Alright, not your cup of tea. That's fine, I'm not going to try to persuade you anymore, but to answer your post, I can say I'm interested in the idea of it, and I'm not unfamiliar with porting code and coding sound card emulation. It's a short jump from the 2151, the only difference is the 2164 has a noise generator on one the channels. It's not a top priority, but without the ROM, there will definitely never be an emulation of it. Not expecting it to be mapped to system address space, which is why the talk about readers and dumping without a reader by hotswapping or using a NIC. I think Trixter might have an IMFC, and desoldering and dumping may be more up his alley. There actually is/was an FB-01 emulator for Linux by some asian guy. I seem to remember running across it at sourceforge or freshmeat, and he had an asian language site for a homepage, but it's not listed anymore and I haven't been able to find it again. There's also MSX emulators like bluemsx to port from, though its patchset would fall well short of an imfc. The biggest difference between the MSX version, fb-01, and IMFC is the patch set, the IMFC having the largest.

IBM Music Feature Card/Yamaha FB-01

Pardon my ignorance, but wasn't the patch set of the IMFC already included with an editor program for the IMFC and FB-01, called FM-Pak/A or something? I have 7 bank files, 4kb each, which came with it and I'm pretty sure that they contain the patches (the first 2 banks are User RAM of course, so the contents of those might change while it's in use). Cloudschatze had that program for download on his website, but apparently his site is offline at the moment. Therefore I've attached those 7 bank files to this post. Perhaps they're of some use?

If not, I guess you could do voice dumps via sysex messages, that might be an easier way to obtain the patch set. I could try that, if only I had a breakout-box 😵

Good news:

The EGA ROM is dumped, all 16K of it. I even did an overdump just to make sure.

Bad news:

The dump is stuck on my old computer, and I will not have the wherewithal to retrieve it until its rebuilt.

Looks like you're selling everything. I thought you were keeping your GUS PNP?

FM-Pak/A is here: http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:1P_yJYTG … lient=firefox-a

http://cd.textfiles.com/pdsl/OTHER/DOS/MIDI/

Though, I see no indication that these are the IMFC patches that the FB01 is lacking that would make it equivalent to an IMFC.

ih8registrations wrote:

FM-Pak/A is here: http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:1P_yJYTG … lient=firefox-a

http://cd.textfiles.com/pdsl/OTHER/DOS/MIDI/

Though, I see no indication that these are the IMFC patches that the FB01 is lacking that would make it equivalent to an IMFC.

Incidentally, the IMFC doesn't have any patches lacking in the FB-01...

Is that an FYI or have you misread what I have written thinking I've suggested such?

According to the Yamaha FB-01's manual, the synthesizer supports 240 ROM voices (banks 3-7) and 96 RAM voices (banks 1-2.) While it is possible the IMFC contains more ROM or RAM voices, it doesn't seem very likely. If each voice requires 64 bytes (not sure), then it very well may be contained in the 32K EPROM.

IBM Personal Computing […]
Show full quote

IBM Personal Computing

Donald B. Trivette

Creating A Blues Symphony

The introduction of the IBM Personal System/2 received so much ballyhoo that it overshadowed another announcement on the same day—the IBM Music Feature.

The Music Feature is a professional-quality music synthesizer contained on a full-length expansion card that fits in the IBM PC, XT, AT, and PS/2 Model 30; it does not fit in the PCjr, the IBM Portable, or the Convertible. It may or may not work with IBM compatibles—although my best guess is that it will. On the back of the card are three RCA-type plugs and a D-shell connector which provide input and output to the music card.

Two of the RCA-plugs are for input to a home stereo amplifier—left and right audio outputs—and the third is for headphones. The D-shell plug accommodates a short cable connected to a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) adapter box, which is part of the Music Feature. Into the MIDI box (MIDI in, out, and through) you may plug a keyboard or other musical apparatus. A typical home installation might have two cables (left and right channel) running from the PC's Music Feature to the input jacks on your stereo, and a keyboard such as the Yamaha DX-100 attached to the MIDI adapter box.

Once all the hardware is connected—it takes about 10 minutes—you have an FM synthesis of up to 336 instrumental sounds in any musical style from jazz to classical, with as many as eight instruments or voices playing at one time. If eight instruments aren't enough, you can install two IBM Music Feature boards in the PC and have up to 16 voices. But you won't get nary a whistle if you don't buy some software, because even at $495 the IBM Music Feature is softwareless.

Fortunately, there are already dozens of products on the market that work with the Music Feature—and there are more on the way. However, you must be careful if you're installing the system on IBM's PS/2 Model 30, as I did. That machine has only the new 3½-inch disk drive, and most music programs are currently available only in the 5¼-inch format. I tried to transfer some of the better programs through a floppy-disk equipped PC to the Model 30 via a modem connection, but their copy-protection scheme prevented me from using them.

336 = 240 + 96. That should definitively end the discussion about the IMFC's supposed superior specs.

More definitive:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3398095
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:u2qZ-4A9 … lient=firefox-a

wd wrote:

I am also letting go of most of my old video cards as well.

Maybe create bios dumps of those before completely letting them go though.

Hi,
I stumbled upon this thread while searching for something else. I only skipped through the posts in this thread so maybe I missed the answer, but I wanted to ask: Are BIOS dumps really useful for something? I mean, I have many display cards with BIOS ROMs that I can dump very easily (nothing rare, though), and although I don't have the time to start searching the web about this subject, I always thought that if these (GFX cards ROM dumps) were important, there would be a web site which collects them... Isn't there one? And is anyone here interested in those?

I dumped my IBM EGA and VGA BIOSes for two reasons:

1. To assist in the perfection of the emulation of these video standards. The BIOS contains functions that need to be emulated correctly, and many clone BIOSes didn't get the functions quite right. Look to the source, IBM, before the substitutes.

2. To recover the BIOSes if and when they fail to bit rot. (the VGA uses EPROM)

Certain cards have collectible BIOSes, 3dfx Voodoo cards for example. I used a tweaked Voodoo 5 5500 PCI BIOS to flash my Voodoo 5 5500 PCI/DVI MAC card. (Lots of tense moments there.)

Great Hierophant wrote:

1. To assist in the perfection of the emulation of these video standards.

That's what I wanted to know: How can you be sure that emulator programmers will use these dumps? Have any requested such dumps?

Great Hierophant wrote:

Certain cards have collectible BIOSes, 3dfx Voodoo cards for example.

I think I have most of the voodoo models (the V5 6000 is too pricey for me...), but I don't remember seeing a card with a socketed BIOS, only BIOS chips that were soldered to the PCB (but anyways, is there a list of undumped voodoo ROMs somewhere?).

Great Hierophant wrote:

Look to the source, IBM, before the substitutes.

If that's the case, I surly can't be of much help. As I said, I only have common cards, mostly VGA: Cirrus Logic, ATI, Trident, S3, ETx000, Western Digital, etc (about several dozens overall). Only a few EGA cards, and some cards which I can't identify (like this one, I'm not even sure it's a display adapter 😖 it has two DE-9 female connectors )

Og, the card u show is an I/O card, just look on the big white letters

That's what I wanted to know: How can you be sure that emulator programmers will use these dumps? Have any requested such dumps?

Absent the availability of the source code (which should be in some IBM manual, they are the next best thing. They will not incorporate the dumps wholesale, but can use them to assist in debugging their own EGA and VGA BIOSes.

You can even load a vga bios in dosbox, much like what bochs does,
though for the latter a vga rom (like the gpl'd vgabios) is required.

They couldn't be bundled and distrubted with DOSBox, but I don't see a reason that would prohibit using non GPL'd ROMs in DOSBox. It's a binary which isn't being integrated into the source. It's the same as using the dos games. Depending on the ROM, some could be loaded inside DOSBox using old dos rom loading utils.

Since this is really off-topic, I won't continue to discuss it here, but just to conclude my side of this, I uploaded some pictures of some of my cards (by all means not all of them): PCI1 & PCI2 (I think that most are XGA though), and ISA&VESA. Sorry about the quality.
I anyone would like any of the ROMs showed in the pictures (or more pictures of other cards I have), please let me know (if the legitimacy of dumps is questionable, then write me a PM), even if it's not for reverse engineering but for reflashing a defective BIOS. As I said, dumping these are very easy for me since I own an EPROM Programmer (actually, more than one).

Sorry for barging in on your thread GH and good luck with your auctions! 😀

Og

Though there maybe some who would like you to think so, there's nothing illegitimate about dumping ROMs. A sad commentary that you have such an impression.

He doesn't say that.

He's talking about the position (and sharing) of ROM dumps on this forum. That is just a cautious stance.