Rubix wrote on 2026-02-02, 20:45:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-02-02, 20:22:

I'm not saying that I recommend doing this, but I have actually seen the "freezer trick" work with dying hard drives. There are also half a dozens reasons why you shouldn't do this though, so... yeah. 😅

Yes, I've heard of it. But I thought it was only for drives that suffer from stiction. Let's first see what ddrescue manages to save. In my experience, it's often able to get quite a bit of data off of bad hard drives. Although this one is really bad, and especially executable files/drivers/etc. can't have errors in them.

Ddrescueview shows a nice visual of how bad the situation is 😅

Oof! Wow, that looks bad. But hey, the drivers for the sound card came on two floppy disks and we really only need probably a handful of files from one or the other. If 1MB is readable and it happens to contain what we're looking for then that would be okay for now. 😅

Regarding the freezer trick, I will make no on-record statement as to whether I was involved in the decision or not, nor will I take the credit for recovering that customer's files ~20 years ago (🤩), but at least in that situation it wasn't used to revive a drive suffering from stiction. It was a click of death of some sort as I recall.

(Again, this is not an endorsement... but if you use ddrescue and it doesn't find enough to be useful, and swapping the PCBs doesn't help, then... well...)

I've taken the covers off of hdds before to get them spinning so I could recover files.

Another thought is to reseat the connections on the circuitboards.

cyclone3d wrote on 2026-02-02, 22:14:

I've taken the covers off of hdds before to get them spinning so I could recover files.

Another thought is to reseat the connections on the circuitboards.

Great idea... If this thing was exposed to moisture and there was corrosion inside the computer, it is possible that contacts between the drive and its PCB could have been affected. I have never needed to check this myself, but I would definitely do it in this situation.

Sooooo, I think I am getting closer to figuring out this card and WaveFront sporting cards in general.

I'm having AI do analysis of WFLite, and from what it looks like so far, this should work for, I think, any of the WaveFront cards.

The missing piece, from what I have gathered, is that the utility that configures the card is what loads the .MOT file (the OS for the WaveFront). Since we don't have that part for this card, it is not going to work until one is made.

After the analysis of WFLite is complete, I will run the configuration program through it to see how to load the .MOT file.

So, in the end, for the JazzWave card, I am thinking we will have:
1. Jazz16 initializer
2. .MOT loader
3. WFLite

Also, the WaveFront chip apparently has a built-in MPU-401 emulator, so it makes sense why the MPU jumper is supposed to eb set to Disabled for the WaveFront to work. I guess theoretically it may be possible to have the Jazz16 MPU enabled at the same time IF the Wavefront MPU was using a different address. I doubt it is possible to set it up that way, but who knows.

There is no .MOT .I think this is for cards with Motorola processor. If you go to ics2115 datasheet, you see that you need to set chip in mpu401 mode then you can use it. It uses a palce20v8 to do it. We need to know the address mvlite.exe uses to set this. This is why wflite does not work.

Marmes wrote on 2026-02-03, 08:24:

There is no .MOT .I think this is for cards with Motorola processor. If you go to ics2115 datasheet, you see that you need to set chip in mpu401 mode then you can use it. It uses a palce20v8 to do it. We need to know the address mvlite.exe uses to set this. This is why wflite does not work.

That is what I originally thought as well and it makes sense. I'm not 100% sure after looking at different driver packages though.

The addresses thing has been extracted and one of my next steps is to make a utility that polls those addresses to see if anything shows up and to try some other addresses as well.

Polling just a single address at a time does not return anything as has been tested for hours long tests to check all possible addresses.

I tried to read the palce20v8, it's protected. I know there are solutions for GAL and PAL to extract the code, but for PALCE I don't think they work. I don't want to risk to damage the chip.
I will wait. If the data extraction of the disks don't come to anything, we need to get a aztech or anstar cards to extract the code if they have gals instead of palce chips.

I found a Korean bulletin board that has the driver for this card. Problem is, access to the download is only available to members and I am having trouble figuring out how to create an account or request an account:
https://lucyweb.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=pd … wr_id=67&page=4
Name of the file is pawdrv.rar

Found the register page: https://lucyweb.net/bbs/register.php
HTTP_403
New membership registration is currently disabled.

Bah!

cyclone3d wrote on Yesterday, 07:41:

I found a Korean bulletin board that has the driver for this card. Problem is, access to the download is only available to membe […]
Show full quote

I found a Korean bulletin board that has the driver for this card. Problem is, access to the download is only available to members and I am having trouble figuring out how to create an account or request an account:
https://lucyweb.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=pd … wr_id=67&page=4
Name of the file is pawdrv.rar

Found the register page: https://lucyweb.net/bbs/register.php
HTTP_403
New membership registration is currently disabled.

Bah!

I have asked for help from a Korean buyer of pcmidi.eu stuff - maybe we can get the file through him, when I have some news I will report back 😀

edit:
got a reply back, the site is not accepting registrations and there is no way to get the file even if you are located in Korea
probably this BBS site is just dead at this point
he will ask on Korean retro-forums in case someone has this or the original drivers archived...

Oof... Wow this thread is a rollercoaster. 🤣

But hey, at least we have yet another filename and a possible file size to look for. 2.4MB seems pretty big for a sound card driver from 1995, so I'm guessing it includes extra programs as well. Since the card uses a wavetable ROM and does not have RAM, then I don't think it would have sound banks or anything of that sort.

It would be nice to dig up some marketing materials related to this thing while we're at it. It is odd how little mention of it there is online.

If I had to guess, this was MediaVision's last attempt to use the Jazz16 before throwing in the towel (due to the legal\financial\leadership issues they faced) and going with third party solutions from ESS. It is possible that everyone got straight to work on Aureal Vortex once this was finished and they didn't spend a cent trying to promote it.

EDIT: Browsing their site in 1996 shows absolutely zero mention of this card at all. I am honestly surprised that they even listed the driver FTP links on the download page.
There is no press release for it...
https://web.archive.org/web/19970603222336/ht … e/announce3.htm

And nothing on the product page from 1996:
https://web.archive.org/web/19961110152047/ht … rt/ts_audio.htm
Or from 1997:
https://web.archive.org/web/19971007073328/ht … rt/ts_audio.htm

There is also this list of all their products by model number from 1996 and it isn't on there either:
https://web.archive.org/web/19961110142952/ht … rt/allparts.htm

There is nothing listed on the on this list of files on the FTP server from 1996:
https://web.archive.org/web/19961110143004/ht … rt/filelist.htm
But the driver file names are on the FTP file list from 1997:
https://web.archive.org/web/19970603203047/ht … rt/filelist.htm

... Maybe this thing had production issues due to all of the company's troubles and only a couple batches were made and shipped out late to OEMs without any fanfare? Perhaps if it was an OEM card the drivers could be available from whatever company sold systems with these installed. I wonder if there is any significance to the "Clr" at the end of the product name on the FTP list.

I just found a listing for a different version of this card with spaces for SCSI components , but with only the IDE ones actually populated.

https://shopozz.ru/de/items/226756100829-retr … audio-wavetable

FCCID: JZZWTSCSI
Model number: 650-0154-___

Name printed on card: Media Vision Pro Audio WTBL SCSI/IDE (TM 1995)

This seems to be the other card listed on various hardware sites (probably originating from TH99), such as this one:
http://www.yjfy.com/hardware/video/MEDIAvision.htm

PRO AUDIO WAVETABLE IDE (650-0154-52)

Cool. On a driver related note, it looks like IBM released driver source code for the Wavefront chip for OS/2. Think I found the correct development pack that should include it but will have to download it tonight to verify.

The driver readme states that the source code is available.

cyclone3d wrote on Yesterday, 18:06:

Cool. On a driver related note, it looks like IBM released driver source code for the Wavefront chip for OS/2. Think I found the correct development pack that should include it but will have to download it tonight to verify.

The driver readme states that the source code is available.

Interesting. Hopefully it is fairly straight forward to get that working.

I saw on this german message board that someone in 2020 claimed to have the driver and said they had uploaded it...
https://dosreloaded.de/forum/thread/3003-einr … -1995/?pageNo=3

Well... turns out they later edited the post to say they just had a Pro Audio 3D... bleh.

Eventually that thread goes on to find some of the same stuff we found here, and even links to another old VOGONS post about the card.

Also interesting is this list linked from the MV Wikipedia page listing the MV products, presumably including some planned ones - https://web.archive.org/web/20060722003050/ht … mediavision.htm
The PAW300 is especially interesting, apparently promising a 2MB wavetable.
The 2.4MB Korean driver pack could be the 2x mv6200 floppies in one.

JidaiGeki wrote on Today, 00:47:

Also interesting is this list linked from the MV Wikipedia page listing the MV products, presumably including some planned ones - https://web.archive.org/web/20060722003050/ht … mediavision.htm
The PAW300 is especially interesting, apparently promising a 2MB wavetable.
The 2.4MB Korean driver pack could be the 2x mv6200 floppies in one.

Oh! This is very interesting. I have seen the card mentioned somewhere as a PAW200, or something similar to that with 200 in the name, so that is definitely the card we're looking at in this thread.

Also, this list explains the mv6200 name on the driver package... The Pro Audio Wavetable was apparently included in the MV6200 or MV6200SE multimedia kits. That is another possible avenue to check then.

The PAW300 would most likely be the ICS Wavefront with the ICS2122M-001 2MB ROM mentioned in the datasheet.

It makes sense that both options would have existed for this card since the PCB has a location for a large TSOP44 chip already. The 4MB model apparently uses two uncompressed 2MB ROM chips, so would not be possible on this card without a different design.

And I agree that the 2.4MB driver pack is probably the contents of both of the MV6200 floppies.

EDIT: It seems I keep rediscovering the same information that I already learned 3 years ago...
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today