VOGONS


IBM MWave related

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First post, by peklop

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Mwave1.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Mwave

Hi,

why is ibm MWave chip ignored by vintage computing community?
i know many people hated mWave but now it can be "NV1 of the sound cards"
I read about many interesting features
- fully programable DSP processor
- ISA, MCA, PCMCIA (and PCI?) busses. Later cards with PnP.
- software upgradeable by program for DSP
- small but fast SRAM memory instead of DRAM
- scalable power between sound and modem features
- relative good wavetable (with small onboard memory)
- OVERCLOCKING (interesting feature for sound card')
- 16bit audio, wavetable, modem. All inside one chip from end of the 1992 year.

- bad drivers
- DOS problem, Windows 95/98 problems.
- good working only under under Win 3.1 and OS/2?
- bad Sound Blaster emulation
- no FM chip (true Adlib compatibility)
- modem problems. slow and unstable
- class action lawsuit
- Texas Instruments drop
- piece of crap

- and more..

Now i reading articles about mWave cards. Must have hardware.

I'll have a lot of questions 😀 .

Lukas

Reply 1 of 28, by peklop

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MWave is only subversion of famous TI TMS320 DSP chip? That means mWave is direct successor of the IBM M-ACPA card.

Most used "Classic" 2780 is second generation MWave chip? Or only relabelled? I found some older chip existing.
https://books.google.cz/books?id=41XoBQAAQBAJ … 320M500&f=false
TMS320M500 from was first MWave. 17 MIPS

I found only one card with M500 / TMS320M500PQL chip:
IBM WaveRunner ISDN Digital Modem (no sound card) http://ohlandl.ipv7.net/communications/waverunner.html

and (stronger) M520
TMS320M520 was used at some sound cards. Some IBM.

MDSP2780 is relabelled TMS320M520 or updated and more powerful chip?

Reply 2 of 28, by dionb

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mWave... look for mid 1990s IBM or Packard Bell systems. Most early Aptivas had the (non-PnP) IBM Dolphin mWave card, a lot of early Win95 Packard Bells had Miro Connect 34V 'Cassius' PnP cards.

I recently sold an IBM PC330 I added a Dolphin to. I was simply not able to get it running under Windows 95 with any driver combo (eventually drivers were error-free, but the mixer didn't work so no sound...), but in Windows 98SE it installed flawlessly with built-in drivers, at least once I set the base address jumper correctly.

IMHO they were interesting technology undermined by the typical IBM problem of lack of software support truly using their power. In practice you had a good Windows Sound System and 34kbps modem device with decent MIDI and dodgy SB/Adlib compatibilty - and nothing more than that. A curiosity that could be useful if not outstanding if you could get it running.

Reply 3 of 28, by peklop

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Thanks for info.
What MIDI synth is used by 98SE built-in drivers? Internal Windows softsynth same as for all other cheap FM cards? Or mWave wabetable?

Reply 4 of 28, by dionb

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peklop wrote:

Thanks for info.
What MIDI synth is used by 98SE built-in drivers? Internal Windows softsynth same as for all other cheap FM cards? Or mWave wabetable?

You load seperate MIDI patches for mWave so I'm assuming mWave's own wavetable. Didn't actually try to use it beyond confirming it worked, so can't comment on quality. In any event the card doesn't do native FM, so anything leveraging that would be an odd choice.

Reply 5 of 28, by Arctic

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I used the mirobconnect 34 back in the day and using microsoft phone with the dsp was huge fun. I had to downgrade to a sb vibra16 when i upgradee to win98. I still have my card and the driver cds

Reply 6 of 28, by peklop

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Thanks. i must learn differences between miro cards.

Her i found next mWave feature:
https://books.google.cz/books?id=AmQEAAAAMBAJ … 20mwave&f=false

Mwave in 1995 IBM Aptiva Pentium I desktops was announced as MPEG Audio accelerator.
(TMS320 DSP in Antex cards was MPEG Audio accelerator too)

EDIT:
more links:
https://books.google.cz/books?id=hVEEAAAAMBAJ … 20mwave&f=false
Mwave debut from TI (not IBM), November 1992
boards from TI:
Personal Audio
Office Pro with V.32 modem (14.4k?)

1994 November, Visual Voice for Mwave
https://books.google.cz/books?id=JRmzq4L7HioC … 20mwave&f=false
For IBM Windsurfer and
Best Data Products ACE

1994 January
MWave catch Windows. Microsoft announced API
https://books.google.cz/books?id=W2eGcZ3Q0FYC … q=mwave&f=false

Reply 7 of 28, by dionb

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One point where the mWave did live up to its promise - and that might be confusing here: modem speeds were upgraded in software. So the same card that was released with 14k4 support in 1992 could (with new drivers, if you could ever get them installed) do 33k6 in 1995. So don't try to distinguish based on modem speed.

Reply 9 of 28, by peklop

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Strange issue:
Quake II v3.13 Patch https://archive.org/details/q2_313
Sound Issues:
- MWave: We have found that if you are using an MWave sound card, and are using the low quality game sounds in deathmatch, the right and left audio channels are reversed. This problem is solved by using the high quality game sounds.

IBM Thinkpad Drivers FTP (PCBBS) - February 1997
https://archive.org/details/FWVMW058
Drivers for ThinkPad 755 and 760 with MWave

Reply 10 of 28, by peklop

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COMDEX 1992 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP-KGm6gyIE
MWave introduction by TEXAS INSTRUMENTS.
3D sound test
Prototype cards
Personal Audio and Office Pro (with V.32 modem)
V.32 is 14.4?

Reply 11 of 28, by rmay635703

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I had an IBM EDUQUEST all in all one SLC 25mhz system and was mostly able to play Duke 3d with sound at a fairly good clip but I had trouble where there were too many enemies and sounds playing it would just crash, never could figure out why

Reply 12 of 28, by peklop

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Duke Nukem 3D with SLC 25MHz? Very slow CPU for Duke. I read minimum CPU is DX2/66
Eduquest cars is strange with mirrored non-ISA connector?
Is it card with original first mWave TMS320M5200?
I don't know kow this card can play wavetable sound because missing five SRAM memory chips from late MDSP2780 cards.

btw:
photo of (Asia only?) mWave card MWV-3000 from Samsung:
http://blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=spc … e&from=postView
Card used different bus chip from other mWave cards. rectangulat and not square shaped.

Reply 13 of 28, by peklop

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MWAVE Class Action Settlement
https://web.archive.org/web/20010304174418/ht … nfo/MIGR-4R9SMK
http://ps-2.kev009.com/pccbbs/aptiva/e17197us.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20020927090601/ht … settlement.com/
Interesting list of Aptiva and Thinkpad machines with MWave chip:

The Aptivas Covered By The Settlement
The following IBM Aptiva personal computers designated by the IBM machine types and model numbers are Qualifying Aptivas affected by the Settlement: 2144-M30, 2144-M31, 2144-M35, 2168-M40, 2168-M41, 2144-M50, 2144-M51, 2144-M52, 2168-M53, 2168-M54, 2168-M55, 2168-M56, 2168-M57, 2168-M58, 2168-M60, 2168-M61, 2168-M62, 2144-M63, 2168-M70, 2168-M71, 2168-M72, 2168-M91, 2144-A10, 2144-A12, 2144-A14, 2168-A15, 2168-A40, 2168-A44, 2168-A45, 2168-A50, 2168-A51, 2168-A52, 2168-A90, 2168-A92, 2168-A94, 2134-C21, 2176-C23, 2176-C31, 2176-C33, 2176-C35, 2176-C55, 2176-C65, 2176-C67, 2176-C73, 2176-C77, 2176-C6D, 2176-C6Y, 2176-C66, 2176-C32, 2176-C6Z, 2176-C53, 2176-C6E, 2176-C3X, 2176-C5X, 2176-C6X, 2176-C6B, 2159-S64, 2159-S66, 2159-S74, 2159-S76, 2159-S7H, 2159-S78.

The ThinkPads Covered By The Settlement
The following IBM ThinkPad computers designated by the IBM series designations, machine types and model numbers are Qualifying ThinkPads affected by the Settlement: 755CD (9545 9BD), 755CD (9545 9BE), 755CD (9545 FBK), 755CD (9545 FBL), 755CE (9545 7BD), 755CE (9545 7BE), 755CE (9545 7BC), 755CV (9545 8BJ), 755CV (9545 EBK), 755CV (9545 EBL), 755CX (9545 HBE), 755CX (9545 HBD), 755CX (9545 HBL), 755CDV (9545 ABK), 755CDV (9545 ABJ), 755CDV (9545 GBL), 755CDV (9545 GBK), 755CSE (9545 6BD), 755CSE (9545 6BE), 755CSE (9545 6BC), 760C (9546 U21), 760C (9546 U22), 760C (9546 U2A), 760C (9546 U2B), 760C (9546 U27), 760C (9546 U2H), 760CD (9546 U1C), 760CD (9546 U13), 760C (9546 U2J), 760CD (9546 U11), 760CD (9546 U1A), 760E (9546 U3L), 760E (9546 U3B), 760E (9546 U4A), 760E (9546 U4B), 760E (9546 U9B), 760ED (9546 U3A), 760ED (9546 U9A), 760XD (9546 U9E), 765D (9546 U9H), 760C (9546 U28).

Reply 14 of 28, by oeuvre

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Have had several Aptivas and ThinkPads with MWaves in them. Their MIDI sounds quite bad and driver installation in DOS, Windows 3.x, and 9x is a royal PITA.

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
ws90Ts2.gif

Reply 15 of 28, by soviet conscript

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Where did you guys find Mwave drivers? I'm currently restoring an Aptiva model 2176 and I can't find Mwave drivers anywhere, just broken links. I currently have Win98 installed and the Mwave card isn't even detected as a ! in device manager.

Reply 18 of 28, by dionb

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soviet conscript wrote on 2019-05-05, 00:43:

Where did you guys find Mwave drivers? I'm currently restoring an Aptiva model 2176 and I can't find Mwave drivers anywhere, just broken links. I currently have Win98 installed and the Mwave card isn't even detected as a ! in device manager.

Which card is in there? The commonest MWave card is the Dolphin and it's non-PnP, so not automatically turning up in Device Manager is normal. Just Add New Hardware and let Windows detect it, then select device from list. I forget exactly the name of the driver, but it's built into Win98 (at least SE, don't know about FE)

Reply 19 of 28, by cyclone3d

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I have a brand new MWave card. Not sure if I put the drivers up on vogonsdrivers.com yet though.

I probably also have all the available drivers I could find as well.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK