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The forgotten IBM PS/1 Audio Card (with IBM PCjr / Tandy 1000 sound)

I created these recordings for that Vogons thread but thought I'd put them here as well. I'd be glad to record any requests if folks have particular tracks from games they're curious about hearing on the PS/1 Audio Card. These are from an actual hardware card, although I understand DosBox emulation is now quite good...

The Colonel's Bequest
I've split up the intro into three bite-sized pieces: The signing of the will, the introduction of the characters on the stage, and then the cutscene where Laura is sitting outside on the Tulane campus:

Will signing

Stage

Tulane

Police Quest II

PQ2 Intro
 
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pl212 said:
I'd be glad to record any requests if folks have particular tracks from games they're curious about hearing on the PS/1 Audio Card.
Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time! Since the audio hardware is the same as in the PCjr/Tandy, I don't think the soundtracks will sound any different than those systems, unfortunately. The difference will be for any game that produces digitized audio, like the version of Silpheed for the PS/1 audio card that speaks (ie. https://youtu.be/zrwhlRSixjI?t=3m41s )
 
Ja, I've noticed that EcoQuest II uses the DAC for a few of its voice snippets; I should try the intro to SQIII, patched to produce the "Where am I?" sound to see if that works.

I remember a while back that somebody produced a patch (agi-mid05.zip) for AGI games to port the tandy/pcjr 4-voice soundtracks to a SB or MT-32. This never sounded terrific, because of the difference between the hardware architectures. The PS/1 card would be an ideal target for this hack...
 
Any chance to retrieve an updated copy of THEXDER 2 compatible with PS/1 card?
I have the 2.0 version and there is no driver for PS/1 or IMF card implementation. I tried to copy IMF.drv from silpheed directory but fails to "load song driver".

No sound or driver from colonel's bequest either. any advice?
cheers
 
theruler said:
No sound or driver from colonel's bequest either. any advice?
Click to expand...

From page 2 of this thread:
Cloudschatze said:
By-the-way, here is a driver package that extends support of the PS/1 audio card (both MIDI and "4-voice") to Sierra's SCI0-based adventure games, along with Thexder II. You're probably already aware that Sierra's later titles (up until SCI32) shipped with PS/1 audio card support.

ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/IBM_PC_BBS/ps1/instdrv.exe
Click to expand...
 
Trixter said:
Thanks for taking the time! Since the audio hardware is the same as in the PCjr/Tandy, I don't think the soundtracks will sound any different than those systems, unfortunately. The difference will be for any game that produces digitized audio, like the version of Silpheed for the PS/1 audio card that speaks (ie. https://youtu.be/zrwhlRSixjI?t=3m41s )
Click to expand...

The pitch will sound higher on the PS/1 due to the difference in base frequency : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-journey-of-pcjrtandy-sound-chip.html
 
Thanks, claudshatze, I totally missed that post.

An user spoke of an home-made OPL3 based sound card connected to the proprietary IBM ps/1 bus. Are there schematics around? I would really enjoy making such a piece of hardware for my PS/1!
 
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theruler said:
Thanks, claudshatze, I totally missed that post.

An user spoke of an home-made OPL3 based sound card connected to the proprietary IBM ps/1 bus. Are there schematics around? I would really enjoy making such a piece of hardware for my PS/1!
Click to expand...

I don't think he provided schematics. The IBM PS/1's game/audio connector has all the signals of an ISA slot you need except one, it does not have an OSC signal. You have to find that elsewhere on the board or you can build a clock circuit.
 
Quick question -- does the PS/1 midi sit at port 0x330 and behave as a dumb UART, or is it a non-standard address with proprietary programming? Will it work in Intelligent mode?

I can't find any real information to confirm that one way or the other.

If it is custom, I'd love to have the info to try and add it to my ever growing library of supported sound cards.
 
Trixter said:
a quick disassembly shows it writing to ports 330h, 333h, and 334h, and I didn't see any IRETs, so I'm assuming it is a dumb UART as you suspected. I've attached the quick'n'dirty disassembly.
Click to expand...

The lack of read for response on 0x331 likely means it's not dumb UART though... or at least doesn't follow the MPU-401 standard even if it is sitting at the correct ports. The accesses to 0x333 and 0x334 are pretty non-standard in fact.

MPU 401 Dumb UART mode only uses the base address and base + 1. (0x330 and 0x331 for normal config). Data port and status port respectively.

It looks like it's reading 0x335 for status before write which is... strange. I'll have to dig into this a bit deeper.

Hopefully I'll have better luck making sense of it than I did the IMF, but it's IBM so...
 
deathshadow said:
The lack of read for response on 0x331 likely means it's not dumb UART though... or at least doesn't follow the MPU-401 standard even if it is sitting at the correct ports. The accesses to 0x333 and 0x334 are pretty non-standard in fact.

MPU 401 Dumb UART mode only uses the base address and base + 1. (0x330 and 0x331 for normal config). Data port and status port respectively.

It looks like it's reading 0x335 for status before write which is... strange. I'll have to dig into this a bit deeper.
Click to expand...

This thread is long dead, but I'm poking at this and can't help but update (I wanted to get PS/1 MIDI supported in DoxBox or another emulator).

From what I found, it's a UART, but not MPU-401 compatible. There's a scan of the technical manual that lists the registers (see p. A-8, A-13, A-22 to A-24):
  • 0x330 is the data port
  • 0x331 is interrupt enable (IRQ 7)
  • 0x332 is interrupt identification
  • 0x335 is status

I've seen mentioned that the audio is very similar to Tandy, but I'm really just interested in the MIDI.
 
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