pdw wrote:

Hi. Author of the TSR here..

Hiii pdw, my good friend, a very very warm welcome on vogons.
And thanks for your work the great adlipt TSR 😀

welcome pdw!!!

Your OPL2LPT looks like a nice thing to have for old laptops, considering how difficult it can be to find any pcmcia sound card.
It reminds me of the Digispeech PortAble Sound Plus for the AdLib on the parallel port function, but simpler to replicate as the other device was emulating SB as well.
Some inside pics in case anyone missed them: Re: A gallery of strange sound devices

lolo799 wrote:

It reminds me of the Digispeech PortAble Sound Plus for the AdLib on the parallel port function, but simpler to replicate as the other device was emulating SB as well.
Some inside pics in case anyone missed them: Re: A gallery of strange sound devices

Hey this is very interesting.
This Digispeech PortAble Sound Plus works well with DOS games ?
Does someone has this device and/or more tech info ?

It works very well with DOS games and in Windows 3.x/9x.
I had that unit but sold it to the member NilsWorld more than a year ago, you should contact him.
He made a bunch of videos of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r6t-c7q-94
It covers the full install so skip to 18:30 for one set of drivers and to 52:00 for the latest ones in DOS, followed by some Wolf3d.
Ultima Underworld:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAoII--IuF8
The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJGsSAcGS_Q

Drivers are still available at:
http://www.expnet.com/know.nsf/a87c96fe8c9775 … 8f?OpenDocument

Paralel wrote:

Any idea where the noise is coming from? "

I will not ship any further kits this week, will investigate further if I can improve the sound with the existing PCB.
Again, I think we can wait a little bit longer, to aim for perfect (or at least better)sound.

That Digispeech Portable Sound Plus looks absolutely awesome. Adlib & SB? Sign me up!

It uses an ESS ES688P.

It's capable of:

Stereo (and Mono) playback, 16 or 8 bits per channel
Sampling rates from 4 Khz to 44.1 Khz
Supports DVI (IMA) ADPCM, OKI ADPCM and SoundBlaster ADPCM compression and decompression in real time
Synthesized music, 9 melodic or 7 melodic and 4 percussive voices

Apparently a few other more advanced parallel sound cards existed that we didn't know about:

StreetSound External - Acts as a advanced Covox Sound Master clone

MediaVision AudioPort - Also acts as an advanced Covox Sound Master clone

lolo799 wrote:

He made a video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r6t-c7q-94&f … be_gdata_player

Most interesting!

I put some links from other videos in his youtube channel where he tries two other games, check them too^^

This is really interesting hardware : in his video, this moment, you see the DOS configuration, TSR load en test in wolf3d of the Digispeech Portable Sound Plus : https://youtu.be/9r6t-c7q-94?t=18m35s
Very impressive. even if it hangs after a while in the demo.

Received my kit today (thanks dreamblaster!) and built it:

I found the audio quality to be great - I am not that picky btw 🤣 , it sounds just like every other OPL2 board to my ears. There is some floor noise - yes - but the same exists on older SBs and it doesn't bother me.
I tested it on 2 machines with the latest as of now ADLIPT v0.3 TSR: a 386sx16/16kb cache EGA build and a P233mmx VGA build. I took some quick videos with my phone so please don't expect bluray quality 😵

The 386sx one was slow, you can watch Commander Keen 4 struggling here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xy77UpPVVY
Keep in mind that this is an EGA machine and an upgraded 286/16 motherboard.

The P233mmx didn't care about the extra cpu power that the TSR needed, here are 2 videos I made:
Alone In The Dark (love this game and it's OPL music) : https://youtu.be/rthfXISC090
Wolfenstein 3D: https://youtu.be/v1TXOKabdew

You can also hear my mechanical keyboard working in the background 🤣
Also notice that I did not change any settings or removed my SB or forced Adlib on any of the games - the OPL2LPT just works alongside it 😀

Naturally I like the device but one must keep in mind that it does take some cpu time. I will test tomorrow on a 386DX40/VGA setup and update then - I am sure things will be better on it 😎

Thanks for the videos! 😀
This is a very interesting project.

Is there room for a socket in lieu of the YM3812 on the current PCB?

^ do you mean if you can install a socket for the YM3812? I have put sockets on both YM3812 and it's DAC, they fit just fine

keropi wrote:

^ do you mean if you can install a socket for the YM3812? I have put sockets on both YM3812 and it's DAC, they fit just fine

Oh yeah I see it now! Hadn't looked closely enough the first time. My bad! 🤣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7VxWbCgWHk

Much more interesting would be if this still works on newer machines, e.g. my AMD64 1,6Ghz Laptop.
On these fast machines a covox produces crackeling noises on the lpt-port.

dreamblaster wrote:

This is really interesting hardware : in his video, this moment, you see the DOS configuration, TSR load en test in wolf3d of the Digispeech Portable Sound Plus : https://youtu.be/9r6t-c7q-94?t=18m35s
Very impressive. even if it hangs after a while in the demo.

I don't remember any hanging sound when I had it, maybe because he used the old DOS driver at that point in the video, or his parallel cable caused issues.
Games I remember testing in DOS include Epic Pinball (I found an audio record I made at the time which sounds a bit on the low quality side like Inertia Player in the video linked to by dr.zeissler, an issue with mod music possibly?) and the CD version of Dune which worked perfectly fine.
There's a small list of tested games at http://www.newtale.com/pp/article215.html

dr.zeissler wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7VxWbCgWHk

Much more interesting would be if this still works on newer machines, e.g. my AMD64 1,6Ghz Laptop.
On these fast machines a covox produces crackeling noises on the lpt-port.

that should work fine

640K!enough wrote:

That's not bad at all. You'll know you've done the job well when the old Ad Lib sound TSR and jukebox will also run with this little device. For an early prototype, it's looking quite promising.

https://youtu.be/YxtoyG7yLOc 🤣

dreamblaster wrote:

640K!enough wrote:

That's not bad at all. You'll know you've done the job well when the old Ad Lib sound TSR and jukebox will also run with this little device. For an early prototype, it's looking quite promising.

https://youtu.be/YxtoyG7yLOc 🤣

Very nice! From your video, I didn't notice the noise a few of you have mentioned. Do you have any specific clues about where it is coming from?

I had another thought, too. Do you plan on also trapping the SB FM I/O ports in the TSR? There are probably a few titles that access the OPL2 that way, ignoring Ad Lib altogether. I even seem to remember a few lesser-known titles that needed SBFMDRV.COM. What do you think about the possibility of getting that working as well?