
A Sound Card Before Its Time - userbinator
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/a-sound-card-before-its-time/
======
rahimnathwani
Did any of you, back in the 90s, build a parallel port DAC to use with Linux's
PC Speaker driver?

I never did, but was tempted. In the end I just splurged the 80 GBP for a
SoundBlaster 16.

It's amazing what people can do with great software and just a little
hardware. (See bottom of page: [http://linux-audio.com/Sound-
HOWTO-3.html](http://linux-audio.com/Sound-HOWTO-3.html))

~~~
nikanj
According to the list, AdLib is the only one that’s no longer manufactured.

~~~
duskwuff
> no longer manufactured.

OR IS IT?!

[https://texelec.com/product/radlib-opl2-sound-card-8-bit-
isa...](https://texelec.com/product/radlib-opl2-sound-card-8-bit-isa-adlib-
clone/)

------
js2
> _With appropriate software, the VCA could respond to voice commands,
> function as a voice-controlled keyboard, record and play back digital audio,
> synthesize speech from text, detect and produce dialing signals, and
> function as a 1,200 baud modem. All that in 1985._

This is very similar to the Novation Apple-CAT II which was available by 1981
or so:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novation_CAT#The_Apple-
CAT_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novation_CAT#The_Apple-CAT_II)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160508112704/http://www.jammed...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160508112704/http://www.jammed.com:80/~jwa/Machines/cat/)

Ironically, Novation was wiped out when they retooled to produce a card for
the PCjr.

~~~
394549
Could that do the voice recognition functions? The Apple-CAT II sounds like a
conventional modem.

I think the unique thing about this IBM sound cards is that it had a
programmable DSP which made it much more flexible.

~~~
js2
Yes, my recollection is that it could recognize voice on the line. Besides
that:

\- It had a four-voice synthesizer, so it could play music / synthesize
voices, etc over the line.

\- It had a handset input, I think w/digitizer, so it could be used as a voice
distorter.

\- It supported Bell 202 1200 bps half-duplex to another Cat II.

\- It could control a tape recorder, so it could be used as an answering
machine.

\- It could control home appliances via BSR X-10.

\- It had RS-232 support, so it could be used as a serial printer controller.

It was not a conventional modem.

------
simulate
Radio Shack's TRS-80 had a voice synthesis box available for $399 way back in
1979:

[http://www.trs-80.org/trs-80-voice-
synthesizer/](http://www.trs-80.org/trs-80-voice-synthesizer/)

Here's a YouTube demo:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeIJxXCh8P8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeIJxXCh8P8)

($399 in 1979 is equal to about $1399 in 2018)

~~~
fanf2
Superior Software’s SPEECH! for the BBC Micro: software speech synthesis on a
machine with relatively anaemic sound hardware. It was so cool back in the
1980s :-)

[http://www.triumphoverchallenges.com/working-at-superior-
sof...](http://www.triumphoverchallenges.com/working-at-superior-software-
leeds/)

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=1hC7Vjl_EWY](https://youtube.com/watch?v=1hC7Vjl_EWY)

------
pasta
My first sound card was a Gravis Ultrasound Max I bought for around $400
maybe?

Cut out a part of the PC cage so it could fit. Added memory from an old video
card to it and it worked great.

But things were going so fast that maybe one/two years later the Soundblaster
2 came on the market. Maybe it was $200 and producing much better sound.

Edit: changed the prices as others point out they are wrong.

~~~
einr
The GUS Max came out in 1994, the SoundBlaster 2.0 came out in 1991 and was a
significantly more limited card than the GUS (no wave table synthesis, no
16-bit audio or stereo)

In 1994 the state-of-the-art SoundBlaster would have been the AWE32 and it was
$399. You must be misremembering :)

Sound cards did not drop to anywhere near $20 until the very late 90's or
early 00's and those $20 cards were bottom barrel stuff that would have been
less advanced in many ways than the GUS Max even then.

~~~
sundvor
"In 1994 the state-of-the-art SoundBlaster would have been the AWE32 and it
was $399."

Now I remember why I was never able to save any money in my late teens...

------
avian
Off topic, but is anyone else consistently getting a plain “you don’t have
permission to access” 403 error for this link?

~~~
rasz
you need a proxy, blog author manually cuts out ISPs after encountering
spam/heavy traffic

~~~
nottorp
What good is a blog if no one can read it?

~~~
Theodores
What good is the reading of a blog if no one can track it?

------
Jaruzel
Relevant: I've recently build a DOS based retro gaming PC using an old Epia
5000 mini-itx motherboard. The reason I picked this board (other than I
already had one) is that it has onboard support for Ad-Lib and Soundblaster
audio, meaning most DOS era games playback audio without any modification.

These boards still pop-up from time to time on ebay, and are way cheaper than
a modern ad-lib clone card.

~~~
xhrpost
So you're directly installing DOS on the device and not using emulation?

~~~
Jaruzel
Correct. Plus the required drivers in config.sys, and using a SD card as the
C: drive, all in a slimeline, silent mini-itx case. I've added a text gui
(think Curses) to easily select games and apps. It's not done yet, but I'll
probably knock up a webpage all about it at some point.

------
reassembled
Did anyone here ever have the speech synthesizer card for the Texas
Instruments TI-99/4A computer? I remember playing a game called Parsec on that
computer and if you had the speech synth plugged into the expansion port of
the TI the game would speak at times.

~~~
rwmj
There were lots of speech synthesizer cards for 8 bit machines. What they had
in common was the SP0256 chip
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_SP0256](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_SP0256))
which could synthesize speech by chaining together a series of phonemes. Or
you could use the phonemes to create "pew-pew"-type special effects for games
as I did ...

------
tokyodude
I remember being blown away by a DAC on a Commodore Pet. Unfortunately I don't
think there are any videos. It wasn't common to own a video camera in 1980

[http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/pet/audio/index.html](http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/pet/audio/index.html)

I'm not actually sure that's the correct software. All I remember is it
sounding like real instruments back when I was used to simple beeps from the
built in sound

------
userbinator
20MHz is not a lot, but a DSP is quite different from a regular CPU, so I
wonder if it's powerful enough for decoding low-bitrate MP3...

~~~
rasz
A big maybe. While 20MHz TMS32010 DSP in 1985 was around 386DX 33MHz
horsepower wise, if you ignore things like single cycle 16x16 multiply(10-20
faster than 386), it might still be too slow. For comparison ~3x faster
DSP56001 in Atari Falcon needs 16MHz CPU assist to decode MP3.

~~~
einr
Comparing to a general purpose CPU, I remember from the olden days that a 486
DX4/100 was just BARELY able to decode stereo MP3's if you used a well
optimized MS-DOS playback program. In a multitasking environment like Windows
-- forget about it!

~~~
madengr
Windows back then wan’t multitasking. OS/2 on the other hand; I could download
at 9600 baud and play Wolfenstein at the same time.

~~~
einr
I ran Windows 95 on my 486.

------
drosan
403 Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /wp/a-sound-card-before-its-time/ on this
server.

:c

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walrus01
the ps/2 models 25 and 30 were sold in large numbers to educational
institutions, so my guess is that it was paired with some sort of weird
education-related recording and playback software.

~~~
teddyh
It can’t have been made for that, since the IBM PS/2 series of computers was
not released until 1987.

