On WBII the EMU8000 is put into an alternate mode where the bus becomes 68K orientated and incompatible with ISA. There's no way to share the bus and sample ROM is completely different anyway. On PC the work of 68K is done by a TSR, with varying level of failure 🤣.

elianda wrote:

Ok, so having the Emu8K directly accessible through 0x620 and providing general MPU-401 access to it through e.g. a MC68K would not be possible at the same time?

As mentioned, the biggest problem is Creative's apparent disdain for the hobbyist community, in general. Apparently, they would rather get no money at all for their legacy chips, than a little, by providing low-cost documentation and a reasonable, low-volume unit price. There have been a few accounts of people trying to contact them about such projects and not getting any response.

Creative arrogance aside, I suspect that an implementation like you describe would be possible, if somewhat inelegant. It would involve carefully considering the compromises you would be willing to make, altering the board design, then a fairly significant development and testing effort for the firmware, especially if you want SoundFont support in both modes. Even then, given the level of integration of the chip being used, there is no guarantee that there wouldn't be any unintended side-effects due to the change in design.

Basically, it would be a non-trivial effort, with a certain possibility that you get nothing in return. Given that they have already said that this will be a low-volume, high-cost project, I doubt it would provide a reasonable return on investment or development effort.

Small update - if you check the most important global marketplace and search for AWE64 Legacy there, you'll find the listing for the one & only Rev. 0 prototype 😉

Some other great news will come soon enough, so stay tuned.

Looking forward for the final project.

This is amazing! Surely want to sign up for one of these once it's done.

I don't think salvaging the original chip is a good idea either.
AWE64 prices on ebay will sky rocket because of this,, and they are not infinite.

I mean look on eBay.
Why is he selling it in that price? It's a new half baked product, not a vintage hard to obtain period correct card.

The point of new modern clones is to have the same compatibility of the hard to obtain original cards in a fraction of the cost, NOT quadrupling the cost of the original and new modern clone. 😵

Each project has its own aim, pricing and target audience. This project never aimed at decreasing the price, but quite the opposite - making a niche expensive maxed out product.

We won't produce many PCBs (~50), so don't worry, that won't impact on the prices or availability of the original CT4520. Neither is it expensive - average price for a CT4520 is $20, it's cheaper than most other vintage cards, and couldn't be cheaper IMO.

James-F, no. The main point of new modern clones is to have maximum possible functionality. In relation to current project: we have 28mb RAM, OPL, second separate MPU channel, WB header - all rolled into one. And fixed bugs/disadvantages.

The point is to copy original and make it cheap is if we can't find original product easy. AWE64 cards are not very rare and very expensive, let's go and buy it for $20-30 today right now. Who's stopping you?

James-F wrote:

The point of new modern clones is to have the same compatibility of the hard to obtain original cards in a fraction of the cost,

Says who? That might be the point of garbage Chinese clones. But that is not something I'd be interested in.

I'm also not thrilled with destroying genuine retro hardware for modern remakes but I can at least understand why it's done..

Couldn't you use CT4520 cards as donors? They are neutered AWE64 cards which your work would only improve

No only you can, but that's the only model that suits the project. The very first post says that all 😀

Not all CT4520s are neutered cards.

Oh sorry, I missed that word. No, unfortunately we need the original WaveROM as well.

You aee not copying the waverom? Not that I imagine anyone would, nut could you use the 4mb waverom from awe64gold?

kolderman wrote:

You aee not copying the waverom? Not that I imagine anyone would, nut could you use the 4mb waverom from awe64gold?

Gold also has 512K rom it just has 4mb extra ram.

1MB ROM in both versions I believe; 512KB RAM in Value, 4MB RAM in Gold.

dr_st wrote:

1MB ROM in both versions I believe; 512KB RAM in Value, 4MB RAM in Gold.

The 1MB creative soundfont is significantly better than the ROM. The soundfont dump of the rom is 512KB by the way, so I am certain that it is only 512KB.

appiah4 wrote:

dr_st wrote:

1MB ROM in both versions I believe; 512KB RAM in Value, 4MB RAM in Gold.

The 1MB creative soundfont is significantly better than the ROM. The soundfont dump of the rom is 512KB by the way, so I am certain that it is only 512KB.

Aren't all those ROM fonts compressed? Maybe that's the difference in size.

appiah4 wrote:

dr_st wrote:

1MB ROM in both versions I believe; 512KB RAM in Value, 4MB RAM in Gold.

The soundfont dump of the rom is 512KB by the way, so I am certain that it is only 512KB.

This is interesting, because every place I could find references the CT1972 to be a 1MB ROM. Perhaps it is used for more than just the soundfont?