VOGONS


First post, by Farfolomew

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So it seems my Vortex 2 card, the Montego II, contains a header called SPDIF_I25 (I think it's an "I" maybe a 1 though). It's an 8-pin connector, and supposedly you use it with a digital i/o breakout bracket. I bought this card last century, and thus, have no idea where that bracket could be (if I ever had one to begin with).

I would like to be able to use the S/PDIF capabilities of this board to digitally output the sound to my AWE64's S/PDIF input. I have two questions:

1.)Is this even possible IN DOS even if I did have this original breakout bracket?
2.)Since I don't have the above mentioned bracket, does anyone know the pinout of the 8-pin connector, so that I can use a custom cable?

Here's a small picture of what i'm talking about. The 8-pin connector is on the upper right side of the card, with the breakout bracket to the right of the Montego II:

quadzilla320.jpg

Thanks!

Reply 1 of 12, by gerwin

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I have that connector-cable at home. Will look into it when I find the time.
In windows the S/PDIF works well. In pure Dos it did not give any sound, but I don't know wheter it was because of the Vortex-2 on the receiving end or the Yamaha card as the source.

Reply 2 of 12, by Farfolomew

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Hmm, interesting, thanks a lot!

Any info you can provide would be appreciated. Maybe if you find the correct pinout, you could try connecting a regular internal S/PDIF cable from your Montego II to your Yamaha instead of using the breakout bracket.

Reply 4 of 12, by gerwin

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I measured the cable connections, none of the wires seem directly connected to the Coax S/PDIF. Only one pin was connected to ground. See Image

Reply 5 of 12, by Holering

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Sorry for resurrecting an old thread. But has there been advancements on this? It appears to be a crossover cable to the expansion bracket. I really only need one spdif input on my vortex 2 (au8830); not a whole bunch of I/O spdifs. These expansion brackets hardly exist. Would really like to build a cable for SPDIF capture.

Reply 6 of 12, by obobskivich

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I'm guessing it is not "I25" but "I2S" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2S

A number of Sound Blaster cards use the same protocol for their breakout modules. It isn't directly compatible with S/PDIF (it isn't just a matter of a breakout cable). Your best bet would be to locate the daughterboard, as it will have both the compatible pinout as well as the appropriate receiver/transmitter hardware to interface with the card.

EDIT

A quick search on ebay and I could not find the daughterboard by itself, but found an entire package with the card and a daughterboard: http://www.ebay.com/itm/AUREAL-TURTLE-BEACH-Q … K-/201113384600

Reply 7 of 12, by sliderider

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That's a Quadzilla in the first picture. If you don't already have the S/PDIF board, it's not likely you will find one separately. You also need a special driver as the generic one for the Montego II by itself won't enable digital output or quad stereo.

obobskivich wrote:

EDIT

A quick search on ebay and I could not find the daughterboard by itself, but found an entire package with the card and a daughterboard: http://www.ebay.com/itm/AUREAL-TURTLE-BEACH-Q … K-/201113384600

That's not actually the Quadzilla. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that is a Home Studio despite what the instruction manual that comes with it says. The Quadzilla is a much simpler design for the breakout board for home use. The Home Studio was designed for professionals and has more features. My Quadzilla comes with the smaller breakout board shown in the top picture.

Here's a photo of the Quadzilla and you can see the breakout board is the smaller one.

b2wb.jpg

I found some more information, and it looks like it may be a Plus.

http://retrosoundcards.wordpress.com/category … 000-56k/page/3/

Reply 8 of 12, by AlphaWing

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Does the original Montego that uses the vortex 1 use the same pinouts?
It has those pins at the top of the card too, I use it with a SBPRO in a PII-300.
Heres a actual picture of it... I took for a different thread so its not centered on it. Its next to the SBPRO2.
Slotbracket_PII_zpsf7dad120.jpg

Reply 9 of 12, by obobskivich

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sliderider: great info there! It does indeed look like the "plus" from the pictures you linked. Are they like Sound Blaster cards in that any daughterboard can be mated to the PCI card via the I2S link? Or is it not that "universal"?

Reply 10 of 12, by sliderider

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obobskivich wrote:

sliderider: great info there! It does indeed look like the "plus" from the pictures you linked. Are they like Sound Blaster cards in that any daughterboard can be mated to the PCI card via the I2S link? Or is it not that "universal"?

That card only connects to the one that it came with as far as I know. It's not like a waveblaster compatible daughtercard. Creative and Aureal were locked in mortal combat at that time so I doubt they would share technology like that. You'd also need a special driver just like you need a special driver with the Montego II to get quad stereo and S/PDIF to work. I did see on ebay recently someone selling a SB Live! with it's own daughtercard which I assume has similar functionality to the one with the Quadzilla.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Sound-Blaste … =item2591e916f6

Reply 11 of 12, by obobskivich

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Oh no that isn't what I meant exactly. 😊 I didn't mean hook up the Aureal card to a Creative or vice versa, what I meant was will any of the Aureal I2S daughtercards work with the Aureal PCI card? (similar to how the Sound Blaster "Live Drive" expansions work with a wide range of Sound Blaster cards) Or are they tied to only the "package" they came in? (similar to a lot of M-Audio daughter/break-out modules) Sorry for the confusion. 😊

Reply 12 of 12, by nikon331

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Can someone please upload a disk image of the Montego 2 Quadzilla CD? Seems to only have the regular card drivers on here and they specifically say not for use with the Studio or Quadzilla cards.