appiah4 wrote on 2023-06-07, 10:31:

Will the SMD version be any different price-wise? I'm a lot more confident with THT soldering than SMD 😀

SMDs will be pre-assembled only and cheaper than current pre-assembled THTs

Just thinking loud, but how hard it would to add CMS sockets in the schematic.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2023-06-08, 05:04:

Just thinking loud, but how hard it would to add CMS sockets in the schematic.

At current stage it is not yet impossible if there would be enough demand for it. You are the third person who ask about it since 2018 😀

gerber files ?

scroeffie wrote on 2023-06-13, 18:25:

gerber files ?

Sorry, I don't give away gerber files. If you want a bare PCB - there is a minimal kit available for sale which includes a PCB and a metal bracket with a mounting kit.

@LABS do you have any new updates on SMD design?
Perhaps you could at least to share prototype look'n and feel as teaser!

Thinking to build one. Wondering should I wait or not. Well assuming SMD version have DIY kit... Edit: Nevermind you stated it earlier that only pre-assembled version will be available.

Well, after couple of days assembly got it done and it started to work right away. Well not everything was perfect - I wrongly ordered surface mount crystal oss and while attempting to fix its fat legs I broke one off. Now I applied some creative soldering and it's hanging in the air. Ordered proper trough hole version already.

Fantastic piece of engineering LABS!!

Random observation - I'm seeing mostly high wattage beefy resistors in builds? I ordered minimum required 250mW ones in blue color. Turned out to be almost invisible from far. Gives slightly more modern look to card.

Random observation 2 - Part of the fun is assembly for me. I see trends among DIYers to migrate to SMD pre-assembled format. I hope manageable trough hole DIY builds will not fade away completley.

vutt wrote on 2023-10-18, 15:38:

Random observation 2 - Part of the fun is assembly for me. I see trends among DIYers to migrate to SMD pre-assembled format. I hope manageable trough hole DIY builds will not fade away completley.

Not everybody likes to assemble, so usually you can sell more cards if they are preassembled. And TTH assembly is much more expensive when done on fabric (I suppose SMD parts are also cheaper). On the other hand, SMD is harder to assemble if it's done manually.

The solution is to have two types of cards - preassembled SMD and DIY TTH, but that complicates stuff even more.

Personally I like bigger cards with huge amount of discrete components.

Surface mounted is aboslutely not harder to assemble manually, it takes fraction of the time to lay 100 components on pasted pads before putting to oven and call it a day than to bend and cut pins of 100 through hole components, stuff them to the board, solder each of the pins (and make them look good too) and then clean the flux residue, more steps, more time...

Hand soldering the sufrace mounted parts may be slower if the tools are wrong, but good needlenose tweezers, right soldeling tip (throw away your conicals 🤣), solder wick (especially one with flux in it already) and correct flux will make things easy still. Drag methods are supreme, it takes much less time to solder up all the many tens of pins chips than the through hole ones.

On the sound cards I am making (and have made), soldering the few tens of through hole parts take longer than pick&placing the few hundred surface mounted parts.

I'm pretty sure all the lamentations that surface mounted parts are something to fear come from having the wrong tools and techniques. Lot of people do regular soldering without flux and them complain how things are so difficult but of course it is when you are missing a key ingredient of the process 🤣

Back on topic, that assembled board couple posts back does look good, at least on the top ~
As far as component size goes, technically the larger parts have lower tempcoeff which results in lower distortion and slightly lower excess noise due to more material for things to even out in but metal film parts are still much superior to carbon film ones regardless of their physical size (and these effects are all measurable aswell).

A quick question about the 74 series logic on the board: Is it ok to substitute LS or F series chips in the build? Thanks

It should almost definitely be ok t0 swap LS with F, but if the design requires F specifically LS may be too slow to get the job done.

Jackal1983 wrote on 2024-04-16, 18:19:

...substitute LS or F series chips in the build?

Yes, you can. However, there might be timing problems if you mix F and LS series, so it is better to stick to only one type - LS or F

LABS wrote on 2024-04-17, 12:34:

Jackal1983 wrote on 2024-04-16, 18:19:

...substitute LS or F series chips in the build?

Yes, you can. However, there might be timing problems if you mix F and LS series, so it is better to stick to only one type - LS or F

Thanks, just trying to save some cash, F series seems to be a bit more available than the HC or HCT series chips

Jackal1983 wrote on 2024-04-18, 16:56:

Thanks, just trying to save some cash, F series seems to be a bit more available than the HC or HCT series chips

Just for information, in case you are not aware of it: Do avoid HC chips for interfacing with TTL logic system (like the ISA bus). A TTL system expects a receiving chip to treat 2.1V as "high". A HC chip powered at 5V wll treat 2.1V as low. HCT is a variant of HC chips that have TTL-compatible input thresholds. HC chips will drive the output so close to the rails that sending a signal generated by an HC chip into a TTL system is not a problem, just receiving signals with HC chips is. So if you exactly know what you are doing, in some cases replacing an LS or HCT chip by an HC chip might be OK, but in general, using LS or HCT is an easier solution than trying to find out whether an HC chip might work as well in your specific circumstances.

mkarcher wrote on 2024-04-18, 18:07:

Jackal1983 wrote on 2024-04-18, 16:56:

Thanks, just trying to save some cash, F series seems to be a bit more available than the HC or HCT series chips

Just for information, in case you are not aware of it: Do avoid HC chips for interfacing with TTL logic system (like the ISA bus). A TTL system expects a receiving chip to treat 2.1V as "high". A HC chip powered at 5V wll treat 2.1V as low. HCT is a variant of HC chips that have TTL-compatible input thresholds. HC chips will drive the output so close to the rails that sending a signal generated by an HC chip into a TTL system is not a problem, just receiving signals with HC chips is. So if you exactly know what you are doing, in some cases replacing an LS or HCT chip by an HC chip might be OK, but in general, using LS or HCT is an easier solution than trying to find out whether an HC chip might work as well in your specific circumstances.

I was planning to buy F series chips, the should be ok from that angle.

Jackal1983 wrote on 2024-04-18, 20:42:

I was planning to buy F series chips, the should be ok from that angle.

Yes, confirmed.

Hello,
i own a Blasterboard Rev B and i recently got hands on a nice 286 machine, so i wanted to try the Blasterboard in there. The problem is, i am unsure what program or game to use, to fully test if the card is working. I know some games use Music capability, others use PCM and so on, and i dont know which game or program can test all functionality of the card.

so far i tried 2 tools from Creative Labs for Sound Blaster 2, both of which dont succeed in testing.
test-sbc.exe hangs after determining the DMA channel (see second screenshot)
diagnose.exe immediately doesnt recognize the card on the first screen (see first screenshot)

so i am completely unsure if the card works in this machine. On my Pentium it works fine.

sadly, the test-bb.exe never got released 🙁

If the card is properly working, test-sbc.exe should pass and allow you to try FM and digital sound.
Games that are 286-friendly and use both FM and digital effrcts:
Duke Nukem 2
Prince of Persia
TMNT Manhattan Missions
Many Sierra games (Space Quest 4, Kings Quest 5)

Thanks for the games, will give them a try.

wbahnassi wrote on 2025-04-29, 22:42:

If the card is properly working, test-sbc.exe should pass and allow you to try FM and digital sound.

are you sure about that? According to LABS himself its not possible that test-sbc will pass, but he doesnt really say where the program fails. For me it just freezes the PC without saying what the problem is.

test-sbc fails with Blasterboard during DMA detection as it doesn't have sound recording functionality (i.e. DMA transfer from the card to the host), which test-sbc needs to pass the DMA test. Sonic Buster 8 is not prone to this btw.
You can try any 286-compatible software that use sound capabilities. For example, Duke Nukem for FM and ADPCM, Edlib for FM, Prince of Persia for FM and PCM and so on. I don't have a 286 system myself, but these should be compatible.
I actually have test-bb utility, but it is very raw and was never released as there was zero demand. Maybe its time to bring it to the release.