Tandy 2500 RSX

[Dan Tsatsanis]

Is the Tandy Sensation the only 486 with the 3 Voice DAC hardware?

 

[Cloudschatze]

Is the Tandy Sensation the only 486 with the 3 Voice DAC hardware?

As pertains to stock systems, and based on the Tandy part lists and anecdotal comments from an ex-employee (Frank Durda IV), yes. You can always drop a 286/386-to-486 accelerator into one of the earlier systems, however.

It's worth mentioning that, unlike the 1000/2500-series systems with the same chip, the PSSJ output in the Sensation! is pretty heavily filtered, to the point of being almost unusable. I can record some examples, if anyone is curious.

 

[Dan Tsatsanis]

As pertains to stock systems, and based on the Tandy part lists and anecdotal comments from an ex-employee (Frank Durda IV), yes. You can always drop a 286/386-to-486 accelerator into one of the earlier systems, however.

It's worth mentioning that, unlike the 1000/2500-series systems with the same chip, the PSSJ output in the Sensation! is pretty heavily filtered, to the point of being almost unusable. I can record some examples, if anyone is curious.

I'd like to hear what you're talking about. Are you saying that the DAC sound compatibility (for old DOS games) of the Sensation is not as good as, say, the 1000TL2?

 

[Cloudschatze]

I'd like to hear what you're talking about. Are you saying that the DAC sound compatibility (for old DOS games) of the Sensation is not as good as, say, the 1000TL2?

More that the PSSJ sound output quality isn't as good with the Sensation!, being muffled by the additional filter(s). I'll record some comparisons tonight.

Compatibility is an entirely different problem...

In the PSSJ-bearing Tandy systems with 16-bit ISA slots (1000 RSX, the 2500-series, and that first-model Sensation! again), the 3-voice and DAC ports were moved from the starting address of C0 to 1E0, so as to not conflict with the second DMA controller. This breaks Tandy sound compatibility with most software that I've encountered. Some later software takes these changes into account, so while Sierra's SCI0 and SCI1 games (for example) will work fine on these systems, with the appropriate driver, the older AGI games will not.