Artigkar wrote:

What does that red button looking thing do?

haha don't push the red button... 🤣 it resets the sound chip.
For example if a game crashes and this causes hanging notes, you can press reset
This can also be handy for testing, during driver development.

It resets the Dreamblaster S2P if you accidentally rebooted or powered off the machine when playing a DOS game instead of exiting the game properly to stop the hanging music from playing.

Very nice!
I think this device is especially interesting for people developing new retro-games for DOS. They can add General MIDI support for this device easily, and anyone with a vintage machine with a printer port can enjoy great sound quality at low cost. I think it's pretty awesome how well it works even on my PCjr. There's no other way to add MIDI support to that machine.

Very much looking forward to this one!! This will be handy especially for the Win 3.1 game era. I have been waiting for something like this to add way more games to my retro laptops that run under Win 3.1 😀

I tested some S2P production batch boards, and they work great !

On the software side, I've been testing the new softmpu /MT32 mode today, with legend of kyrandia.
The music translates pretty well, the sound effects not.
It is certainly better than pc speaker 🤣

Here's the video of this experiment : https://youtu.be/AP66yWq6ZoQ

nice one!
btw it is expected that the sfx fail since the game uploads new sounds to the mt32 , this function is not supported on anything else other than the mt32 and variants

keropi wrote:

nice one!
btw it is expected that the sfx fail since the game uploads new sounds to the mt32 , this function is not supported on anything else other than the mt32 and variants

in the game setup, if you select MT32, it uses this for both music and sound.
would you know a way to config MT32 for music only ? (and for example use pc speaker for sound effects ?)

sadly I don't think that's possible - unless someone hacks the sound drivers or something like that...

Here is Betrayal at Krondor, on a 386-dx 40 with all sound through the S2P on the parallel port, in general midi mode : https://youtu.be/_Fy7yxpoXOs
For general midi, the sound effects are fine, of course 😀

Available now in the webshop : https://www.serdashop.com/S2P
Compatible with the special version of SOFTMPU from https://github.com/pdewacht/softmpu
Considering the development of a patcher as well.

USING SOFTMPU: DREAMBLASTER S2P MODE

Run SoftMPU specifying the parallel interface to be used and the base port
address of the MPU-401 interface, e.g.

SOFTMPU.EXE /MPU:330 /OUTPUT:LPT1

To enable MT-32 compatibility, add the /MT32 switch to the command line, e.g.

SOFTMPU.EXE /MPU:330 /OUTPUT:LPT1 /MT32

A Sound Blaster base port address and IRQ can optionally be specified if
MPU-401 interrupts are required.

an S2P patcher will be available soon.
First success with doom ! 😀

3d printed enclosure for S2P -- prototype
Any suggestions ?

and in black..

I like the red one more 😁

another iteration ...
with easy access for reset-button
and in red again

This is definitely better !

OK... GO!

That is pretty amazing. Will there be an X2P version as well, out of curiosity?

appiah4 wrote:

That is pretty amazing. Will there be an X2P version as well, out of curiosity?

Not planned at the moment.
I started design of MIDILPT --> parallel port MIDI interface
which would be more commonly usable, also with MT32 (throught softmpu).

I love it. Do you think it would be possible to create an ISA version as well? 8 bit card with Keystone ISA bracket?