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I built the AdLib reproduction card

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First post, by root42

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And I have to say it was extremely fun! The project is very straightforward. Boards were manufactured by aisler, parts ordered at Mouser and the Yamaha chips off of eBay. Soldering took all in all maybe 1.5 hours. Plus I had to assemble a barebones 286 from old parts off of eBay. The card worked on first try! I still have to drill holes in the bracket and have to get a case for the 286.

Two problems I noticed: the card is quite noisy. This isn't particularly notable when music is playing, but maybe it's the way those old cards were.
Second, the potentiometer I used seems pretty direct. Maybe it's a linear one? It certainly doesn't feel logarithmic. I used the parts described in the project (https://github.com/schlae/adlib).

The final product:

nuUEXWe

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Reply 2 of 22, by root42

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Hi,

yes, it has gold edge connectors. Aisler makes pretty decent quality PCBs. Plus for very small batches (they start at 3 PCBs) they were the cheapest I could find. I have 2 PCBs left, as well as the components. So I guess I'll solder two more and auction them off for interested people.

The whole project is indeed not extremely cheap, but not massively expensive either. PCBs plus components worked out to about 100 EUR. The PCBs alone were 60 EUR, I think. Higher volume would of course have given a discount...

Also, it is way, way cheaper than an original AdLib card... There's currently one on eBay for about 1000 USD...

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Reply 4 of 22, by lvader

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derSammler wrote:
root42 wrote:

So I guess I'll solder two more and auction them off for interested people.

When doing this, I hope you get banned on every retro forum on the whole net...

As long as he is honest on the auction what it is I don't see a problem.

Reply 5 of 22, by root42

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Yes, of course I won't give them away as legit AdLibs. This is clearly a reproduction. And right now I don't NEED three AdLib cards... 😉 Sergey Malinov has PCB designs for another OPL2 ISA card on his site. However, I thought it is neat that you can build your own AdLib lookalike.

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Reply 6 of 22, by matze79

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You can solder a 1/10 Value Resistor parallel to potentiometer output and ground to make it more logarytmic.

A 7805 regulator with proper filtering on the card feeding the ic's and powered from 12V line reduces the noise.
Many Soundcards did it this way.

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https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 7 of 22, by root42

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The idea with the regulator sounds interesting. But I think I don't want to shoehorn it on my existing board. Would be nice to augment the PCB design, though.

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Reply 8 of 22, by shock__

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derSammler wrote:
root42 wrote:

So I guess I'll solder two more and auction them off for interested people.

When doing this, I hope you get banned on every retro forum on the whole net...

Hold your horses guy putting values on every retro hardware without being asked.
While replicas are semi-fraud friendly, the card shown here has various details different/wrong making it obvious as a reproduction rather than a vintage card to every serious collector.
Personally I'd go with the malinov design tho ... has a few advantages over the original design.

Current Project: new GUS PnP compatible soundcard

[Z?]

Reply 9 of 22, by root42

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shock__ wrote:
Hold your horses guy putting values on every retro hardware without being asked. While replicas are semi-fraud friendly, the car […]
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derSammler wrote:
root42 wrote:

So I guess I'll solder two more and auction them off for interested people.

When doing this, I hope you get banned on every retro forum on the whole net...

Hold your horses guy putting values on every retro hardware without being asked.
While replicas are semi-fraud friendly, the card shown here has various details different/wrong making it obvious as a reproduction rather than a vintage card to every serious collector.
Personally I'd go with the malinov design tho ... has a few advantages over the original design.

I would be interested in those. What advantags has Sergey's design?

I am also thinking about building his micro XT. I have secured a few Faraday chips and 8088s so I can actually do this. His stuff seems really good. But then again, it seems he is working for Intel, according to his github profile...

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Reply 10 of 22, by root42

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I also have the first bracket now done. I use the Keystone brackets that are available at several vendors. A colleague and friend of mine has a good stationary drill which we used to drill the two holes and used a countersink to make it nicer. It's a bit of work, but fits really well and looks good.

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Reply 12 of 22, by root42

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I still have one soldered and tested board left, if anyone's interested. Just drop me a PM.

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Reply 13 of 22, by keropi

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root42 do you have any measurements on where to drill the holes?
I build some cards for a friend and it would make life easier to know where to drill exactly 😀

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Reply 14 of 22, by root42

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keropi wrote:

root42 do you have any measurements on where to drill the holes?
I build some cards for a friend and it would make life easier to know where to drill exactly 😀

Sure, screenshot of KiCad attached. There you see the dimensions of the holes.

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Reply 16 of 22, by root42

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keropi wrote:

^ great thanks!!!

No problem. Make sure to mark the holes first and hold it against your card. My experience is that it's a bit tricky to get it right. Also be careful of the metal deforming or shredding while drilling...

My last card worked out relatively fine and looks like this (countersink is a bit too large for the potentiometer and headphone jack):

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Reply 17 of 22, by keropi

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yeah I know these brackets are so easily bent when drilling that's why I hate working with them 😁

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Reply 19 of 22, by MJay99

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Robin4 wrote on 2023-01-01, 03:43:

Is there a genuine parts list to order parts from?

In the project's README on https://github.com/schlae/adlib there's a link to a mouser basket root42 created.
You need to find replacements for a number of resistors (as they're a minimum order of 200, at least now...) and the 74LS 245 logic IC, as that's currently out-of-stock, it seems.
But none of those should be an issue to source from mouser, too.