Hi all! The owners of this card, please tell me the marking of the memory chips, which is installed?

Mr.Hunt wrote on 2024-03-29, 14:12:

Hi all! The owners of this card, please tell me the marking of the memory chips, which is installed?

MT4C4M4E8DJ-6

@e2e4, Спасибо!

Hi! I’ve only just learned about this project. I’m in awe (no pun intended!). Is there any chance you will produce more of these? Or is it possible to sell just the board schematics/eagle/whatever files? I have always wanted a Time Machine!

Autonym wrote on 2024-05-24, 06:07:

Hi! I’ve only just learned about this project. I’m in awe (no pun intended!). Is there any chance you will produce more of these? Or is it possible to sell just the board schematics/eagle/whatever files? I have always wanted a Time Machine!

I think that it's possible to sell for you board, but problem one and big. How to send and how to get money.... Where are you from?

I would like to buy.

Hello,

Is this still available?

I'd be interested in a bare pcb if theres any left

I also would be interested in PCB or card.

I think project is over.... 🙁
No one is interested in continuing it from the creators.

If that's the case, kindly release all of the associated project files so that we may build our own. Thank you.

Hi, a few questions for those assembling yourself about BOM discrepancies - or maybe someone who has an assembled card can take a look at their card:

ptrz wrote on 2022-10-19, 20:36:

ECAP C50, C51 should be 22uF x 50V. C40-C49 should be 4.7uF x 50V (note for PCB rev. 1.2.1) The developer has probably already fixed this in BOM.

Is this still the case / confirmed? I see the BOM has not been updated (in Google drive nor att vccollection.ru) . The BOM says 4.2µF for C40-46, C49-51 and 22µF for C47, C48 (REV 121).

Also, R6 is listed as 91Ohm but the part number is for 93.1Ohm. This probably doesn't matter that much as the values are so close to each other ... but which one is correct?

Also, anyone adapted the RAM to something more modern? It's not easy to source 4M4 (I believe I can do it) but some Frankenstein adaptation to something more easily available would be welcome.

Also, GAL seems to be a bit difficult to come by and programmers are expensive.

Hello, is it still possible to buy this card Any URL to a shop selling it?

Not now. Perhaps they will appear later.

I would be interested in the PCB too

darry wrote on 2023-11-18, 14:40:

shandavid wrote on 2023-11-17, 13:43:

640K!enough wrote on 2019-08-12, 15:42:

If they end up with a superior result, where is the great harm in the effort? It's not like they are destroying some ultra-rare, high-end hardware; it's just a fairly common, base-model Creative card. If they can de-activate or supplement the CQM with genuine OPL3 and also manage quieter output, it's already a net gain.

If Creative weren't so apathetic or openly hostile toward community projects, there may have been other options. As it stands, they were left with no choice. It will be too expensive for me, but I still applaud the effort. It can be a great educational or professional development experience to undertake something like this.

Retro hardware has better sounding DAC, components and materials
you will lose the "magic" in the sound if you don't know what you are doing

IMHO, it could be argued that Creative Labs themselves did not always know what they were doing in their early days. By the AWE64 era, they had gotten a lot better at keeping noise relatively under control, but listening to one at the time, even routed through the headphone amplifier of an audio receiver, the limitations were still quite audible.

While I do have certain fond memories of listening to lo-fi tracker music on an SB 2.0 clone without even proper filtering to remove aliasing effects, I very much appreciated the arrival if 16-bit mixing, higher samplerates than 8KHz, and 16-bit sound cards. These early 16-bit sound cards, were still noisier and sometimes significantly more distorted than even an inexpensive contemporaneous CD player. Even the audio jack on a cheap CDROM drive often provided cleaner audio. At the time, I would have preferred it if the sound cards that I could afford had sounded more like my CD player. At a time when affordable external DACs were not really a thing where I lived and home stereo equipment with S/PDIF input was out of my reach, I very much hoped that the DACs and especially the analogue output stages of the cards I had could be bypassed. That's just me.

The best-sounding DACs are the early chips like the TDA1540, TDA1541, and CX20017. (BB PCM, AKM, CS, etc., have slightly inferior sound quality due to their materials, making them inferior to the 1980s TDA and CX chips.
You can search for videos of "TDA1540 CD" on YouTube, then compare it with CD players using modern DAC chips and listen to see which one is better.

For chip sound quality, the biggest factor affecting sound quality is the plastic material encapsulating the chip. I know 99.99% of people haven't noticed this; believe it or not. The principle is similar to the wooden housing of a musical instrument; the type of wood mainly affects the sound quality of an instrument. (By the way, why can't 99% of modern violins surpass the sound of antique violins from 200-300 years ago? Besides the wood, the varnish applied to the surface of the violin also has a significant impact. Once you know this secret and find the best-sounding varnish, it's possible to surpass famous antique violins.)

The reason sound quality deteriorates year by year is because the materials used become worse each year, but manufacturers haven't realized this and instead pursue ineffective sound quality specifications.

(Yes, you could say the golden age of pop music in the 1980s was luck. Chip manufacturers were lucky to use good sounding materials for their chips, music producers had more creative inspiration because MIDI synthesizers sounded good, helping them to continue creating good music..Hi-Fi audio systems sounded good back then, so many people bought them, leading to the rise of the music and audio industry.)

For gaming sound cards, the best-sounding FM sound cards were from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. The best-sounding 16-bit PCM sound cards were around the AWE32/AWE64 era.
After 1997, audio products deteriorated year by year, resulting in a lifeless sound.

SNR, THD, kHz, and other sound quality specifications have little impact on actual sound. Blindly pursuing specifications like 32-bit/384kHz does nothing to improve sound quality and introduces unnecessary high-frequency (>100kHz) noise from the circuitry, thus degrading low-frequency (20-20kHz) sound quality.

Because of this pursuit of ineffective specifications while ignoring the factors that truly affect sound quality, modern Hi-Fi sound is far less pleasing and vibrant than it was in the 1980s. Even fewer people listen to music now; because music has lost its appeal, both the music and audio industries have declined.

Of course, different people have different understandings of sound quality principles. Actual sound performance can prove who is right and who is wrong. You can use my recently developed SGM-Pro 9 Soundfont to play GM/GS MIDI files and compare it with any other MIDI source, including the latest professional-grade Roland Fantom and Yamaha Motif series, to see if my soundfont's sound quality is better than theirs.

Hm this is pure psychologilal religionism, are you trying to say that plastic material for chip package can have more impact to sound than the silicon chip inside? The plastic has resistance over Tohm or so, just add a bit of capacity (a few pF) to IO pins...
Do you also use inch thick repro cables made of 99,999999999999999999% pure copper or silver or gold? This would affect the sound a bit more 😀

RayeR wrote on 2026-02-08, 19:54:

Hm this is pure psychologilal religionism, are you trying to say that plastic material for chip package can have more impact to sound than the silicon chip inside? The plastic has resistance over Tohm or so, just add a bit of capacity (a few pF) to IO pins...
Do you also use inch thick repro cables made of 99,999999999999999999% pure copper or silver or gold? This would affect the sound a bit more 😀

The sound isn't affected by the plastic material's resistance. it's the material's vibration characteristics that affect the sound.
Just as musical instruments rely on the vibration of good wood to produce a beautiful sound, on a microscopic level, electric currents and electrons also vibrate. These currents and electrons ultimately modulate into the sound we hear.

This is why some audiophiles use isolation feet (but using them is useless. modern hi-end sound is garbage, and the impact of peripheral accessories is minimal).

You can compare the Signetics NE5532/NE5534 opamp from 1981 and later years. The 1981 version has the best sound, and the sound gets worse year by year after 1982. The chip circuitry remains the same. only the plastic casing material is getting worse

If you're making audio equipment now and need to use parts currently in production, I personally recommend the JRC NE5532DD/5534DD op-amps (their materials and sound quality are equivalent to the Signetic 5532/5534 from 1985-86). The PCM series DAC chips are currently the best available (their materials are equivalent to the TDA1541 from around 1990).

Some audiophiles currently favor ESS chips, but their materials are terrible. the sound quality is actually very poor, uncomfortable, and unpleasant to listen to.

shandavid wrote on 2026-02-08, 20:25:

The sound isn't affected by the plastic material's resistance. it's the material's vibration characteristics that affect the sou […]
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The sound isn't affected by the plastic material's resistance. it's the material's vibration characteristics that affect the sound.
Just as musical instruments rely on the vibration of good wood to produce a beautiful sound, on a microscopic level, electric currents and electrons also vibrate. These currents and electrons ultimately modulate into the sound we hear.

This is why some audiophiles use isolation feet (but using them is useless. modern hi-end sound is garbage, and the impact of peripheral accessories is minimal).

You can compare the Signetics NE5532/NE5534 opamp from 1981 and later years. The 1981 version has the best sound, and the sound gets worse year by year after 1982. The chip circuitry remains the same. only the plastic casing material is getting worse

If you're making audio equipment now and need to use parts currently in production, I personally recommend the JRC NE5532DD/5534DD op-amps (their materials and sound quality are equivalent to the Signetic 5532/5534 from 1985-86). The PCM series DAC chips are currently the best available (their materials are equivalent to the TDA1541 from around 1990).

Some audiophiles currently favor ESS chips, but their materials are terrible. the sound quality is actually very poor, uncomfortable, and unpleasant to listen to.

Vibration doesn't mean anything when it comes to electronics. Especially digital ones. A record player not getting as clean of a sound because the stylus gets more vibrations than just the record groove? Yes, that would make sense. But anything else is delusional, hallucinatory nonsense. It's also why sound engineers can't stand audiophools. Just like physicists can't stand flat-earthers.

TechieDude wrote on 2026-02-09, 00:32:

Vibration doesn't mean anything when it comes to electronics. Especially digital ones. A record player not getting as clean of a sound because the stylus gets more vibrations than just the record groove? Yes, that would make sense. But anything else is delusional, hallucinatory nonsense. It's also why sound engineers can't stand audiophools. Just like physicists can't stand flat-earthers.

You are shouting into the void my friend