Would you really put a CGA card in a 486? Or a Sound Blaster 16 in an IBM PC? People have done it, but its just plain wrong.
A. IBM PC & XT
As the familiar story goes, in the beginning IBM made the PC. And the world received the PC and deemed it good. IBM offered two choices of video adapter, the Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter (MDA) or the Color/Graphics Adapter (CGA). If you wanted color output or graphics, you chose the latter. If you wanted to run only text-based applications, you chose the former.
Few people saw this computer as a gaming machine, although with the right hardware it was as capable a gaming machine as the Apple II. It used an 8088 processor running at 4.77MHz, supported a maximum of 640KB of RAM and a socket for an 8087 math coprocessor. It had five 8-bit ISA expansion slots, and the XT had eight. Even so, the machine was slow, really slow. If you are going to use an IBM PC 5150 or XT as a gaming machine, keep these limitations in mind.
So for an IBM PC or XT or a clone, essential gaming hardware to have in the machine is :
1. Memory Expansion
PC - 256KB or 384KB memory expansion; XT - 640KB mod.
The PC, most commonly seen with 256KB on the motherboard, required memory expansion boards to reach a full 640KB. IBM's Memory Expansion Adapters maxed out at 256KB per board. The IBM XT originally came with a 64/256KB board, but a trivial modification would allow it to support 640KB by swapping chips. Competitors like AST's Six Pak Plus allowed for 384KB and added a serial port, a real time clock, a parallel port and could be upgraded to support a game port, which leads me to :
2. Gameport
If you want to play games on the PC, you need a gameport card. IBM's official name for its card is the Game Control Adapter, but any card should work fine. Sound card gameports work as well so long as the sound card is not Plug-n-Play.
3. Floppy Drives and Controller
While this should be a no-brainer, you will be using lots of floppies on these machines. Ideally, since floppy controllers only support two internal drives, you will be needing two drives. Virtually all IBM PC 5150s come with two 5.25" floppy drives, and XT's usually come with two Full Height 5.25" drive, but later models come with two Half Height 5.25" floppy drives and usually a hard drive. IBM PCs will work with a 3.5" floppy drive, but will treat it as a 720KB drive without a rare HD floppy controller. You will need to use DOS 3.2 or better to recognize 80-tracks. IBM PC and XTs are designed to accept only full-height drives, you will need to find some mounting hardware for half height drives or faceplates.
If you are running DOS off a floppy disk, then drive B will the drive you use to run DOS game software.
4. Graphics
The CGA card is really the only choice here, although you can run an MDA card for text if you cannot stand CGA snow. Many early games take advantage of CGA's composite output to display more colorful graphics on a TV or color composite monitor than an RGB monitor. In some weird reality I could see someone running a triple-display with an IBM 5151 Monochrome Display, an IBM 5153 Color Display and a Color Composite Monitor like the AppleColor Composite Monitor IIe.
5. Operating System : IBM PC-DOS 3.3
While 3.2 is perhaps the more historically accurate OS, 3.3 is more useful due to the support for multiple hard drive partitions.
Not essential, yet useful hardware include :
1. Hard Drive and Controller
The IBM PC has a 63.5W power supply, so running a huge Seagate ST-412 is out of the question, but its successor, the Seagate ST-225, should be doable. Later drives almost invariably take far less power, so you should be fine. Since the PC has only 8-bit slots, you will be stuck with whatever controller you can find, unless you build an XT-IDE controller of find an ADP-50L. Both cards will allow you to use standard 16-bit parallel ATA devices in an 8-bit slot. They can be used with a compact flash card, which is ATA compatible with a passive pin adapter.
2. NEC V20 CPU
Replacing your Intel 8088 with an NEC V20 CPU will increase performance by 10-15%. It does break the occasional game like Championship Lode Runner. Plus, if you are looking for the exact PC speed, it does not slow down.
3. Mice
Most applications that run well on an IBM PC were made before the days where the mouse was an ubiquitous input device. Nonetheless, when an application or game, like Tass Times in Tonetown supports it, it is always appreciated. Use serial mice, since they are the closest thing to a standard and the CuteMouse driver.
Not recommended :
1. EGA/VGA Graphics Cards
Most EGA cards offer decent CGA compatibility, but do not expect them to work with games that tweak the CGA registers. VGA cards usually are less compatible. Running EGA or VGA games on a 5150 is often too frustrating because the hardware is so slow.
2. Expanded Memory Boards
By the time games were taking advantage of EMS, it was 1990. The PC and XT were way too slow.
3. Math Coprocessor
While it will not hurt to insert an 8087, I would not go out of my way to do it. Games really did not support the coprocessor until the mid 90s. Early games that do include SimCity and Falcon 3.0. SimCity is no fun on an XT.
4. Sound Cards & MIDI
The first games supporting sound cards like the Adlib, C/MS Game Blaster and midi devices like a Roland MT-32 were not released until 1988, almost seven years after the release of the PC. You might as well try making a 486 play Quake II. King's Quest IV, even with CGA, on a PC is no fun. The number of games that are playable on an PC or XT and support sound cards is a very small number.
5. Modems
Games supporting modem play began in the late 80s, and if you can find someone who is willing to play with you over a telephone line, Battle Chess or Modem Wars will take an eternity to carry out commands.
B. IBM PCjr.
Normally, I say you should not play 16-color games on an 8088 machine. I have two exceptions to this rule. First, if the game is using a tweaked CGA mode like Round 42, Styx or ICON: Quest for the Ring. Second, if the game has specific support for the PCjr. The PCjr. is mostly self-contained, yet there are a few things to make life easier :
1. PCjr. Joysticks
Gaming is easier with a joystick, and the PCjr. has custom joystick ports. Regular PC-compatible joysticks are fully compatible with a pin-adapter.
2. Memory Expansion
The PCjr. was only supposed to have 128KB RAM, but even IBM realized that this artificial limitation was absurd. And as memory expansions did not have to share access between the CPU and the video controller and had dedicated DRAM refresh circuitry, the machine ran faster than a PC or XT when the expansion was used. Many self-booting games of course, did not know about the expansion RAM. Most memory expansions came in 128KB sidecars, but could be modified to support 512KB.
3. Keyboard Replacement
If you are using the original PCjr. keyboard with the unlabeled rectangular keys (the chicklet keyboard), you should replace it with the official replacement PCjr. keyboard, or make a cable to connect an XT keyboard. Typing on the chicklet can lead otherwise sane, well-adjusted people to commit depraved acts against computer hardware.
4. Cartridges
Imagic and Activision ported some of their best games to cartridges, and this is the only way you are going to run them.
5. Monitor
If you can find it, get the IBM PCjr. Display, Model 4863. It supports 16 colors, utilizes the PCjr.'s unique cable output and has a built-in speaker. The 3-voice sound only comes out of the monitor port or audio jack. The internal beeper is not a speaker cone but a tinny tweeter that fails to produce digitized sound with any sort of volume.
6. Operating System : IBM PC-DOS 2.1
The stock DOS for this system is just fine to run DOS programs. If you get a hard drive you will need something more advanced.
Recommended and Non-essential Hardware is the same for the IBM PC.
Virtually all PCjr. enhanced games are self-booters. Most DOS 16-color games support EGA or Tandy 1000 and many explicitly exclude PCjr. support.
C. IBM AT, XT/286 & Clones
1. Memory Expansion
The IBM AT comes with 512KB built into the motherboard, but can use 128KB on an expansion card. Most 16-bit extended memory cards can fill the remaining hole. The XT/286 has 640KB on the board. However, at 6 or 8MHz, many of the programs that benefit from Expanded or Extended Memory are still beyond these systems. Cards tend not to work well past 10MHz.
2. EGA Graphics
With a 286 machine, you should really be using an EGA graphics adapter. IBM's adapter requires a memory expansion board to increase the memory from 64KB to 256KB, but many third party adapters have the maximum built in. 128KB is needed for 640x350x16 graphics. Also needed is an EGA monitor like the IBM 5154 Enhanced Color Display. IBM's adapter is only an 8-bit device, 16-bit cards will provide speedier video, but at this stage CPU power is more important that graphics speed. VGA is easy to add and allow for use of modern monitors, but VGA games tend to be more demanding than what these machines can handle.
3. Sound Cards
At this point, games which use Sound Cards will run playably on these systems, so put them in. An Adlib, a Game Blaster, an 8-bit Sound Blaster, a Roland MPU-401, anything you can find will likely run due to the 16-bit ISA slots. Avoid ISA PnP cards, their software tends to require a 386.
4. Multi-I/O
A hard drive is essential at this stage, but due to the 16-bit ISA slot you have a multitude of options. There are plenty of cheap multi-I/O boards that integrate HD floppy controllers, IDE, serial, parallel and gameports. Unfortunately, without a BIOS ROM, your hard drive support will be extremely limited in an IBM system.
5. Network Card
A 16-bit ISA network card is easy to find, and they have several advantages. First, you can use a network to transfer files. Just set up an FTP on your main machine and use a small FTP client found in IRCjr. Also, the ROM socket can be used to expand your hard drive choices using the Universal XT-IDE BIOS. By burning the ROM and plugging it into the card, you have a BIOS extension capable of recognizing all that storage on your modern machine.
6. Mice
Mice are really starting to become supported in late 80s games, no gamer should be without one. If you have a machine with a PS/2 connector, the universe of mice has become greater.
One very useful addition is any kind of CPU accelerator. Intel Inboard 386/AT is an example of one product designed to work in an IBM AT. 101 Keyboards are also useful, but not yet indispensible (the 84-AT keyboard has a very impressive feel)
Unnecessary investments : 16-bit Sound Cards, High Density drives, 80287 coprocessor.
7. Operating System : IBM PC-DOS 3.3 or 5.0
Depends on the size of your hard drive, >32MB is best used with 5.0.
D. Tandy 1000
1. 286 Machines
The upgrade path for Tandys that use 8088s or 8086s often do not satisfy for the games that really use 320x200x16 graphics. 286 machines are really recommended if you wish to run the whole breadth of software which can use Tandy graphics and especially Tandy sound.
2. XT-compatible Keyboards
The Tandy 1000 TL/SL/RLs come with a Tandy Enhanced Keyboard, which in my opinion does not have great keystroke action. I prefer an IBM Model M, and the keyboards made from 1985-1992 work very well with these machines.
3. Memory Expansion
It is extremely important to upgrade these machines to their maximum supported motherboard limit. This is 768KB for the 286 machines, 640KB on the lower machines. Extended memory above 1MB is not supported, but Expanded memory is, if you can find a board that will fit inside these machines. They are extremely rare, and the games to run them just are not quite there yet.
4. Hard Drive Controller
8-bit Hard Drive Controllers like the ADP-50L and Acculogic S-IDE used to be impossible to find, but now with XT-IDE, the use of hard drives can now be realized in these systems.
5. Sound Cards
See the AT entry above, just avoid the Sound Blaster, Thunderboard or any other card that camps out only at DMA1, which is also used.
6. CPU Accelerator
Products like Make-it-486 are every useful here, as the speed boost will be much appreciated even in 16-color titles. They can give you 386SX performance, although not the memory mapping features.
Useful cards : Network cards (useful more for the file transfer capabilities, use one like an NE1000 or Intel EtherExpress 8/16), parallel cards (to avoid the card edge parallel ports). EGA card (to run games like Commander Keen which do not work with Tandy graphics)
7. Operating System : Tandy DOS 3.3 or MS-DOS 5.0
See above
Unnecessary : See AT entry above.
E. 386 Machines
1. Memory Expansion
Usually 386 boards will require two or four 30-pin SIMM modules to expand the memory. 4-8MB is a good amount for a 386 machine.
2. 386DX
These are often socketed while 386SX CPUs are almost always soldered in and not upgradeable.
3. Fast 16-bit VGA
At this point, VGA is the only choice. Avoid slow cards from Trident or OAK Technology. The Tseng ET4000AX is an excellent choice for fast, compatible VGA. While SVGA is not yet a requirement, a having a 512KB card is usually sufficient for the standard SVGA modes.
4. Sound Cards
A Sound Blaster Pro, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, Gravis Ultrasound are all great choices. Roland MPU-401 is also highly recommended. MT-32/LAPC-I/CM-32L is still the better option, but select games are starting to use General MIDI. A Roland SCC-1 is very useful.
5. HD Floppy Drives
Should have two, one for each size of disk.
6. Multi-I/O, Network Card, Mouse & 101 Keyboard
7. External Cache
Good boards can support up to 128-256KB external cache. Adding external cache will really boost performance.
See above
8. Operating System : MS-DOS 5.0-6.22
Absolutely necessary to gain access to the High Memory Area and Expanded Memory Emulation. Windows 3.1 is not yet recommended, the performance needed when playing games just is not there yet.
Useful items include a CD-ROM drive, 80387DX coprocessor, SCSI controller (faster than 16-bit IDE)
F. 486 Machines
All the above, with the following notes :
1. Memory Expansion
72-pin SIMMs, FPM RAM are beginning to be seen here.
2. 486DX
486SX processors have the coprocessor disabled, use a DX processor to get it back.
3. CD-ROM drive
At least 4x, but any generic IDE or SCSI CD-ROM will work fine.
4. VLB or PCI SVGA
A fast card will use either one of the 32-bit buses. Early PCI implementations tend to be buggy, but VESA gets unstable the more cards that are added to the bus.
5. SCSI or VLB IDE
VLB IDE can be very fast, but stability is an issue. ISA SCSI may not be quite as fast, but it is rock solid stable and faster than ISA IDE.
6. Sound Cards
A Sound Blaster 16 or AWE32/64 is a good choice for a main card. If you are not playing older games, a Roland MPU-401 is no longer essential. General MIDI, in the form of waveblaster daughterboards or external MIDI modules, is preferred for music.
7. External Cache
While not quite as impressive as on the 386, due to the internal cache of the 486, it can really help you get playable framerates in DOOM. 256KB should be the minimum
8. Operating System : MS-DOS 5.0-6.22 & Windows 3.11
See above, now you can enjoy Windows 3.1 games.
G. Pentium
1. Solid PCI Video
A S3 Trio64V+ is a good, compatible choice, but there are many others. Some like the quality of the Matrox Millenium. AGP is yet to make its appearance. A great VGA compatibility list of PCI and AGP cards can be found here : http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/
2. 3dfx Voodoo
At this point a 3D accelerator is very useful, and the compatible card of choice is the 3dfx Voodoo 1 chip.
3. Socket 7
Socket 7 boards support just about any Intel Pentium, and can range from 75 to 233MHz, MMX.
4. External Cache
512KB is the usual amount, 1MB is also available
5. Network Card
Should be PCI, and the Boot ROM feature should no longer be required as most boards should support 28-bit LBA.
Useful items include a DVD-ROM drive and mpeg2 decoder board (Creative DXR series or Sigma Realmagic Hollywood+)
6. Operating System : Windows 95 OSR 2.0
OSR 2.0 is necessary for FAT32 support and support for AGP cards, avoid 2.5 as it integrates Active Desktop.
H. Pentium II
1. 3dfx Voodoo 2 + AGP or Voodoo 3
3D acceleration is now required, so the above boards offer the best compatibility and good performance for the late 90s. Other good options include a nVidia Riva TNT2 board. Combining two Voodoo 2 cards in SLI with another 3D accelerator in the AGP slot is highly recommended.
2. DVD-ROM and mpeg2 Decoder
See above
3. 3D PCI Sound Card
Good options include the Sound Blaster Live! with its EAX support and Aureal SQ2500 with support for A3D 2.0. If you want solid backwards compatibility without using an ISA sound card, a Yamaha YMF-724 board shines in a BX motherboard.
4. Intel i440BX Motherboard
Stable, rock solid boards, fast as they come. Can support CPUs from 233MHz to 1GHz
Operating System : Windows 98SE
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Why CD Collections or Compilations Are Not Ideal for Vintage Computing
When I bought a copy of the King's Quest 15th Anniversary Collector's Edition almost 20 years ago, I thought I had everything I would ever need to enjoy the King's Quest Series. I had the AGI versions of KQ1-3, KQ4, KQ1SCI, KQ5 CD and KQ6 CD. (KQ7 would have to wait for a later collection). Isn't that everything?
Well, as it turns out, that is far from everything of King's Quest. For KQ1 & 2, I only had the DOS-installable AGI2 versions. No disk images were included to use the previous booter versions of KQ1 and KQ2. The AGI version of KQ4 was not included, nor was the English disk versions of KQ5 and KQ6, but the French disk version of KQ5 and the German version of KQ6 were. More details available as to the extras can be found here : http://www.sierraplanet.com/curiosities/kingsquest/collections.html
So what, I still had the ideal, didn't I? Well, for vintage gamers, the ideal is not always enough. Lets see what I can come up with for issues :
KQ1 - No PC Booter versions for the IBM PC, IBM PCjr. or Tandy 1000.
KQ2 - No PC Booter version. Version 2.1 included where there is a version 2.2 (fixes issues with using EGA or VGA on a Tandy 1000).
KQ3 - No issues
KQ4 - No AGI version, later version of KQ4 included; earlier version has many graphical differences, as demonstrated here : http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php/topic,2802.0.html. I assume they included the patch to fix the waterfall bug. Original monochrome install program is replaced by the color install program that was introduced years after the game, and most of the graphics and sound drivers in the floppy releases are not included.
KQ1SCI - Original monochrome install program is replaced by the color install program that was introduced years after the game, and most of the graphics and sound drivers in the floppy releases are not included.
KQ5 - No English Disk Version included, either 16-color or 256-color, the CD version features pretty poor voice acting, all from people working for Sierra and it cannot be turned off.
KQ6 - No English Disk Version included, however the very good voice acting can be turned off. Minor differences in the interface, better opening video.
Obviously, if you are releasing CD-ROMs, the user must have a CD-ROM drive. But to run KQ5 or KQ6 CD, you have to keep the CD in the drive or use a custom install program and lots of hard drive space. In 1994 hard drives tended to average around 500MB. It would not be unreasonable to allow people to install the disk versions and avoid having to keep the CD in the drive. Having to put up with pauses or spinning when the game looks for the next audio file or video segment is also annoying.
One great benefit to having CDs is that they will not deteriorate like floppy disks. Of course, if the game is already corrupted by the time of transfer, then the CD really does not serve its archiving purpose. Ultima II is a good example of this, because by the time it hit the CD compilations, it had suffered from data corruption. A dungeon entrance was removed as a result. Also, because the game could only be run from floppy disks, the files were originally given the same names on the Player and Galactic Disks. Instead of changing the file names and modifying the executable, they simply copied over the files and destroyed the ability to travel to several planets in the original game. The fix to both issues is available here : http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/ultima2/utilities.shtml
Some companies left manual-based copy protection intact, others removed it, but at a cost. In the Monkey Island Madness CD, Monkey Island 2; LeChuck's Revenge was included. MI2 was only ever released as a disk version, (not counting the relatively recent Special Edition or patches to the DOS version based on it). The original disk version used a code wheel copy protection at the beginning of the game, but the version included on this CD eliminated it. However, the easy mode was also eliminated, and selecting EGA graphics gave an incorrect monochrome EGA display instead of 16 colors. A fix for the EGA version can be found here : http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=10452&sid=17c26cf2a1203f1d3c23f85c47001561. On the other hand, the MPU-401 port is now selectable in the CD versions.
LucasArts also broke Tandy Graphics support in the version of Maniac Mansion included in Day of the Tentacle. With DOTT, the text with Tandy Graphics selected is corrupted. However, the Nuke-Em Alarms door is always open. LucasArts always disabled manual based copy protection in their floppy collection releases as well, so there are no protection screens in the LucasArts Classic Adventures (except possibly for Zak McKracken) and Air Combat Classics . Of course, you lose out on the experience of using a codewheel, a red filter, or a codebook and the screens supporting them.
Other compilation releases do not always put the latest version of the game in the CDs. The Leisure Suit Larry Collections put an earlier version of LSL1 in it, so it suffers from the same issue as the KQ2 found in the King's Quest Collections. The Police Quest Collection has some install weirdness going on. For copyright reasons, the original version of Quest for Glory I, entitled Hero's Quest, is not included in the Quest for Glory releases. The Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry collections do not include the 16-color versions of SQ1 & SQ4, LSL1 remake & LSL5, and PQ3 16-color is not included in the Police Quest Collections. The disk version of SQ4 is not to be found, being replaced by the buggy and Sierra-staff voice acted SQ4CD. Nor will you find the disk version of PQ4. However, the first LSL collection CD contains the disk version of LSL6, but the later collection CDs have the CD version. On the Roberta Williams Anthology, the version of Lara Bow: Dagger of Amon Ra, is the CD version voiced by the Sierra staff.
In other releases, you do not have the option to install the expansions separately from main game. So in Ultima VII, you will always have the Forge of Virtue and the Silver Seed installed. Ditto for the Secret Missions and Special Operations of Wing Commander I & II. You cannot install the "save space" options for Ultima Underworld or The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes : Case of the Rose Tatoo. Nor can you install the 16-color graphics for Wing Commander I & II. Did you know that Wasteland and Dragon Wars had separate installs for Tandy, CGA and CGA color composite graphics? The versions on the CDs only works with an EGA or VGA card.
Wizardry 7 had a CD version that was did not take advantage of the CD's storage capacities but did allow you to use separate devices for music and sound effects. The floppy version and the version included in the Ultimate Wizardry Archives do not allow for that.
I could go on and on about these issues, but let me return to the focus of my article, why these are not all that great for vintage computing. First of all, shocking as it may seem, but not all vintage computers have a CD-ROM drive. Getting a CD-ROM drive in a computer with only 8-bit slots is no simple task. Installation then becomes a game of installing it on one computer and moving it to another. Finding VGA cards that work well in an 8-bit slot tends to be a bit of a challenge. With these compilations, you may have some difficulty running King's Quest IV in a Tandy 1000 computer. A Tandy 1000TX (8MHz 286) was almost certainly a prime target for Sierra's developers at the time. Suppose that I wanted to run the EGA version of Wing Commander because that was the way I played it back in the day? Good luck with a CD version.
The solution is floppy disk images. If the disk is a DOS disk and does not have disk-based copy protection, they are very easy to make. WinImage is a popular program, but write protect any floppies you insert into a system with a Windows OS, otherwise it will modify the disk's FAT table. The modification is harmless, but the disk is no longer "pure". DSK2IMG is a program I like to use, and it can be set to retry the read multiple times if you have an iffy disk. DOSBox is getting better and better at being able to install games off floppies.
Well, as it turns out, that is far from everything of King's Quest. For KQ1 & 2, I only had the DOS-installable AGI2 versions. No disk images were included to use the previous booter versions of KQ1 and KQ2. The AGI version of KQ4 was not included, nor was the English disk versions of KQ5 and KQ6, but the French disk version of KQ5 and the German version of KQ6 were. More details available as to the extras can be found here : http://www.sierraplanet.com/curiosities/kingsquest/collections.html
So what, I still had the ideal, didn't I? Well, for vintage gamers, the ideal is not always enough. Lets see what I can come up with for issues :
KQ1 - No PC Booter versions for the IBM PC, IBM PCjr. or Tandy 1000.
KQ2 - No PC Booter version. Version 2.1 included where there is a version 2.2 (fixes issues with using EGA or VGA on a Tandy 1000).
KQ3 - No issues
KQ4 - No AGI version, later version of KQ4 included; earlier version has many graphical differences, as demonstrated here : http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php/topic,2802.0.html. I assume they included the patch to fix the waterfall bug. Original monochrome install program is replaced by the color install program that was introduced years after the game, and most of the graphics and sound drivers in the floppy releases are not included.
KQ1SCI - Original monochrome install program is replaced by the color install program that was introduced years after the game, and most of the graphics and sound drivers in the floppy releases are not included.
KQ5 - No English Disk Version included, either 16-color or 256-color, the CD version features pretty poor voice acting, all from people working for Sierra and it cannot be turned off.
KQ6 - No English Disk Version included, however the very good voice acting can be turned off. Minor differences in the interface, better opening video.
Obviously, if you are releasing CD-ROMs, the user must have a CD-ROM drive. But to run KQ5 or KQ6 CD, you have to keep the CD in the drive or use a custom install program and lots of hard drive space. In 1994 hard drives tended to average around 500MB. It would not be unreasonable to allow people to install the disk versions and avoid having to keep the CD in the drive. Having to put up with pauses or spinning when the game looks for the next audio file or video segment is also annoying.
One great benefit to having CDs is that they will not deteriorate like floppy disks. Of course, if the game is already corrupted by the time of transfer, then the CD really does not serve its archiving purpose. Ultima II is a good example of this, because by the time it hit the CD compilations, it had suffered from data corruption. A dungeon entrance was removed as a result. Also, because the game could only be run from floppy disks, the files were originally given the same names on the Player and Galactic Disks. Instead of changing the file names and modifying the executable, they simply copied over the files and destroyed the ability to travel to several planets in the original game. The fix to both issues is available here : http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/ultima2/utilities.shtml
Some companies left manual-based copy protection intact, others removed it, but at a cost. In the Monkey Island Madness CD, Monkey Island 2; LeChuck's Revenge was included. MI2 was only ever released as a disk version, (not counting the relatively recent Special Edition or patches to the DOS version based on it). The original disk version used a code wheel copy protection at the beginning of the game, but the version included on this CD eliminated it. However, the easy mode was also eliminated, and selecting EGA graphics gave an incorrect monochrome EGA display instead of 16 colors. A fix for the EGA version can be found here : http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=10452&sid=17c26cf2a1203f1d3c23f85c47001561. On the other hand, the MPU-401 port is now selectable in the CD versions.
LucasArts also broke Tandy Graphics support in the version of Maniac Mansion included in Day of the Tentacle. With DOTT, the text with Tandy Graphics selected is corrupted. However, the Nuke-Em Alarms door is always open. LucasArts always disabled manual based copy protection in their floppy collection releases as well, so there are no protection screens in the LucasArts Classic Adventures (except possibly for Zak McKracken) and Air Combat Classics . Of course, you lose out on the experience of using a codewheel, a red filter, or a codebook and the screens supporting them.
Other compilation releases do not always put the latest version of the game in the CDs. The Leisure Suit Larry Collections put an earlier version of LSL1 in it, so it suffers from the same issue as the KQ2 found in the King's Quest Collections. The Police Quest Collection has some install weirdness going on. For copyright reasons, the original version of Quest for Glory I, entitled Hero's Quest, is not included in the Quest for Glory releases. The Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry collections do not include the 16-color versions of SQ1 & SQ4, LSL1 remake & LSL5, and PQ3 16-color is not included in the Police Quest Collections. The disk version of SQ4 is not to be found, being replaced by the buggy and Sierra-staff voice acted SQ4CD. Nor will you find the disk version of PQ4. However, the first LSL collection CD contains the disk version of LSL6, but the later collection CDs have the CD version. On the Roberta Williams Anthology, the version of Lara Bow: Dagger of Amon Ra, is the CD version voiced by the Sierra staff.
In other releases, you do not have the option to install the expansions separately from main game. So in Ultima VII, you will always have the Forge of Virtue and the Silver Seed installed. Ditto for the Secret Missions and Special Operations of Wing Commander I & II. You cannot install the "save space" options for Ultima Underworld or The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes : Case of the Rose Tatoo. Nor can you install the 16-color graphics for Wing Commander I & II. Did you know that Wasteland and Dragon Wars had separate installs for Tandy, CGA and CGA color composite graphics? The versions on the CDs only works with an EGA or VGA card.
Wizardry 7 had a CD version that was did not take advantage of the CD's storage capacities but did allow you to use separate devices for music and sound effects. The floppy version and the version included in the Ultimate Wizardry Archives do not allow for that.
I could go on and on about these issues, but let me return to the focus of my article, why these are not all that great for vintage computing. First of all, shocking as it may seem, but not all vintage computers have a CD-ROM drive. Getting a CD-ROM drive in a computer with only 8-bit slots is no simple task. Installation then becomes a game of installing it on one computer and moving it to another. Finding VGA cards that work well in an 8-bit slot tends to be a bit of a challenge. With these compilations, you may have some difficulty running King's Quest IV in a Tandy 1000 computer. A Tandy 1000TX (8MHz 286) was almost certainly a prime target for Sierra's developers at the time. Suppose that I wanted to run the EGA version of Wing Commander because that was the way I played it back in the day? Good luck with a CD version.
The solution is floppy disk images. If the disk is a DOS disk and does not have disk-based copy protection, they are very easy to make. WinImage is a popular program, but write protect any floppies you insert into a system with a Windows OS, otherwise it will modify the disk's FAT table. The modification is harmless, but the disk is no longer "pure". DSK2IMG is a program I like to use, and it can be set to retry the read multiple times if you have an iffy disk. DOSBox is getting better and better at being able to install games off floppies.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Sierra's AGI Evolution
Over the years when Sierra was producing games using their Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) interface, the company would often update their games to fix bugs or add new features.
The first AGI game, King's Quest, was released for the IBM PCjr. and was only meant to be played on that system. However, as the PCjr. was not the smash hit that IBM and Sierra were betting on, Sierra quickly released a version for the IBM PC, essentially by substituting CGA and PC Speaker support for PCjr. graphics and sound support. This version could support 4-color CGA graphics using the red/green/brown palette or 16-color color composite graphics when the CGA card was connected to a color TV or composite monitor.
Although it would take time for people to realize it, this was a watershed moment for PC gaming, as finally a high-profile game was released for and designed for the PC. Previous PC games had been ports from the arcades or other home computers or from small-time publishers. Sierra would be the first high profile publisher to concentrate on the IBM PC platform.
When Tandy released its 1000 computer in 1985, which had almost exactly the same graphical capabilities (the main difference being a relocatable graphics buffer) and sound capabilities as the PCjr., Sierra released a third version of King's Quest for that computer. [A Tandy 1000/A/HD with only 128KB of memory can run the PCjr. version properly because the graphics buffer is in the same place as it would be on a PCjr.] These versions of King's Quest are known as AGI0. All later AGI releases support the PC and Tandy architectures, and most also support the PCjr. All AGI version 1 games also were self-booting disks that did not require DOS or support a hard drive. They did not have the white status/score bar, drop down menus and could only save games to a blank formatted floppy disk. They offered in-game commands to format a floppy disk. They could autodetect whether they were running on an IBM PC, IBM PCjr. or Tandy 1000. Release period is 1984-85.
The most significant and immediate hardware improvement in the second version of AGI was to offer support for EGA cards, so non-Tandy/PCjr. users could view the games graphics in the most colorful and sharpest mode available. The first game for the newer version, Donald Duck's Playground, was still a booter and a port of a C64 game that did not use AGI. There are a pair of hacked versions floating around that allow the game to be played in DOS, but they use Atari ST or Amiga resources and are not as reliable when compared to true PC releases. The game was subject to a license from Disney, and was not in release long enough for Sierra to produce an officially-hard drive installable version. AGI2 thereafter was able to install the game to a hard disk and save games on the hard disk. The early AGI interpreters still did not provide drop down menus, and speed control was not always present. Releases date from 1986.
All AGI10 and AGI1 games were eventually re-released in AGI2. Sierra added Hercules graphics support by the 2.4xx interpreters because Hercules cards were very popular in the mid-80s, by its early 1987 releases. Unlike other graphics adapter, the Hercules mode will show typed text in a box in the center of the screen and pause the action like the later SCI0 engine. The PC was, after all, primarily thought of as a business computer at this time and lots of PCs used monochrome TTL monitors and supported Hercules graphics. The drop down menu bar gets implemented, as are adjustable animation speeds for all games.
Later improvements added support for MCGA graphics for the users of the IBM PS/2 Models 25 & 30, MCGA and EGA not being compatible. Most 2.4 interpreter versions should support MCGA. If not, you would forced to use four color CGA. Also, since these games had key disk copy protection (requiring Disk #1 to be in the A: drive, even for a hard drive install), further fixes allowed the copy protection to work on 1.2MB drives for games with 360KB disks. The IBM PS/2 computers and the Tandy 1000HX and TX all had 3.5" disk drives built in, so around mid-1987 Sierra began shipping dual-format release games for DOS with both 5.25" disks and 3.5" disks of the game in the same box. Disk 1 for each disk type would be copy protected.
In all AGI2 games, the first disk for the game had to be inserted into the A: drive for the copy protection checks in the game executables to pass. The key disks used a track with a checksum error, overlaid data on the sectors and non-standard sector sizes. A standard PC floppy disk controller and DOS could not replicate these protections. Only a device like the Central Point Software Copy II PC Option Board could fully replicate the protection, SuperLok 3.2. The game's .com loader would make check for a bad track, and if found would then read a decryption key from it and decrypt the real executable, which is AGI. Even if the game was installed on the hard drive, the first disk had to be in the drive. Most versions of Police Quest were released without copy protection in an experiment in honesty. So-called "slash" budget releases of these games also have the protection removed.
AGI2 releases with interpreter 2.917 or later do not exhibit the issue of footprint tracks for animation on faster hardware with EGA and VGA cards. Sometimes Sierra shipped earlier versions on its Collection CDs. There is a fix available, see my January 22, 2015 post in this thread : http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?40365-Tandy-1000SX-Game-Issues
Bypassing the copy protection can be done in two ways. The first is to modify the loader program, typically called SIERRA.COM or something like KQ3.COM or SQ2.COM. The 128-byte encryption key is copied from track 6 into the.COM, the protection checks are bypassed and the .COM file will always decrypt the AGI file without needing or asking for the key disk. There are instructions to do this in debug, but Sierra used two versions of the 3.0 Loader, a 1985 and a 1987 version. The memory offsets are different for each. AGI interpreter versions up to and including 2.4x use the 1985 version of the loader, 2.9x versions use the 1987 version of the loader. The second is to permanently decrypt the AGI file. In this case, you do all the above but write the decrypted AGI file, which is in memory, to a file called AGI.EXE or SIERRA.EXE. After that, you run the .EXE file and that will start the game.
AGI3 signaled the shift from disk-based copy protection to document-based copy protection. Three games use the lookup the word in the manual method. There is no disk-based copy protection loader and the disks are perfectly standard DOS disks.
All games (except for Donald Duck's Playground) by the end of AGI2 had support for every graphics and sound standard widely supported on the market up to 1988. For graphics, this means CGA, PCjr., TGA, HGC, EGA, MCGA & VGA. For sound, all that was widely available and supported was the PC Speaker and the PCjr./Tandy 1000 PSG (Adlib and Roland MT-32 not having found game support until the middle of 1988, which coincided with the introduction of Sierra's SCI games). Release dates are 1988-1989.
All versions of these games check the computer's BIOS for the PCjr. or Tandy 1000 byte identifiers before initializing the three voice PSG sound data. This was standard in the days before games would freely let you choose your graphics and sound hardware. By default, if these games found those strings, they would load their PCjr. or Tandy 1000 graphics drivers. It is possible to force CGA graphics on a Tandy 1000 computer by using the -p command line argument. This will give you CGA Composite Color Graphics. You can also use -p -r to force CGA RGB Color Graphics. However, you will get annoying unintentional noises if you have previously run a game that uses Tandy sound prior to running an AGI game this way. Command line arguments for the SIERRA.COM loader include :
-c = Force CGA Composite Color Mode
-e = Force EGA
-h = Force Hercules
-r = Force CGA RGB Color Mode
-p = Force "PC Mode"
-s = Unknown
-t = Force Tandy 1000 Graphics and/or Sound
-v = Force MCGA/VGA
By accident or design, all AGI3 games and AGI2 games with the latest interpreters (greater than or equal to 2.917), will work in most Tandy 1000s with an EGA or VGA card installed. This combination will give you the sound of the Tandy PSG paired with an EGA or VGA card. The only Tandy 1000s that this does not work with are the original 1000, 1000A and 1000HD, because their graphics cannot be disabled, and the RSX. Tandy sound will not work on the RSX even though it has the chip because Tandy had to relocate it in the I/O map because the original location (C0-C7) conflicted with the I/O for the 2nd DMA controller added in the IBM PC AT (IBM is to blame here), so it is at 1E0-1E7. The RSX was released well after the AGI games. The Tandy 1000 RLX is a special case because it has built-in VGA on the motherboard and ports at the usual locations (no DMA 5-7). You must use these latest versions for AGI games to work at without sprite footprints on the RLX and its built-in VGA.
All the games as shown below have a release with an AGI interpreter version greater than or equal to 2.917 except for Mixed Up Mother Goose. In order to play that game on a hybrid Tandy system like the RLX, you need to use an interpreter from another game. However, it is not as simple as copying over a few files. The decrypted AGI file has the name of the game embedded in it, like KQ2 or SQ2. If the game does not match the name, it will refuse to interpret the game files. What you need to do is to permanently decrypt the AGI file with a version equal or greater than 2.917, change the name in the AGI file and use the file to run Mixed Up Mother Goose. There is a program called AGI Decryptor that can permanently decrypt the AGI file.
The specifications for the AGI engine are here : http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/AGI/Specifications and a description of the copy protection used is available and a utility to remove the protection is here : http://sierrahelp.com/GeneralHelp/FloppyDiskBackupProblems.html. Here are a list of games and their known versions :
The first AGI game, King's Quest, was released for the IBM PCjr. and was only meant to be played on that system. However, as the PCjr. was not the smash hit that IBM and Sierra were betting on, Sierra quickly released a version for the IBM PC, essentially by substituting CGA and PC Speaker support for PCjr. graphics and sound support. This version could support 4-color CGA graphics using the red/green/brown palette or 16-color color composite graphics when the CGA card was connected to a color TV or composite monitor.
Although it would take time for people to realize it, this was a watershed moment for PC gaming, as finally a high-profile game was released for and designed for the PC. Previous PC games had been ports from the arcades or other home computers or from small-time publishers. Sierra would be the first high profile publisher to concentrate on the IBM PC platform.
When Tandy released its 1000 computer in 1985, which had almost exactly the same graphical capabilities (the main difference being a relocatable graphics buffer) and sound capabilities as the PCjr., Sierra released a third version of King's Quest for that computer. [A Tandy 1000/A/HD with only 128KB of memory can run the PCjr. version properly because the graphics buffer is in the same place as it would be on a PCjr.] These versions of King's Quest are known as AGI0. All later AGI releases support the PC and Tandy architectures, and most also support the PCjr. All AGI version 1 games also were self-booting disks that did not require DOS or support a hard drive. They did not have the white status/score bar, drop down menus and could only save games to a blank formatted floppy disk. They offered in-game commands to format a floppy disk. They could autodetect whether they were running on an IBM PC, IBM PCjr. or Tandy 1000. Release period is 1984-85.
The most significant and immediate hardware improvement in the second version of AGI was to offer support for EGA cards, so non-Tandy/PCjr. users could view the games graphics in the most colorful and sharpest mode available. The first game for the newer version, Donald Duck's Playground, was still a booter and a port of a C64 game that did not use AGI. There are a pair of hacked versions floating around that allow the game to be played in DOS, but they use Atari ST or Amiga resources and are not as reliable when compared to true PC releases. The game was subject to a license from Disney, and was not in release long enough for Sierra to produce an officially-hard drive installable version. AGI2 thereafter was able to install the game to a hard disk and save games on the hard disk. The early AGI interpreters still did not provide drop down menus, and speed control was not always present. Releases date from 1986.
All AGI10 and AGI1 games were eventually re-released in AGI2. Sierra added Hercules graphics support by the 2.4xx interpreters because Hercules cards were very popular in the mid-80s, by its early 1987 releases. Unlike other graphics adapter, the Hercules mode will show typed text in a box in the center of the screen and pause the action like the later SCI0 engine. The PC was, after all, primarily thought of as a business computer at this time and lots of PCs used monochrome TTL monitors and supported Hercules graphics. The drop down menu bar gets implemented, as are adjustable animation speeds for all games.
Later improvements added support for MCGA graphics for the users of the IBM PS/2 Models 25 & 30, MCGA and EGA not being compatible. Most 2.4 interpreter versions should support MCGA. If not, you would forced to use four color CGA. Also, since these games had key disk copy protection (requiring Disk #1 to be in the A: drive, even for a hard drive install), further fixes allowed the copy protection to work on 1.2MB drives for games with 360KB disks. The IBM PS/2 computers and the Tandy 1000HX and TX all had 3.5" disk drives built in, so around mid-1987 Sierra began shipping dual-format release games for DOS with both 5.25" disks and 3.5" disks of the game in the same box. Disk 1 for each disk type would be copy protected.
In all AGI2 games, the first disk for the game had to be inserted into the A: drive for the copy protection checks in the game executables to pass. The key disks used a track with a checksum error, overlaid data on the sectors and non-standard sector sizes. A standard PC floppy disk controller and DOS could not replicate these protections. Only a device like the Central Point Software Copy II PC Option Board could fully replicate the protection, SuperLok 3.2. The game's .com loader would make check for a bad track, and if found would then read a decryption key from it and decrypt the real executable, which is AGI. Even if the game was installed on the hard drive, the first disk had to be in the drive. Most versions of Police Quest were released without copy protection in an experiment in honesty. So-called "slash" budget releases of these games also have the protection removed.
AGI2 releases with interpreter 2.917 or later do not exhibit the issue of footprint tracks for animation on faster hardware with EGA and VGA cards. Sometimes Sierra shipped earlier versions on its Collection CDs. There is a fix available, see my January 22, 2015 post in this thread : http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?40365-Tandy-1000SX-Game-Issues
Bypassing the copy protection can be done in two ways. The first is to modify the loader program, typically called SIERRA.COM or something like KQ3.COM or SQ2.COM. The 128-byte encryption key is copied from track 6 into the.COM, the protection checks are bypassed and the .COM file will always decrypt the AGI file without needing or asking for the key disk. There are instructions to do this in debug, but Sierra used two versions of the 3.0 Loader, a 1985 and a 1987 version. The memory offsets are different for each. AGI interpreter versions up to and including 2.4x use the 1985 version of the loader, 2.9x versions use the 1987 version of the loader. The second is to permanently decrypt the AGI file. In this case, you do all the above but write the decrypted AGI file, which is in memory, to a file called AGI.EXE or SIERRA.EXE. After that, you run the .EXE file and that will start the game.
AGI3 signaled the shift from disk-based copy protection to document-based copy protection. Three games use the lookup the word in the manual method. There is no disk-based copy protection loader and the disks are perfectly standard DOS disks.
All games (except for Donald Duck's Playground) by the end of AGI2 had support for every graphics and sound standard widely supported on the market up to 1988. For graphics, this means CGA, PCjr., TGA, HGC, EGA, MCGA & VGA. For sound, all that was widely available and supported was the PC Speaker and the PCjr./Tandy 1000 PSG (Adlib and Roland MT-32 not having found game support until the middle of 1988, which coincided with the introduction of Sierra's SCI games). Release dates are 1988-1989.
All versions of these games check the computer's BIOS for the PCjr. or Tandy 1000 byte identifiers before initializing the three voice PSG sound data. This was standard in the days before games would freely let you choose your graphics and sound hardware. By default, if these games found those strings, they would load their PCjr. or Tandy 1000 graphics drivers. It is possible to force CGA graphics on a Tandy 1000 computer by using the -p command line argument. This will give you CGA Composite Color Graphics. You can also use -p -r to force CGA RGB Color Graphics. However, you will get annoying unintentional noises if you have previously run a game that uses Tandy sound prior to running an AGI game this way. Command line arguments for the SIERRA.COM loader include :
-c = Force CGA Composite Color Mode
-e = Force EGA
-h = Force Hercules
-r = Force CGA RGB Color Mode
-p = Force "PC Mode"
-s = Unknown
-t = Force Tandy 1000 Graphics and/or Sound
-v = Force MCGA/VGA
By accident or design, all AGI3 games and AGI2 games with the latest interpreters (greater than or equal to 2.917), will work in most Tandy 1000s with an EGA or VGA card installed. This combination will give you the sound of the Tandy PSG paired with an EGA or VGA card. The only Tandy 1000s that this does not work with are the original 1000, 1000A and 1000HD, because their graphics cannot be disabled, and the RSX. Tandy sound will not work on the RSX even though it has the chip because Tandy had to relocate it in the I/O map because the original location (C0-C7) conflicted with the I/O for the 2nd DMA controller added in the IBM PC AT (IBM is to blame here), so it is at 1E0-1E7. The RSX was released well after the AGI games. The Tandy 1000 RLX is a special case because it has built-in VGA on the motherboard and ports at the usual locations (no DMA 5-7). You must use these latest versions for AGI games to work at without sprite footprints on the RLX and its built-in VGA.
All the games as shown below have a release with an AGI interpreter version greater than or equal to 2.917 except for Mixed Up Mother Goose. In order to play that game on a hybrid Tandy system like the RLX, you need to use an interpreter from another game. However, it is not as simple as copying over a few files. The decrypted AGI file has the name of the game embedded in it, like KQ2 or SQ2. If the game does not match the name, it will refuse to interpret the game files. What you need to do is to permanently decrypt the AGI file with a version equal or greater than 2.917, change the name in the AGI file and use the file to run Mixed Up Mother Goose. There is a program called AGI Decryptor that can permanently decrypt the AGI file.
The specifications for the AGI engine are here : http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/AGI/Specifications and a description of the copy protection used is available and a utility to remove the protection is here : http://sierrahelp.com/GeneralHelp/FloppyDiskBackupProblems.html. Here are a list of games and their known versions :
| Game Name | AGI Int. Ver. | Game Ver. | Floppies | Protection | File Date | Loader 3.0 Yr | Interaction Newsletter | Notes |
| Black Cauldron, The | 1.12 | 1.1J | 2x360KB | Booter | 1985 | |||
| Black Cauldron, The | 1.12 | 1.1K | 2x360KB | Booter | 1985 | |||
| Black Cauldron, The | 1.12 | 1.1K Tandy | 2x360KB | Booter | 1985 | |||
| Black Cauldron, The | 1.12 | 1.1M | 2x360KB | Booter | 1985 | |||
| Black Cauldron, The | 2.44 | 2.00 | 2x360KB | Key Disk | 06/14/87 | 1985 | Fall 1987 | MCGA fix |
| Black Cauldron, The | 3.002.098 | 2.10 | 2x360KB | None | 11/10/88 | NP | ||
| Christmas Card | 2.272 | 1 | 1x360KB | None | 11/13/86 | NP | Christmas Demo | |
| Donald Duck's Playground | 2.001 | 1.0Q | 1x360KB | Booter | 06/09/86 | |||
| Gold Rush | 3.002.149 | 2.01 | 5x360KB/2x720KB | Manual Word Lookup | 12/22/88 | NP | ||
| King's Quest | 1 | 1.00 | 1x360KB | Booter | 1984 | Licensed to IBM | ||
| King's Quest | 1 | none | 1x360KB | Booter | 1984 | Generic PC version | ||
| King's Quest | 1 | 01.01.00 | 1x360KB | Booter | 1984 | Licensed to Tandy | ||
| King's Quest | 1 | ? | 1x360KB | Booter | 1984-1985 | Came as second disk in later PC booter releases, functionally equivalent to Tandy 1000 version | ||
| King's Quest – Quest for the Crown | 2.272 | 1.0U | 2x360KB | Key Disk | 11/14/86 | 1985 | ||
| King's Quest – Quest for the Crown | 2.425 | 2.0F | 2x360KB | Key Disk | 04/1987 | 1985 | ||
| King's Quest – Quest for the Crown | 2.917 | 2.0F | 2x360KB/1x720KB | Key Disk | 05/05/87 | 1987 | Fall 1987 | 1.2meg Fix, MCGA & Hercules Support |
| King's Quest II – Romancing the Throne | 1 | 1.0W | 2x360KB | Booter | 1985 | |||
| King's Quest II – Romancing the Throne | 1 | 1.1H | 2x360KB | Booter | 1985 | |||
| King's Quest II – Romancing the Throne | 1 | 01.01.00 | 2x360KB | Booter | 1985 | Licensed to Tandy | ||
| King's Quest II – Romancing the Throne | 2.411 | 2.1 | 2x360KB/1x720KB | Key Disk | 04/10/87 | 1985 | ||
| King's Quest II – Romancing the Throne | 2.426 | 2.2 | 2x360KB/1x720KB | Key Disk | 05/07/87 | NP? | Fall 1987 | MCGA fix |
| King's Quest II – Romancing the Throne | 2.917 | 2.2 | 2x360KB/1x720KB | Key Disk | 12/01/87 | 1987 | ||
| King's Quest III – To Heir is Human | 2.272 | 1.01 | 3x360KB | Key Disk | 11/08/86 | 1985 | ||
| King's Quest III – To Heir is Human | 2.435 | 2.00 | 3x360KB | Key Disk | 05/25/87 | 1985 | Fall 1987 | |
| King's Quest III – To Heir is Human | 2.936 | 2.14 | 2x720KB | Key Disk | 03/15/88 | 1987 | Spring 1988 | MCGA fix |
| King's Quest IV – The Perils of Rosella | 3.002.086 | 2.00 | 3x720KB | Manual Word Lookup | 07/27/88 | NP | Hercules & PCjr. Support | |
| King's Quest IV – The Perils of Rosella | 3.002.086 | 2.3 | 6x360KB | Manual Word Lookup | 09/27/88 | NP | ||
| Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards | 2.440 | 1.00 | 2x360KB/1x720KB | Key Disk | 06/01/87 | 1985 | Spring 1988 | |
| Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards | 2.917 | 1.00 | 2x360KB/1x720KB | Key Disk | 12/01/87 | 1987 | ||
| Manhunter – New York | 3.002.102 | 1.22 | 5x360KB/2x720KB | Manual Word Lookup | 08/31/88 | NP | ||
| Manhunter – New York | 3.002.107 | 1.22 | 5x360KB/2x720KB | Manual Word Lookup | 09/01/88 | NP | ||
| Manhunter 2 – San Franscisco | 3.002.149 | 3.02 | 3x720KB | None | 07/26/89 | NP | ||
| Manhunter 2 – San Franscisco | 3.002.149 | 3.03 | 8x360KB | None | 08/17/89 | NP | Disk swapping problems fix | |
| Mixed-Up Mother Goose | 2.915 | 1.0D | 2x360KB | Key Disk | 11/10/87 | NP? | Spring 1988 | |
| Police Quest - In Pursuit of the Death Angel | 2.903 | 2.0A | 3x360KB | Key Disk | 10/23/87 | NP | ||
| Police Quest - In Pursuit of the Death Angel | 2.911 | 2.0A | 3x360KB | Key Disk | 11/04/87 | NP | ||
| Police Quest - In Pursuit of the Death Angel | 2.915 | 2.0E | 3x360KB | Key Disk | 11/17/87 | NP | ||
| Police Quest - In Pursuit of the Death Angel | 2.917 | 2.0G | 3x360KB/2x720KB | Key Disk/None | 12/03/87 | NP | Spring 1988 | PCjr. Support |
| Space Quest - The Sarien Encounter | 2.089 | 1.0X | 2x360KB | Key Disk | 09/24/86 | 1985 | ||
| Space Quest - The Sarien Encounter | 2.272 | 1.1A | 2x360KB | Key Disk | 11/13/86 | 1985 | ||
| Space Quest - The Sarien Encounter | 2.426 | 2.2 | 2x360KB/1x720KB | Key Disk | 05/07/87 | 1985 | Fall 1987 | MCGA fix |
| Space Quest - The Sarien Encounter | 2.917 | 2.2 | 2x360KB/1x720KB | Key Disk | 12/01/87 | 1987 | ||
| Space Quest 2 - Vohaul's Revenge | 2.912 | 2.0A | 2x360KB/1x720KB | Key Disk | 11/06/87 | 1987 | Spring 1988 | MCGA fix |
| Space Quest 2 - Vohaul's Revenge | 2.936 | 2.0D | 1x720KB | Key Disk | 03/14/88 | 1987 | Bug Fix | |
| Space Quest 2 - Vohaul's Revenge | 2.936 | 2.0F | 1x720KB | Key Disk | 01/01/89 | 1987 |
Monday, July 23, 2012
Sound Blaster 16 - Distinguishing the Endless Models
No vintage PC product line is more complex than the Sound Blaster 16. These cards were extremely common from 1992 to the end of the DOS era (1997). Their basic advance over the Sound Blaster Pro, 16-bit sound, is still the basic standard today. But the cards went through many generations and many OEM models. For the system builder, it is extremely difficult to find the right one without doing the homework. As there are an enormous number and variety of SB16s, I will not try to identify the features of every model. Here are some considerations :
Waveblaster Header
Value and OEM cards generally do not have it, although there may be solder points for it. However, the passive components on the motherboard that assist in implementing the interface may be missing. Waveblaster MIDI daughterboards will suffer from the hanging notes bug, as will MIDI modules connected through the gameport.
Hanging MIDI Notes Bug
It is important to identify games which produce hanging notes as a result of incompatibility with the various DSP versions of the 16-bit Sound Blaster series. : DOOM, DOOM II, Heretic, Hexen, Raptor, Hocus Pocus, Duke Nukem 3D and Blood are all examples of games which suffer from this bug. There are other games which may occasionally produce hanging notes regardless of the midi interface being used. Any game using LucasArts iMuse system may be subject to it. This includes Star Wars - X-Wing and Tie Fighter (floppy versions) are good examples of such a game. Only the former are addressed here.
The affected DSPs have been identified as versions 4.11, 4.12 & 4.13. DSP versions 4.04, 4.05 and 4.16 will not suffer from this bug. The bug will only occur when digital sounds and midi are being played. The best fix for the problem is to use another card for MIDI. This bug will not be present in any card using the CT-1747 chip.
ISA Plug N Play
First generation SB16s with the CT1746 Bus Interface chip were strictly configured by jumpers. No software initialization required.
Second generation SB16s with the CT1747 Bus Interface and OPL chip required jumpers to set the I/O range (IOS0 & IOS1), joystick enable/disable (JYEN) and MIDI I/O Select 330/300 (MSEL). However, IRQ and DMA selection were done in software on startup. SBCONFIG.EXE or DIAGNOSE.EXE needed to be loaded in AUTOEXEC.BAT to tell the card which resources to use at boot.
If you have a ViBRA chip, then you may have an ISA Plug N Play card. They are initialized through the software Creative Technology Configuration Manager (CTCM.EXE) and configured and disabled through the Creative Technology Configuration Utility (CTCU.EXE) or in PNP operating system like Windows 95. This allows you to disable the joystick, the MPU-401 MIDI interface, the Adlib Ports, High DMA or the whole card. Unfortunately, if you have to load CTCM, it adds noticeably to the boot time when booting to DOS.
SB16s with the ViBRA chips are be detailed below.
CD Interfaces
First generation SB16s supported Panasonic, Mitsumi or Sony CD Interfaces. One board, the Sound Blaster 16 SCSI, had a SCSI port for a SCSI CD-ROM, and it could not be disabled. The SCSI interface took up an IRQ and did not support booting hard drives. The next generation began to add IDE support. On retail boards, the IDE port should be able to be disabled. On some OEM boards, the CD Interface ports may not able to be disabled by design. The Panasonic interface is harmless because it does not require any resources beyond the I/O range used by the Sound Blaster 16.
QSound Advanced Signal Processor/Creative Signal Processor
Many boards have a CT-1748 ASP/CSP chip or a socket for one. The ASP/CSP was generally upgrade option, which never really caught on and omitted on the cheaper boards. Except for the CT-2502 boards, you will never see the chip or the socket for one on a ViBRA board. TFX is the only game known to support the chip.
True Yamaha OPL3 Synthesis
You will get true Yamaha OPL3 synthesis if your board has a Yamaha YMF-262 or YMF-289 chip or CT-1747 chip. The CT-1747 contains an OPL3 core licensed from Yamaha. If you have a CT-1978 chip or the ViBRA CT-2505 or CT-2511 chips on the board, you will get Creative CQM synthesis.
ViBRA Chips
The ViBRA series of chips sought to achieve a higher degree of integration among the various component chips that made up the original Sound Blaster 16.
CT2501 ViBRA 16
Integrates the Bus Controller Interface, the DSP, the Mixer and the Codec.
Jumper configured
No treble, bass or gain controls in integrated analog mixer
80db SnR
YMF-262
CT2502
I have never seen this chip branded with the ViBRA logo, and it is not a home-grown Creative Labs chip, as it contains technology licensed from Crystal Semiconductor. I think this is also known as the ViBRA Pro.
ISA PNP
Treble, bass and gain controls in integrated analog mixer
85db SnR (best SnR on any Creative Labs ISA sound card, even the AWE64 Gold)
CT-1978 or YMF-289 (less common, but makes for an awesome board)
CT2504 ViBRA 16S
Tends to be found on SB16s integrated on the motherboard.
IRQ/DMA software setting
YMF-262 or CT-1978
80 SnR
No treble or bass controls
CT2505 VIBRA 16C
Tends to be found on SB16s integrated on the motherboard.
See above, except :
ISA PNP
Integrated CT-1978
DSP v4.16
CT2511 ViBRA VX
Was used on the last, cheapest SB16s, especially those branded with the WavEffects logo.
See above, except :
High DMA channels not supported, uses two low DMA channels for 16-bit sound.
Of the ViBRA's, the two potential compatibility issues are the loss of the mixer settings in all but the CT2502 and the DMA channels in the VX. I doubt that games used those settings anyway. As the mixer receives analog signals, this can be replicated to some extent using an external mixer.
As far as the DMA channels in the VX, this will not be an issue unless you select a Sound Blaster 16 in the install of a DOS game and the game requires a High DMA channel. Windows and its games will be fine so long as the proper drivers are installed.
Which One to Buy
The least hassle of the SB16s are the CT1740 and CT1750, which along with the CT1770 were the first retail Sound Blaster 16s. With a 4.05 or lower DSP they will not have the hanging notes midi bug, will output genuine FM, require no software initialization and will not take up extra resources. However, they have the nickname "Noise Blaster" and it is deserved. Everything will sound noisy on the card, moreso than its predecessor the Sound Blaster Pro 2.0. The Waveblaster output is affected and I found the sound from a SCB-55 to be comparatively muffled compared to the same daughterboard on a MPU-401AT. If you can live with the potential hanging notes midi bug, look for the CT2750, which is silkscreened the Sound Blaster 16 EASY, and it has no CD interfaces on it.
If you want the freedom to choose your IRQs and DMAs in software, you could try the CT2230 with jumpers to disable the proprietary CD interfaces or the CT2770 which only has the Panasonic interface. Be wary of SB16s with an IDE port, as the port may not be able to be disabled. Some cards of the same model number have the ports while others only have silkscreening for the header and glue logic.
If you want the least noisiest cards of the bunch, look for the CT2940 with a Yamaha YMF chip. This card has the CT2502 (ViBRA) chip but uses ISA PNP.
If you look at other ViBRA cards, you could try the CT2800 or CT2900 which have Yamaha chips, software selectable IRQ and DMAs and a disable IDE jumper setting.
Three Generations of Sound Blaster 16s Compared
Number One : Sound Blaster 16 MCD CT-1750
CODEC : CT1701
FM Synthesis : Discrete Yamaha YMF-262 OPL3
DSP : Discrete 4.01-4.12
Mixer : Discrete CT1745
CD-ROM Drive Interfaces : Panasonic, Sony, Mitsumi
Configuration : Jumpers
ASP/CSP : Socket or Soldered
Waveblaster Header : Present
Amplifier : Jumpers & Volume Wheel
PCB Headers : Creative CD-ROM, PC Speaker In
This is a first generation Sound Blaster 16. Its main weakness is that most 8-bit digitized sound has an audible layer of hiss surrounding the sample playback. This hiss is not observed when playing back FM music. Mixing the audio from the Waveblaster connector sounds muffled. When 8-bit digital samples play there are often pops and clicks in the audio output. Everything is configured by jumpers, and its best to set the Panasonic interface to be the active interface because it does not consume any more resources beyond the Sound Blaster itself.
Number Two : Sound Blaster 16 MCD CT-2230
CODEC : CT1703 or CT1701
FM Synthesis : Integrated Creative/Yamaha CT-1747 OPL3
DSP : Discrete 4.11-4.13
Mixer : Discrete CT1745
CD-ROM Drive Interfaces : Panasonic, Sony, Mitsumi
Configuration : DIAGNOSE.EXE or SBCONFIG.EXE + Jumpers
ASP/CSP : Socket or Solder Pads
Waveblaster Header : Present
Amplifier : Separate Jacks
PCB Headers : Creative CD-ROM, MPC-2 CD-ROM, PC Speaker In
This is a second generation Sound Blaster 16. The noise, pops and clicks associated with the first generation are fully gone when paired with the later CODEC. The IRQ and DMA selection is done by software settings on startup. The settings requiring jumpers are the I/O address selection, the MPU-401 MIDI interface enable and address selection and the joystick enable. My card has no headers for any interface other than the Panasonic interface.
Number Three : Sound Blaster 16 PnP CT-2940
CODEC : CT1703
FM Synthesis : Discrete Creative CT-1978 CQM or Discrete Yamaha YMF-289 OPL3-L
DSP : Integrated 4.13
Mixer : Integrated CT1745
CD-ROM Drive Interfaces : IDE
Configuration : CTCM.EXE + CTCU.EXE
ASP/CSP : None
Waveblaster Header : Present
Amplifier : Separate Jacks
PCB Headers : Creative CD-ROM, MPC-2 CD-ROM, PC Speaker In, AUX 1, AUX 2, TAD, MBPro
This is a third generation Sound Blaster 16. Most of these cards typically come the Creative CQM chip, but this card comes with a Yamaha OPL3 chip. This card is totally jumper free and adheres to the ISA PnP standard. It can be configured with Creative's utilities or with PnP-supporting operating system like Windows 95. Reportedly, the integrated mixer has the highest signal to noise ratio of any ISA Sound Blaster, even the Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold. My card has no header or circuitry for the ISA interface, so it does not take up any resources. Its only other downside beyond the PnP is that its MIDI interface does have the hanging notes bug.
Waveblaster Header
Value and OEM cards generally do not have it, although there may be solder points for it. However, the passive components on the motherboard that assist in implementing the interface may be missing. Waveblaster MIDI daughterboards will suffer from the hanging notes bug, as will MIDI modules connected through the gameport.
Hanging MIDI Notes Bug
It is important to identify games which produce hanging notes as a result of incompatibility with the various DSP versions of the 16-bit Sound Blaster series. : DOOM, DOOM II, Heretic, Hexen, Raptor, Hocus Pocus, Duke Nukem 3D and Blood are all examples of games which suffer from this bug. There are other games which may occasionally produce hanging notes regardless of the midi interface being used. Any game using LucasArts iMuse system may be subject to it. This includes Star Wars - X-Wing and Tie Fighter (floppy versions) are good examples of such a game. Only the former are addressed here.
The affected DSPs have been identified as versions 4.11, 4.12 & 4.13. DSP versions 4.04, 4.05 and 4.16 will not suffer from this bug. The bug will only occur when digital sounds and midi are being played. The best fix for the problem is to use another card for MIDI. This bug will not be present in any card using the CT-1747 chip.
ISA Plug N Play
First generation SB16s with the CT1746 Bus Interface chip were strictly configured by jumpers. No software initialization required.
Second generation SB16s with the CT1747 Bus Interface and OPL chip required jumpers to set the I/O range (IOS0 & IOS1), joystick enable/disable (JYEN) and MIDI I/O Select 330/300 (MSEL). However, IRQ and DMA selection were done in software on startup. SBCONFIG.EXE or DIAGNOSE.EXE needed to be loaded in AUTOEXEC.BAT to tell the card which resources to use at boot.
If you have a ViBRA chip, then you may have an ISA Plug N Play card. They are initialized through the software Creative Technology Configuration Manager (CTCM.EXE) and configured and disabled through the Creative Technology Configuration Utility (CTCU.EXE) or in PNP operating system like Windows 95. This allows you to disable the joystick, the MPU-401 MIDI interface, the Adlib Ports, High DMA or the whole card. Unfortunately, if you have to load CTCM, it adds noticeably to the boot time when booting to DOS.
SB16s with the ViBRA chips are be detailed below.
CD Interfaces
First generation SB16s supported Panasonic, Mitsumi or Sony CD Interfaces. One board, the Sound Blaster 16 SCSI, had a SCSI port for a SCSI CD-ROM, and it could not be disabled. The SCSI interface took up an IRQ and did not support booting hard drives. The next generation began to add IDE support. On retail boards, the IDE port should be able to be disabled. On some OEM boards, the CD Interface ports may not able to be disabled by design. The Panasonic interface is harmless because it does not require any resources beyond the I/O range used by the Sound Blaster 16.
QSound Advanced Signal Processor/Creative Signal Processor
Many boards have a CT-1748 ASP/CSP chip or a socket for one. The ASP/CSP was generally upgrade option, which never really caught on and omitted on the cheaper boards. Except for the CT-2502 boards, you will never see the chip or the socket for one on a ViBRA board. TFX is the only game known to support the chip.
True Yamaha OPL3 Synthesis
You will get true Yamaha OPL3 synthesis if your board has a Yamaha YMF-262 or YMF-289 chip or CT-1747 chip. The CT-1747 contains an OPL3 core licensed from Yamaha. If you have a CT-1978 chip or the ViBRA CT-2505 or CT-2511 chips on the board, you will get Creative CQM synthesis.
ViBRA Chips
The ViBRA series of chips sought to achieve a higher degree of integration among the various component chips that made up the original Sound Blaster 16.
CT2501 ViBRA 16
Integrates the Bus Controller Interface, the DSP, the Mixer and the Codec.
Jumper configured
No treble, bass or gain controls in integrated analog mixer
80db SnR
YMF-262
CT2502
I have never seen this chip branded with the ViBRA logo, and it is not a home-grown Creative Labs chip, as it contains technology licensed from Crystal Semiconductor. I think this is also known as the ViBRA Pro.
ISA PNP
Treble, bass and gain controls in integrated analog mixer
85db SnR (best SnR on any Creative Labs ISA sound card, even the AWE64 Gold)
CT-1978 or YMF-289 (less common, but makes for an awesome board)
CT2504 ViBRA 16S
Tends to be found on SB16s integrated on the motherboard.
IRQ/DMA software setting
YMF-262 or CT-1978
80 SnR
No treble or bass controls
CT2505 VIBRA 16C
Tends to be found on SB16s integrated on the motherboard.
See above, except :
ISA PNP
Integrated CT-1978
DSP v4.16
CT2511 ViBRA VX
Was used on the last, cheapest SB16s, especially those branded with the WavEffects logo.
See above, except :
High DMA channels not supported, uses two low DMA channels for 16-bit sound.
Of the ViBRA's, the two potential compatibility issues are the loss of the mixer settings in all but the CT2502 and the DMA channels in the VX. I doubt that games used those settings anyway. As the mixer receives analog signals, this can be replicated to some extent using an external mixer.
As far as the DMA channels in the VX, this will not be an issue unless you select a Sound Blaster 16 in the install of a DOS game and the game requires a High DMA channel. Windows and its games will be fine so long as the proper drivers are installed.
Which One to Buy
The least hassle of the SB16s are the CT1740 and CT1750, which along with the CT1770 were the first retail Sound Blaster 16s. With a 4.05 or lower DSP they will not have the hanging notes midi bug, will output genuine FM, require no software initialization and will not take up extra resources. However, they have the nickname "Noise Blaster" and it is deserved. Everything will sound noisy on the card, moreso than its predecessor the Sound Blaster Pro 2.0. The Waveblaster output is affected and I found the sound from a SCB-55 to be comparatively muffled compared to the same daughterboard on a MPU-401AT. If you can live with the potential hanging notes midi bug, look for the CT2750, which is silkscreened the Sound Blaster 16 EASY, and it has no CD interfaces on it.
If you want the freedom to choose your IRQs and DMAs in software, you could try the CT2230 with jumpers to disable the proprietary CD interfaces or the CT2770 which only has the Panasonic interface. Be wary of SB16s with an IDE port, as the port may not be able to be disabled. Some cards of the same model number have the ports while others only have silkscreening for the header and glue logic.
If you want the least noisiest cards of the bunch, look for the CT2940 with a Yamaha YMF chip. This card has the CT2502 (ViBRA) chip but uses ISA PNP.
If you look at other ViBRA cards, you could try the CT2800 or CT2900 which have Yamaha chips, software selectable IRQ and DMAs and a disable IDE jumper setting.
Three Generations of Sound Blaster 16s Compared
Number One : Sound Blaster 16 MCD CT-1750
CODEC : CT1701
FM Synthesis : Discrete Yamaha YMF-262 OPL3
DSP : Discrete 4.01-4.12
Mixer : Discrete CT1745
CD-ROM Drive Interfaces : Panasonic, Sony, Mitsumi
Configuration : Jumpers
ASP/CSP : Socket or Soldered
Waveblaster Header : Present
Amplifier : Jumpers & Volume Wheel
PCB Headers : Creative CD-ROM, PC Speaker In
This is a first generation Sound Blaster 16. Its main weakness is that most 8-bit digitized sound has an audible layer of hiss surrounding the sample playback. This hiss is not observed when playing back FM music. Mixing the audio from the Waveblaster connector sounds muffled. When 8-bit digital samples play there are often pops and clicks in the audio output. Everything is configured by jumpers, and its best to set the Panasonic interface to be the active interface because it does not consume any more resources beyond the Sound Blaster itself.
Number Two : Sound Blaster 16 MCD CT-2230
CODEC : CT1703 or CT1701
FM Synthesis : Integrated Creative/Yamaha CT-1747 OPL3
DSP : Discrete 4.11-4.13
Mixer : Discrete CT1745
CD-ROM Drive Interfaces : Panasonic, Sony, Mitsumi
Configuration : DIAGNOSE.EXE or SBCONFIG.EXE + Jumpers
ASP/CSP : Socket or Solder Pads
Waveblaster Header : Present
Amplifier : Separate Jacks
PCB Headers : Creative CD-ROM, MPC-2 CD-ROM, PC Speaker In
This is a second generation Sound Blaster 16. The noise, pops and clicks associated with the first generation are fully gone when paired with the later CODEC. The IRQ and DMA selection is done by software settings on startup. The settings requiring jumpers are the I/O address selection, the MPU-401 MIDI interface enable and address selection and the joystick enable. My card has no headers for any interface other than the Panasonic interface.
Number Three : Sound Blaster 16 PnP CT-2940
CODEC : CT1703
FM Synthesis : Discrete Creative CT-1978 CQM or Discrete Yamaha YMF-289 OPL3-L
DSP : Integrated 4.13
Mixer : Integrated CT1745
CD-ROM Drive Interfaces : IDE
Configuration : CTCM.EXE + CTCU.EXE
ASP/CSP : None
Waveblaster Header : Present
Amplifier : Separate Jacks
PCB Headers : Creative CD-ROM, MPC-2 CD-ROM, PC Speaker In, AUX 1, AUX 2, TAD, MBPro
This is a third generation Sound Blaster 16. Most of these cards typically come the Creative CQM chip, but this card comes with a Yamaha OPL3 chip. This card is totally jumper free and adheres to the ISA PnP standard. It can be configured with Creative's utilities or with PnP-supporting operating system like Windows 95. Reportedly, the integrated mixer has the highest signal to noise ratio of any ISA Sound Blaster, even the Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold. My card has no header or circuitry for the ISA interface, so it does not take up any resources. Its only other downside beyond the PnP is that its MIDI interface does have the hanging notes bug.
Sound Blaster AWE32 & 64 Options
The AWE32 came in many varieties, starting with the CT2760, but there are several basic cards which a vintage computer enthusiast should consider. In this post, I will discuss the various features that separate the usual cards from each other.
Soundfont RAM
All AWE32s come with 512KB RAM, but the AWE32 Value cards omit the SIMM sockets for upgrading the RAM. Sound Blaster 32s do not have any onboard RAM, but have SIMM sockets to upgrade RAM.
All these boards can support 28MB RAM, and if the SIMM sockets are used, the onboard RAM is disab+
led. Use 30-pin SIMMs, 80ns or faster, with identical memory sizes of 1MB, 4MB or 16MB. You need to populate both sockets. The SIMM sockets on these boards are usually very cheap and the retaining tabs can break easily. Epoxy is your friend, but if you wish a less permanent solution, you can try a strong tie.
The AWE64 came only in two major ISA varieties, with the principal difference being the amount of RAM supported. The Value, CT4380, CT4500 & CT4520, version came with 512KB RAM and you need to solder a 2-pin header for SPDIF output on all these cards. The AWE64 Gold, CT4390 & CT4540, came with 4MB RAM. To upgrade the RAM, you had to purchase expensive, proprietary Creative daughterboards. People used to use AWESIMM to adapt SIMMs, but today people can use SIMMCON, found here : http://simmconn.tripod.com/. Only one 72-pin SIMM is required.
Models without RAM upgradeability : CT3780, CT3910, CT3630
Waveblaster Header
If you want to use a MIDI daughterboard like the Waveblaster, Waveblaster II, Roland SCB-7 or SCB-55 or Yamaha DB50XG or DB60XG on your sound card, stay away from the AWE32 Value, SB32 or AWE64, as they do not support the header.
Models supported : CT2760, CT3900, CT3980, CT3990
SPDIF
Virtually all these cards had a 2-pin SPDIF header, even the budget models but on some of the cheaper models you will need to solder pins or wires. The non-Gold AWE64s are cards where you have to do this.
SPDIF outputs the EMU8000 output. This includes the FM if using a CT-1747 or CT-1978 chip but not a discrete YMF-262 or 289 chip. MIDI audio output (from Waveblaster) and CD Audio sound would not be output through SPDIF on any models. 16-bit digitized Sound Blaster audio will also be output on the AWE64 Gold cards, but this functionality may only work in Windows 95 or better. The non-Gold AWE64 cards almost always have a pair of through holes which you could add a 2-pin SPDIF header.
Note that the AWE32 outputs a 5v TTL digital signal. This is the same signal that CD-ROM drives with a digital audio output header send out. They even use the same 2-pin header. The O is the output pin, the I is the ground pin. Not all SPDIF inputs will accept this signal. Fortunately the CD Digital input header on a Sound Blaster Live! or Audigy will. Moreover, you can connect the pins to an optical/TOSLINK port output, which is accepted by lots of devices. Coaxial SPDIF is designed for 0.5v to -0.5v peak-to-peak signals. This is what the Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold provides.
AWE32 Models supported : CT2760, CT3900, CT3980, CT3990
SB32 Models supported : CT3600, CT3620
AWE64 Models supported : CT4390, CT4540
ISA Plug 'N Play
The early AWE32s did not conform the ISA Plug 'N Play standard. They used jumpers to set the I/O addresses (IOS0 and IOS1), to enable/disable the joystick interface (JYEN), and to select the MPU-401 MIDI I/O (MSEL). However, IRQ and low and high DMA selection was handled by software initialization via SBCONFIG.EXE or DIAGNOSE.EXE, which reads the settings from the SET BLASTER line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT.
Later AWE32s, SB32s and AWE64s conform to the ISA Plug 'N Play standard and are initialized through the software Creative Technology Configuration Manager (CTCM.EXE) and configured and disabled through the Creative Technology Configuration Utility (CTCU.EXE) or in PNP operating system like Windows 95. This allows you to disable the joystick, the MPU-401 MIDI interface, the Adlib Ports, High DMA or the whole card. Unfortunately, if you have to load CTCM, it adds noticeably to the boot time when booting to DOS.
All cards have a jumper marked MFBEN. This jumper enables or disables NMI generation for the AWEUTIL.COM utility. This functionality is required when AWEUTIL is emulating a MIDI interpreter in DOS. If you are not using AWEUTIL other than for initialization, you can remove the jumper.
Models without PNP : CT2760, CT3900, CT3780, CT3910
True Yamaha OPL3 FM Synthesis
Non PNP models have a CT-1747 bus interface chip which integrates a licensed Yamaha OPL3 core. They sound true to the AdLib and earlier Sound Blasters, but people have individual preferences of which card they like.
All the PNP models of the AWE32 and SB32 have the option to use Creative Quadrature Modulaton (CQM) Synthesis or Yamaha FM Synthesis. On boards using CQM, there will be a CT-1978 chip. CQM is generally not objectionable to the untrained ear, but it often sounds harsher and more metallic but slightly crisper compared to a Yamaha FM chip. Most boards have a silkscreen for a Yamaha YMF-278 and its DAC (very small chips). Finding boards with the CQM chips are much more common. However, if you find a board with the Yamaha chip, note that you will not be able to run the chip through the EMU-8000 effects processor.
AWEUTIL is used on the AWE cards to initialize the FM Synthesis output and can be used to apply reverb and chorus effects on the CT-1747 cards through the EMU-8000 chip. I am uncertain whether cards with a discrete YMF-278 can do that, and the AWE32 Upgrade cards probably cannot as well.
Models using CT-1747 : CT2760, CT3900, CT3980, CT3780, CT3910
Models supporting YMF-278 option : CT3990, CT3600, CT3930
CD Interfaces
Most of these cards come with one, two or three headers for the cable to a CD-ROM. In the early days, proprietary, incompatible standards came from Panasonic, Sony and Mitsumi. Some sound cards support SCSI instead, although no Creative AWE cards are known to have done so. Later AWE cards support an IDE port. If the card is a non-PNP, the IDE, Sony or Mitsumi interfaces can be disabled. The Mitsumi interface is a real hardware hog as it uses an IRQ and DMA. Fortunately the Mitsumi interface can usually be disabled. The Panasonic interface does not use any resources outside the standard Sound Blaster I/O 2x0-2xF, so it is harmless.
Models with Panasonic/Sony/Mitsumi Interfaces : CT2760, CT3780
Models with Panasonic Interface : CT3900
Models IDE Interface (Non-PNP) : CT3900, CT3910
I assume that the IDE interface on PNP cards can be disabled using the CTCU utility, but I have no experience with such cards. It may be necessary to disable the IDE interface to avoid conflicts with IDE ports on the motherboard or I/O cards. Also it should remove any IRQ resource hogging.
On the non-PNP cards with an IDE port, the port can be set to the secondary address, 170-177, tertiary address, 1E8-1EF, or quaternary address, 168-16F or disabled. The primary IDE address is 1F0-1F7.
Hanging Notes MIDI
It is important to identify games which produce hanging notes as a result of incompatibility with the various DSP versions of the 16-bit Sound Blaster series. : DOOM, DOOM II, Heretic, Hexen, Raptor, Hocus Pocus, Duke Nukem 3D and Blood are all examples of games which suffer from this bug. There are other games which may occasionally produce hanging notes regardless of the midi interface being used. Any game using LucasArts iMuse system may be subject to it. This includes Star Wars - X-Wing and Tie Fighter (floppy versions) are good examples of such a game. Only the former are addressed here.
AWE64s use DSP 4.16, so there will be no hanging notes midi bug. AWEs prior to that use DSP 4.13 for the most part, and all these DSPs are known to suffer from the hanging notes midi bug. The bug will only occur when digital sounds and midi are being played. The best fix for the problem is to use another card for MIDI. The CT2760 is the card where you will most likely see the 4.11 and 4.12 DSPs. Rev. 3 of the CT2760 probably has the 4.13 DSP. This bug will not be present in any card using the CT-1747 chip.
QSound ASP/CSP
The original AWE32 had, as standard, the CT-1748 QSound Advanced Signal Processor (ASP), later known as the Creative Signal Processor (CSP)., which was an optional upgrade in the Sound Blaster 16s. All full-length AWE32s should have one soldered onto the PCB. The AWE32 Value has a socket for a CT-1748 chip, which could have been purchased from Creative Labs. The SB32s and AWE64s do not have any support for the chip.
All boards with the chip or socket, even if they are otherwise PNP, will have two jumpers to enable or disable the chip.
Models with CT-1748 : CT2760, CT3900, CT3980, CT3990
Models with CT-1748 Socket : CT3780, CT3910
Odd Ducks
The CT3980 is a PNP card, but has a CT-1747 Bus Interface and OPL chip. It is an exception to the almost universal rule that a CT-1747 chip on-board means that the board is not a PNP board. In this instance, another chip is used to provide the PNP functionality, but the CT-1747 is certainly used for OPL FM.
The CT3930 SB32 is a true exception to many of the above categories because it uses the CT2501 ViBRA 16 bus interface chip. As a result, this board has a discrete YMF-262 OPL3, which none of the other boards have. This ViBRA chip lacks controls for treble, bass and gain in the hardware mixer. Finally, there is no PNP or software selectable resource settings, the jumper layout of the original Sound Blaster 16s is used. In other words, you have to set jumpers to set the IRQs and DMAs. While the other main SB32, the CT3600, uses a ViBRA CT-2502 chip, those features were put back in the mixer and PNP functionality was enabled.
CT3630 SB32 and CT4330 AWE32 have no Soundfont RAM. The CT4330 is really a cut down AWE64. The CT3670 is a SB32 with SIMMs, but its main chip comes from an AWE64.
The AWE64 Gold has gold plated mini-jack and RCA connectors, RCA jacks not having been used since the Game Blaster. Some sites claim that it possesses a 20-bit high quality DAC, but that is not quite correct. The SPDIF connector outputs the full 20-bits of the the standard. Additionally, it adds the digital PCM audio output to the signal. Whether the existing 16-bit signals are upconverted to 20-bit or extra bits are just tacked on is unknown.
There seems to be two main versions of the AWE64 Value, the CT4500 and CT4520. The CT4520 does not have separate mixer, CODEC or 558 timer chips. The CT4500 has these, just like all the other AWE cards. It appears that Creative had integrated these functions into the large QFP chip on the CT4520, whether any functionality was lost is unknown.
AWE Upgrade
The CT192x requires its own section. This card was designed as an add-on card for Sound Blaster 16 owners to add most of the AWE features to the PC. It is sometimes known as the Goldfinch board. It contains the EMU8000 chip, 512KB RAM, SIMM slots. It requires its own drivers. Instead of AWEUTIL.COM, it uses AWEUTIL.EXE. Game compatibility with AWE32 supporting games may be uncertain as a result. This board was intended mainly for OEMs like Dell and Micron.
Most CT192x boards only have an 8-pin strip to output audio. A cable would output audio to the a special header on an OEM motherboard or some (OEM) Sound Blaster 16s. Instructions and drivers can be found here : http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php/topic,2747.0.html. CT-192x boards have been reported with Line Out and SPDIF Out jacks. Usually there are solder points for at least the Line Out. Some boards may have the 512KB RAM.
Unlike a regular AWE32, you cannot run FM effects through the EMU8000 or output FM through the SPDIF.
Soundfont RAM
All AWE32s come with 512KB RAM, but the AWE32 Value cards omit the SIMM sockets for upgrading the RAM. Sound Blaster 32s do not have any onboard RAM, but have SIMM sockets to upgrade RAM.
All these boards can support 28MB RAM, and if the SIMM sockets are used, the onboard RAM is disab+
led. Use 30-pin SIMMs, 80ns or faster, with identical memory sizes of 1MB, 4MB or 16MB. You need to populate both sockets. The SIMM sockets on these boards are usually very cheap and the retaining tabs can break easily. Epoxy is your friend, but if you wish a less permanent solution, you can try a strong tie.
The AWE64 came only in two major ISA varieties, with the principal difference being the amount of RAM supported. The Value, CT4380, CT4500 & CT4520, version came with 512KB RAM and you need to solder a 2-pin header for SPDIF output on all these cards. The AWE64 Gold, CT4390 & CT4540, came with 4MB RAM. To upgrade the RAM, you had to purchase expensive, proprietary Creative daughterboards. People used to use AWESIMM to adapt SIMMs, but today people can use SIMMCON, found here : http://simmconn.tripod.com/. Only one 72-pin SIMM is required.
Models without RAM upgradeability : CT3780, CT3910, CT3630
Waveblaster Header
If you want to use a MIDI daughterboard like the Waveblaster, Waveblaster II, Roland SCB-7 or SCB-55 or Yamaha DB50XG or DB60XG on your sound card, stay away from the AWE32 Value, SB32 or AWE64, as they do not support the header.
Models supported : CT2760, CT3900, CT3980, CT3990
SPDIF
Virtually all these cards had a 2-pin SPDIF header, even the budget models but on some of the cheaper models you will need to solder pins or wires. The non-Gold AWE64s are cards where you have to do this.
SPDIF outputs the EMU8000 output. This includes the FM if using a CT-1747 or CT-1978 chip but not a discrete YMF-262 or 289 chip. MIDI audio output (from Waveblaster) and CD Audio sound would not be output through SPDIF on any models. 16-bit digitized Sound Blaster audio will also be output on the AWE64 Gold cards, but this functionality may only work in Windows 95 or better. The non-Gold AWE64 cards almost always have a pair of through holes which you could add a 2-pin SPDIF header.
Note that the AWE32 outputs a 5v TTL digital signal. This is the same signal that CD-ROM drives with a digital audio output header send out. They even use the same 2-pin header. The O is the output pin, the I is the ground pin. Not all SPDIF inputs will accept this signal. Fortunately the CD Digital input header on a Sound Blaster Live! or Audigy will. Moreover, you can connect the pins to an optical/TOSLINK port output, which is accepted by lots of devices. Coaxial SPDIF is designed for 0.5v to -0.5v peak-to-peak signals. This is what the Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold provides.
AWE32 Models supported : CT2760, CT3900, CT3980, CT3990
SB32 Models supported : CT3600, CT3620
AWE64 Models supported : CT4390, CT4540
ISA Plug 'N Play
The early AWE32s did not conform the ISA Plug 'N Play standard. They used jumpers to set the I/O addresses (IOS0 and IOS1), to enable/disable the joystick interface (JYEN), and to select the MPU-401 MIDI I/O (MSEL). However, IRQ and low and high DMA selection was handled by software initialization via SBCONFIG.EXE or DIAGNOSE.EXE, which reads the settings from the SET BLASTER line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT.
Later AWE32s, SB32s and AWE64s conform to the ISA Plug 'N Play standard and are initialized through the software Creative Technology Configuration Manager (CTCM.EXE) and configured and disabled through the Creative Technology Configuration Utility (CTCU.EXE) or in PNP operating system like Windows 95. This allows you to disable the joystick, the MPU-401 MIDI interface, the Adlib Ports, High DMA or the whole card. Unfortunately, if you have to load CTCM, it adds noticeably to the boot time when booting to DOS.
All cards have a jumper marked MFBEN. This jumper enables or disables NMI generation for the AWEUTIL.COM utility. This functionality is required when AWEUTIL is emulating a MIDI interpreter in DOS. If you are not using AWEUTIL other than for initialization, you can remove the jumper.
Models without PNP : CT2760, CT3900, CT3780, CT3910
True Yamaha OPL3 FM Synthesis
Non PNP models have a CT-1747 bus interface chip which integrates a licensed Yamaha OPL3 core. They sound true to the AdLib and earlier Sound Blasters, but people have individual preferences of which card they like.
All the PNP models of the AWE32 and SB32 have the option to use Creative Quadrature Modulaton (CQM) Synthesis or Yamaha FM Synthesis. On boards using CQM, there will be a CT-1978 chip. CQM is generally not objectionable to the untrained ear, but it often sounds harsher and more metallic but slightly crisper compared to a Yamaha FM chip. Most boards have a silkscreen for a Yamaha YMF-278 and its DAC (very small chips). Finding boards with the CQM chips are much more common. However, if you find a board with the Yamaha chip, note that you will not be able to run the chip through the EMU-8000 effects processor.
AWEUTIL is used on the AWE cards to initialize the FM Synthesis output and can be used to apply reverb and chorus effects on the CT-1747 cards through the EMU-8000 chip. I am uncertain whether cards with a discrete YMF-278 can do that, and the AWE32 Upgrade cards probably cannot as well.
Models using CT-1747 : CT2760, CT3900, CT3980, CT3780, CT3910
Models supporting YMF-278 option : CT3990, CT3600, CT3930
CD Interfaces
Most of these cards come with one, two or three headers for the cable to a CD-ROM. In the early days, proprietary, incompatible standards came from Panasonic, Sony and Mitsumi. Some sound cards support SCSI instead, although no Creative AWE cards are known to have done so. Later AWE cards support an IDE port. If the card is a non-PNP, the IDE, Sony or Mitsumi interfaces can be disabled. The Mitsumi interface is a real hardware hog as it uses an IRQ and DMA. Fortunately the Mitsumi interface can usually be disabled. The Panasonic interface does not use any resources outside the standard Sound Blaster I/O 2x0-2xF, so it is harmless.
Models with Panasonic/Sony/Mitsumi Interfaces : CT2760, CT3780
Models with Panasonic Interface : CT3900
Models IDE Interface (Non-PNP) : CT3900, CT3910
I assume that the IDE interface on PNP cards can be disabled using the CTCU utility, but I have no experience with such cards. It may be necessary to disable the IDE interface to avoid conflicts with IDE ports on the motherboard or I/O cards. Also it should remove any IRQ resource hogging.
On the non-PNP cards with an IDE port, the port can be set to the secondary address, 170-177, tertiary address, 1E8-1EF, or quaternary address, 168-16F or disabled. The primary IDE address is 1F0-1F7.
Hanging Notes MIDI
It is important to identify games which produce hanging notes as a result of incompatibility with the various DSP versions of the 16-bit Sound Blaster series. : DOOM, DOOM II, Heretic, Hexen, Raptor, Hocus Pocus, Duke Nukem 3D and Blood are all examples of games which suffer from this bug. There are other games which may occasionally produce hanging notes regardless of the midi interface being used. Any game using LucasArts iMuse system may be subject to it. This includes Star Wars - X-Wing and Tie Fighter (floppy versions) are good examples of such a game. Only the former are addressed here.
AWE64s use DSP 4.16, so there will be no hanging notes midi bug. AWEs prior to that use DSP 4.13 for the most part, and all these DSPs are known to suffer from the hanging notes midi bug. The bug will only occur when digital sounds and midi are being played. The best fix for the problem is to use another card for MIDI. The CT2760 is the card where you will most likely see the 4.11 and 4.12 DSPs. Rev. 3 of the CT2760 probably has the 4.13 DSP. This bug will not be present in any card using the CT-1747 chip.
QSound ASP/CSP
The original AWE32 had, as standard, the CT-1748 QSound Advanced Signal Processor (ASP), later known as the Creative Signal Processor (CSP)., which was an optional upgrade in the Sound Blaster 16s. All full-length AWE32s should have one soldered onto the PCB. The AWE32 Value has a socket for a CT-1748 chip, which could have been purchased from Creative Labs. The SB32s and AWE64s do not have any support for the chip.
All boards with the chip or socket, even if they are otherwise PNP, will have two jumpers to enable or disable the chip.
Models with CT-1748 : CT2760, CT3900, CT3980, CT3990
Models with CT-1748 Socket : CT3780, CT3910
Odd Ducks
The CT3980 is a PNP card, but has a CT-1747 Bus Interface and OPL chip. It is an exception to the almost universal rule that a CT-1747 chip on-board means that the board is not a PNP board. In this instance, another chip is used to provide the PNP functionality, but the CT-1747 is certainly used for OPL FM.
The CT3930 SB32 is a true exception to many of the above categories because it uses the CT2501 ViBRA 16 bus interface chip. As a result, this board has a discrete YMF-262 OPL3, which none of the other boards have. This ViBRA chip lacks controls for treble, bass and gain in the hardware mixer. Finally, there is no PNP or software selectable resource settings, the jumper layout of the original Sound Blaster 16s is used. In other words, you have to set jumpers to set the IRQs and DMAs. While the other main SB32, the CT3600, uses a ViBRA CT-2502 chip, those features were put back in the mixer and PNP functionality was enabled.
CT3630 SB32 and CT4330 AWE32 have no Soundfont RAM. The CT4330 is really a cut down AWE64. The CT3670 is a SB32 with SIMMs, but its main chip comes from an AWE64.
The AWE64 Gold has gold plated mini-jack and RCA connectors, RCA jacks not having been used since the Game Blaster. Some sites claim that it possesses a 20-bit high quality DAC, but that is not quite correct. The SPDIF connector outputs the full 20-bits of the the standard. Additionally, it adds the digital PCM audio output to the signal. Whether the existing 16-bit signals are upconverted to 20-bit or extra bits are just tacked on is unknown.
There seems to be two main versions of the AWE64 Value, the CT4500 and CT4520. The CT4520 does not have separate mixer, CODEC or 558 timer chips. The CT4500 has these, just like all the other AWE cards. It appears that Creative had integrated these functions into the large QFP chip on the CT4520, whether any functionality was lost is unknown.
AWE Upgrade
The CT192x requires its own section. This card was designed as an add-on card for Sound Blaster 16 owners to add most of the AWE features to the PC. It is sometimes known as the Goldfinch board. It contains the EMU8000 chip, 512KB RAM, SIMM slots. It requires its own drivers. Instead of AWEUTIL.COM, it uses AWEUTIL.EXE. Game compatibility with AWE32 supporting games may be uncertain as a result. This board was intended mainly for OEMs like Dell and Micron.
Most CT192x boards only have an 8-pin strip to output audio. A cable would output audio to the a special header on an OEM motherboard or some (OEM) Sound Blaster 16s. Instructions and drivers can be found here : http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php/topic,2747.0.html. CT-192x boards have been reported with Line Out and SPDIF Out jacks. Usually there are solder points for at least the Line Out. Some boards may have the 512KB RAM.
Unlike a regular AWE32, you cannot run FM effects through the EMU8000 or output FM through the SPDIF.
Why get an AWE32? : http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php/topic,3477.0.html
Which one should I get?
Since I find PNP cards to be more trouble than they are worth, I would stick with the non PNP AWE32s. The best of the bunch, feature wise, would be the CT3980, then the CT3900 and CT2760. However, since the CT3980 is a PNP card, I would pick the CT3900 or CT2760 first. The CT2760 uses the older CT1701 CODEC chip while the CT3900 uses the newer CT1703 CODEC chip. The later CODEC chip has been said to have a cleaner output compared with the older CODEC. I can see people using the IDE port in a system for a CD-ROM drive, but the Panasonic and other interfaces are the very definition of appendices today. The cards tend to get less noisy as they get newer.
Sound Blaster 32s are surprisingly good buys, and as they were found in many OEM systems, they tend to be more common than AWE32s. However, they are truly a great option if you can find a rare one with a YMF chip.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Observations on 8-bit Video and Sound Cards
8-bit Video Cards
This card can only display 80-column by 25-row text, and uses a special TTL monochrome monitor. The official monitor is the IBM 5151 Display, but clones exist. Not especially useful for games as the next card. Full-length 13" card (as are all IBM 8-bit Video cards), 4KB Video RAM, enough for one page only. Can be used with a CGA card in a dual monitor setup.
Can do everything the MDA can and more. The "more" is a 720x348 monochrome graphics mode that tons of 80s game use. The Hercules-brand cards tend to be 13" full-length cards that do not fit inside Tandy 1000s and other machines with card clearance issues. Many EGA cards include Hercules functionality, as do the Tandy 1000 T/S/RL machines. Many people back then and some vintage enthusiasts today use a CGA card with a color monitor and a Hercules card for text on a monochrome monitor. This avoids CGA snow in text modes. 64KB Video RAM, usually 32KB used (so-called Half-mode). Full-Mode, using 64KB RAM, will conflict with CGA and later cards.
16KB Video RAM
Displays CGA Snow
Uses B8000-BFFFF
Provides the exact synthesis of a Roland CM-300 (SC-55 base) plus a Roland MPU-401 interface, but only 1 MIDI OUT and 1 MIDI IN. MIDI OUT requires a special mini-DIN to DIN cable. Stereo speakers and RCA outputs. The SCC-1 supports 317 patches, the SCC-1A card supports 354 (SCC-1B is a marketing term for an SCC-1A and the Ballade software). Capital tone fallback (see my previous post about Unique PC Hardware) feature is not supported in the SCC-1A. MPU-401 uses ROM revision 1.5B.
In an IBM PC, Portable or XT or a clone or a Tandy 1000, these are your options. I will talk about the IBM cards and note possible differences with clone cards.
IBM Monochrome Display Adapter
This card can only display 80-column by 25-row text, and uses a special TTL monochrome monitor. The official monitor is the IBM 5151 Display, but clones exist. Not especially useful for games as the next card. Full-length 13" card (as are all IBM 8-bit Video cards), 4KB Video RAM, enough for one page only. Can be used with a CGA card in a dual monitor setup.
Hercules Graphics Adapter
Can do everything the MDA can and more. The "more" is a 720x348 monochrome graphics mode that tons of 80s game use. The Hercules-brand cards tend to be 13" full-length cards that do not fit inside Tandy 1000s and other machines with card clearance issues. Many EGA cards include Hercules functionality, as do the Tandy 1000 T/S/RL machines. Many people back then and some vintage enthusiasts today use a CGA card with a color monitor and a Hercules card for text on a monochrome monitor. This avoids CGA snow in text modes. 64KB Video RAM, usually 32KB used (so-called Half-mode). Full-Mode, using 64KB RAM, will conflict with CGA and later cards.
IBM Color/Display Adapter
16KB Video RAM
Displays CGA Snow
Uses B8000-BFFFF
Only fits in an 8-bit slot, has a skirt
Requires a functional 14.318MHz OSC signal for composite signal
Has two solder points to wire a jumper to select the "thin font".
Early cards display a slightly different color arrangement in composite color mode. If your text has red and blue fringes, you have an early card. If the text has orange and blue fringes, you have a later card.
Early cards only display four shades of gray on a monochrome/black&white TV or composite monochrome monitor. Later cards display 16 shades of gray.
Supports an RF adapter and a light pen via pin headers.
Clone cards function similarly to IBM's, but their fonts are likely to show differences and they may lack support for a light pen or a header for an RF adapter. I have an Epson clone which does not have a discret MC6845 CRTC and thus is not quite as compatible with the IBM CGA. Early clones tend to have the 8-bit skirt, later clones tend to be shrunk down. Official monitor is the IBM 5153 Color Display, which supports 200 lines in 16 colors. It can work with an IBM 5154 Enhanced Color Display, Tandy CM-4, CM-5, CM-10 or CM-11. The IBM PC Portable has a built-in 9" amber monochrome screen and it requires a CGA card with composite output.
ATI's Small Wonder cards combine CGA and Hercules support, and they are probably not alone.
IBM EGA Adapter
Uses IRQ2 for vertical sync
64KB on Motherboard, requires separate Expansion daughterboard to add 192KB for the full 256KB. 128KB required for 640x350x16 graphics. (Clones tended to have 256KB on board)
Daughterboard uses standard 64Kx1 chips
Can be set to use alternate 2xx I/O addresses via jumper
Can support light pen
Must use jumper and dipswitches to set monitor type, can use IBM Monochrome, IBM Color and IBM Enhanced Color displays
Can be used with an MDA card in Color mode or a CGA card in monochrome mode
No Hercules support
Can fit in 16-bit slot, but has skirt otherwise
16KB BIOS ROM, mapped C0000-C3FFF (Clones often used 32KB, mapped to C7FFF)
RCA jacks are useless without a Feature Board (IBM never offered one)
Only IBM 8-bit Video Card with Jumpers and Dipswitches.
Only IBM 8-bit Video Card with Jumpers and Dipswitches.
Some clone cards utilize the 16-bit ISA connector, support non-standard line modes, and offer Hercules compatibility. IBM 5154 Enhanced Color Display is the official monitor, supporting 350-lines and 64 colors. This monitor and its clones are pricey and many people use a CGA monitor. Remember to set the dipswitches on the bracket appropriately for a 200-line monitor. It can also use MDA monitors if you set the switches appropriately.
IBM VGA Adapter
Unlike other IBM cards, this card is full length but has a lower profile, width wise. No skirt.
Uses IRQ2 for vertical sync.
Designed to upgrade IBM PS/2 Model 30 systems to VGA, works fine in IBM PC, XT, AT, XT-286.
Officially called the IBM PS/2 Display Adapter
Officially called the IBM PS/2 Display Adapter
Will not fit inside an IBM PS/2 Model 25.
Finicky with 3rd-party motherboard
Uses EPROM to store VGA BIOS (32KB EPROM, 24KB used).
Has two BERG-strip pin headers, functionality unknown
256KB video memory, no further upgrades
24KB BIOS ROM, mapped C0000-C5FFF (Clones almost always use 32KB)
8KB of scratchpad memory, mapped C8000-C7FFF (6KB) and CA000-CA7FF (2KB) Clones do not have this and this mapping is often an annoyance with other cards that can use the CA000 region.
Jumperless, no lightpen support
Many 16-bit VGA cards can work in an 8-bit slot. The Paradise PVGA1A chipset is a good choice, but even some Tseng ET4000AX boards will work. Don't expect to set speed records.
Many 16-bit VGA cards can work in an 8-bit slot. The Paradise PVGA1A chipset is a good choice, but even some Tseng ET4000AX boards will work. Don't expect to set speed records.
8-bit Sound Cards
There are relatively few 8-bit Sound Cards, in fact these are really your only choices for games :
AdLib Music Synthesizer Card
The first sound card, first revision has a 1/4" audio jack, second revision a 3.5mm mini-jack. OPL2 FM Synthesis. Noisier than a Sound Blaster. May be necessary to use an AdLib in a Tandy 1000 T/S/RL due to those systems not playing well with a Sound Blaster. Clone boards will work the same if they use a Yamaha YM3812 OPL2 chip and its Y3014 DAC.
AdLib Gold 1000
Backwards compatible, adds 8-bit and 12-bit DAC functionality but its midi interface is not MPU-401 compatible in any way. No Sound Blaster compatibility. Has header for optional surroundsound daughterboard. Dune makes use of the daughterboard and only supports stereo OPL3 FM Synthesis on this card. Card is rare, daughterboard extremely rare.
Covox Sound Master
Uses GI AY8930 for music and 8-bit DAC/ADC. No compatibility with other cards. Has some near-exclusive game support. Also supports two Atari-style digital gamepads. Virtually impossible to find.
Covox Sound Master Plus
AdLib compatible OPL2 FM. 8-bit DAC, but not completely compatible with the previous card as some games use the AY8930 for DMA. Ditto on findability.
Covox Sound Master II
AdLib compatible OPL2 FM, 8-bit DAC. Basic Sound Blaster compatibility. Somewhat more common.
Creative Music System/Game Blaster
Uses 2 x Phillips SAA-1099 (CMS-301) for music. Certain CMS/Game Blaster cards will not work with Sound Blaster cards with C/MS chips due to the custom board detection chip on these boards. Only way to get trouble free CMS sound on Tandy 1000 T/S/RL systems due to DMA conflict between Sound Blaster and Tandy DAC. Very rare.
Creative Labs Sound Blaster 1.0 & 1.5
1.0 has CMS chips onboard. DSP in 40-pin socket. Typically came with v1.05, could be upgraded to 2.0. 2.0 adds auto-init DMA, which was necessary to meet Windows MPC specification. Regardless of DSP version, DAC limited to 8-bit @ 22.050kHz playback. AdLib compatible. MIDI port is not MPU-401 compatible, even in UART mode. Removing the DRQ1 jumper will not solve problems with Tandy 1000 T/S/RL systems. The 1.5 has 2 sockets for CMS chip upgrade, otherwise identical to 1.0.
Creative Labs Sound Blaster 2.0
DSP v2.01 adds 8-bit @ 44.1kHz DAC playback. Loses alternate I/O selections compared with 1.0, but many games expect the Sound Blaster at I/O 220-22F. CMS upgrade requires a Programmable Logic Array (PAL) chip, which has been reverse engineered using a Generic Logic Array chip (GAL). The GALs of today only work on rev. 3 and rev 4 SB 2.0s unless you use one from National Semiconductor, which are the only ones that work on boards without a rev. They will not work reliable on rev. 0 (no revision) boards, so avoid those if you intend to upgrade. Cards with a CT1336A Bus Interface Chip will not work with the CMS upgrade, even with a true Creative Labs' PAL. Very short card for its time.
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro 1.0
Although the Sound Blaster Pro cards have a 16-bit connector, all it does is allow you to select IRQ10 or DMA0, both very unpopular resource choices. They work just fine in 8-bit systems and you can dremel off the 16-bit portion of the card edge with no ill effects. The Pro supports stereo FM with 2 x OPL2 chipsets and 8-bit @ 44.1kHz DAC. It also introduces a hardware mixer, which some games use to create stereo sound. Virtually useless proprietary Panasonic CD-ROM interface on the common CT-1330, but it does not take up extra resources. The Pros allow you to select DMA3, which means they can work with the Tandy 1000 T/S/RL series. They have a 2-pin header to connect the PC Speaker header on the motherboard. Usually the motherboard header is a 4-pin strip, but a simple "rewiring" of a CD audio cable works for me. The PC Speaker will sound louder through the Pro than through systems with a piezo tweeter or a tiny speaker.
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro 2.0
See above, but uses an OPL3 for stereo FM. There are games that prefer the dual OPL2 setup, and for the later games that may utilize OPL3 features, they almost always sound better with General MIDI. Shorter than the Pro 1.0 and less noisy sound output than the early Sound Blaster 16s. CT-1600 is the most common and uses the Panasonic CD-ROM interface. CT-1690 has a non-bootable SCSI interface which works with SCSI CD-ROMs.
Innovation SSI-2001
A MOS 6581 SID on a card with a gameport. Extremely rare. I have seen two pictures of these cards, and both use 6581R4 chips, not 6582/8580 (would need a 9v converter on board). A 6581 requires a +12v power source, which the ISA bus provides. The SID chip's 29 registers are mapped directly on the I/O bus starting at 280, 2A0, 2C0 or 2E0. The SID should be clocked at .894MHz. The filter will sound different, as the Caps on the C64 used 470pf and the SSI board uses .01uF. Extremely rare.
Mediavision Pro Audio Spectrum (PAS)
AdLib compatible, no Sound Blaster compatiblity. Requires loading MVSOUND.SYS in CONFIG.SYS for card to work. 8-bit @ 44.1kHz DAC support. SCSI CD-ROM interface. Better noise characteristics than any 8-bit Sound Blaster. Stereo FM using 2 x OPL2 chipsets. There are games from Sierra that support this card for stereo FM music that do not support the Sound Blaster Pro. The MIDI interface has no MPU-401 compatibility.
The PAS can emulate the PC Speaker without having to route the sound from the motherboard. This is weird, however, since there is a header for the analog PC speaker output from the motherboard on the card.
The jumper settings for the original, 8-bit Pro Audio Spectrum are hard to find online and not marked on the circuit board. Look here, which also gives the pinout for the CD Audio input header :
The PAS can emulate the PC Speaker without having to route the sound from the motherboard. This is weird, however, since there is a header for the analog PC speaker output from the motherboard on the card.
The jumper settings for the original, 8-bit Pro Audio Spectrum are hard to find online and not marked on the circuit board. Look here, which also gives the pinout for the CD Audio input header :
Mediavision Thunderboard
AdLib and Sound Blaster 1.5 compatible clone (no CMS) with a volume wheel. Some games have a Thunderboard install option for better compatibility. Claims dynamic filtering for better output quality. Supposed to be reported as a 2.0, presumably because it supports auto-init DMA as does a SB 1.5 with DSP v2.01. The Thunderboard can disable the FM via jumper to work alongside the PAS and provide Sound Blaster compatibility to the Pro Audio Spectrum. (I assume you can do the same thing on a real Sound Blaster by removing the YM3812 chip.) The PAS16 would use the Thunderboard chipset for Sound Blaster compatibility. Do not use in a Tandy 1000 T/R/SL because the DMA channel cannot be changed or disabled. Interestingly, for a Sound Blaster clone it does not support MIDI output of any kind from the joystick port. There is a version called the Thunder and Lightning that does support MIDI output and the capabilities of an SB2.0, licensed from Creative. Its jumper settings are here :
Roland MPU-401 + MIF-IPC or MIF-IPC-A
Roland MPU-401 + MIF-IPC or MIF-IPC-A
Strictly a MIDI interface, but if you need 100% Roland MPU-401 compatibility, your choices are limited. The large external box contains all the major circuitry, the MIF cards are simple bus adapters and can easily be replicated. There were several ROM revisions, with the final revision being v1.5A. This revision is used in the MPU and LAPC-I cards. The MIF-IPC is not reliable in AT-bus systems (16-bit ISA bus systems), while the -A card adds AT-bus compatibility. I/O address and IRQ2 usage cannot be changed without cutting traces and soldering wires or a dipswitch box. The box can be used in many other systems (Apple II, Commodore 64) with the appropriate interface card. Connectors include 2 MIDI OUTs.
Roland MPU-IPC or MPU-IPC-T
Virtually the same as the above, although this time the circuitry is on the card and the external box is just for the connectors. The -T loses the Sync Out (useless for gaming) but allows changing the I/O and IRQ usage without physically altering the card. Connects to the external box via a DB-25.
Roland LAPC-I
Provides the exact synthesis of a Roland CM-32L (MT-32 rev. 1 + 33 extra sound effects) plus a Roland MPU-IPC and selectable I/O and IRQ usage. Has a headphone and two RCA jacks. A DA-15 connector connects to its MCB-1 box for interfacing with extenal devices, which was sold separately. A Gameport-to-MIDI adapter cannot be used unless pins are altered inside the cable. Is a full-length card and requires a -5v power on the ISA bus. Modern ATX power supplies (2.0 and above) do not supply the appropriate voltage. In a pinch you could wire in a 7905 to convert it down from the -12v line, which is still supported. Uses the CM-32L Control ROM, v1.0 (EPROM) or v1.2 (Mask ROM).
Roland SCC-1
Provides the exact synthesis of a Roland CM-300 (SC-55 base) plus a Roland MPU-401 interface, but only 1 MIDI OUT and 1 MIDI IN. MIDI OUT requires a special mini-DIN to DIN cable. Stereo speakers and RCA outputs. The SCC-1 supports 317 patches, the SCC-1A card supports 354 (SCC-1B is a marketing term for an SCC-1A and the Ballade software). Capital tone fallback (see my previous post about Unique PC Hardware) feature is not supported in the SCC-1A. MPU-401 uses ROM revision 1.5B.
Roland MPU-401/AT
The MPU-401AT uses the same MPU-401 features and ports as the SCC-1, but only has a 26-pin waveblaster header. It has no on-board synthesizer by default, but can use any daughterboard that will fit on it. Roland offered two, the General MIDI (with extra drumsets) compatible SCB-7 (a SC-7 derivative) and the General MIDI/GS compatible SCB-55 (a SC-55mkII derivative). I have used a Yamaha DB50XG on the board without problems. The audio output is superior than a Sound Blaster.
There has been confusion between the labels SCB-7 and SCB-55 and SCD-10 and SCD-15. The former two names identify and are silkscreened on the hardware boards, the latter refer to the product bundle with the box, software and manuals. The bundle with the SCB-55 and MPU-401AT ISA card is called the SCM-15AT.
Unfortunately, the MPU-401AT is extremely small and virtually all daughterboards will extend well-beyond the edge of the board. Longer boards have four holes for the daughterboard standoffs, but this board only has two holes for standoffs. The end result can be wobbly. Finally, the name and manual for this card indicate that it is not PC or XT compatible, but because the card was released in 1995, those systems were seen as obsolete. The card probably works fine in 8-bit XT compatible machines. Finding standoffs of the right height will likely prove to be a time consuming task.
All three Roland cards with sound synthesis capabilities can accept MIDI data from a separate computer. In this sense, the cards can act as external modules.
There has been confusion between the labels SCB-7 and SCB-55 and SCD-10 and SCD-15. The former two names identify and are silkscreened on the hardware boards, the latter refer to the product bundle with the box, software and manuals. The bundle with the SCB-55 and MPU-401AT ISA card is called the SCM-15AT.
Unfortunately, the MPU-401AT is extremely small and virtually all daughterboards will extend well-beyond the edge of the board. Longer boards have four holes for the daughterboard standoffs, but this board only has two holes for standoffs. The end result can be wobbly. Finally, the name and manual for this card indicate that it is not PC or XT compatible, but because the card was released in 1995, those systems were seen as obsolete. The card probably works fine in 8-bit XT compatible machines. Finding standoffs of the right height will likely prove to be a time consuming task.
All three Roland cards with sound synthesis capabilities can accept MIDI data from a separate computer. In this sense, the cards can act as external modules.
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