Reply 18920 of 29605, by bjwil1991
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- l33t
creepingnet wrote on 2021-05-07, 17:18:Unfortunately the ESS688 from the P/75 won't fit in the M/75. I know because I've tried (I have a P/75 and an M/75 - and a 40EC […]
Unfortunately the ESS688 from the P/75 won't fit in the M/75. I know because I've tried (I have a P/75 and an M/75 - and a 40EC and a V/50). It looks like it will, but it won't.
Where the P/75 has it's soundcard is differently keyed and uses different connectors on the M/75 as it deals with the LCD screen used. The M/75 came in the following models - a few probably speculator y...
PC-470 & PC-480 - HI-TOP Graphics module between CPU Card connectors - only works with 640x480 4096 color screen (NL6448AC30-3/6/10) or the 800x600 256 color screen (NL8060AC24-01) - one or both of these were also availible with a 3M Touch digitizer w/ wired stylus.
PC-570 & 580 - Has a different LCD controlle rcard between CPU Card connectors for the NL6448AC30-09 LCD Panel, which is a slightly thicker industrial panel that facilitated making a newer, custom screen assembly for it. THis model is known as the M/75TC or M/100TC - for "True Color" - basically it's capable of 32-bit True Color at 640x480 resolution. Kind of wild for 1994. This is what the one I currently have was before I put the daughter card from a PC-470 with a Digitizer & pen in it, and hacked the screen circuit to make it 800x600.
With the card removed, the PC will boot, but only output from the VGA connector on the back.
That said, the M/75 DOES have a Crystal CS-4231-KQ audio chip in it, which is Windows Sound System Compatible. It works with games like The 7th Guest, Tyrian, Under a Killing Moon, some Sierra Stuff (Freddy Pharkas Talkie, Hoyle Classic Card games) and even Day of the Tentacle, and Theme Hospital. In Windows 95 NESTICLE gets sound through it through SoundBlaster Emulation. It's pretty much stuck to 44.1KHz 16-bit so the sound quality is really nice through headphones or proper speakers (and pretty nice through the M/75's speaker as well considering the setup). It just won't work with everything. I've been trying to use WSSXLAT from the Windows Sound System 2.0 driver disks to get SB Compatibility in DOS to no avail for the last year or so. Basically this is what's done....
[CONFIG.SYS]
DEVICE=EMM386.EXE 512 RAM[AUTOEXEC.BAT]
C:\WSS\WSSXLAT.EXE sbio=220 irq=7 dma=1
SET BLASTER = a220 i5 d3Supposedly what it does is EMM386 is used to trap the values for the SB Compatible mode for WSSXLAT, which then translates it over for the PC to pick it up. That said, seems EMM386 has helped some of my games with WSS support in DOS to run a lot better or run at all so there's an upside. The downside is things like Ultima VII won't run because they use their own proprietary memory manager - not much of a loss though considering most of the music and sound effects for Ultima 7 are adlib based anyhow.
I've been following the "New PCMCIA Card" thread to see what yyzkevin (IIRC) and so on have been doing both because I'm interested in their developments myself, and I've been half tempted to take a crack at a PCMCIA sound card myself in the same quasi-savant way I've been doing Guitar Pedals the last few years. If I can figure out a way to rig my breadboard into a PCMCIA slot on one of the Versas I thought about taking a crack at it myself by combining Sergio's Adlib schematics, and maybe figure out a way to get it working without having to load Card Services or a Driver, or using some kind of very tiny executable like those used for my Cisco Aironet cards.
Bummer. I have an EXP CD-ROM + SoundNote, except I don't have the speaker and I know the speaker has the sound chips in there, which is odd and I cannot find the exact speaker for it.
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