 and 2:1 frequency... so with the 33mhz oscillator in there, I can run it 1:1 for 33mhz CPU speed, or 2:1 for 16mhz CPU speed. (The board officially supports the old 16 and 20mhz 486 chips.)

And the cache chips are socketed... you can't see it too well in the picture, but yeah, swapping 'em out will be no big deal.

As for what I'm gonna do with an ISA 486, I have a few ideas I'm gonna try, but for the most part I'm just gonna play with it and go from there. I might end up setting it up in place of my 386DX/40.

About the SlotA, SavantStrike pretty well has it... SlotA is just something different and interesting. Actually, that little MSI board isn't going to get used any time soon, I just grabbed it since it would've been thrown away otherwise. I already have another SlotA system put together which I use for general Win98 stuff, and that one is a bit better performing anyway since it has a faster CPU and the KX133 chipset (which has 4X AGP and 133mhz memory support).

gerwin wrote:

SavantStrike wrote:

a media vision card with SB16 support (and I believe pro as well).

Are you sure about that? SB16 compatibility was never licenced to competitors. Only the CMI8330 and maybe the ALS100 and their successors are SB16 compatible.

I'm not sure any more, no.

I was under the impression that most of the SB16 clones were in fact compatible, although I could be wrong and that could only be SB Pro compatibility.

I do know the Jazz chipsets were not PAS16 compatible, which was odd given they were Media Vision chipsets.

Well the PAS16 is Sound Blaster compatible and that's it. No SB Pro, no SB 16.

But many games have native support for the PAS16, so it's not a big deal.

If you want Stereo FM music in Space Quest 4, the PAS16 is the card to have!

schlang wrote:

well, it's like a soundblaster, only without all the noises...

Otherwise known as...
Spectrum Sound™ 🤣

Cloudschatze wrote:

Otherwise known as... Spectrum Sound® :lol: […]
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schlang wrote:

well, it's like a soundblaster, only without all the noises...

Otherwise known as...
Spectrum Sound® 🤣

That pic looks like somekind of schematical thingy, dividing the board into 2 separate "regions" as often visible on other PCB's 😉

Tetrium wrote:

That pic looks like somekind of schematical thingy...

Indeed. 😀

Unlike, ahem, some companies, Media Vision used 4-layer PCBs. In addition to the physical divisions between the digital and analog sections, most of the circuit traces in the latter are sandwiched between outer, "shielded" layers (one side of which is shown in the picture). This design serves to mostly reduce, or even eliminate, the EMI that Creative's cards so expertly amplify.

While Media Vision's cards aren't perfect - my biggest gripe being the high-frequency whine of the OPL3 if the FM volume is set too high - their design is mostly superior to any contemporaries.