VOGONS


First post, by dingpromos

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Here's a picture of a rare sound card!
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/djsite/SilpheedSoundCard.jpg

It's the IBM PS/1 sound card (expensive) add-on which came with a driver disk although I can't remember it and two programs. These were Cakewalk Apprentice for DOS - see the README.DOC file:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/djsite/READMEDOC.txt

and the Sierra Silpheed game.

I think this sound card may qualify as the worst sound card of all time, because it only ever worked with these two programs! 😎 It did boast "three channel FM sound" which Silpheed could use but there was no Windows 3.1 driver so when I "upgraded" the 1992 machine I used the internal speaker driver for Windows.

Does anyone know about this piece of hardware? It did come with a MIDI breakout box and an IBM joystick for Silpheed so you did get a few bits.

Reply 1 of 5, by Cloudschatze

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

The PS/1 audio card was discussed a bit in this thread.

Sound-wise, the PS/1 audio card appears to feature both a DAC and an SN76496, "3-voice" core, not unlike Tandy's PSSJ chip.

A number of games (mostly Sierra's) support the PS/1 card for both digital sample and 3-voice music playback, a list of which can be found at Mobygames. Using Sierra's MT32IBM driver, you can even attach an external MT-32 or CM-variant synthesizer for some of the best music playback possible. (Not too bad for the lowly PS/1, eh?)

Your specific Silpheed version interests me. I imagine it contains a driver that might be used to extend support of the PS/1 card to all of Sierra's SCI0 games. Care to post the contents? 😀

Reply 2 of 5, by dingpromos

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Unfortunately the Silpheed diskette cannot be read in my FDD - reported unformatted. I did used to play the game using the breakout MIDI box connected to a Creative Labs Midi blaster, which has an MT-32 mode. Thanks to info from Quest studios, I now have a real MT-32 and a Roland Super MPU all on a 1994 Pentium 180Mhz PC featuring 5 ISA's & 3 PCI slots. The game had to be redownloaded.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/djsite/GameGear.jpg

The PS/1 machine would not start and was dumped quite recently, with Silpheed on the hard disk, although I kept the sound card and a 2MB memory card. I'm sure the MIDI breakout box must be somewhere as well, but I don't know where.

Reply 3 of 5, by ih8registrations

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Perhaps use rawwrite or ttt.. i forget the name to do a bit dump.

Reply 4 of 5, by Cloudschatze

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
ih8registrations wrote:

...do a bit dump.

This might be worth pursuing.

I have a registered copy of Disk2FDI, along with the Disk2FDI "cable." If none of your efforts pan out, would you be willing to let me borrow that disk, dingpromos?

Reply 5 of 5, by robertmo

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

i think the best way to do before other things is to check that floppy in a different drive, as like with everything there are drives of a different quality. Some drives are able to read way more floppies. Some don't even see floppies made by some manufacturers. Some don't see floppies recorded with different drives... etc.