sparky4
Experienced Member
nice project ^^
Well, technically, the Adlib is 80s tech It came on the market in 1987.
I was wondering what the best way would be to approach designing sounds. Seeing your tool was very helpful and inspirational!
I'm trying to imagine what would have happened if this had been around in say 1982 (or even 85 after SMB1 came around) ... it would have changed EVERYTHING about gaming on computers for years to come.
It's actually a variation on how midi works, with a unique header.Actually went through PakuPaku's SOUND.PAS for the first time and tried to see how it stored note sequences... If I understood correctly it stores every note/event as an individual object with links to the first and next note in the pattern.
Since adlib and other popular soundcards came much after IBM 5150, it ruins the "roleplaying the 80's" element of the development for me.
Well, technically, the Adlib is 80s tech It came on the market in 1987.
Your blog post was a fun read, I've already read many of your previous posts and am slowly starting to understand the technicalities. If you're about to make those multiplexed frequencies, you probably need something very close to MONOTONE so I'm surprised to hear you would still opt to make your own editor.
Yeah, but the 5150 was discontinued in 1987. I'm guessing the emphasis is on the 5150, not on the full decade.
That being said, my own 5150, when I get it and my shit back together, is totally going to see a Covox attached.
I don't think you'll see a lot of software other than Covox's own utilities that will work on a 5150; it takes a lot of horsepower to drive an LPT DAC.
The Disney Sound Source was engineered for a 4.77MHz system; it has a 16-byte FIFO and maxes out at 7KHz, reducing the interrupt load for a slow CPU dramatically. Driving a Disney Sound Source (properly, by software that is programmed specifically for it) works on slower systems. Unfortunately, all of the games that drive it properly that I know of (Arachnophobia, Rocketeer, etc.) require 8MHz to be fun. The educational titles probably work fine though.
I know nothing about it or its audio chip.
Do you know if it's possible to build or buy the DSS on a budget? (Zero hits on ebay for the DSS. Are designs freely available?)
Does this mean that the passed-through parallel port was still usable e.g. for a printer? Presumably you couldn't print and play audio at the same time though, right?
Hmm. Wiki page list is incomplete. The PS1 (or at least certain models) had the same functionality, just on a different port than the Junior or Tandy 1000.See the wiki page for a list.
; function tandyDetect:boolean;
pProcNoArgs tandyDetect
push ds
mov ax, 0xF000
mov ds, ax
xor ax, ax
cmp [0xFFFE], BYTE 0xFD
je .isTandy
cmp [0xFFFE], BYTE 0xFF
jne .notTandy
cmp [0xC000], BYTE 0x21
jne .notTandy
.isTandy:
inc ax
.notTandy:
pop ds
retf
; function PS1Detect:boolean;
pProcNoArgs PS1Detect
mov ah, 0xC0
stc
int 0x15
jc .failed
mov ax, [es:bx + 2]
cmp ax, 0x0BFC ; PS/1 LW-Type 44 or Model 2011
je .success
cmp al, 0xF8
jne .failed
cmp ah, 0x30 ; PS/1 Model 2121
je .success
cmp ah, 0x0E ; PS/1 486SX
je .success
cmp ah, 0x0F ; PS/1 486DX
je .success
.failed:
xor ax, ax
.success:
retf
; procedure tandySetLevel(left, right, voice:word);
; left level is ignored, right sets volume for entire channel
pProcArgs tandySetLevel
mov bx, [bp + 6]
mov al, bl
mov cl, 3
and al, cl
ror al, cl
or al, 0x90
mov cl, 0x0F
mov ch, [bp + 8]
and ch, cl
sub cl, ch
or al, cl
mov [bx + tandyLevels], al
pRet 6
Thank you, that makes perfect sense. Been wondering that one for a few years, never got a straight answer.IBM had to change the music port to keep the PS/1 machines AT compatible.
Was completely unaware of that -- good to know. I'll have to investigate to see if I can figure a auto-detect method. You'd think since it's a AT thing just detecting 286 or not would be sufficient, but dimes to dinars those XT class 286 machines lack that second DMA controller... Well, if there's a way to detect the second DMA controller, that would be suffiicent. If it's there, use the other port.Tandy eventually had to do this as well, although they chose a different port, 1E0.
I have ranted at great lengths about what a steaming pile of **** that is. It's like it was written in bad broken engrish like trying to get tech support from AT&T, translated to Japanese, and then into English. None of the code samples make sense, seem to be functional, and nothing I've tried for code has worked for any of the people who have one trying to test for me.Do you find the IBM Music Feature's Technical Reference to be such poor documentation?
I'll toss together a standalone demo and post it up in it's own thread for testing. It's still untested on real hardware, but since it's just a 1:1 port from my C64 version (that was designed to use different clocks since, well, PAL VS. NTSC -- so PC's different feeder was easy enough to adjust to) and seems to work with DOSBox's emulation on YKHWong's builds. I'd still like to get confirmation from something resembling real hardware BEFORE I release RC1 of Paku 2.0 (which will be the first public release)I'd love to try your SSI-2001 support sometime on my replica.
I'd have thought sierra's AGI/SCI games would have come close. Hell I was using a disassembly of Sierra's IMF driver as a guide as the manuals and documentation were so malfing useless.If you can encompass the Covox Sound Master and IBM Music Feature, your game will support the greatest number of music devices ever. No one supported them all.
You'd think since it's a AT thing just detecting 286 or not would be sufficient, but dimes to dinars those XT class 286 machines lack that second DMA controller... Well, if there's a way to detect the second DMA controller, that would be suffiicent.
True for real XT/286's, but the tandy's were a bit different in that they still had 8 bit slots, so there was probably no reason to put in a controller for data lines that didn't exist.I asked Trixter that question recently, about the XT/286. Apparently the XT/286 is fully AT-compatible, so the 'XT' in the name is a bit of a misnomer.
The game folder is 162 KB. I hope fitting into a 180 KB floppy is still acceptable for a 5150 release?
The game folder is 162 KB. I hope fitting into a 180 KB floppy is still acceptable for a 5150 release?