bristlehog wrote:

1) Does 8-bit original PAS have SCSI or IDE CD connector?

SCSI

2) The PAS Plus - is it a 8 bit or 16-bit ISA card? Does it carry dual 3812 or one 262 Yamaha chips?

It's a 16-bit card, but has the same 8-bit PCM capabilities of both the PAS and Thunderboard (and can work in an 8-bit slot). It has a single Yamaha YMF262.

Everytime Cloudschatze posts his cards pictures i watch. Beautiful pics!

This is the best 8-Bit sound card that I know of. It's just a great card!

FGB wrote:

This is the best 8-Bit sound card that I know of. It's just a great card!

The 8-bit PAS is a pretty nice card, although, I don't know if I can rate it higher than the Ad Lib Gold. 😀 If I had to nit-pick anything, it's that the PAS is somewhat difficult to pair with anything else, be it a Sound Blaster, or a PSSJ-bearing Tandy system, because a number of game developers didn't think to allow for IRQ/DMA usage outside of the 7 and 1 defaults.

Interestingly enough, Media Vision's Thunderboard was designed to co-exist with the PAS, and includes the ability to disable its FM, making for a pretty swell pairing.

It should also be noted that Fabian's PAS photograph is much superior to mine. 😀

How hard is original PAS to find? How much would it probably cost?

To what extent are PAS16 cards compatible with the original PAS?

My experience probably isn't the best measure of scarcity or value, but:

PAS #1 - Obtained by trade (IBM Music Feature Card)
PAS #2 - Purchased for $0.50 from a local electronics recycler

The digital audio portion of the PAS16 is backwards-compatible with the 8-bit PAS, when configured to use a lower DMA channel. I have a config.sys/autoexec.bat menu with both "16-bit" and "8-bit" PAS16 configurations; the only real difference between the two being the DMA channel assignment.

bristlehog wrote:

How hard is original PAS to find? How much would it probably cost?

To what extent are PAS16 cards compatible with the original PAS?

I have never even seen on on eBay 😀

Stereo FM in, especially old games, is what the PAS is for. However many of these games supported the MT-32 as well. But some didn't.

bristlehog wrote:

How hard is original PAS to find? How much would it probably cost?

Are you really interested in one of these? Because I think I bought... oh, let me go into the garage and look, just a sec...

I think the 8-bit one is the one I left at the surplus place. I'll stop by asap and see if I can find it, again. I don't imagine anyone else took it. 😜

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Stereo FM in, especially old games, is what the PAS is for.

There's also its decent-quality digital audio playback, SCSI interface, use of Yamaha's esoteric MIDI Communication and Service Controller chip, and an exceptional analog output stage, among other things.

Logistics wrote:

bristlehog wrote:

How hard is original PAS to find? How much would it probably cost?

Are you really interested in one of these? Because I think I bought... oh, let me go into the garage and look, just a sec...

I think the 8-bit one is the one I left at the surplus place. I'll stop by asap and see if I can find it, again. I don't imagine anyone else took it. 😜

Yes, I am interested.

Does a PAS card offer Soundblaster or Soundblaster Pro compatibility? If so, it sounds like it may be an interesting alternative to a typical Creative card.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Does a PAS card offer Soundblaster or Soundblaster Pro compatibility? If so, it sounds like it may be an interesting alternative to a typical Creative card.

Original PAS has only Adlib compatibility. PAS Plus and PAS16, though, have a Thunderboard chip that supplies SB compatibility.

bristlehog wrote:

How hard is original PAS to find?

it takes years...