8-bit Sound Cards

[thisisamigaspeaking]

I'm surprised that it took as long as it did for sound to take off on PC, a big plus of the architecture is expandability... At least just PCJr/Tandy sound. Apparently just these simple chips were expensive at the time though. I remember an AdLib card costing a lot, only to be one-upped by Sound Blaster soon after.

It'd be a different world if IBM had decided to include a DAC like Amiga and Mac.

[jordi]

That's great, definitely a good addition to the core. Interesting that AdLib sounds a lot better even though mono.

Cms is square wave, so it's more accurate. I guess it will sound better to who had such cards nostalgic things

[breiztiger]

for those who want to test new cms feature

type demo from a:

[thorr]

My favorite title for CMS is The Colonel's Bequest. Watch the intro and go play all the piano songs.

[Malor]

I'm surprised that it took as long as it did for sound to take off on PC, a big plus of the architecture is expandability... At least just PCJr/Tandy sound. Apparently just these simple chips were expensive at the time though. I remember an AdLib card costing a lot, only to be one-upped by Sound Blaster soon after.

It'd be a different world if IBM had decided to include a DAC like Amiga and Mac.

Part of the problem was that the XT's ISA bus was extremely slow, only 8 bits wide, and the 8088 was much slower than the 68000. (which was no real speed demon itself.) Shoveling enough data for reasonable digital sound was really hard work on an XT. The Amiga had its custom chips, which made moving the data fairly easy, but even there it only supported 8-bit sound. (albeit 4 channels.)

The AT introduced a 16-bit ISA bus, which improved things a fair bit, but ISA in general was a horrible bottleneck in early PCs. It wasn't until PCI, and then later VLB, that graphics and sound started getting decent.

I found it kind of funny that about the time PCIe came out, everyone was switching to 3D graphics for everything. We *finally* had enough bandwidth to do 2D games well, but instead we switched to 3D, which used hardly any bus bandwidth. Loading textures was bandwidth-intensive, but sending geometry to use existing textures on the card hardly took any traffic at all, far less than animating a 2D screen.

For a long time, you could run 3D games just fine on a PCI card. Level loads took a few extra seconds, but the actual play was identical between PCI and PCIe. Marketers shouted from the rooftops about PCIe x16 and how you wanted the hottest newest most wonderful thing, but it hardly mattered for several years.

Anyway: 16-bit ISA is fast enough to do reasonable digital sound, but you really wanted at least an 80286, and a 386 was much better.... it was stuck for the same amount of time sending bytes over ISA, but then could get a lot more done in its free time.

I doubt the XT core is modeling ISA very closely, so it might actually be able to transfer data fast enough to do 8-bit digital sound while running a game decently well, but that's probably inaccurate to real life.

I haven't played with an actual XT in a long, long time, so I could be misremembering their capabilities.

[jordi]

I'm surprised that it took as long as it did for sound to take off on PC, a big plus of the architecture is expandability... At least just PCJr/Tandy sound. Apparently just these simple chips were expensive at the time though. I remember an AdLib card costing a lot, only to be one-upped by Sound Blaster soon after.

It'd be a different world if IBM had decided to include a DAC like Amiga and Mac.

Part of the problem was that the XT's ISA bus was extremely slow, only 8 bits wide, and the 8088 was much slower than the 68000. (which was no real speed demon itself.) Shoveling enough data for reasonable digital sound was really hard work on an XT. The Amiga had its custom chips, which made moving the data fairly easy, but even there it only supported 8-bit sound. (albeit 4 channels.)

The AT introduced a 16-bit ISA bus, which improved things a fair bit, but ISA in general was a horrible bottleneck in early PCs. It wasn't until PCI, and then later VLB, that graphics and sound started getting decent.

I found it kind of funny that about the time PCIe came out, everyone was switching to 3D graphics for everything. We *finally* had enough bandwidth to do 2D games well, but instead we switched to 3D, which used hardly any bus bandwidth. Loading textures was bandwidth-intensive, but sending geometry to use existing textures on the card hardly took any traffic at all, far less than animating a 2D screen.

For a long time, you could run 3D games just fine on a PCI card. Level loads took a few extra seconds, but the actual play was identical between PCI and PCIe. Marketers shouted from the rooftops about PCIe x16 and how you wanted the hottest newest most wonderful thing, but it hardly mattered for several years.

Anyway: 16-bit ISA is fast enough to do reasonable digital sound, but you really wanted at least an 80286, and a 386 was much better.... it was stuck for the same amount of time sending bytes over ISA, but then could get a lot more done in its free time.

I doubt the XT core is modeling ISA very closely, so it might actually be able to transfer data fast enough to do 8-bit digital sound while running a game decently well, but that's probably inaccurate to real life.

I haven't played with an actual XT in a long, long time, so I could be misremembering their capabilities.

Isn't a z80 in a spectrum so slow? And it had this AY chip that could do very nice sound in a PC.

I guess the PC was targeted to business and thus the bad graphics or sound

[thorr]

Holy huge quote with 2-line response Batman. All I know is I wanted a sound card when my dad had his XT and my friend had a 286-12 with a Sound Blaster. I also wanted at least EGA. I tend to agree that limiting the XT to Adlib and CMS (and MPU-401 hopefully someday even though it is on hold for now, maybe bbond007 can do this) is reasonable, but digital sound should still work on an XT and Sierra games would work with it. I don't think it is too slow. EGA isn't needed since Tandy graphics are supported.

[thisisamigaspeaking]

Holy huge quote with 2-line response Batman. All I know is I wanted a sound card when my dad had his XT and my friend had a 286-12 with a Sound Blaster. I also wanted at least EGA. I tend to agree that limiting the XT to Adlib and CMS (and MPU-401 hopefully someday even though it is on hold for now, maybe bbond007 can do this) is reasonable, but digital sound should still work on an XT and Sierra games would work with it. I don't think it is too slow. EGA isn't needed since Tandy graphics are supported.

You probably already know, but there's a distinction between a DAC (Mac, Amiga, Sound Blaster, later Unix workstations) and some kind of synthesizer chip like a TI-SN76496 (PC Jr.) or YM3812 (Ad Lib).

To do much useful with a DAC required mixing it and for that the Amiga had a custom 4-channel stereo mixing coprocessor with DMA. Later software increased this to 8 channels on a 68k using the CPU for half the work. Macs had adequate but simple sound in games. Just a simple DAC is great for sound effects and was strikingly effective in some 80s Mac games.

Arcade games moved from synthesizers to DAC sound during the 80s. I'd guess that a 68000 is about the least processor you'd want to try it on. It takes very little bandwidth or processing to drive a synthesizer (the amount of data that a midi cable can move, or much less), but more for a DAC, especially to mix it or use it as a sample-synthesizer (Amiga .MOD format music).

Now to the more direct response to what you said:

I think the IBM PC could've drive a 4-bit or 8-bit DAC fairly well, but IBM didn't foresee at the time any business application for DAC audio, even though in fact it is quite useful in certain situations as seen just a few years later in the Macintosh.

I remember making a custom audio digitizer for an XT from schematics and I could then output the sound in 1-bit audio on the PC speaker. Very rudimentary but cool at the time. The cost of the chips involved was low by that time.

I think a Sound Blaster would've worked ok in 10 MHz XT for digital audio but I never had one that I remember, just Ad Lib. For the games that just used it to occasionally output sampled sound I don't see why it wouldn't have worked.

[thorr]

You probably already know...

Pretend I quoted the whole thing, just keeping it short, lol. Yes, I think we are similar people. I am well aware of what you are talking about. I also made my own DAC. It used the parallel port and was made with resistors. It took the 8-bit bytes being fed to the parallel port and converted them to a wave form. I am pretty sure it was the same thing the Disney Sound Source did. There was a .MOD player that would allow me to use my sound card for the left channel, and my parallel port DAC for the right channel, and I was in total geekville when I had stereo sound with one of the sound cards that I made myself.

The mixing you are referring to was later when I had my 386. I was able to play Amiga .MOD files using my PC and that was so cool. However originally when the Sound Blaster came out, it was much simpler, similar to the Mac. It was a single audio mono 8-bit sample that was between 8KHz and 22KHz that allowed speech and shorter digital sound clips. This was amazing at the time because the sound was so clear compared to the scratchy digital audio that came before it. I even remember having a program that let me play sampled audio out the PC speaker and it sounded ok, but not near as good as the Sound Blaster.

On my Apple IIc, I recently made my own MIDI sound card for that and started writing software for it. It is pretty slick. Super slick actually that my Apple IIc is able to do what I got it to do. I need to make a video of it at some point.

[Malor]

Isn't a z80 in a spectrum so slow? And it had this AY chip that could do very nice sound in a PC.

I guess the PC was targeted to business and thus the bad graphics or sound

I believe a Z80 is somewhat slower than an 8088, but I'm not sure how much. I think it's a clone of the earlier 8080 chip, so they're very similar, but the 8086 went to 16 bits. The 8088 was the 8086 with an 8-bit bus, so somewhere in between in terms of speed.

From Wikipedia:

Sound output is through a beeper on the machine itself, capable of producing one channel with 10 octaves.

That sounds like it's a tone generator, rather than a simple one-bit speaker like the PC, or a DAC like the Amiga or Mac. Wikipedia doesn't have any real detail, though, so I don't have enough info to extrapolate anything useful.

[thisisamigaspeaking]

That sounds like it's a tone generator, rather than a simple one-bit speaker like the PC

PC used an Intel 8253 which was used as a tone generator. I think 1-bit digital audio was achieved on these by driving it pretty aggressively.

[thisisamigaspeaking]

I also made my own DAC. It used the parallel port and was made with resistors. It took the 8-bit bytes being fed to the parallel port and converted them to a wave form. I am pretty sure it was the same thing the Disney Sound Source did.

As I remember the ADC I used had 4 ICs on a bread board (and a few other things I guess) and used the parallel port as well. I'm not sure what those 4 ICs were. It may not have been the most efficient design, it was just something I found on a BBS when I was in high school.

[Mills]

Hercules is very interesting.

320x200x16 EGA doesn't seem a lot different from 320x200x16 Tandy in the cross section of games that support it or their target CPU speed but I am not sure about that. 640x350x16 is a whole other thing and there were very few games that ran in that. Shareware mostly.

My point is not that EGA should be included, but that OP requested Sound Blaster 2.0 from 1991. I'm wondering how many games from 1991 onward would work with CGA (or Tandy I guess) and Sound Blaster and work with this core's clock speed. I don't know the answer, just wondering.

XTs were weird, there was a lot of people using xts up until 1993-94 (including me), and some games/programs were compatible with everything, from pc speaker to sound blaster (with opl3 and stereo wav), or from hercules to VGA (even SVGA).

[Malor]

That sounds like it's a tone generator, rather than a simple one-bit speaker like the PC

PC used an Intel 8253 which was used as a tone generator. I think 1-bit digital audio was achieved on these by driving it pretty aggressively.

Huh, I didn't know that. I always thought PC speakers were like Apple II speakers... that clicking them required CPU involvement.

TIL.

[thorr]

As I remember the ADC I used had 4 ICs on a bread board (and a few other things I guess) and used the parallel port as well. I'm not sure what those 4 ICs were. It may not have been the most efficient design, it was just something I found on a BBS when I was in high school.

I think this is the design I used (see the picture on the right side - one widely used variant): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing

[jordi]

Hercules is very interesting.

320x200x16 EGA doesn't seem a lot different from 320x200x16 Tandy in the cross section of games that support it or their target CPU speed but I am not sure about that. 640x350x16 is a whole other thing and there were very few games that ran in that. Shareware mostly.

My point is not that EGA should be included, but that OP requested Sound Blaster 2.0 from 1991. I'm wondering how many games from 1991 onward would work with CGA (or Tandy I guess) and Sound Blaster and work with this core's clock speed. I don't know the answer, just wondering.

XTs were weird, there was a lot of people using xts up until 1993-94 (including me), and some games/programs were compatible with everything, from pc speaker to sound blaster (with opl3 and stereo wav), or from hercules to VGA (even SVGA).

Well, they where crazy expensive. My macintosh 128k was active way until 1996 that I got a Pentium. That's a quantum jump

[Malor]

For many years, Jerry Pournelle always said that the PC you wanted at any given time was about $3000. That changed by the mid-2000s or so, but all through the 80s and 90s, it mostly held true. Upgrades were expensive as heck, and anything you bought would be on top for maybe six months before something better came along. It was annoying, but also fun, because everything was improving in such huge leaps.

It's not as much fun anymore. My last PC lasted about six years, and I wouldn't be shocked if the replacement lasted even longer.