Interesting card! Can you post some high resolution pictures of the front and back so we can identify chips and markings?

Also, if you don't mind, what part of the world are you in? Some devices are pretty much exclusive to Asian markets so are completely unheard of in the rest of the world and simply do not come up in searches because they haven't been written about in English. To me this "feels" like such a product, but it will take more research and input from others to say for sure.

Sure, hopefully these help. Apologies - I'm not the best photographer!

As for location, I'm in Australia

InfoWorld mentions that Sony offered this card to run CD-XA applications. https://books.google.com/books?id=CjwEAAAAMBA … CDB-X10&f=false

I would not be surprised if it is a SCSI controller with added ADPCM digital audio output capabilities. This came out in 1990, before the SoundBlaster hit critical mass, so it kinda makes sense.

NJRoadfan wrote on 2025-09-02, 22:18:

InfoWorld mentions that Sony offered this card to run CD-XA applications. https://books.google.com/books?id=CjwEAAAAMBA … CDB-X10&f=false

I would not be surprised if it is a SCSI controller with added ADPCM digital audio output capabilities. This came out in 1990, before the SoundBlaster hit critical mass, so it kinda makes sense.

I second this. Even though this clearly has some stereo audio circuitry it's unlikely to be something you could use as a sound card on it's own.

Sorry for not understanding, could you please explain it to me like I'm an idiot?

From what I gather you're saying, it's potentially a card used to simply provide function to additional specific peripherals that can be used to play music? For example, with a CD ROM attached to it, it could play music from the CD, but it couldn't play music specifically from the PC itself?

It is not a general use sound card, it is designed for use with a specific application.

CravenCoyote wrote on Yesterday, 11:53:

Sorry for not understanding, could you please explain it to me like I'm an idiot?

From what I gather you're saying, it's potentially a card used to simply provide function to additional specific peripherals that can be used to play music? For example, with a CD ROM attached to it, it could play music from the CD, but it couldn't play music specifically from the PC itself?

I agree with what others are saying. It doesn't have any components that would be expected (or used) by games. For example, no FM synth chip (like a Yamaha OPL for Adlib compatible music), none of the common CODEC chips (for digital sound effects), no wavetable synth, etc. Since it is such an early product, being from 1990, it makes sense that it would not have any of these things that became standard later.

There are some very early cards that "produced sound" from before 1990, but their uses are very limited because they predate most standards. Those ones tend to be text to speech cards, or cards who's features are software programmable but without any in-built standards, like the Tecmar ARPA or M-ACPA. Still, they can produce sound in real time, on command, rather than just reading CD audio tracks.

This card has a lot more complexity than your standard CD interface card that simply routes audio from the drive itself to a pair of RCA jacks or even SCSI controller cards from the time. The Yamaha YM6064 is able to decode ADPCM audio (meaning, compressed audio, not traditional CD audio), which is associated with the CD-XA standard. I have no experience with these formats, but it would be interesting to see exactly what kind of capabilities this card would provide a 1990-1992 era system with an SCSI CD-ROM.

I guess VideoCD wasn't even a thing until 1993, so I honestly don't know what discs from 1990-1991 would have even made use of this capability. CD-i was a thing, but the YM6064 datasheet mentions a lot of supporting chips that this card does not have, so I don't think this would allow you to, for example, insert a CD-i game disc and play it on your PC with the right software.