Unique PC Hardware & Game Support

In this post, I will identify certain unique hardware that games used and can be difficult to replicate without it.    Except in one instance, no game will refuse to run because you do not have a particular system or card or device, but features may be lost.  I will identify the hardware in bold, then identify the particular feature or limitation unique to that card and list the games that support or require that particular feature.  Finally, I will explain what the issue is and possible work-arounds.  Fan patches and hacks are not included.

IBM Personal Computer Line

Feature - BASIC in ROM

Bumble Games
Bumble Plot
Juggles' Butterfly

Explanation : IBM's computers contained Cassette BASIC in ROM.  However, this version of BASIC was limited to communicating with cassettes, so IBM put BASIC.COM and BASICA.COM on its DOS disks so BASIC could interface with floppy drives.  These programs were relatively small because they utilized the underlying BASIC in ROM code.  As clone manufacturers entered the picture, Microsoft combined the Cassette BASIC and BASICA.COM into GW-BASIC.EXE for the clone systems, which did not have BASIC in ROM.  

Games requiring BASIC always came in a DOS-readable format and required BASIC, BASICA or GW-BASIC to function.  The above games were released by IBM, and would contain BASIC or BASICA on the game disk.  Other companies may have required you to copy over the appropriate interpreter to avoid having to pay license fees to IBM or Microsoft.  

With the above games, released by IBM, their disk labels clearly state or should state "Copy Protected".  When IBM released software licensed from 3rd party developers, the developers always put copy protection on the disks.  With its internally developed software, it usually was not picky.  The above games were created by The Learning Co.  The disks could boot without user intervention since they contained the basic DOS files and AUTOEXEC.BAT to start the programs.  Normally, if you were trying to run the program on a non-IBM PC, you would replace BASIC and BASICA with GW-BASIC.  On these programs, due to the copy protection, it may not work.

Alternative : MESS, IBM PCemulator

Gravis Ultrasound

Feature - Native GUS Hardware Mixing Support

Archon Ultra
Crusader: No Remorse
Crusader: No Regret
Death Rally
DOOM v1.2 or below
Epic Pinball
Extreme Pinball
Jazz Jackrabbit
The Lemmings Chronicles
One Must Fall 2097
Pinball Arcade CD-ROM (Pinball Dreams & Pinball Dreams II)
Pinball Fantasies
Pinball Illusions
Silverball
Star Control II
Turrican 2
Zone 66

Explanation : These games have support for the GUS's hardware mixing capabilities.  Essentially they boast the best support for the GUS.  By using the GUS's hardware, instead of software mixing, typically these games will have better audio performance and higher audio quality.  Unfortunately, hardware mixing was removed after DOOM v1.2 because there was no room left on the card after the RAM samples for the music had been uploaded and DMA transfers without using the RAM were buggy and inflexible.

NEC V20/V30 Incompatibility

Feature - Game works with an 8088 or 8086 CPU but not with an NEC V20 or V30

Lode Runner
Championship Lode Runner
Jumpman (possibly)

Explanation : The IBM PC, (many) PCjr., XT, Tandy 1000, 1000EX, SX and HX all have a socketed 8088 CPU. A popular, reasonably priced upgrade for these systems was to replace the 8088 CPU for the NEC V20, which is an optimized version of the CPU.  For systems like the IBM PS/2 Model 25 and 30 and the Tandy 1000SL and SL/2, the socketed 8086 could be replaced with an NEC V30.  Due to optimizations in the instruction execution, the addition of a hardware multiplier, the resulting speed improvement could be 15% on average over the equivalent Intel CPU.  However, the occasional game will not work with a V20 or V30.  The only confirmed game is Lode Runner, but the disk image and DOS conversion available on the Internet work fine with a V20.

Alternative : Run game with 8088 or 8086 CPU, use Retrograde Station booter or DOS conversion.

Creative CMS/Game Blaster

Feature - CT-1302 Detection Chip

AD&D Death Knights of Krynn
Altered Destiny
Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh
Bubble Bobble
Death Knights of Krynn
Puzznic
QIX
Rambo III
Rastan

Explanation : Quite a few games support Creative C/MS or Game Blaster sound.  The sound chips are two Phillips SAA-1099s and they can be found on the Creative Music System Card or the relabeled card, the Creative Game Blaster Card.  They can also be found on the Creative Sound Blaster 1.0 and can be inserted into sockets on the Sound Blaster 1.5 or 2.0 and a few licensed clones.  However, the CMS and Game Blaster cards have a 40-pin DIP chip labeled CT-1302A.  This chip allows the card to be autodetected by programs, since the chips themselves cannot be detected.  It also acts as a transceiver for the CMS chips.  The above games have been proven to fail on Sound Blaster cards, since those cards have a Creative Digital Signal Processor where the CT-1302 is mapped on the C/MS and Game Blaster cards.  The Sound Blaster DSP works very differently than the CT-1302.  Operation Wolf will also complain that it cannot find the Game Blaster like the other Taito games, but will still play the music.  Ditto for Wolfpack from Broderbund.

Prince of Persia, v1.0, may be an honorary member in this list.  While it supports the Game Blaster, it also supports Adlib and will use that chip if it detects it in the system, regardless of what else may be inside it.  So if you have a Sound Blaster 1.0-2.0, you will need to physically remove the YM3812 chip or hack the game to disable the Adlib detection to get Game Blaster music.  Star Control acts like Prince of Persia in that it will force Adlib sound if it detects an Adlib or Sound Blaster in the system, even if you have Game Blaster chips and force it by a command line argument.

Alternatives : DOSBox SVN supports C/MS Game Blaster autodetection

Tandy 1000 DAC

Feature - Near Exclusive Digital Sound Support

Gauntlet II (also PC Speaker Tweaked)
Outrun
SimCity & Expansions (also Covox Sound Master)
Wings of Fury

Explanation : The Tandy 1000 series, specifically the SL/TL/RL models, have DAC functionality in addition to the TI SN 76496 PSG hardware.  In other words, they can play back digitized sound samples and voice.  The above games are the only known games to support digitized sound playback on a Tandy but not with a Sound Blaster card.  Some games have other options as listed.  Unfortunately, when the DAC is playing on real hardware, the built in joystick ports cannot be used.

Space Quest III originally shipped with digital sound support only for the Tandy DAC, but you can use the Sound Blaster driver from KQ1SCI and hear the digital sound effects.

Note that there were three revisions of the DAC.  The "Jacksboro" revision came first, and is found in the TL and SL. Then came the "Bonanza" revision, found in the TL/2, SL/2, RL, and 2500XL.  Finally there is the "Hensdale" revision, found in the TL/3, RLX, RSX, other computers in the 2500XL series and in the Sensation! (noticeably over-filtered in the latter).  The Hensdale chips are somewhat incompatible with the above games, producing lockups on Outrun, incorrect sound on Wings of Fury and pops in other games designed for the older chips.

MobyGames indicates that Railroad Tycoon and Metal Mutant support the Tandy DAC, but they do not.  Railroad Tycoon, which also supports Adlib and Roland MT-32 uses the Tandy 3-voice sound chip for all its sound effects.  Metal Mutant does not even support Tandy graphics, but it does support digitized sound effects on the PC Speaker and the Adlib Music Feature Card.

Alternatives : DOSBox SVN has full support for Tandy DAC.  Unlike the real hardware, some games may allow joystick control when digital sounds are played.

Sound Blaster AWE32/64 Soundfont Support

Feature - Custom Soundfont Patches

Battle Arena Toshinden
Dungeon Keeper
Eradicator
Hi-Octane
Magic Carpet 2
Nerves of Steel
Perfect General II
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

Explanation : Most games that supported the Sound Blaster AWE32 or 64 in DOS merely used the 1MB of samples contained in ROM on the card.  These games upload a custom sample bank for more customized sound than what would be contained in the ROM samples.  There are also several Windows games that include Soundfont patches.  They can also use any PCI Creative sound card, but the DOS games will only recognize an AWE32 or AWE64.

Tandy 1000 Video II

Feature - 640x200x16 Mode

Mario Teaches Typing
Math Rabbit Deluxe
Sargon V
Star Trek 25th Anniversary
Time Riders in American History
Treasure Cove
Treasure MathStorm

The TL, TL/2, TL/3, SL, SL/2, RL & RL-HD support all the usual CGA and Tandy video modes but add MDA/Hercules support and an extra 640x200x16 Mode.  This mode was not supported in the BIOS and the programmer had to write to the registers to set it correctly.  The above games are the only ones known to support the 640x200x16 resolution, and both support EGA and VGA too.  Deskmate 3 also uses the mode.  Sargon V uses some different colors in Tandy compared with EGA.

Alternatives : DOSBox

Roland MPU-401

Feature - Intelligent MPU-401

A-10 Tank Killer v1.0
A-Train
Budokan
Codename : Iceman*
Colonel's Bequest*
Companions Of Xanth
Conquests of Camelot*
Cruise for a Corpse
Curse of Enchantia
David Wolf
Elvira II
Ecargxus
Eric the Unready
Flashback
Future Wars
Gateway
Gateway II
Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory I*
Hired Guns
Hoyle's Official Book of Games Volume I*
Hoyle's Official Book of Games Volume II*
Innocent until Caught
It Came from the Desert
King's Quest I : Quest for the Crown*
Kings Quest IV*
Lakers v. Celtics in the NBA Playoffs
Laser Squad
Leisure Suit Larry 2*
Leisure Suit Larry 3*
Linewars II
Might and Magic III
Mixed Up Mother Goose*
Operation Stealth
Police Quest II*
Populous
Princess Maker
Princess Maker 2
Sabre Team
Sensible Soccer
Shadoworlds
Silpheed*
Simon the Sorcerer
Sorcerian*
Space Quest III*
Spellcasting 101
Spellcasting 201
Spellcasting 301
Super Space Invaders
Superhero League of Hoboken
TimeQuest
Ultima VI
Waxworks
Wing Commander
Wing Commander II
Wonderland
Zeliard v1.0-1.208

Explanation : The Roland MPU-401 MIDI Interface supports two modes, normal (unofficially known as "intelligent") and UART (unofficially known as "dumb").  In normal mode, the interface supports a wide range of commands.  In UART mode, it only sends and receives data, not commands.  Early games that supported the MT-32 assumed that the user had a Roland MPU-401 interface and wrote their drivers to utilize the normal mode commands.  Later games dispensed with the commands and the need for normal mode.

Alternatives : DOSBox has full MPU-401 emulation.  Ensoniq Soundscape boards can trick many games into working because they can send an ACK (acknolwedge) to the game after every normal mode command.  Since games only output MIDI, they don't care how the interface handles the command.  The Soundscape does not actually carry out the command.  This does not work for every game, as Legend Enterainment games that support the MT-32 will require true hardware or DOSBox.  The MediaTrix Audiotrix Pro also supports an ACK for MPU-401 commands.  There are fan-made patches for most of the Sierra games that will allow them to use the Sound Blaster MIDI interface at 2x0h, search for mt32sb.zip  I have marked with an asterisk the games which the patch supports.   Finally, if you have a 386 or better processor, there is a program called SoftMPU which emulates an MPU-401 in DOS.  It requires EMM386.EXE or another Expanded Memory Manager to be loaded, so it will not work on a 286 or lower machine.  

Mediavision  Pro Audio Spectrum

Feature - Stereo FM/Dual OPL2

1990 Christmas Card - The Seasoned Professional
B-17 Flying Fortress
Castle of Dr. Brain
Conquests of the Longbow
David Leadbetter's Greens
DragonsSphere
EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus (patch)
F-15 Strike Eagle III
F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0
Fleet Defender
Gunship 2000
Harrier Jump Jet
Hoyle's Official Book of Games Volume 3
Jones in the Fast Lane
King's Quest V (patch)
Leisure Suit Larry 5
Leisure Suit Larry 1 VGA
Lord of the Rings Volume 1
Lord of the Rings Volume 2
Mixed-up Fairy Tales
Mixed-Up Mother Goose (patch)
Pirates! Gold
Police Quest III
Quest for Glory II (patch)
Return of the Phantom
Sid Meier's Civilization
Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon Deluxe
Space Quest I VGA
Space Quest IV (patch)
Special Forces
Strike Commander

Explanation : The Pro Audio Spectrum was the first card to offer stereo FM music.  It has two OPL2 chips on board, one for the left channel, one for the right channel.  Creative later used the dual OPL2 setup in its first Sound Blaster Pro.  The early Sierra 256-color titles listed above will support stereo FM music using the Pro Audio Spectrum Driver only.  The non-Sierra games support both cards in stereo.  Later Pro Audio Spectrums, including the Plus and 16s, will not work either as they use one OPL3 chip.  The Pro Audio Spectrum is compatible with Adlib, but in mono only.  Some of these games may appear to offer OPL3 support, but the Dual OPL2 output has been shown to be objectively superior.

Alternative : Use SB Pro 1.0 in games supporting it.  None of the Sierra games listed above support stereo on the SB Pro 1.0.  There are fan-made patches floating about the Internet for the Sierra titles, but require an OPL3 card like the SB Pro 2.0 or later.

Sound Blaster Pro 1.0

Feature - Stereo FM/Dual OPL2

Formula One Grand Prix
F-15 Strike Eagle III
Hi-Octane (also Pro Audio Spectrum 16)
Inherit The Earth: Quest For The Orb
Ultima Underworld

Explanation : See above, these games support dual OPL2 only on a Sound Blaster Pro 1.0.

Alternative : Use DOSBox SBPro1 emulation.

Innovation Sound Standard SSI-2001

Feature - 6581 SID Sound

Airball
Asterix: Operation Getafix
Bad Blood
Battle Chess II
BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge
F-19 Stealth Fighter
Falcon A.T.
Joe Montana Football
Lord of the Rings Volume  1
Red Storm Rising
Ultima VI
Windwalker

Explanation : Uses the famous SID chip found in the Commodore 64 for music.  The SID chip is directly addressable on the ISA bus on this card, and requires a large number of I/O addresses (31) for its registers.  The chip is a 6581, not a 6582 or 8580.  The card is extremely rare.  Airball uses this card or C/MS Game Blaster for sound effects, but the sound effects sound better on this card.

Alternative : Use DOSBox SVN

Hercules InColor Card 

Feature - 720x350x16 Graphics Mode

Microsoft Flight Simulator (v3.0)
Microsoft Flight Simulator (v4.0)
Sierra's 3-D Helicopter Simulator

Description : These games support a special graphics mode found on the InColor card when connected to an EGA monitor.

Alternative : All games also support high resolution EGA graphics, 640x350x16/64.  It is not impossible that a non-Hercules card may emulate the functionality.  Also, the graphics may look the same, only with borders on the left and right sides of the frame.  Karateka only supports the Hercules Color Graphics Card, a CGA clone designed to co-exist with a Hercules (Monochrome) Graphics Card.

Covox Sound Master

Feature - AY8910 or 8930 Sound

Conan - The Cimmerian
Galleons of Glory
Megatraveller 2
Prince of Persia (v1.0 only)
Punisher, The
Sim Earth
Spirit of Excalibur
Twilight 2000
Ultima VI
Vengeance of Excalibur
Where in Time if Carmen Sandiego (AY8930 music)
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (320x200 VGA Version)

Description : These games support music and/or sound effects using the AY8930 PSG found on the original Covox Sound Master.  Mostly games only supported the basic AY8910 features, which were also found in the Atari ST computers, many arcade games, the Intellivision and the Mockingboard line of sound cards for the Apple II.  The card is incredibly rare.  Covox marketed a line of sound adapters, including the Speech Thing, the Voice Master, the Sound Master, the Sound Master + and the Sound Master II.  The + and II are NOT compatible with the original Sound Master, as they are essentially Sound Blaster clones.

Alternative : None

Feature - Near Exclusive Digital Sound Support

MegaTraveller 1
Space 1899
SimCity
The Punisher
Transylvania III

Description : These games support one of the digitial sound reproduction methods of the original Covox Sound Master or the Adlib-compatible Covox Sound Master II and do not support Sound Blaster digitized sound playback.

Note that Covox Lemmings only supports Adlib, Countdown and A-Train does not actually function with a Sound Master (despite what it says on the A-Train box) and Wolfenstein 3D specifically requires a Disney Sound Source and will not work with a Covox Speech Thing/Voice Master/Sound Master of any kind.

Alternative : Use other cards/devices, if supported

IBM Music Feature Card

Feature - Custom Midi Interface & YM2164 OPP 4-op FM Sound

1988 Christmas Card (Sierra SCI0 demo)
Jones in the Fast Lane (patch)
King's Quest IV (early version only)
King's Quest V (patch only)
Leisure Suit Larry 2 (early version only)
Music Construction Set (special version)
Quest for Glory 2 (patch only)
Thexder 2 (patch only)

Explanation : The above games and demo will support the 4-op FM synthesis, but only using the rare IBM Music Feature Card, IMFC.  No official patches are known to exist to let these games work with an Yamaha FB-01 + Roland MPU-401 combination.  In many cases, later versions of these games will support a Yamaha FB-01.

Alternative : None

Yamaha FB-01

Feature - YM2164 OPP 4-op FM Sound

Codename: Iceman

Colonel's Bequest, The

Conquests of Camelot (patch only)

Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory

Hoyle's Official Book of Games Volume I

Jones in the Fast Lane

King's Quest I SCI

King's Quest IV (later versions)

King's Quest V

Leisure Suit Larry 2 (later versions)

Leisure Suit Larry 3

Mixed Up Mother Goose (16-color SCI version, patch only)

Police Quest II

Quest for Glory 2

Silpheed

Sorcerian

Space Quest III

Explanation : The above games will support the 4-op FM music with the above midi module or the IBM Music Feature Card.  A Roland MPU-401 Midi Interface is required.

Alternative : There is a special version of DOSBox that will support output to the FB-01, the ordinary versions do not due to the MIDI buffer being too small for the custom sysex sounds sent to the FB-01 by the driver.  Also, you should download the patch here to avoid errors caused by Sierra's driver with DOSBox's MPU-401 emulation : http://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=14968  SoftMPU as of version 1.9 will also support the Yamaha FB-01.

If you have an IBM Music Feature and Roland MPU-401 interface but the game that is buggy with the IMF driver, try the FB01 driver, connecting the midi out of the MPU-401 to the midi in of the Music Feature's breakout box.  

Casio MT-540/CT-460/CSM-1

Feature - MIDI module support

Altered Destiny

Codename: Iceman

Colonel's Bequest, The 

Conquests of Camelot (patch driver officially supports CSM-1)

Elvira

Game of Harmony, The

Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory

Hoyle's Official Book of Games

Jack Nicklaus' Unlimited Golf & Course Design (officially supports CT-460)

King's Quest I SCI (driver officially supports MT-540/CT-460)

Leisure Suit Larry 3

Les Manley in: Search for the King

Sorcerian (driver officially supports MT-540/CT-460)

Space Quest III

Explanation : Certain games has specific support for these midi keyboards and module.  The MT-540 and the CT-460 function almost identically from a programmer perspective, even though the latter offers access to more sounds through the keyboard controls.  The one difference is that the CT-460 and CSM-1 assign different tones to program change numbers compared to the MT-540, and the Apogee games identify the CT-460 in their setup programs.  This would mean that the wrong sounds may be played with a MT-540.  The CSM-1 is far less common than either keyboard.  A Roland MPU-401 interface must be used.  DOSBox should work well with these devices attached to a hardware midi interface.

Alternative : None

Adlib Gold 

Feature - Optional Surroundsound Daughtercard Support

Dune

Explanation : Dune supports the Surroundsound module for the Adlib Gold for reverb, enhancing one of the best FM soundtracks ever made for a PC game.

Alternative : None

Feature - YMF-262 OPL3

Dune

Explanation : Dune supports OPL3 features on the Adlib Gold, but only OPL2 features on a Sound Blaster or Sound Blaster Pro.

Alternative : Use MediaTrix Audiotrix Pro sound card or Tandy Sensation! system, which are compatible with the Adlib Gold.

Paradise & Video 7 SVGA

Feature : 800x600x16 Graphics Mode

Wonderland

Explanation : The above early SVGA chipsets support a non-standard 800x600x16 mode.  Wonderland supports it, but only on graphics cards with the PVGA1A or Video 7 VEGA chipsets.  You probably would need a card with 512K RAM on it, even though the mode only requires a 240KB frame buffer.

Alternative : Use DOSBox with the SVGA_Paradise option.

IBM 8514/A Graphics Card

Feature - 1024x768x256 @ 43.5Hz

Mah Jongg -8514- (beta)

Explanation : The IBM 8514/A was an Microchannel (MCA) card that acted as a supplement to the built-in VGA graphics of the early PS/2 systems.  It was a graphics accelerator which added 1024x768x256 and 640x480x256 modes.  The former mode was interlaced at 43.5Hz, the latter ran at 60Hz. Some other cards like the ATi Mach 8 & 32 and the TSENG ET4000 can emulate it.  It originally required a special monitor, the IBM 8514.  The above game is the only game known to utilize the adapter, and it was only a beta.

Alternative : Use DOSBox with the SVGA_ET4000 machine type and the 8514AI emulator. 

IBM PS1 Audio/Game Card

Feature - Digital Sound Support

Silpheed (version 2.3 only)

Explanation : The IBM PS/1 2011 did not come with any ISA slots, so to give some sort of audio support, IBM released the above plug in card to provide support.  Early models of the PS/1 2121 also have the header for the card, but they also have ISA slots.  It used a TI SN76496 clone core, provided gamport joystick and midi support and a specialized DAC.  Sierra released a special and very rare version of Silpheed to support it, and it provides digital samples and voices whereas all the old versions used the PC Speaker.

Alternative : Use DOSBox SVN

Feature - SN Music

Bush Buck: Global Treasure Hunter

Explanation : Bush Buck supports TI SN 76496 based music on the IBM PS/1 Audio Card but not on a Tandy 1000.  Mickey's Colors & Shapes supports 3-voice music on a Tandy 1000 but not on an IBM PS/1 Audio/Game Card.  For the PS/1 card, it uses digitized music, just like with a Sound Blaster or Disney Sound Source.  Users with a Tandy DAC can also hear the digitized music.

Disney Sound Source

Feature - Digital Sound Support

Arachnophobia
Dick Tracy: The Crime-Solving Adventure

Explanation : The Disney Sound Source is an LPT DAC that plugs into a DB-25 female printer port (except apparently on Tandy 1000 RL & TL/3 and 2500XL).  It is similar to the Covox Speech Thing in that it outputs 8-bit digital sound, but the programming is slightly more involved.  The above games are the only games known to exclusively support it for digitized sound playback and have no Sound Blaster support.

Alternative : Use DOSBox

MCGA

Feature - 320x200x"16"

Thexder

Explanation : The MultiColor Graphics Adapter, found in the 8086-based IBM PS/2 Models 25 & 30 only, supports a 320x200x256 color mode.  Some games will use it even though they do not support more than 16 colors on the screen at a time.  Instead, they will use the 256 color mode to allow access to the 18-bit RGB palette of the MCGA and VGA.  Thexder is the only game known to do this by autodetecting the MCGA machines.  If you use a VGA card, the game will give you a 640x200x16 mode with only the default CGA/EGA palette available.

Alternative : You can trick Thexder to run in the MCGA mode if you have a VGA card by renaming MAINPS to MAINEG and MAINEG to something else.

IBM Cassette Port

Feature - PC Speaker sound output through the Cassette Port

Music Construction Set

Explanation : The IBM PC Model 5150 and the IBM PCjr. support a cassette for saving and loading BASIC programs.  It can also output sound from the PC Speaker.  Music Construction Set supported it to output tweaked PC speaker music to a real speaker.  Unfortunately the internal speaker may not be shut off.  The PCjr. has an official cable, but the PC must use a Tandy TRS-80 cassette cable.  The music does not sound any different than what is produced internally, but it does allow for volume control and easier recording.

Alternative : DOSBox or an audio card (Sound Blaster Pro, 16, AWE32-64 except Gold) with a PC Speaker output pin.

IBM PCjr.

Feature - Cartridge Slots

Crossfire (also floppy)
Demon Attack (also floppy)
Microsurgeon
Mine Shaft
Mouser
Pitfall II
River Raid
ScubaVenture

Explanation : The IBM PCjr. came with two cartridge slots on the front of the unit for games and smaller programs.  There was a version of Lotus 1-2-3 that came on two cartridges, presumably for instant loading. The two cartridge slots accept up to 64K cartridges each and are mapped to the D000 and E000 segments, respectively.  The especially rare IBM PC JX also has compatible cartridge slots, but nothing else has compatible slots.

Alternative : DOSBox with cartridge images

Feature - Reliance on PCjr. limitations

King's Quest
Touchdown Football

Explanation : The PCjr. version of King's Quest will not work on a PC or PCjr. compatible like the Tandy 1000s, except for a Tandy 1000/A/HD with 128KB of RAM.  King's Quest for the Jr. uses a graphics window from 96-128K, and the Jr. cannot change the location of the window.  The Tandy 1000 can and does if more than 128KB of RAM is inside the system.  Later Tandy 1000s come with at least 256KB RAM, so the graphics will not display.  Sierra released a version for IBM PCs and a version specifically for Tandy 1000s.  Touchdown Football is reported to have too fast digitized sound playback with a Tandy 1000.  Even though the PCjr. and the 1000 share video RAM with main RAM, the 1000 does not suffer from the performance deficiencies.

I originally included M.U.L.E is in this list because the release for the PC was extremely rare and it was assumed that it was a port IBM commissioned specifically for the PCJr.  Now it has been revealed to the world to be a strictly PC port that supports only standard CGA and PC speaker sound that happens to run on the PCjr.  See here for further details : http://www.worldofmule.net/tiki-index.php?page=IBM+PC

Alternative : Tandy 1000 w/128KB RAM or DOSBox

Feature - Speech Adapter Support

Bouncy Bee Learns Letters

Explanation : Among the few sidecars IBM released was a speech adapter, and Bouncy Bee, also released by IBM supports it.  IBM later released similar speech adapters for the PC Convertible and the PS/2.  Bouncy Bee is not PCjr. specific, so it is quite probable that the game may work with the other IBM adapters.  All adapters are rare.

Alternative : The IBM Digispeech DS201A and 301, which connect via serial and parallel port, respectively, is adverised as being compatible with the IBM Speech Adapters will work with Bouncy Bee Learns Letters, but its driver must be loaded first.

Tandy 1000

Feature - Reliance on Tandy 1000 Features

King's Quest
Touchdown Football
Demon Attack

Explanation : The Tandy 1000 version of King's Quest will not work on a PC, but it should work just fine on a PCjr.  Tandy marketed a version of Touchdown Football that is fixed for its system, but this version is very rare.  Ditto for Demon Attack, now on floppy and with a title screen.  These games will only work in Tandy 1000 machines, and may have difficulties with the TL/SL/RL machines.

Note that I have not included every game that takes advantage of PCjr./Tandy 1000 graphics and/or sound.  The list would be enormous and the machines themselves are not so rare.  I have been putting together a list of games that support Tandy graphics but not EGA or better and Tandy sound but not Adlib, Game Blaster, Roland MT-32 or other sound device beyond the PC Speaker.  Maybe I will finish it and post it on this blog.

Alternative : DOSBox

Secondary Monochrome Monitor Support

Feature - Display Secondary Information

Mah Jongg VGA
Mechwarrior 2 : Mercenaries
Rise of the Triad

Something that had been forgotten by most people is that a MDA or Hercules card can comfortably exist alongside a CGA card or Tandy Graphics Adapter found in the *X machines.  It may or may not work on the *L machines as they have built-in MDA/Tandy emulation.  It should also work with most EGA cards and many VGA cards.  The idea is that you have your color monitor attach to a color graphics adapter and that will be your "primary" display.  The monochrome adapter will of course be connected to a monochrome display and act as the "secondary" display.  With a CGA card or Tandy, the MDA card can be set to display text modes and the DOS prompt and the color adapter to display games and graphics.  With more advanced cards, typically the monochrome monitor would take on the secondary role.  CAD, programming tools, spreadsheets would often take advantage of the multiple monitor setup, but games could use it too.

Mah Jongg VGA will display information about remaining tiles, but Mechwarrior 2 and ROTT show debugging information, which was unintentional.  There is a special build of DOSBox which uses the status window to display what the monochrome monitor would have displayed.

Alternative : Special DOSBox build

Amstrad PC

Feature - 640x200x16 Graphics

Dragonfly (Title Screen Only)
Flags
Feud
Maupiti Island

The Amstrad PC1512 (aka Sinclair PC500) is an 8086 XT clone with a unique video adapter.  It is a UK machine and all games that support it come from European developers.  The PC1640 (aka PC6400) has EGA built-in and also has the 1512 graphics adapter but it is disabled.  The built-in video is based on CGA but supports an additional 640x200x16 mode.  The built in video is not quite 100% compatible with CGA, and like the original Tandy 1000/A/HD it cannot be disabled.

I have never seen a screenshot of a game supporting this adapter.  The adapter has no official support for the much more common 320x200x16 EGA/PCjr./Tandy resolution.  However, the equivalent graphics could be shown on the Amstrad by using double-wide pixels in the 640x200x16 mode.  There would be a performance hit since the memory buffer is twice as large, but the alternative is stock CGA.   All the games above have been actually confirmed to use the 640x200x16 graphics mode, the rest may advertise support for the Amstrad PC, but that only means that the game will work with the system.  These games will only support standard CGA, EGA or VGA graphic adapters.

Alternative : DOSBox SVN has an Amstrad machine type.

Feature - Digital Joystick Support

Die Hard 2: Die Harder
Feud
Iznogoud
Metal Mutant
Wizball

The Amstrad PC1512 and 1640 can support the traditional PC analog joysticks using an external ISA gameport or sound card, but also had a digital joystick port on the keyboard.  The port is a DE-9 and supports standard one and two button Atari style sticks.  The resulting joystick positions and fire button presses are sent as unused keyboard scancodes.  Since the scancodes selected are not usually used on IBM keyboards, the game had to have specific support for the Amstrad joystick interface.  Amstrad also supported a custom mouse where the two mouse buttons also corresponded to unused keyboard scancodes and non-standard I/O ports for the X and Y movement.

There are probably other games that support the Amstrad digital joystick interface, but these games are almost certain to do so since they advertise specific support for the Amstrad PCs.

Taito also supported a one-button Atari joystick using a parallel port adapter for Rastan, Renegade, Sky Shark, Bubble Bobble, Puzznic, QIX.  Other companies may have as well.

Alternative : Gravis Gamepad or digital controller with DOSBox.

Feature - Gun-Stick Light Gun

Solo

The Amstrad PC-1512 and 1640's joystick port was also used for a special kind of light gun called the Gun-Stick and supported in at least one game.  The Gun-Stick was used more in Amstrad CPC games.

Nvidia NV1

Feature - Proprietary 3D Acceleration

Nascar Racing (Diamond Edge 3D Bundle)
Panzer Dragoon
Virtua Fighter Remix (Diamond Edge 3D Bundle)
Virtua Cop

These games support the unique hardware acceleration of the NV1 GPU.  The best known cards using the NV1 were the Diamond Edge 3D boards, and they were bundled with some games designed to work only for those cards.  These cards also had built in sound, midi and joystick ports, the latter of which supporting Sega Saturn controllers.  All except Nascar are Windows games, but they may not support standard Direct 3D.  NV1 boards were no great success in the marketplace.  The software mode in Virtua Cop looks better than the NV1 3D acceleration and was presumably designed for weaker systems.

Alternative : Play these games on a Sega Saturn (except NASCAR Racing)

Rendition Verite

Feature - Proprietary 3D Acceleration

Descent II
EF2000
Grand Prix Legends
Hexen II (vHexen2)
Indycar Racing II
MDK
Mechwarrior 2 Mercs
Myth: The Fallen Lords
Nascar Racing II
Quake (vQuake)
Quake II (vQuake2)
Rebel Moon (3D Blaster PCI Bundle Only)
Scorched Planet
Sub Culture
Tomb Raider
VR Soccer
Whiplash (Fatal Racing)

The Rendition Verite 1000 was an early competitor of the 3dfx Voodoo Graphics 3D Accelerator Board.  It may not have been quite as speedy, but it could offer better graphics effects or higher resolution.  While it was Direct 3D compliant, it ran games much better that used its proprietary Speedy3D and RRedline APIs.  GLQuake supports 3dfx Voodoo and (with some cajoling) other OpenGL compliant 3D accelerators, but strictly in Windows.  If you want 3D accelerated Quake in DOS, you must use a Rendition Verite card and vQuake.  vHexen II and vQuake II are Windows only games and the games themselves obviosuly support 3dfx.

Rebel Moon and Indycar Racing II were both bundled with Rendition cards, (Creative's 3D Blaster PCI and Sierra's Screamin' 3D, respectively), so the bundled versions only work with Rendition cards.  Other than as indicated, the rest of these games will work with a 3dfx Voodoo card.

Alternative : 3dfx Voodoo cards work with most of the above

3Dfx Voodoo 1

Feature - Voodoo 1 Accelerator Only

Dreams into Reality

The above games are the only games that will not work with  a Voodoo Rush or Voodoo 2 or later 3Dfx card.  Several other DOS games will require either a patch or a batch file setting the Voodoo 2 to Voodoo 1 settings for the game to work.

Feature - Statically Linked Glide

Battle Arena Toshinden
EF2000: Tactcom
Fatal Racing/Whiplash
Starfighter 3000
UEFA CHampions League 96/97
VR Soccer '96

The above games can only work with one version of the Glide2x.dll or Glide2x.ovl file, and the driver was only designed to work with a Voodoo 1.  You can use a batch file to get the game working on a Voodoo 2, but it will not work for a a Rush, Banshee, 3/4/5 card.

Roland MT-32 rev. 0

Feature - Early Revision Firmware Bugs

Adventures of Willy Beamish, The (Floppy version)
Castle of Dr. Brain
Colonel's Bequest, The
Dune 2
Heart of China
King's Quest V
Leisure Suit Larry 3
Police Quest II
Ski or Die
Space Quest I VGA (1991 256-color remake)
Space Quest III
Wing Commander

The above games take advantage of bugs in the firmware of the MT-32 to create sounds that do not sound the same on the later Roland LA synthesis modules.  Any Roland MT-32 rev. 0, which have firmware ROM versions up to 1.07, will make these games sound perfect.  However, in most instances the difference in sound is confined to the occasional sound effect or musical note.

Alternative : MUNT or Yhkwong's DOSBox SVN MT-32 emulation should support bugs that rely on characteristics of the version 1.xx firmware ROMs, if you use it, but may not support bugs which rely on the hardware of the rev. 0 MT-32.

Roland  -I/CM-32L/CM-64/MT-100/CM-500/MT-32 rev. 1

Feature - Avoidance of Buffer Overflows, Broken Sounds and Firmware Lockups

American Gladiators
Beneath a Steel Sky
Gods
Hero Quest
Inferno
Humans, The
Immortal, The
Jurassic Park
Lemmings 2: The Tribes
Lethal Weapon
Lord of the Rings Volume 2
Lure of the Temptress
Mortal Kombat
One Step Beyond
Populous
Prophecy 1: The Viking Child
Race Drivin'
Spacewrecked 14 Billion Light Years From Earth
Team Suzuki
TFX (Tactical Fighter Experiment)
Utopia

The above games fail to work properly or at all on rev. 0 MT-32s because they were programmed on a later Roland device, usually a LAPC-I.  While the rev. 0 is sensitive to MIDI transmission speed, several games will give a buffer overflow regardless of system speed because the rev. 0 requires a 40ms delay between sending sysex and the later models do not.  

Alternative : MUNT or Yhkwong's DOSBox SVN's MT-32 will work without buffer overflows, or there in the latest vanilla SVNs there is an option to insert delays into sysex messages irrespective of the game.  This will work to produce sound in many, if not all games when the midi is being output to a real MT-32 rev. 0.  

Roland LAPC-I/CM-32L/CM-64/CM-500
.
Feature - Extra Sound Effects

Another World (aka Out of this World, certain versions only, only uses the sound effects, so no MT-32 support)
Beneath a Steel Sky
Cisco Heat
Curse of Enchantia
Day of the Tentacle
Elite Plus
Fire and Ice
Inferno
Humans, The
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Laser Squad
Leisure Suit Larry 5
Lure of the Temptress
Magic Pockets
Microprose Formula One Grand Prix (aka World Circuit)
Might and Magic III
Nigel Mansell's World Championship
Pinball Dreams (early version)
Pitfighter
Predator 2
Prophecy 1: The Viking Child
Pushover
Simon the Sorcerer
Speedball 2
Supaplex
Supremacy
Team Suzuki
TFX (Tactical Fighter Experiment)
Toyota Celica GT Rally
UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka X-Com: UFO Defense)
Ultima Underworld
Ultima Underworld II

These modules contain an additional 33 sound effects in the drumset compared to the MT-32 or MT-100.  The above games utilize them and may sound lacking on the MTs.

Alternative : MUNT or Yhkwong's DOSBox SVN's will emulate a CM-32L if the proper ROMs are used.  

Roland GS First Generation

Feature - Capital Tone Fallback

Blackthorne
Blood
Duke Nukem 3D
Lands of Lore
Hocus Pocus
Magic Carpet
Might and Magic : Clouds of Xeen
Might and Magic : Darkside of Xeen
Prince of Persia 2
Quarky & Quaysoo's Turbo Science
Quest for Glory III
Space Quest V

Roland GS modules, which are also functionally General MIDI compatibile, support 128 capital tones (or instruments) and 128 variation tones for each capital tone.  In theory, a GS module could support 16,256 variation tones but early modules only define a very small portion of the maximum (61 in a SC-55 not including the 128 MT-32 tones).  Thus in the early Roland GS modules, if a midi file requested a variation tone where none was present, the module would playback the capital tone.  This feature is present on all Roland MIDI modules and devices based on the Roland SC-55, including the CM-300, CM-500, JV-30 (Keyboard), SCC-1, and SC-155.

All these devices, except for the SC-155 and JV-30, were originally released without GM support, although in practice all GM support did was to disable certain GS features.  The Might and Magic games need to specifically Init GS to avoid an issue with modules bearing a General MIDI logo.  

Roland removed this feature in modules based on the Roland SC-55mkII synthesizer, including the SCB-55, SCP-55, SC-55ST, SC-33, SC-50, JV-35 & 50 (Keyboards), and did not restore it in their SC-88 or later devices.  For these devices, an attempt by a game above to access an undefined variation tone will result in no instrument playing, leading to a loss of sound and a NO INSTRUMENT error message on those devices with a LCD.  The SCC-1A, which was an SCC-1 update with the 354 sounds of an SC-55mkII, does not support the capital tone fallback feature.  

Alternative : Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7's default MIDI patches uses the Roland GS sound set and supports capital tone fallback.  

Roland GS (includes game expansions unless otherwise noted)

Feature - Variation Tones

Blood
Duke Nukem 3D
Dune II
Might and Magic : Clouds of Xeen
Might and Magic : Darkside of Xeen

Explanation : See Above.  If you have a GS module that disables this feature with a GM Reset (all GS devices except SC-55, CM-300, CM-500 and SCC-1s without a General MIDI logo on them), then you must send a GS reset or initialize your module in the GS mode to support this feature.  

Feature - Reverb or Chorus Controller

Betrayal at Krondor*
Hi-Octane$
The Incredible Machine 2*
Prince of Persia 2
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Shadow Warrior (Shareware Only)
Ultima VIII: Pagan

Explanation : Uses the reverb or chorus controllers in Roland GS devices.

Feature - NRPN

Duke Nukem 3D

Explanation : NRPN stands for Non-Registered Parameter Number, which allows access to special, non-standard settings on a GS device.  General MIDI devices only have to support Registered Parameter Numbers (RPN).  NRPN is disabled with a GM Reset.  If you have a GS module that disables this feature with a GM Reset (all GS devices except SC-55, CM-300, CM-500 and SCC-1s without a General MIDI logo on them), then you must send a GS reset or initialize your module in the GS mode to support this feature.  

Feature - Additional Percussion Notes

Betrayal at Krondor
Duke Nukem 3D
EcoQuest 2
The Even More! Incredible Machine
Freddy Pharkas : Frontier Pharmacist
Gabriel Knight : Sins of the Fathers
The Incredible Machine$
King's Quest VI
King's Quest VII
Leisure Suit Larry 6
Magic Carpet
Pepper's Adventures in Time
Police Quest : Open Season
Prince of Persia 2
Quarky & Quaysoo's Turbo Science$
Quest for Glory III
Quest for Glory IV
Rise of the Triad: Dark War
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Shadow Warrior (Shareware Only)
Space Quest V
Ultima VIII
Warcraft II

Explanation : Uses sound effects found in the GS modues like Slap, Metronome Bell or Gun Shot.  Non-GS devices may also support these sound effects.

Feature - Special Drum Kits

Age of Empires (Windows only)
Blackthorne
Blood
Descent
Descent II
Duke Nukem 3D
Hocus Pocus
Magic Carpet
Prince of Persia 2
Pepper's Adventures in Time*
Quarky & Quaysoo's Turbo Science*$
Quest for Glory III*
Shadow Warrior (Shareware Only, Retail uses CD audio)
Space Quest V*
Warcraft II

Explanation : Uses the additional drum kits found in the GS modules.  Non-GS devices may also support these extra drum kits.

* - Needs Patch to Enable Feature
$ - Needs Patch for GM to even work!

Feature - Early pre-General MIDI capital tone arrangement

DOOM
DOOM II
Descent
Descent II
Duke Nukem 3D

Explanation : The first Roland SC-55 units had an early arrangement of what would become the canonical General MIDI and GS patch maps.  These units, which can be definitively distinguished by a "GS STANDARD" label under the LCD, have Fl. Key Click at Program Change #122.  Some early SC-55s with the "GS" label under the LCD also adhere to this patch map.  Later SC-55s with the "GS" label, all SCC-1s, CM-300s, CM-500s and any module with official General MIDI support changed the patch map in two respects.  First, Fl. Key Click was replaced with Breath Noise as the capital tone and relegated to a variation tone.  Second, on Program Change #81, Sine Wave was added as a variation tone.  While the second change would be generally difficult to notice for any piece of music, people have confirmed that some music just does not sound right with Breath Noise where it does with Fl. Key Click.  The hypothesis is that the composer used an early SC-55 to compose his MIDI tracks.

Alternative : Manually change the instrument from the capital to the variation tone on any module that has a front control panel.

Update : The composer of the music for DOOM, DOOM II and Duke Nukem 3D (and probably more), Robert "Bobby" Prince, confirmed that he used a GM-compatible SC-55 when composing, so the Breath Noise assignment for those modules is correct.  A patch exists for the Descent games to change the assignment to Fl. Key Click for later modules.

ReelMagic MPEG-1 Decoder Board

Feature - Improved Full-Motion Video and Audio

Conspiracy
Dragon's Lair
The Horde
The Psychotron
Return to Zork
Space Ace

Explanation : The ReelMagic MPEG-1 Decoder boards were a series of ISA expansion card which added hardware MPEG compression decoder.  The decoder comes in full-length ISA cards which requires a connection with a VGA card's feature card and shorter cards  that uses a custom 8-pin or 9-pin VGA passthrough cable.  The boards have an audio output for decoded MPEG-1 audio.  The boards are used with special ReelMagic CD-ROM versions of popular games.  These games would have higher quality and more colorful video and standardized audio, but they only work with one of the ISA cards and require each card's specific driver to be installed.

PC Hardware Redundancies

I see little point for people who obtain hardware simply to have it, i.e. pure collectors.  I do not consider most vintage hardware to have any artistic value, as if people are going to go "ooh" and "ahh" over that super-duper rare IBM computer you have in a display case.  It may start a short conversation, except among the like-minded, but otherwise in my opinion it simply takes up space.  In the PC world, most computers looked as at home on a factory floor as in an office.  Apple had some interesting designs around the time of the Mac II and the Apple IIc, and those trapezoidal function keys of the Atari ST and 130XE are truly unique.

I have held that function should hold over form.  My best example is when more advanced hardware totally eclipses less advanced hardware.  For example, why use an Adlib when a Sound Blaster does everything and more?  In most cases, unless you cannot find a Sound Blaster, there is none.  However, there are a few situations where you could find use for one :

1.  A strictly 80's PC with Adlib support, because the Sound Blaster was not available until 1990.

2.  Hardware conflicts with early Sound Blaster cards.  Sound Blaster cards, until the Pro, only supported digitized sound input and output using DMA1.  I am sure some other 8-bit expansion cards required DMA1 to function, SCSI or NIC cards for instance.  I know that the Tandy Sound DAC in the TL/SL/RL requires DMA1 and the Sound Blaster is utterly incompatible with it.  They hate each other.

3.  A mini PC where there is a really tight squeeze for a card.  The IBM PC/XT and XT/286 only supports short cards in two slots, and some Unisys compact desktops will only support short cards.  The IBM PC Portable can only support two long cards due to its design.  Most Sound Blasters extend beyond the edge of a 16-bit connector.

Even so, except for these specialized uses, there is no need for a true Adlib card.  The Sound Blaster is 100% compatible with Adlib software.  The same cannot be said for a Game Blaster and a Sound Blaster 1.0 or an upgraded Sound Blaster 1.5 or 2.0, because the Game Blaster software and some games will fail if they detect something other than a true Game Blaster.  You also have the same issues as 1-3 above.

On the video card front, EGA is generally not a 100% compatible substitute for CGA, but many non-IBM EGA cards do support Hercules graphics with a monochrome TTL monitor.  EGA is virtually 100% compatible with VGA cards, there is only a few titles that tweak the card in some way that most VGA cards will fail.  So unless you really want to use a 200 or 350 line digital RGB monitor, most people use VGA even for EGA games.

Since I mentioned Hercules graphics, why would anyone want to use that when they could use a color graphics card instead?  Well, beyond the "see how it looked" people, Hercules graphics can be a nice addition to a system.  MDA or Hercules graphics can happily co-exist with CGA or Tandy graphics.  You can setup a dual monitor display, but you cannot use both at the same time.  Typically, the MDA/Hercules would display everything using a text mode, and the color graphics card would be used for games and graphics programs.  It actually would be better if you hated CGA snow or the very slow screen updates in 80-column text modes that programs used to avoid it.  On the other hand, the long persistence phosphors of a mono TTL monitor is very different than what people are used to these days.

Unfortunately, nothing can really take the place of a Roland MPU-401 Midi Interface.  There are at least 45 major DOS games that will refuse to work correctly with a UART mode only compatible interface as found on the Sound Blaster 16, the Gravis Ultrasounds, Windows Sound System and Pro Audio Spectrums and Adlib Golds.  Given the midi hanging note bug that most of the Sound Blaster 16 and all the AWE32 and 32s express to some degree, having another card handle the midi interface chores is a good idea.

The Gravis Ultrasound.does not natively support the FM synthesis of the Adlib OPL2 or OPL3 and other sound cards also support digitized sound effects, so why bother using it?  If you are really into the DOS demo scene, that is one reason.  I do not really care about demos in general, I play games.  I have not encountered any game that exclusively supports the Ultrasound without supporting Sound Blaster.  The main issues are performance and sound quality.

Take Epic Pinball, which has great music.  This is one of those games that is a killer app for the card.  It supports the Ultrasound natively, none of this MEGA-EM or S-BOS emulation nonsense.  It supports 16-bit digital playback through the Ultrasound on a 386.  To get close to the same level of quality on a Sound Blaster 16, you need a Pentium for smooth gameplay.  Pinball Dreams, Fantasies and Illusions, Star Control II, there are other great games for the Ultrasound.  Even DOOM and DOOM II can use it for multiple audio streams.

Speaking of the Sound Blaster, should you choose the Pro or the 16/AWE32/AWE64?  If you have a 386 system, choose the Pro, since most games that run well on that tend to be slightly older.  If you have a Pentium, choose the 16-bit card, since that will provide the better sound quality for later games.  If you have a 486, you may wish to consider using both to get good compatibility at both ends of the spectrum.

A Sound Blaster Pro 1.0 is fully backwards compatible with the Sound Blaster 1.0 or 1.5.  The Sound Blaster 2.0 actually came out after the Pro 1.0, but is in between the two products in terms of functionality.  Actually, the Pro cannot support Game Blaster chips, so in a way it is not quite compatible with a 1.0.  This is unimportant for gaming purposes, since you can always put a Game Blaster card inside a system as well (if you can find one).  There will be I/O issues, however, at the cards' default 220 address.   Some games simply couldn't understand that some people may have to use one of these cards at a setting other than the default.

Two FM devices in a system is a recipe for trouble.  It is not a big concern if a game is merely writing to the chips, since you can always find a way to mute the unwanted output.  It becomes a concern if a game is trying to read the chips, since the values read may not be the same.  Usually, the status ports get read at the Adlib port 388H.  While only the status register can be read on an OPL2 or OPL3 chip, games use it to detect and calibrate their delays to write to an OPL2 chip.

PnP capable Sound Blaster cards have the ability to turn off their Adlib ports.  This does not entirely disable the FM of the Sound Blaster, since it can still be read at 2x0 & 2x2 (Pro or better) or 2x8.  However, this will avoid conflicts with programs that read (and write) to Adlib ports.  Moreover, games supporting the Sound Blaster 16 or better typically will allow alternate I/O, IRQ and DMA settings either through their setup programs or through the BLASTER variable.

The Gravis Ultrasound ACE is the only card in the Ultrasound lineup which can do the same thing, and it does it by a jumper.  My card is a 1.0 model, which unfortunately had a reversed stereo jack.  This is fixed in the 1.1 card, or through reversing cables.

Since this is a series of random observations, let me return to the Tandy.  In the hierarchy of sound autodetection, it goes PC Speaker, Tandy/PCjr. Sound, Adlib.  Items like the Game Blaster tend to hover around the Tandy category, and Roland MT-32 always gets manually selected.  If you have a Tandy 1000, I hope you are not nostalgic for PC Speaker sound because many games will force Tandy sound.  But Tandy graphics sometimes requires use of Tandy sound, even if there is an Adlib in the system.

In a Tandy 1000 *X or later, you can put an EGA card in the machine and games using the EGA mode.  Except for those games that use 350-line EGA graphics, the games look identical.  Many earlier games, however, will insist on using Tandy graphics.  Fortunately there is a program which allows you to switch between a graphics card and the built-in Tandy graphics.  Do can also do the same for VGA so long as you can find a card that works in an 8-bit slot and fits inside the Tandy.  Later games like Commander Keen require EGA due to their smooth scrolling effects, so they will only work on a Tandy 1000 RLX or one with an upgrade card.

IBM PC Cards I Own or Have Owned

When considering my career in vintage computer collecting, I focused more on expansion cards than systems.  I had a hunger to acquire IBM PC ISA and to a lesser extent PCI / AGP cards.  I recently thought about what I have acquired in my career, what I have kept and what I have lost or sold/traded away.

Graphics Cards :

My early graphics card collection is among the best in terms of its comprehensiveness.  I have the following :

IBM Monochrome and Printer Display Adapter

It came with some system, and mine has a larger black bracket for IBM PC 5150 slots, so it will not fit well in other systems.  I have used it with the next card for dual monitor action.  However, only a purist would use it over a Hercules Card.  I also have an IBM 5151 Monochrome Display, which has moderate burn-in.  You can actually see images fade on the monitor, which is utterly unique.  Its parallel interface, like the standalone parallel card, can easily be modified into a PS/2-compatible bidirectional port.

IBM Color/Graphics Display Adapter

I have two of these cards, one of which I somewhat clumsily installed a pair of pin headers so I could choose the thin font.  I think it did something to worsen the video quality.  However, unless you only play text adventures, this card is an absolute must for gaming on an IBM PC/XT.  Other cards are not necessarily compatible or the speed becomes unacceptable.  I am also of the opinion that 256KB is an acceptable amount of RAM for any CGA game that does not support a superior graphics adapter.  There is no substitute for the IBM card, I also have an Epson CGA card that fails certain of Trixter's PC compatibility tests.  One huge advantage that this card has is that it can display color through its composite RCA jack.  While DOSBox, MESS and PCe Emulator can display 640x200 graphics as composite artifact color, they cannot do the same for 320x200 graphics, which usually display in color on a composite monitor or TV.  Games exist that take advantage of this functionality.

Hercules Graphics Card

This is a long card with no additional support.  Hercules later marketed a Plus card with support for user replacable text fonts and an InColor card with 320x200x16 color support.  Some games support the latter, but also support EGA with one exception (Karateka).  I had two of these cards, but sold one with a utilities disk from Hercules.  Unfortunately, I did not have a 5.25" drive at the time, so I could not image the disk.  I do not know if there is a software setting to turn the card into half-graphics mode, which only uses 32KB instead of the card's 64KB.  There is no jumper on the board for this.  The graphics tended to be a bit slow on IBM PC and XTs, however some games use the monochrome graphics well.  Look at Sierra's AGI games for example.

IBM Enhanced Graphics Adapter

Not only do I have the base adapter, but also the RAM expansion daughterboard for a full 256KB.  I have no desire to obtain a Professional Graphics Adapter, as no game I am aware supported it.  The RCA jacks go directly to the expansion connector, and the functions of the switches are not immediately obvious.  Unfortunately I have never owned a 350-line color TTL monitor, so the 640x350 mode is beyond my reach.  This adapter will work just fine with my 5151 and 5153 monitors if the switches are properly set.

IBM PS/2 Display Adapter

This is IBM's only 8-bit VGA graphics card and probably its only ISA card with its own VGA chipset (as opposed to another manufacturer).  It is a full length card with two rows of pin headers for some unknown purpose and a VGA feature connector.  I am concerned that its EPROM may eventually die, but I dumped it just in case.  It will even work in a Pentium II/III system with ISA slots, even if the system beeps.  It will also work fine in an IBM PC 5150.   It was designed to upgrade an IBM PS/2 Model 30 from MCGA to VGA, but it can work in many other systems.  (It would not fit in a PS/2 Model 25).

Unusually, it only uses 24KB of a 32KB EPROM, which is mapped from C0000-C5FFF.  It also has 8KB of sratchpad RAM, but this is mapped in a very weird way.  6KB of it is mapped from C6800-C7FFF and the remaining 2KB is at CA000-CA7FF.  There are memory holes in between, so if you are using a card with an External ROM, make sure it does not start at C8000 if you are using this card.

My later acquisitions include :

Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo Graphics

I remember owning one of these back in the day, so I bought another for those early DOS/Win 9x games which do not work properly with a a later generation Voodoo 2 card.  One day the card refused to display graphics, just some white lines on a black screen.  Eventually I threw it away.

Diamond Monster 3D II 12MB Voodoo 2

I remember replacing my Voodoo Graphics with a Voodoo 2 back in the day, but I do not believe I ever had two cards for an SLI configuration.  I am sure I replaced it by 2000 for a Geforce 256.

3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 AGP

This card was a replacement for the MAC card, but eventually it could no longer display graphical modes without severe corruption, so it too went into the trash.

3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 MAC PCI

I bought this card on eBay from a guy in China, and noticed that the card's faceplate was very rusty.  Once I flashed the card with a PC BIOS, it worked well, even its DVI connector.  Eventually the VGA output would not display the color green, and an unknown component in a set of three looked damaged, so I eventually threw it away.


IBM Cards :

IBM Printer Adapter

This card would have been used to add LPT1 to a system with a CGA card or LPT2 to a system with an MDA card.  The usual address is 0x378h, but it can be hacked and I did hack it to be selectable to 0x278h.

IBM Asynchronous Communications Adapter

This card could reliably handle null-modem transfers at 9600 baud, whereas the UART on my AST Six Pak Plus could only do 4800 baud null-modem transfers.  Has one jumper DIP block to select COM1 or COM2, another to select TTL or current loop communication.  My card has a jumper to work in the IBM XT's slot 8.  

IBM Game Control Adapter

This card may seem useless, as it has needs a Y-splitter for two joysticks and has no speed adjustment, but its useful to have a card, the compatibility of which, is assured.

IBM Diskette Drive Adapter

Has a card edge and can support 5.25" or 3.5" double density drives.  If you need a custom cable because you installed a 3.5" drive with only a pin connector, you should be able to squeeze on an extra connector to a cable easily.

AST Six Pak Plus

This card came with my IBM PC 5150, and it can complete a PC if everything is properly installed.  IBM even marketed it in some of their late brochures.  It can add 384KB of RAM to the PC's Motherboard's 256KB for the full 640KB.  It can also add a serial, parallel and game port.  Each of these ports can be disabled.  The parallel port requires a DB-25 female header and the game port a DA-15 female header, a N558 Quad Timer and a 74LS244 chip.  The serial port has a socketed UART.

Sound Cards :

Adlib Music Synthesizer Card

There are two versions of this card, the 1987 version and the 1990 version.  Other than an extra capacitor or two on the 1990 version, the only difference is that the 1987 version uses a 1/4" TRS output jack and the 1990 version uses a  3.5mm mini-jack.  Output is mono, and the silkscreening on the YM-3812 and Y3014 OLP2 chip and DAC is scratched out on my 1990 version card, although by that time the secret of what chip Adlib was using was out.

IBM Music Feature Card

I originally purchased this full length card for a hefty sum on ebay.  It came with a midi breakout box, which I acquired separately a year later.  Later I traded it for something, a trade I occasionally regret.  Only Sierra On-Line ever supported it in games, but they supported it for a four year period (1988-1991).  It is a combination of a Yamaha FB-01 midi music synthesizer (using 4-op FM synthesis) and unique IBM midi interface.  I put it in a PC and used the breakout box to try and replicate an FB-01, but DOSBox would not produce the correct sounds.  That was about 3 years ago, but there are versions of DOSBox available on VOGONS that will transmit the MIDI properly to the card or FB-01.  A Yamaha FB-01 works well with most games and a Roland MPU-401 interface.

Roland MPU-IPC-A + MPU-401

As I have stated previously in this blog, the MPU-IPC-A is merely a small logic card, and the MPU-401 is the external box where all the midi commands and data is processed.  It makes no music unless attached to a midi synthesizer, whether a keyboard or a module.

Roland LAPC-I

I bought this, with its MCB-1 midi breakout box, from a seller for $25 + shipping.  He did not know if it worked and this was a risk.  This was back in 2006 or so before the price of an LAPC-I skyrocketed.  I could put it in a PC and use it as an external synthesizer in DOSBox, but I needed a program that allowed sysex to pass through the midi interface to the synthesizer.  The interface by default would block sysex, which would eliminate the synthesizer's ability to receive custom sounds from a game.  I traded it for something good after I had acquired a CM-32L, which has the exact same synthesizer capabilities.  My card had ROM v1.02, not EPROM, which was v1.00.

Creative Labs Game Blaster

My most recent acquisition came as a part of a trade for a Tandy 1000 TL.  It came in its retail box with driver disks on 5.25" and 3.5" disks and the Sierra game Silpheed, also on both disk formats.   I wanted this because there are games which I have confirmed will not work with a Sound Blaster with C/MS chips, they obviously are looking for something inside that big CT-1302 chip.  The next widely-available CL card using RCA jacks would be the AWE64 Gold.  It is a stereo card, but that was probably the only thing for which it was known.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster 1.5 w/CMS Upgrade

The earliest Sound Blaster cards came with a v1.xx DSP, but mine came with a v2.00 DSP.  I added the C/MS chips, which are Phillps SAA-1099s.  That is the only part of the card in stereo.  With the v2.00 DSP (which adds auto-DMA support among other things), I have cajoled Trixter's 8088 Corruption demo to work with the card.  I read that the v2.00 DSP was necessary for MPC-1 compliance with Windows 3.x multimedia features.  I may keep it around only to check whether C/MS games will work with the card, but DOSBox now supports the Game Blaster.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster 2.0

I sold this card because I could not upgrade it with C/MS chips because it uses an extra PAL chip, a 16L8N, the programming for which nobody was able to replicate at the time.  It would have worked as well as any Pro in any game except for stereo and mixer support.  Its abilities are firmly encompassed by other cards.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro 1.0

I kept this card because there are games that support its dual OPL2 chipset.  It is also necessary if you wish to use a Sound Blaster with any Tandy system with a PSSJ sound chip.  The PSSJ only works with DMA1 and if a Sound Blaster is also set to DMA1, games will freeze when playing sounds.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro 2.0

Although I sold this, it has one big advantage over the Pro 1.0.  The OPL3 chip on this board is not not particularly sensitive to system speed, whereas the OPL2 chip is (like the game port and a rev 0 MT-32).  If you run an older game on say a Pentium system, the game may send the data to the OPL2 chip so fast that it cannot process all the data, and the music will be incorrect.  However, the Sound Blaster 16s I have also have true Yamaha OPL3 chips.  Although Windows 9x does support the Sound Blaster and Pros, their 8-bit limitations will show themselves in garbled 16-bit audio playback.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 MCD ASP & Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 SCSI-2 ASP

This card is the bare minimum which modern programs can use, since it can do stereo 16-bit playback at 44,100kHz.  I originally got the SCSI-2 CT-1770, but I did not like the fact that the SCSI interface used an extra high IRQ and eventually traded it.  I acquired a MCD CT-1760, and the proprietary CD-interfaces on that card can have their IRQ usage disabled.  Both my cards have a soldered ASP chip (TFX uses it) and use DSP 4.05 for error free midi playback through the waveblaster or the external midi out.  The waveblaster port does no favors for the output of a midi daughterboard.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE32

When I bought this card, a CT-2760 rev. 3, I soon discovered that I had no case in which to put it.  My Pentium II/III system uses a modern case with a hard drive cage going all the way down the case.  This blocked the card, which is a full-length 13" ISA card.  Also, the plastic tabs that held the SIMMs in place were broken.  Gravis used much more durable metal clips in their PnP.  I only used it once or twice by removing the motherboard from the case, which was unwieldy to say the least.  I eventually donated it to a friend of mine who was interested in the rev. 3.

Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold

This card was superior to the 16s and the AWE32s in almost every way.  I did not care about the lack of SIMM slots or waveblaster connector.  However, ISA PnP is no fun and its FM Synthesis is lacking in quality.  Unlike the early AWE cards, which used genuine integrated Yamaha OPL3 core, Creative was using its CQM substitute by this time.  Although the sound is close, it is not the same and usually sounds harsh.

Gravis Ultrasound ACE

This card I picked because it had perfect GUS playback capabilities.  My board came with driver disks and thick manual.  It also came with the maximum 1MB of RAM.  It has one soldered SOJ chip and one socket for an additional SOJ chip.  Unlike an original GUS or GUS MAX, it does not support a daughterboard for 16-bit recording, but I have no interest in recording anyway with an ISA card.  Its Adlib emulation, which uses I/O 388/389h can be disabled, which eliminates conflicts between the real thing.  It does not have a joystick/midi to further reduce configuration headaches.  Unfortunately, this is the 1.0 version, which means the output jacks have reversed stereo.


Gravis Ultrasound PnP

This card embodies the true 2nd Generation of Ultrasound sampling technology.  Unfortunately, games did not really support the extra features of this card.  Mine (v1.0) does not have any RAM soldered on the board but has both SIMM slots populated.  2MB of RAM is on my card, which ensures full Ultrasound compatibility and not much else.  I prefer the ACE over this card because this is a dreaded PnP card and its RAM usage is far from unique in Windows 9x.

Roland SCD-15

This is the official name of the marketed combination of a Roland MPU-401/AT ISA MIDI Interface Card + Roland SCB-55 daughtercard.  It has these mini-DIN connectors which were always hard to find.  Creative Labs had mini-DIN connectors for their Live! and Audigy breakout boxes which worked, but their support site did not always have them in stock.  The daughterboard was almost as big as the card itself and the card hung off it.  In fact, although the daughterboard had four standoffs, only two actually connected to the board.  This did not seem like a stable long-term solution, so I traded it away.

Yamaha DB50XG

I also got one of these, although the DB60XG is more common on eBay.  The former is a retail product, while the latter is an OEM product.  The former has the advantage of at least partial support for Yamaha QG300 synthesis custom voices.  The Fat Man really expoused the virtues of this card, and some games either supported it or were attuned to sound good with it.  I avoided the SW60XG because it had no external midi port.  When I finally acquired a MU10XG, I traded this away.

Yamaha YMF-724/744/754 Cards

I do not talk about PCI cards much here, but these were a very good solution for backwards compatibility with the Sound Blaster.  Most late ISA and PCI card emulated the Adlib OPL2/3 FM synthesis poorly or inaccurately, but these cards came from Yamaha and incorporated a true OPL2/3 core into the chip.  They also supported the PC/PCI connector found on some TX/LX/BX motherboards or D-DMA for TSR-less digital Sound Blaster compatibility.  Finally, some cards also supported S/PDIF output for crystal clear sound.  Pure FM recording with these cards is quite possible.  I have not tested it, but 4-speaker sound output is available in 744 and 754 cards.  But there are some drawbacks :

While the digital sound blaster emulation is good, it is not perfect and only goes up to an SB Pro.  Fortunately, very few games require a Sound Blaster 16 or better. Fallout for DOS had broken SB/SB Pro drivers, but I used drivers from another other Interplay game to get the SB/SB Pro sound working again.  It will not emulate Sound Blaster ADPCM 8bit-3bit and 8-bit-2bit modes, which Duke Nukem II among others use for some sound effects.  Since games use direct I/O access for the Sound Blaster and Adlib, the card may not work in Windows XP or other NT machine.  The card supports DirectSound and DirectSound 3D and emulates EAX 1.0 through Sensura, but the surround sound causes system performance issues.  Finally, most motherboards for the Pentium/II/III have at least one ISA slot, so why not use a true ISA Sound Blaster?

Aureal SQ2500

The ultimate card for A3D support, I picked it because it represented the last card to support a widely used but eclipsed technology.  No other card except the Aureal AU8830 supported A3D 2.0, other cards only went up to 1.0.  It supported 4-speaker output, but the rear speakers were not as widely used as the front speakers.  Games that support A3D 2.0 include Half-Life, Descent 3, Unreal and early versions of Quake III.  It also has a waveblaster header.

MIDI Modules :

Roland MT-32

My MT-32 was something of a late purchase as I did not fully understand the need for one or the unique character of the LCD display.  It is very convenient to be able to reset the module by pressing Master Volume and R at the same time.   Other modules require a shutdown or sending a reset command via midi.  Viewing messages on the LCD which games display is always neat.  Mine is a rev 0 ROM v1.07, which is the last ROM version before the 2.x versions, exclusive to rev. 1 boards.  The MT-32 works great in DOSBox, which can easily adjust transmission speed to be slow enough for an MT-32.  I would say 3,500 cycles is the limit if the game is transmitting custom patches.  Since I am a big fan of Sierra games, I want to know how these games sounded, and some of them exploited bugs of the rev. 0 boards.

Roland CM-32L

Being unhappy with my CM-64 and CM-500, I turned to this, simpler model.  No slot, no mode switch, only an on button.  Necessary for games that causes errors on the MT-32 regardless of speed or use the extra sound effects of the rhythm/percussion part.

Roland CM-64

After learning of the CM-500's vibrato issue, I turned to this module, a true combination of CM-32L and CM-32P.  Unfortunately another issue reared its head.  Sierra's SCI games music synthesis engine broadcasted  MT-32 data on midi channels 2-10 and Adlib data on channels 11-16.  The MT-32/MT-100/LAPC-1 and CM-32L did not care, as they did not use channels 11-16.  The CM-32P does, and wrong sounds would constantly be heard.  Later Sierra drivers eliminate the issue, but they will not work with the early versions of King's Quest IV and Leisure Suit Larry II.  Also, this may occur in other games, although this is unlikely.  Although the CM-32P was supported in some Japanese NEC-98xx and X68000 games, my primary interest is DOS, so a better solution was found in a simple CM-32L, and this got traded.

Roland CM-500

When I was first collecting vintage hardware, this module was seen as the Holy Grail of Roland LA Synthesis and expensive and rare even then (2005).  It does support the Roland SC-55 GS (and later General MIDI) synthesis engine and the Roland CM-64 (emulating the CM-32P).  Unfortunately, not only does it share the same issue as the CM-64, it was pointed out that it had annoying Vibrato.  So it got traded.

Yamaha MU10XG

This external synthesizer used the same synthesis engine as the DB50XG and SW60XG, so I knew it was a quality card.  It was also hard to find, I guess it was not very popular.  Unusual for an external module, it has a battery compartment.  It also has two 1/4" audio input jacks to which the module can apply reverb and other effects.  It requires a +12v adapter, so I used an adapter from something completely different that fit.  It has not gotten much use because DOS games generally composed for Roland LA or GM.

Roland SC-55

This was a relatively recent purchase.  It came with a remote control, which I have somewhere.  Like the MT-32, it has a display and there are games that take advantage of it (Lands of Lore).  Mine is a GM/GS module, which came later than the original, GS only modules.  It makes no difference in functionality whether the module supports GM and GS or just GS.  Also, there is the stargame.mid, which uses the equalizer to display graphics.  Its only downside is the 24 voice polyphony, but the quality of the sounds with effects more than makes up for the deficiency.

Roland SC-55ST

I thought this was better than the original SC-55 in every way, but it turns out not to be the case.  The original SC-55 had a Capital Tone Fallback feature that if a game tried to play a variation tone which the module did not have, the module would play the capital tone instead.  Yamaha also used this technology and forced Roland to remove the feature from the 2nd and later generations of Sound Canvases.  Unfortunately, there are games that use this functionality (Might and Magic IV & V, Space Quest V, Lands of Lore).  It gets little use as a consequence, as the SC-55 has much more character.

Tandy 1000SX - The Best Overall Choice for IBM PC Gaming of the 1980s

Back in the 1980s, if you wanted to play games on a computer, there were many incompatible options available.  If you were on a budget, you may have had a Commodore 64.  If you were a real computer geek, you may have appreciated the open system of the Apple II.  Of course, your parents may have made the unfortunate choice of buying a Coleco Adam, Mattel Aquarius, TI-994A, a Commodore PET or TSR-80 or Color Computer.  None of these machines were particularly good for gaming.   You may have had the awesome parents that would have bought an Atari 8-bit computer or the VIC-20, which were great for games and very little else.  But later in the 1980s there were fewer options, in no small part due to the acceptance of the IBM PC in the business world.

In the second half of the 1980s, the 6502-based systems like the C64 and Apple II were really starting to show their age and the Atari machine was virtually dead.  In response, Commodore, Atari and Apple introduced new computers, the Amiga, ST, Macintosh and IIgs respectively.  The first two never caught on in the North American market, the Macintosh suffered from a lack of a color screen and gaming hardware early in its life and the IIgs withered on the vine due to a perceived slow processor and apathy from Apple.

From 1981-1986, the IBM PC line had become a huge success in the business world, but the high prices of the offerings from IBM did not make for much enthusiasm from the home market.  Even in 1987, just before IBM discontinued the line, the most basic configuration of the IBM PC cost a list price of $1,165.00.  This configuration only came with 64KB of RAM, no floppy or hard disk drive or adapter, no monitor or graphics card, no software, no game controller adapter.  To get a working configuration you would practically have to double the price.  For that year, the PC was a slow machine.

IBM's one effort to market a machine to the home user during this decade was the PCjr from 1983-1985.  The Jr. failed for reasons that are widely known, namely that people were expecting a fully PC compatible machine and got something significantly less than compatible, had a terrible chicklet keyboard, limited and proprietary expansion options, and was not especially competitive with other home computers at the high price point of $1,269.00.  If the PCjr. could not escape the shadow of its big brother and its own shortcomings, it did have some influence.  First, it was designed to be easier to get up and running.  If you got the expanded model, there was little need to open the machine as everything attached to the back or was bolted onto the side.  It had lots of built in hardware that were extras on a PC.  It had a built-in custom graphics controller that had better capabilities than the Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter found on the PC and could connect to a digital RGB or analog composite color monitor.  Comparable but incompatible graphics were available on the Enhanced Graphics Adapter, which was hugely expensive at the time.  It had a three-voice sound chip in addition to the PC Speaker and could mix external audio from a sidecar and had an audio RCA output.  All the above did not exist on the PC.  It had a serial port and a game port with plugs for two joysticks, which were extra add-in cards on the PC.  Perhaps in part to offset speed issues with RAM shared between the CPU and the Graphics Controller, the machine had two cartridge slots for games and programs.

Tandy Corporation, which operated the Radio Shack chain of stores, had a very active home computer division which had already produced the aging TRS-80 and not-exactly a sales leader Color Computer lines. Tandy had designed an MS-DOS machine called the Tandy 2000, which was at best semi-compatible with the PC and was hardly a best-seller.  The home market was crying out for affordable PC-compatible machines, and Tandy liked the PCjr.'s features and thought they could do better at the price point.  They developed a machine that supported the PCjr.s features and offered mostly better PC-compatibility.  Unfortunately, in 1985 as the machine was about to be released, IBM discontinued the Jr.  So Tandy began to emphasize MS-DOS and PC compatiblility for the machine, the Tandy 1000.

The Tandy 1000 came with a 8088 running at 4.77MHz, just like a PC, 128KB of RAM (shared with graphics),  the 90-key Keyboard used in the Tandy 2000, two joystick ports using joysticks from the CoCo, the same graphics and sound capabilities as the PCjr., composite video and digital RGB support, a printer port.  Its keyboard and joystick ports were at the front of the unit whereas IBM's were always at the back.  It had a reset button whereas IBM users had to press Ctrl-Alt-Del.  It ditched the cassette and cartridge ports of the Jr., the wireless keyboard and avoided proprietary ports to a greater extent than the Jr.  It came with a 5.25" floppy disk as standard and had the floppy controller circuitry built into the motherboard.  MS-DOS 2.11 and GW-BASIC came with the machine (no separate purchase required) as did DeskMate (Office App).  Unlike the PCjr. with its one drive bay, the 1000 came with two.  Its weaknesses included :

Only 3 XT/8-bit ISA slots

RAM upgrades only by special Tandy upgrade cards took up 1-2 ISA slots to get to 640KB.

No Serial port

No DMA built-in, came on one of the RAM upgrades.  This gave a stock 1000 the same kind of annoyances as the Jr. (CPU servicing disk drive, leading to ignored keystrokes, keystrokes interrupting serial data).

No ability to disable graphics circuitry (no upgrades to EGA or VGA)

No socket for a Math Coprocessor.

The Tandy 1000A added a math coprocessor socket and fixed some bugs.  (Tandy offered a version called the 1000HD with a 10MB hard drive and a 640KB RAM & DMA upgrade board that came on 1 board instead of 2).  The IRQ for the hard drive was 2 for these Tandys, with IRQ 5 used for the video.  IBM used the opposite designations for the PC line.

The next models in the series, released toward the end of 1986, are the Tandy 1000 EX and 1000 SX.  They are functionally the same machine, but the EX is a compact model with only one drive bay and the need to use Plus card for expansion with room for only three and an external drive port for a second disk drive.  The RAM and DMA upgrade comes on a Plus card.

The Tandy 1000 SX, the machine in question fixes virtually all the above issues.  It has 5 XT/8-bit ISA slots, can be upgraded to 640KB of RAM on the motherboard, can support an EGA or VGA card and a hard disk controller and a math coprocessor.  It came with 384KB standard RAM, a DMA chip and used standard 256Kx1 chips to upgrade to 640KB.  It came with MS-DOS 3.2, which added support for 720KB drives.  It could boot from either drive, which is useful if you have bootable 5.25" and 3.5" disks.  It ran is 8088 at 7.16MHz or 4.77MHz for a decent speed boost.  This speed is selectable on bootup for software expecting the slower speed.

Later models in the 1000 series added support for a 286 processor (TX), DOS-in-ROM (HX), 768KB of RAM so graphics memory would not conflict with conventional memory (TX), high density floppy controller (RLX & TL/3), 8-bit IDE interface (TL/2, RL), 3.5" drives as standard (TX & HX), improved graphics with 640x200x16 mode (TL & SL), enhanced sound with Digital-to-Analog and Analog-to-Digital conversion (Tl & SL).

Here is how I have my Tandy 1000 SX configured

Monitor :
Tandy CM-11 High Resolution Color Monitor

Keyboard :
Tandy 1000 Keyboard

Drive Bays :
5.25" 360KB Drive
3.5" 720KB Drive

ISA Slots :

1 - Serial Card
2 - 286xpres Accelerator
3 - Roland MIF-IPC-A w/ Roland MPU-401 & Roland MT-32
4 - Adlib Music Synthesizer Card or Creative Game Blaster Card
5 - ADP-50L 16-bit IDE Controller

I feel no particular need to go 100% Tandy, but the floppy drives come from, if not manufactured by, Tandy.  I used to have a 20MB Tandy Hardcard, but the drive was very noisy and soon died.  So, in my only concession to modern hardware, I have a 1.0GB Compact Flash card mounted instead.   Unfortunately, the ADP card, which supports 16-bit IDE drives on an 8-bit bus, can only utilize 504MB of that due to the infamous limitations of the straight INT 13h/ATA addressing it uses.  This limitation is independent of any DOS limitations.  Compact Flash cards are virtually IDE devices, requiring only a passive pin converter to work with an IDE port.  The ADP card is a bit finicky about which CF drives it will boot, having not been designed for that.  The Board does not use IRQs or DMAs.  Two drives can be used for a total of 1008MB. The ADP board relies on memory mapped I/O, not port mapped I/O, so it should be faster than, say an XT-IDE card.  (The XT-IDE card with a 2.0 and above BIOS eliminates virtually all hard drive barriers, but even MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 95 pre-OSR2 only support physical disks up to 8GB).  I may also be able to use a Trantor T-130B 8-bit SCSI interface card but that requires a separate SCSI-IDE bridge.  On the plus side, it does support and can boot up to 1GB storage devices.  However, the Trantor will freeze if it writes to a hard disk using an 8088 CPU.  A V20 CPU works with it.

Tandy MS-DOS 3.2, like all DOS versions 3.0-3.3, allows a primary DOS partition of only 32MB.  Support for extended partitions was added and standardized in DOS 3.3.  Tandy MS-DOS 3.2 does support up to three other DOS partitions on the drive (up to 32MB each), but it requires loading a driver in config.sys on startup and is non-standard.  Ultimately I chose MS-DOS 5.00 for its features (edit mainly) and it uses less conventional memory and hard disk space than DOS 6.22.  Also, while DOS 3.3's fdisk supports an extended partition up to 736MB in size, it has to be divided into 32MB logical drives from D:-Z:.  DOS 4-6 supports a primary partition of up to 2GB, all of which is the C: drive.  So MS-DOS 5.00 with a few additions from Tandy DOS (the Mode command, a device driver or two) works just fine.  If games start complaining about lack of free RAM (only 624KB is available before DOS due to sharing with the video), then I may have to go back to 3.3.

What kind of games would be played on this machine?  Well, all the important PC originals from 1981-1990. I will include any game whose maximum resolution was 320x200x16 and supports Tandy graphics or supports the Tandy sound chip for music and/or effects that does not support an Adlib, Sound Blaster, Roland MT-32 or Game Blaster.  Some examples include :

Thexder - Although the game supports an EGA 640x200x16 mode, which is appropriate considering its Japanese origins on the PC-88, it supports Tandy Sound for its music (all of two pieces).  Sound effects are PC Speaker only.

Secret of the Silver Blades, Champions of Krynn & Death Knights of Krynn - All support Adlib music, but if you select Adlib you get PC Speaker sound effects.  Tandy gives better sound effects than the speaker. Music only tends to be in the introduction to those games.

Games that require an EGA card and do not support Tandy, like Commander Keen, Duke Nukem & Sorcerian) are not going to be on this machine.  Similarly, games with a VGA version and an EGA/Tandy version aren't going to be either, unless the EGA version came out first (Indy 3, Monkey Island).  Nor would games that support a high resolution color EGA mode (Thexder II - Fire Hawk, SimCity, Zeliard, Silpheed) and sound cards.  In short, if there is no real benefit from running the game on a Tandy instead of an IBM PC or clone, then it has no real use in this machine.

The other hardware should be fairly obvious.  The Sound Blaster will see little use for its digitized sound and none for its midi or gameport capabilities.  Its there because I wanted an Adlib and a Game Blaster in one card.  The Roland is the ideal setup, nothing more need be said about it.  Chiefly only Sierra's games would have put it to any real use (custom sounds).

The 286xpress Accelerator requires a little explanation.  This device is an ISA card that can be used in a Tandy 1000, 1000A or 1000SX.  It has an 80286 CPU running at 7.16MHz and 8KB of cache.  It has a ribbon cable running from the card's daughterboard to the 8088 CPU socket on the motherboard.  It has a spare socket for a 80286 running at 4.77MHz.  The 8088 is plugged into the daughterboard.  This board does nothing unless activated when DOS boots either by a program loaded in autoexec.bat or a device driver in config.sys.  So it will not interfere with PC booter programs expecting 8088 speeds.  You can turn the cache off for better compatibility with programs.  With cache off, the system is just a little faster or slower than the system running at 7.16MHz on the 8088.  With the cache on, it is almost as fast as a Tandy TX or IBM PC AT @ 8MHz.  While an TX provides a serial port (freeing up a precious slot) and CPU upgrades fit into the slot (freeing up another slot), even at its slow speed it should still run faster than the SX at its fast speed.  So for older games that run like they are on amphetamines unless the CPU is an 8088 running at 4.77MHz,  it just isn't as good a choice.

Things to watch out for :

The RCA composite video output hues are somewhat different compared with the IBM PC in CGA modes, causing the colors displayed, compared to the IBM colors, are off.  For example, in Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood, Pooh appears in brown on an IBM and blue on the Tandy.  You can try to use the tint control on your monitor or TV to adjust the colors, but most TV monitors only allow a shift between red to green, which is not enough to make the colors accurate.  A composite monitor designed for computer use may allow a greater range of adjustment.  I believe this is present throughout the Tandy 1000s that have composite color output.  One game, Indianapolis 500 - The Simulation, by Electronic Arts actually allows the player to select an IBM or a Tandy palette in composite color mode, allowing the proper colors to be displayed with either type of machine.  If you use a standard CGA card in the machine, you should be able to get a more accurate IBM color.

The RCA audio output is not turned on by default.  (The Tandy 1000/1000A suffers from a similar problem, the EX, HX, TX and later models do not) The default is for all sound to go through the internal speaker.  Some programs like Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken & the Alien Mindbenders fail to recognize that the SX is a little different and do not turn the audio output on.  A program called tdyspkr.com can be used in your autoexec.bat to turn the output on to the RCA out and/or off to the internal PC Speaker.

The default 80-column text mode on the Tandy annoyingly uses 225 lines.  IBM uses a 200 line text mode.  All graphics modes in these machines use 200 lines.  In order to get a proper aspect ratio with the graphics modes, the vertical size control has to be set almost to the point where the graphics are almost hidden by the monitor bezel.  When you return to the text mode, this winds up cutting off either the top, bottom or both lines of the display.  Use Tandy MS-DOS 3.2 mode.com command : mode 200, to fix this.  This does not work in the TL machines.  You can use the Tandy mode command in a later, non-Tandy DOS.

Tandy floppy disk drives require a ribbon cable without a twist!  They also require setting jumpers or switches on the drives to tell the machine which is drive A and which is drive B.  On an IBM PC, both drives are set to DS1, and the twist turns the drive at the end of the cable to DS0.  If you are using a modern 1.44MB drive in these systems, they are generally soldered to DS1, so they will be the B drive.  5.25" drives should always allow you to set DS0 or DS1.  But one of the great things about a Tandy is that they allow you to boot from the B drive by pressing the F3 key at startup.  If you have a standard "universal" floppy cable (with 3x pin connectors and 2x card connectors), you have to untwist the cable by prying off the end connectors, flipping the wires around, then snapping the connectors back on again.  Tandy did not support high density drives until the RLX and TL/3, but you can use most 1.44MB floppy drives with double density/720KB media.

The EX and SX are the last Tandy 1000s that does not use the floppy connector port to power the drives.  The HX, TX and all later Tandys, (inlcuding the SX's replacement, the SL), do run power through the drive cable.  If you are using floppy drives on a Tandy 1000 system that do not correspond to Tandy's power-in-drive cable pinouts, you must cut holes in pins 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 29, 31, 33 for any portion of the cable going to the regular drive.  I used an Xacto knife and a pair of clippers to do the trick, and only small holes are needed.  Tandy did this themselves with their cables so an individual could connect a standard 5.25" drive into an empty bay.

In the TL/SL/RL series, there is a way to disable the Tandy joysticks and use an IBM joystick adapter.  On the early Tandys, there is no way, you you have to use Tandy joysticks.  Tandy used the same joysticks for the TSR-80 Color Computer and the 1000 series.   They come in three varieties : the one-button (cheap) black non-centering Joystick, the two-button Kraft-style Deluxe Joystick, and the flight simulator pistol grip joystick (four buttons, only two usable).  You can also use a Color Mouse (one-button) or Deluxe Color Mouse (two-buttons) in a joystick port and a special driver.  The Deluxe Joystick is virtually identical to the Kraft IBM PC joystick or the IBM PCjr. stick, and can be either set to self-centering or or free floating in one or both axes.  There are some subtle differences in the control interfaces between the PC and Tandy joysticks which may manifest themselves in compatibility issues with older games.

Now, while you could use a Tandy Color Computer mouse, this is not an ideal method because of the attention the CPU must spend on the reading the joystick ports.  This can slow the PC down.  A much better alternative is to use a serial mouse, especially as serial mice are easy to find.  So are 8-bit serial cards.  Serial cards use IRQs to get the CPU's attention so excess CPU time is not wasted in polling the serial controller's I/O ports.  You will need to use an 8250B based serial card, which is typically what 8-bit cards use.  I always use ctmouse as a driver as does virtually every other vintage computing enthusiast.  Its compatibility is excellent and it only uses 3K of precious memory.  In the SX there is no serial port, Tandy fixed this in the TX by replacing the useless Light Pen port with a serial port.  (Some games, like the Gold Box games referred to above, do not support using a mouse with Tandy graphics).

Using a printer requires a special adapter cable.  For some reason, probably TSR-80 and old-style Centronics printer compatibility, Tandy used card edge printer port on all 1000s until the RL, RLX and TL/3.  The ribbon cable would have a card edge connector on one end and a Centronics port on the other end.  Fortunately, building a compatible cable should not be a problem, especially if you are connecting it to an IBM compatible printer.  One thing to note is that all card edge printer ports are unidrectional and devices that use the port for data transfer in (like a Backpack CD-ROM drive or a parallel port ZIP drive) will not work, even in nybble mode.

Games and programs requiring BASIC may be an issue if they require ROM BASIC.  ROM BASIC is virtually unique to IBM PCs and PS/2s of the 1980s, and even highly regarded compatibles like the Compaq Portable failed to run programs that required it.  Tandy DOS comes with GW-BASIC, which incorporates the BASIC that would otherwise be in ROM and supports the Tandy graphics and sound capabilities.  GW-BASIC may work for some games.

The Tandy 1000SX has two speeds, the default 7.16MHz and the 4.77MHz speed.  The latter speed is for compatibility for PC software that was only intended to be run on an IBM PC or XT.  Pressing F4 at boot will put the computer into slow mode, which is great for PC booters.  The commands mode fast and mode slow can be used in DOS to switch back and forth.  Also useful is F1 for mono mode and F2 for TV mode to kill the color text or to make the text more legible on a TV.

With my Compact Flash card, the only noise from the system is from the Power Supply fan.  The internal speaker is a large and loud 3" cone, even bigger than the 2.25" cone of the IBM PCs.  PC speaker sound can be output to the RCA audio out.  If you have a Sound Blaster Pro, which has a 2-pin PC Speaker input, you can connect the header which would otherwise connect to the internal speaker.  This allows you to output PC Speaker and Tandy 1000 sound to speakers without having to deal with the RCA port issue and being able to directly control the sound volume.

The Sound Blaster 1.0-2.0 all use DMA1 and do not play nicely with the PSSJ sound chip in the TL/SL/RL, which also uses DMA1.  Lockups and freezes are commonplace when digital sound is played.  The SX does not have a PSSJ chip, so the issue is not present.  However, I have a Central Point Software Option Board, which requires DMA1 in a Tandy system (it can share DMA2 in an IBM system).  So if that is installed, the Sound Blaster may not play nicely with it.

The Tandy keyboard is a funny thing.  It has 90 keys, and it is much more compatible with the IBM keyboard layout than it first appears.  Since an IBM 83 and 84 key keyboard used the numberpad for directional keys, use can use the Tandy's if the dedicated cursor keys are not working in the game.  The small shift keys are not much fun, there is no separate * key, the Alt key is in a funny place, and there is no scroll lock equilavent (use Alt Break).  Beware the Hold key, it will seem like the machine has frozen until it is pressed again.  Its nice that the Num and Caps Lock keys light up, which did not on an IBM PC or XT.  The \ key is also less than ideally placed.  The fat enter key is far superior to the IBM 83-key keyboard.  However, the IBM 83-key keyboard is probably the most solid and clicky keyboard I have ever typed on.  By comparison, the Tandy keyboard is mushy and prone to registering a keypress with only the slightest pressure.  It does not use rubber dome keys, it has springs in the keys, but still the action leaves much to be desired.  PC-compatible keyboards do not work on the Tandy 1000s prior to the TL/SL, but there was an adapter from Tandy that would allow a PC keyboard to work.  The Northgate Omnikey keyboards are also compatible with a special cable (which you may have to make yourself).

The SX and TX are the first Tandys that allow their graphics to be disabled if an EGA or VGA board is installed.  (The EX and HX can as well, but require upgrade cards with the PLUS adapter).  There is a special program that improves the detection of these cards in Tandy 1000s.  An MDA or Hercules compatible card should be installable in any Tandy 1000 except perhaps the 1000 and 1000A.  You can even install a CGA card in the SX, but some games may detect a Tandy 1000 machine and set their graphics to use the Tandy Graphics Adapter, requiring you to remove it.

On the SX, adding a math coprocessor is as easy as installing it into the empty socket and removing a jumper.  The machine came with 384K and was upgradable to 640K by installing eight 256x1 RAM chips into the empty sockets by the drive cage and removing another jumper.  There are four switches.  Switch 1 is useful if you have a MDA/Hercules card, switch 2 for hard drive controllers that are hard wired to IRQ2, switch 3 and 4 disable IRQ6 and IRQ7, respectively.

The last issues which must be addressed relate to the expansion slots.  Original Tandy 1000s did not come provide -5v to the expansion bus.  Sound cards like the Sound Blaster 2.0 require this voltage, as do many VGA adapters.  The SX has the voltage on the bus, so this should no longer be an issue on the later machines (except for the EX and HX, which also do not have this voltage on the PLUS expansion port).  More concerning is that fact that only 10" boards or shorter will fit inside any Tandy 1000 case.  The Roland LAPC-I, for example, will not fit, so I used a bare MPU-401 interface box with a small card.  Nor will most EMS memory boards.  Hard cards may be difficult to come by that will fit.

Tandy 1000s are supremely easy to open, all you need to do is to unscrew two screws from the front or the side and pull the cover forward.  Working inside the first generation models is not quite so easy, due to the disk drive cage and the screws used to hold the expansion slots in place.  Inside, the screws are all of the hex nut, standard screwdriver types, no Phillips head screws.  I use a hex nut on a flexible screw driver handle to get at the screws, and it works pretty well.  The expansion slot screws are a nightmare because they are so small and covered a bit by the back plastic piece.

In late 1986, the SX was released in its 2x5.25" drive version for $1,199.00.  A similarly configured PC or XT, which did not come with a printer adapter or a graphics adapter, would have cost much more and not have been as much fun.  Like the PCjr, it supports 160x200x16, 320x200x16, and 640x200x4.  (I think only Deskmate ever supported the last resolution).  Unlike the PCjr., it has register level compatibility with CGA, whereas the PCjr. has only BIOS level compatibility.  Also, while the PCjr. and the Tandy 1000 support the PC Speaker sound generation, the PCjr. only has a piezo tweeter, while the 1000s have the biggest PC Speaker cone I have ever seen in a compatible.  This means that games that tweak the speaker, like Access Software's Realsound games, will sound far superior on the Tandy than the PCjr.  The Tandy 1000 does not require device drivers to support more than 128KB, unlike the PCjr.  256KB and greater booter games will work on the former but not the latter.  Many games use these graphics and sound capabilities to give great improvements over competing systems.  There are several games that support Tandy but not EGA graphics and games that support Tandy sound but not sound cards or midi devices.

PCjr. specific software (almost all of which was released by IBM) may not run on the Tandy or support Tandy graphics and sound.  King's Quest and Touchdown Football (PCjr. versions) will not work in anything other than a Tandy 1000 with 128KB of RAM.  Fortunately there are Tandy versions available of these games.  The near mythical M.U.L.E. port IBM PC was alleged to take advantage of PCjr features but really only supports CGA and PC Speaker sound (but it runs on the jr.).  Cartridge software, even when dumped, will not work because it expects to find itself in the D000 and E000 segments.

Unfortunately, the SX requires the 286xpress accelerator board to play those games of the late 80s that run slowly on 8088 machines.  The 286xpress is not an easy find as it was very expensive back in the day.  Also, finding an ADP-50L is not easy either, as it was a niche product.  A fast hard drive is an absolute necessity with these machines.  If you cannot find a 286xpress accelerator, then I would definitely recommend a Tandy 1000 TX instead, which has an 8MHz 80286 processor.  It is the last system to be truly Tandy 1000 compatible, as the later systems use a PC compatible keyboard and lose composite output.