It really has some kind of Covox on it:

http://kawai.spb.ru/photo/v/hardware/museum/p … ageViewsIndex=5

But which port does it map ? does anyone have a Card ? 😀
EDIT: Covox Soundmaster 2 Combatible ? wow

what really? I have one , what can I test?

I spent a little bit of time tracing the logic on the card and it responds to IO addresses in 22x, 30x and 38x where x is 2/4/6/8/A/C/E (I don't have complete schematic yet). 38x is definitely FM chip range, the DAC is in 24x or 30x ranges.

Yeah everything is offshelf Parts.. so we can easily make a clone 😳

Test Covox Lemmings ! keropi 😀

will do tests tomorrow as I left the office for the day and the card is there along the other test systems... if this card proves to be nice I can desolder all if needed so it can be copied 😉

That would be nice 😀

matze79 wrote:

Hi i recently found this Picture,

For completeness: This is the full post at AmoRetro. It shows both sides of the board.
There are also pictures in this thread: Bought these (retro) hardware today.

The Covox Sound Master appears to be using 222h as the default port for its DAC. (According to the reverse engineering thread.) Maybe this one uses 242h?

Well tbh this doesn't seem to be that useful in the end 🤣 but whatever the case I will test more... I mean game support is pretty much non existent unless I am mistaken

So it's Covox Sound Master compatible or Sound Master 2? Both? In anycase this is very interesting, that resistor ladder shouldn't be hard to replicate. My concern is that 222h as the default port would conflict with the right CMS chip on a gamblaster or compatible card and the advanced FM music regiser address port of the OPL3 on a Sound Blaster Pro or compatible card.

Might not be that useful, but would be cool to implement this on a clone retrobrew clone card as an extra feature. The more sound standards, the better! Implementing 242h would be better, and if needed patching games could be done as well, just as what i did for the Game Blaster on port 210h.

This card responds to 22x and 30x, I don't know what exactly the x are, it certainly doesn't decode none of the LPT addresses where normal covox DAC devices sit at, which will limit the usefulness quite a bit.

got some more pics in the evening , posting them here as well for completeness since they turned out nice 🤣

Allright the card seems to work in Alone in the Dark and is getting detected as the "Sound Master +" , I made a quick video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjVs7IppnPk
(don't expect much quality from a cellphone recording but the DAC has really clean sound - just like a soundblaster for example)
DAC will only work with 22X address selected, anything else will freeze the system.

I am getting some CF access noise - most likely because the DAC also listens to port 300 where the XT-IDE-CF card resides , I run a test program Tiido gave me and I do get DAC sound on both 220 and 300 ports.
It is too bad the card doesn't also respond to the normal Speech Thing LPT port address, it would make it more appealing... (but then again it would need some way to turn that off when you use the lpt port for something else and it would go beyond the limits or some resistors and logic for a cheap DAC solution, in end any DAC is better than no DAC 🤣)

edit
some more games tested:
- Shadow Of The Comet -> works as expected like alone in the dark with the SoundMaster+ option
- Pinball Fantasies -> works only with the "DA Converter" option when set at ports 220 or 300 (so it really listens to these ports, 240/280/2C0 do not produce sound)
- Wizardry 6 -> works with the Voice Master option (sound master is silent)

Wow, that card is brilliant. I like Rainbow Arts. They did some very nice games back in the day. Big fan of MadTV for example.

Yeah lets make a Clone of it 😀

i would make the Adressdecoder in a way to select the adress freely, for more freedom.

So Soundmaster Games can be patched to use Covox on LPT ?
we should give it a try 😁

Well we've been discussing this with Tiido and ran some tests it seems that the DAC part is just a DAC that sits on ports 220 and 300 , it is write-only so there is no way of a detection going on.

So for example with alone in the dark and shadow of the comet if these games detect an Adlib then they also offer the choice for soundmaster+ , no fancy stuff under the hood. Basically it's just a covox thing on non-conventional ports and I assume that if you patch speech thing games to use these ports it will just work

So its basicly what i have on my Tandy Prototype Card 😉

just used a 74LS688 a DIP Switch and a AD7524 ;D

We see Clearly that there is a 8 Bit Latch plus a R / 2R DAC Network, so definitively a Covox.
Sound Master I/O Port is 330h normally.

You can try Mod Master with a Custom DAC @ at 330h 😀

matze79 wrote:

Yeah lets make a Clone of it 😀

I yould prefere to have an address decoder in the BlasterBoard so that it can emulate COVOX, DSS, Tandy and so on 😀

FreddyV wrote:

We see Clearly that there is a 8 Bit Latch plus a R / 2R DAC Network, so definitively a Covox.
Sound Master I/O Port is 330h normally.

You can try Mod Master with a Custom DAC @ at 330h 😀

how can I make it use port220 ?