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PCMCIA Sound Cards

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Reply 280 of 567, by MAZter

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Bondi wrote on 2020-09-18, 12:50:

Got a respond from Ratoc. Unfortunately they don't have the drivers. The guy on the other end was very responsive and indeed was trying to find the drivers, but with no luck.

Did you check this page?

http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php? … 259&language=en

Doom is what you want (c) MAZter

Reply 281 of 567, by Bondi

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MAZter wrote on 2020-09-18, 13:32:

Thanks for the link, but unfortunately it does not contain the DOS drivers.

PCMCIA Sound Cards chart
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Reply 282 of 567, by MAZter

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Bondi wrote on 2020-09-18, 13:50:

Thanks for the link, but unfortunately it does not contain the DOS drivers.

dos.png
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dos.png
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28.46 KiB
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2244 views
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.

Doom is what you want (c) MAZter

Reply 283 of 567, by cyclone3d

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MAZter wrote on 2020-09-18, 18:52:
Bondi wrote on 2020-09-18, 13:50:

Thanks for the link, but unfortunately it does not contain the DOS drivers.

dos.png
.

No DOS drivers for the 5571 though.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 284 of 567, by mt777

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I have Thinkpad 370C and configured now:

  • SCP55
  • Wavjammer
  • (IBM) Digital PCSOUND

I have problems with Wavjammer.
Older driver (loaded only via Wavjammr.sys) works fine.
Newer driver (nmcutil.exe and wavjammr.exe) cant initialize the card because nmcutil always set IBM switch automatically. Strange but this flag breaks proper initialize the card (also when will put this flag manually in old driver).
I want to run newer driver to have ability setting flag COMP=GAMES and configure Miles Sound System. With old driver MSS doesn't see Wavjammer.
Any suggestions?

Reply 285 of 567, by Bondi

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mt777 wrote on 2020-09-28, 21:59:
I have Thinkpad 370C and configured now: […]
Show full quote

I have Thinkpad 370C and configured now:

  • SCP55
  • Wavjammer
  • (IBM) Digital PCSOUND

I have problems with Wavjammer.
Older driver (loaded only via Wavjammr.sys) works fine.
Newer driver (nmcutil.exe and wavjammr.exe) cant initialize the card because nmcutil always set IBM switch automatically. Strange but this flag breaks proper initialize the card (also when will put this flag manually in old driver).
I want to run newer driver to have ability setting flag COMP=GAMES and configure Miles Sound System. With old driver MSS doesn't see Wavjammer.
Any suggestions?

I don't have the solution unfortunately. But you can check my adventures with Wavjammer on page 9 of this thread. Digital sound did not work as well. I tried it on IBM TP 360c. But the only game that I had on hand was Abuse. So maybe some other game would work.

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Reply 286 of 567, by mt777

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I see now.
If you wish then can send older drivers (they are not probably published on the web) with wavjammr.sys initialize.

//
wjssenab is great. When loading with only socket service (instead wavjammer.sys/exe) then have enough conventional memory for running Wolf3d. Music and effects works out the box

Reply 287 of 567, by Bondi

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Did digital sound (direct support of WJ card) work with wavjammr.sys?
I think I have the older drivers as well. I could get only Adlib sound with all the drivers that I tried, but no direct suport of WJ(digital sound).

PCMCIA Sound Cards chart
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Reply 289 of 567, by Bondi

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Found an old review from 1997 about a number of PCMCIA sound cars. Not much new information, but might be curious anyway. Also the author confirms my suspicion that Media Vision card was also sold as Eiger Labs card. So overall Eiger sold three different cards under their brand.
http://www.newtale.com/pp/article216.html
And another two articles about Media Vision card and DSP Solutions LPT device from the same author
http://www.newtale.com/pp/rubrique10.html?deb … nation_articles

PCMCIA Sound Cards chart
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Reply 290 of 567, by lolo799

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That's the review that made me look for pcmcia sound cards in the first place, and prompted me to start this thread!

The author is wrong about the Media Vision/Eiger Labs connection though, Eiger Labs only sold a 1688 chip based card rebranded from Fujitsu, not counting the sound/cdrom card.

PCMCIA Sound, Storage & Graphics

Reply 291 of 567, by Bondi

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Well, Eiger at least sold also the clone of IBM Audio Adapter. Posted it here Re: PCMCIA Sound Cards

As for the Media Vision card, we discussed it over PM already, maybe it was never released, but it's definitely the same card.
Here is the picture, you can't confuse the shape of the breakout box.

snd.jpg
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snd.jpg
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8.08 KiB
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2070 views
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Eiger MV
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Fair use/fair dealing exception

Also If you look at the descriptions of both cards, it's slightly edited at Eiger website, but most of the wording and specs is exactly the same
http://web.archive.org/web/19961103210304/htt … abs.com/mm.html

https://web.archive.org/web/19961110151353/ht … ort/spcmcia.htm

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Reply 292 of 567, by digger

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The Wavjammer still fascinates me the most, simply because it's apparently the only PCMCIA sound card that was supported natively by at least some DOS games.

What set that card apart from all those alternatives, to justify the development of DOS drivers for it? Perhaps the company that released the card invested in that effort and made those drivers available to game developers? Or was there a different reason?

Reply 293 of 567, by Bondi

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There was also I/O Magic Tempo card (and it's clone Media Magic card) that had direct support in certain DOS games https://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/att … buteId,569/p,2/.
Frankly I don't really see why these cards were actually released. They require pentium processors, at least the games that have the support for this card have rather high demand for CPU power. And laptops of this level already had onboard sound.

Last edited by Bondi on 2020-11-02, 08:58. Edited 1 time in total.

PCMCIA Sound Cards chart
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Reply 294 of 567, by digger

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Indeed, I don't know of any Pentium laptops that did not come with on-board Sound Blaster compatible sound support. (If anyone reading this knows of any, please share!)

However, I'm pretty sure that even the most demanding of the later protected mode DOS games still supported 486 systems. They pretty much had to.

The era of protected mode DOS games lasted from 1993 (the release of Doom) until around 1996 or so, when DirectX started to take off. And I don't think any affordable Pentium laptops started to appear until 1995.

That leaves approximately a 2-year window within which there could have been at least some level of demand for PCMCIA sound cards with native DOS support.

Reply 295 of 567, by Bondi

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I've been experimenting with ES1688 based Panasonic KXL-D20 card to see if it's capable of playing digital (PCM) samples in DOS.
This is a feature of Ablib sound card that is used rarely and not well known. Although there are some games and software that use this possibility. Just to be clear it's not an imitation of digital effects by FM synth (like in ROTT for instance), but playing actual digital sounds. The CPU does all of the processing in this case as there is no DMA.
And the PCMCIA card has actually worked very well on every game I tried.
The games I tried this on are:
- Sango Fighter (a new game from 2010, BTW)
- Stunt Driver
- Pinball fantasies
- F-15 Strike Eagle II

- Sound Club music editor.
It plays .mod files and a couple of more file types very well. as for .wav files it does not play them directly. But there is a possibility of loading new sound samples in .wav format and it's possible to listen to them before loading (some kind of "preview") . But it plays correctly not all .wav files.
AFAIR there are also other editors that are capable of using Adlib for playing digital samples.

A separate case is Alone in the dark. KXL-D20 plays digital sound (footstep sound, shots ) in this game as well. But not in Adlib mode, but if Sound Blaster(no DMA) is selected in setup. Maybe it's just same thing under different name, I'm not sure.
I think all the above is relevant for other ES1688 based cards.

So, are there other games that use Adlib for digital sounds? Would be great to find and try more of them.

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Reply 296 of 567, by MAZter

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Bondi wrote on 2020-11-06, 18:05:

So, are there other games that use Adlib for digital sounds? Would be great to find and try more of them.

Not sure, maybe Cannon Fodder?

Doom is what you want (c) MAZter

Reply 298 of 567, by Bondi

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MAZter, lolo799, thank you. I'll check both games and post later on.

I've found a good text about Sound Blaster, and I think it explains how the sound in Alone in the dark works. I wonder what other games use this method.
...
There are three methods a Sound Blaster card uses to play back digital audio.

Direct DAC
The first is called Direct DAC and it means that the PC software has to feed the sound card each sample at just the right time. It works a lot like the parallel-port DACs that people used to build in the 80s and 90s, or like the Disney Sound Source. When you send a data byte to the sound card, it immediately changes the analog signal going into the speaker amplifier.

Software using this method typically sets up a periodic timer interrupt. In the interrupt handler, the new sample is calculated and then fed to the sound card for playback.

Although it’s a simple method, it produces extra noisy playback to due the timing jitter of the interrupt handler. Because PC interrupts are non-deterministic, the samples don’t occur at precisely the sampling rate. This timing difference means that the waveform being reproduced doesn’t match the source material, and the difference in voltage sounds like noise or hiss.
....

http://tubetime.us/index.php/2019/01/19/sound … s-of-operation/

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Reply 299 of 567, by Bondi

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MAZter wrote on 2020-11-06, 19:21:

Not sure, maybe Cannon Fodder?

Cannon Fodder works fine, but looks like it just uses FM synth for digital sound.

lolo799 wrote on 2020-11-06, 19:45:

That's interesting, could you try other Infogrames games from the same era like Shadow of the Comet for example?

I tried Shadow of the Comet and it does digital samples, it has the no-DMA option in setup. But they are very plain and rare compared to normal SB sound. No speech, no background sounds, one can hear just occasional knocks and rustling.
I tried also Jack in the dark and it worked fine with all sounds just like AITD, which is no surprise as they share same engine.
Other games that utilize Adlib for digital sound are Alpha Waves/Continuum and M1 Tank Platoon.

Overall I'm surprised how well the card works - there was not a single game that refused to work with sound.

PCMCIA Sound Cards chart
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