I distinctly remember that SB 2.0 noise when playing Wolf 3d, I had the exact same issue on my 486 SX25 system when I was young. It wasn't until I got a new/better sound card that I realized that it wasn't part of the game/games. Funny how watching your video instantly made me remember, the sound bleeding through was exactly the same as I remember. I doubt I would have cared much even if I knew though coming from just PC speaker sound before getting it. There was a neat "driver" that pushed digital audio through the PC speaker that I used up till getting it. It sounded terrible but it was actual sound rather than beeps and boops.
Yes! PAS16! I loved that card, and had one in 1994 until 1997 in my 486sx that I built myself. I preferred it over SB16. The included software was great, too. Mod tracking was a dream!
yeah, I always forget to add it to the himem.sys arguments. In this case I left it out, because during the memory check the data bus noise was especially loud. This way I could hear very early, if a sound card was noisy or not :)
I tried a dozen or so sound cards in my retro PC, I found the YMF719 to have the least noise. ESS cards had good sound but had a lot of static hiss, even after recapping and disabling the onboard amp, and the various ISA SoundBlasters I tried all had the databus noise you're demonstrating in Wolf3D. The Aureal Vortex I tried had laughably bad OPL emulation. I have a PCI SB Audigy 2 that sounds really good but using it with DOS requires a janky hacked driver that breaks protected mode games and has bugs with some real mode games. It's a solid 98/XP card though.
Ah, this is the video where you ask about what we (as viewers) would like to see in a sound card video. You already covered the PAS in depth. I wonder about sound cards that were competitors in the early market, before AdLib/SB became the de facto standard, like including the Covox Speech Thing. And then covering cards like the PAS that tried to compete with features over the Sound Blaster, but failed due to lack of widespread game support, and were left unused apart from bundled demos, just stuck in SB compatibility mode forever. The name "Turtle Beach" comes to mind, but a quick search shows them as making much more modern hardware.
This was my exact setup in 1993: a Tandy 1000 RSX with a PAS 16. I had a SoundBlaster 1.0 to start and do remember the data noise but never any freezing/glitching with that card. The PAS was necessary for a CD-ROM upgrade. After watching your last round of RSX videos, I actually found one and bought it (for probably too much money). Restoring and upgrading it was much easier with your videos for reference. Thank you for that. I hope your channel continues to grow, as your content is just as good as any of the big hitters in the retro community.
Ah yes, the ProAudio Spectrum, still have one in my collection. Absolutely love how clean and noise free these cards are, especially while using headphones. I have the Logitech SoundMan 16, which is a clone, but the OPL2 sound seems off, even though it has an original Yamaha YMF262-M onboard.
I'm not sure, may be there were different versions of the Logitech SoundMan 16, but the one, that I know is a Jazz16 based and not a Pro Audio Spectrum compatible anymore. However, I have one Jazz16 in my collection as well and it has the same outstanding audio quality as the PAS16, that's true, but I didn't observe any OPL2 or OPL3 sound issues with my cards. They tend to sound more "meaty" due to the better pre amp, but they don't sound off. May be your OPL3 chip has a defect? Technically, I don't know what has to be done to get YMF262 sound different. It is a very simple IC, which is almost directly bound to the ISA bus. You can only control the sound quality by tweaking the amps on the output, but that shouldn't change the melody of the synth itself.
Good job ! I hope to see a new DOS sound card with concerns about audio quality. I've seen pretty promising stuff, but I don't know what they're really worth in terms of compatibility.
do you have any of the older Turtle Beach sound cards? i had a Malibu Surround which was amazing in Terminal Velocity and Descent. shame that Creative, Adlib, Gravis, Crystal, and the various on-board chips are usually more well known than Turtle Beach from what i've seen...
A followup video on software setup would be a nice idea! I have thought about experimenting with programs that can load device drivers normally loaded with CONFIG.SYS from the command-line. If so, you could drop the awful looking MS-DOS boot menu and use a nice program like HDM to launch each program by first reconfiguring the system as needed, running the game, and then unloading the driver to revert the environment back to 'normal'. This could be especially useful for programs that would depend on that TNDY program, or what about overcoming the lack of Turbo button by using THROTTLE to add compatibility with older speed-sensitive games? All of this could potentially be automated away without reboots to bring up new system configurations! What do you think?
Hi never heard of HDM, just took a look at it. Interesting tool. The problem with the most SYS drivers, that they are not unloadable, so you would have to reboot the machine anyway. Except HDM makes some really crazy magic and saves the complete memory state including interrupt vectors. As I said, I never heard of HDM yet, but I guess once a driver is loaded, you will have to reboot your machine anyway. If your drivers are in COM form and are actually unloadable, that could probably work. In regards of THROTTLE, if I remember right, that utility is for more modern chipsets and will not work on a 386. I might be wrong about that as well.
Great video! I have a 2500 RSX on the way - same board in a different case. I was thinking I would put one of the Yamaha pnp cards in it. But I do have a PAS and the Tandy seems like a worthy home. The 2500 RSX has the reset populated. I was planning to share out that cap value when it came. For some reason, the 2500 RSX does not have the rear audio jacks populated.
My 2500 RSX came in and the capacitor fitted next to the reset header is a small MLCC. It doesn't look like it could be more that about 0.1uF. I did not have any luck measuring it in circuit. I suppose I would remove it if someone really wanted to know the actual value.
soundcards i'd like to see a video about? CPS sound Blaster 2.5. My very first soundcard. Bit of an odd one too, being a rebranded product, just for the German market. There is a story to tell I suppose.
Eh, the back isn't always easy to get at, depending on your setup. I'd just stick with the power switch. I forgot the board even had that header, though the thing I REALLY want is a hard drive light. Best I can figure is a rectangular LED mounted through the front grill. Anything else would require drilling a hole.
Good video - important to remember the Tandy's with digital sound have a DAC at DMA1 that will conflict with things. However, your solution probably requires a full power cycle to de-initialize the sound card (I don't think the reset button is sufficient because bus power is maintained); instead, why not just use a card that supports DMA 3? Since it's a 386 it should support that. I think the Sound Blaster Pro you had supported being jumpered to that. Tandy games would work at the same time as Sound Blaster without any conflict. This would also allow you to run the 1 or 2 games that support Adlib + Tandy digital, or Sound Blaster + Tandy PSG.
Thanks. Reset is sufficient and is just as good as a power cycle. In regards of DMA3, as I told in the video, many games back then didn't support anything else, but DMA1. It was basically hard coded into the games, so DMA3 wouldn't solve the problem. Also SBPro, which I have is basically the same low quality sound card as the SB 2.0. The only difference is, that it had two DSPs and OPL2s for stereo capabilities and no CMS. But it was the same noisy crap, so it would be not a good choice for the Tandy.
@@necro_ware Ah, makes sense; I do remember some games let you set IRQ/Address but not DMA. Many many years ago I had a "Sound Machine" (Sound Blaster clone) in a Tandy 1000RX and it was also very noisy like yours. Nowadays I have a Tandy 1000A that I just use Tandy sound with, and a separate 486 with a Reveal SC500 wavetable card; I find a lot of stuff that runs well on the older XT class machines supports Tandy sound more often than Adlib / SB, so that works out well.
I had the same thought. Conflict? make that DMA change! but the games, this is why we do it after all. Thanks for clarifying, as I had the same thought... a lot of games have the option of auto detection of which addresses sound is located on.
As always, really good content. Freue mich auf mehr!. BTW: Meine Grafikkarten werden auch so gelagert. Allerdings habe ich in jeder Tüte noch so einen kleinen Beutel antimold.
I think the noise on the Sound Blaster might be from the power supply not having a -5 volt line. You might be able to add a negative 5 volt regulator to the 12 volt line to supply a negative 5 volts to the sound blaster. I'm not sure if the power supply on your machine is missing the -5 volts.
The voltage regulator for -5V is directly on the mainboard. I addressed it in last year's #SepTandy videos. So, it's not the issue. Furthermore SB 2.0 doesn't work without -5V at all, same as the PAS16, wich I also showed. This topic was also covered by my cooperation with PhilsComputerLab on the Voltage Blaster.
DMA1 is usually available, provided you're not using multiple audio interfaces, and is the default on most SB-compatible cards. DMA channel 5 is often used for 16-bit audio cards, either alone or along with DMA1. IRQ5 and 7 are often used for audio. IRQ5 is also usually available -- again, assuming a stock PC with no other audio cards, network or SCSI cards. IRQ7 is used for LPT1 (the parallel port), but if you're not using your old dot-matrix printer, and can disable the LPT port, then you can use it for sound. Some people think IQR7 is the "correct" IRQ to use for a SB or compatible. Apparently there are some early SB 1.0-era games that assume you're using IRQ7 and won't let you change it. I haven't run into this myself. I don't have quite this bad of a problem with noise on my SBs. I would imagine it depends a little on the system you put it in -- like how clean the power rails and ground are. The Sound Blaster isn't a _quiet_ card, but eh.. if I wanted perfection, I wouldn't be using a retro computer. So, IMO (which nobody asked for), here's my recommendation: *8088:* Do you really need sound in an XT-class PC? Use the PC speaker (or PCjr / Tandy 3-voice) like everyone else did back then! 😄 *286:* AdLib or Game Blaster *386SX:* Sound Blaster, Media Vision Thunderboard (if you can find one), Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum (not PAS16 -- also, _good luck_ finding one) *386DX:* Any of the above SB-class, or SB Pro. (SB Pro 1.0 is interesting for the dual OPL2, but not much uses it. SB Pro 2.0 has OPL3, but not much that runs on a 386 will use it either. So vanilla OPL2 is fine.) *486:* SB Pro 2.0, Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum 16 *486DX2 or DX4:* SB 16, PAS 16, one of the Aztech or ESS cards capable of SB Pro emulation, maybe an SB AWE 32, or if you've won a lottery recently, a Gravis UltraSound *Pentium:* AWE32, or if you're going to run DOS, any of the Aztech / ESS / Yamaha SB Pro clones with native 16-bit audio when supported by the game *Pentium II:* AWE32 or AWE64 (especially if you're going to run DOS), or SB Live! (if Windows-only), or Aureal Vortex or similar *Pentium III:* SB Live!, SB Audigy, or Aureal *Pentium 4:* SB Audigy or Audigy 2 There are lots of other interesting cards, like the Windows Sound System (or compatible), that are probably not worth the trouble unless you spend a LOT of time in Windows 3.1. Some software natively supports it, but not a lot. Same goes for stuff like Ensoniq cards, which are insanely expensive and not well supported except in compatibility mode. You're really better off with a Sound Blaster, or 100% compatible card, if you're going to use DOS at all. Once you get into Windows 9x, it doesn't matter much anymore, except if you want to use EAX (SB Live / Audigy) or Aureal 3D.
Inspired by this video, I put my PAS 16 in my 2500 RSX (same mainboard in a different case). Unfortunately I did not have the same success. The card seems to be working fine but the bleed through noise is horrendous. Event the hard drive motor spinning up comes through loud and clear. Still didn't stop me from playing Spear of Destiny for an hour. Although it does seem very peaceful now that it is turned off.
That is very strange, did you use headphones, or speakers? How do other cards behave in your machine? I tested now also MediaVision Jazz16 in this machine and together with the PAS16 that were the only two cards, which were usable in this mainboard.
@@necro_ware It was with headphones. I have not tried other cards yet. I messed around some with the oscilloscope and there is about 2v peak to peak noise just between some of the ISA ground lines. I tried a few things which brought the measurable noise on the supply lines down but nothing improved the audio noise to be at acceptable levels. I may poke around some more later.
@@jayesonlee-steere5493 I have to admit, that this Tandy mainboard is the noisiest one I ever had, so you have to see it in relation. Also Tandy's power supplies were not very good and produce a lot of noise, especially if you still have the old capacitors in there. They are probably dry meanwhile and produce horrible ripple. It is so bad, that you can actually damage the hardware. I replaced the power supply in my Tandy and don't have the original parts anymore, but with headphones I still can hear some slight noise on the data bus even with PAS16. However on the speakers and during the recording it is not noticeable at all. Headphones seem to be more sensitive to it. If you didn't try another sound cards yet, just put any Sound Blaster from around that time (1.5, 2.0 or Pro) and you will see, what a "horrible" data bus noise really means :D EDIT: As far as I remember, the 2500 RSX has no audio port soldered on the mainboard, right? So, you can't even use the Tandy Sound System on it. On the 1000 RSX there is one and if you try to plug your headphones into it, your ears will start to bleed. Unfortunately Tandy didn't bother to shield anything on this mainboard. It is absolutely horrible. With external speakers it is kind of ok though.
@@necro_ware I tried out a Sound Blaster 2.0 and you are right, it is worse. The noise bleed-through is at least as loud as the game sounds. Very unpleasant! :-) I decided to try the card that came with the computer: unbranded 8 bit ISA with YM3812 and Gallant DSP. It is much better than the others. I can only hear a small low frequency grunt every now and then during hard drive access. I am guessing this why it was chosen for the machine. Unfortunately it has a pretty bad signal to noise ratio (white noise, not the bus noises). DSP compatibility seems off too - I was getting digital audio dropouts that I did not get on the SB or PAS.
I decided to try my Audician 32 (OPL3-SA). It was silent. Some kind of black magic because it is only a budget 2 layer board. It is also plug and play so can be conditionally enabled on boot. A little new for the machine but at least it works.
Oh no, its September 24 and I haven't posted any Tandy videos! I really screwed up Septandy this year. I love the RSX - its the fastest 1000 and still gets to have the elusive tandy sound chip. I attempted to turn my Magnavox 386 into an RSX-like machine w/ a TNDLPT but its just not the same thing. It works, but a Tandy it is not.
As i remember, there was possibility to set low DMA channel to 3 on various SB clones. I've personnaly had old machine with ESS 1868 (sb pro 2 clone) built on-board and ISA slot based SB AWE 64. There were no conflicts at all. First card had A220 I5 D1 parameters, the second card had A240 I7 D3 H5. Worked like a charm until one day... My PSU decided to burn every part that it was connected to. :(
As I told in the video, later sound cards starting from sound blaster pro allowed to select a DMA between 0, 1 and 3. But on sound blaster cards before 1992 it was not possible. DMA 1 was assumed standard and so many games had DMA 1 hard coded. If you take a newer card and set DMA 3 it will not run with many older games in real mode DOS. Wolfenstein 3D is a good example, it runs only on DMA 1.
@@necro_ware I hadn't realized they were hardcoded, the BLASTER environment variable was supposed to be what they used when it wasn't specified in an install.exe, and that was put in the autoexec.bat by the Sound Blaster install disks.
Huh. I've never had an occasion where I needed to change it, but always assumed the BLASTER env would take care of that too. Creative was pretty clear about that, so you'd have to be a bit bull-headed to hard-code it. :-) Could've sworn the SB had jumpers for DMA channel. I'll be darned. But like I said, DMA1 is almost always available anyway, so...
now you can add a scsi cdrom drive ;-) One more thing that could complete your build is adding mt32 support. Im personally playing around with mt32-pi with softmpu. It works very well and it can even work over serial. But you could also use your mpu 401 midi output.
Yes, the machine has only two ISA slots and both are occupied now. But since the PAS16 can MPU-401, I can connect an external MIDI device through the joystick port. SCSI CD-ROM would be complicated however, since the case has no 5,25" bay for it :D I could however replace the network card by a SCSI card and connect an external SCSI CD-ROM if I need one.
I'm pretty sure, that it is possible, but I don't know if it's as simple as on the RSX. I don't have a 1000HX, but in the worst case you can search for a reset line on the mainboard and solder a wire in an appropriate place.
To be honest I started off with Microsoft XP Pro (worked alright but not properly because of the AHCI) then Microsoft Vista (which kept crashing because it didn't like my Trackball) then UBUNTU 12.04LTS which was brilliant but I really wanted to install GhostBSD (Open UNIX) but would not show up in the install menu so I went for Linux Mint CINNAMON 19.3 (Tricia) 64bit edition.
I started with.... well, you will probably not know with what I started, however, my first AT compatible was a 386SX-20 overclocked to 25MHz and it ran MS-DOS. I really didn't like windows from the beginning and stayed with DOS as long as I could. Then I switched to Win95 around 1996 and around 1998 to Linux. I never came back to Windows ever since. That's why my favorite operation systems I like to tinker with are DOS and Linux. But due to my job as a software developer, I had to look into the guts of various MS products as well. So I can't tell, that I have absolutely no clue about Windows, however my knowledge about it is not nearly as deep as about Linux.
Why you surrender so fast?)) I'm think SB 2.0 have issue with capacitors on +5V rail - but now we will don't know it (( Can we change DMA address by hardware mod?
It has no issues with capacitors. I have multiple SB2.0 from different revisions, all the same. This cards second name is noise blaster as well and that's for reason. Mod can't be done easily, since the needed ISA contacts are not populated. You woul need to add new pads, but as I said many early SB games had DMA hardcoded to 1, you can patch the games as well, but that all is too much hustle if you can simply take a better sound card :)
As I said in the video, that might be a bit too much for the Tandy, but my 1000RSX is from 1992, the same year where PAS16 was introduced. So from the time perspective it fits. However, I have to admit, that PAS16 was an absolute high end product back than, where the 1000RSX was more of a low end.
What about ditching that Motherboard for a DAA78L+AMD A10-7800k and 512GB of DDR3 RAM then you will be back up and running and go with Linux Mint CINNAMON 19.3 (Tricia) 64bit edition and Wine64+Winetricks64+Zip.dll and then you could play all your Windows or DOS games.
By scary I mean, ditching something, what is quite rare, with a big historical value and probably twice as expensive for something mediocre. Doesn't make too much sense to me, especially where I have a Ryzen 5 3600 under my table :D But again, it has to make fun eventually. If s.o. wants to make a "sleeper" out of a Tandy machine, it's a way to go. However, please don't get me wrong, I'm running a retro channel, because I have a heart for the retro machines. So this wouldn't be fun to me. As I told in the video, I was even fighting with myself, as I should drill a hole for the reset button :D
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 79 | คู่เอก "ก้องชัย vs อาเมียร์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/WfPSA1A0NHc/mqdefault.jpg)
It's always a good day when a new Necroware's video pops up
My 2nd sound card was the Mediavision PAS. My first was an Adlib. I really liked the PAS and used it for many years.
Sound card round up would be interesting
I bought the PAS16 back when it first came out at full cost. Loved that card. Having 16 bit when everyone else had 8 bit was a cool factor for sure.
I distinctly remember that SB 2.0 noise when playing Wolf 3d, I had the exact same issue on my 486 SX25 system when I was young. It wasn't until I got a new/better sound card that I realized that it wasn't part of the game/games. Funny how watching your video instantly made me remember, the sound bleeding through was exactly the same as I remember. I doubt I would have cared much even if I knew though coming from just PC speaker sound before getting it. There was a neat "driver" that pushed digital audio through the PC speaker that I used up till getting it. It sounded terrible but it was actual sound rather than beeps and boops.
Yes! PAS16! I loved that card, and had one in 1994 until 1997 in my 486sx that I built myself. I preferred it over SB16. The included software was great, too. Mod tracking was a dream!
In order to boot up a little faster you could add the testmem:off parameter to the himem line.
yeah, I always forget to add it to the himem.sys arguments. In this case I left it out, because during the memory check the data bus noise was especially loud. This way I could hear very early, if a sound card was noisy or not :)
The PAS16 was the bees knees back in the day. The PAS16 made the SB seem terrible when it came to SQ.
I tried a dozen or so sound cards in my retro PC, I found the YMF719 to have the least noise. ESS cards had good sound but had a lot of static hiss, even after recapping and disabling the onboard amp, and the various ISA SoundBlasters I tried all had the databus noise you're demonstrating in Wolf3D. The Aureal Vortex I tried had laughably bad OPL emulation. I have a PCI SB Audigy 2 that sounds really good but using it with DOS requires a janky hacked driver that breaks protected mode games and has bugs with some real mode games. It's a solid 98/XP card though.
Ah, this is the video where you ask about what we (as viewers) would like to see in a sound card video. You already covered the PAS in depth. I wonder about sound cards that were competitors in the early market, before AdLib/SB became the de facto standard, like including the Covox Speech Thing. And then covering cards like the PAS that tried to compete with features over the Sound Blaster, but failed due to lack of widespread game support, and were left unused apart from bundled demos, just stuck in SB compatibility mode forever. The name "Turtle Beach" comes to mind, but a quick search shows them as making much more modern hardware.
This was my exact setup in 1993: a Tandy 1000 RSX with a PAS 16. I had a SoundBlaster 1.0 to start and do remember the data noise but never any freezing/glitching with that card. The PAS was necessary for a CD-ROM upgrade. After watching your last round of RSX videos, I actually found one and bought it (for probably too much money). Restoring and upgrading it was much easier with your videos for reference. Thank you for that. I hope your channel continues to grow, as your content is just as good as any of the big hitters in the retro community.
I really look forward to your PAS video since I never had one :D
This 2nd SepTandy has came around super quick.
Soundcard special sounds fun
Ah yes, the ProAudio Spectrum, still have one in my collection. Absolutely love how clean and noise free these cards are, especially while using headphones. I have the Logitech SoundMan 16, which is a clone, but the OPL2 sound seems off, even though it has an original Yamaha YMF262-M onboard.
I'm not sure, may be there were different versions of the Logitech SoundMan 16, but the one, that I know is a Jazz16 based and not a Pro Audio Spectrum compatible anymore. However, I have one Jazz16 in my collection as well and it has the same outstanding audio quality as the PAS16, that's true, but I didn't observe any OPL2 or OPL3 sound issues with my cards. They tend to sound more "meaty" due to the better pre amp, but they don't sound off. May be your OPL3 chip has a defect? Technically, I don't know what has to be done to get YMF262 sound different. It is a very simple IC, which is almost directly bound to the ISA bus. You can only control the sound quality by tweaking the amps on the output, but that shouldn't change the melody of the synth itself.
@8:06 So that's where all the world's soundcards are!
Great video, really looking forward to the Pro Audio Spectrum video!
That SoundBlaster 2 card is like: Mein Leben!
Good job ! I hope to see a new DOS sound card with concerns about audio quality. I've seen pretty promising stuff, but I don't know what they're really worth in terms of compatibility.
do you have any of the older Turtle Beach sound cards? i had a Malibu Surround which was amazing in Terminal Velocity and Descent. shame that Creative, Adlib, Gravis, Crystal, and the various on-board chips are usually more well known than Turtle Beach from what i've seen...
Nice video :) Sound cards are interesting :)
I want to see a video about your SoundCard collection, combined with the facts about the special one you mounted to the Tandy1000 :)
Yes please. Long boring video of each card in your stash. :-) 🍿
Yay! A Necroware video!
2:00 Sound card and bus aalyzer 2 in one! :)
LOL :)
A followup video on software setup would be a nice idea! I have thought about experimenting with programs that can load device drivers normally loaded with CONFIG.SYS from the command-line. If so, you could drop the awful looking MS-DOS boot menu and use a nice program like HDM to launch each program by first reconfiguring the system as needed, running the game, and then unloading the driver to revert the environment back to 'normal'. This could be especially useful for programs that would depend on that TNDY program, or what about overcoming the lack of Turbo button by using THROTTLE to add compatibility with older speed-sensitive games? All of this could potentially be automated away without reboots to bring up new system configurations! What do you think?
Hi never heard of HDM, just took a look at it. Interesting tool. The problem with the most SYS drivers, that they are not unloadable, so you would have to reboot the machine anyway. Except HDM makes some really crazy magic and saves the complete memory state including interrupt vectors. As I said, I never heard of HDM yet, but I guess once a driver is loaded, you will have to reboot your machine anyway. If your drivers are in COM form and are actually unloadable, that could probably work. In regards of THROTTLE, if I remember right, that utility is for more modern chipsets and will not work on a 386. I might be wrong about that as well.
Great video! I have a 2500 RSX on the way - same board in a different case. I was thinking I would put one of the Yamaha pnp cards in it. But I do have a PAS and the Tandy seems like a worthy home.
The 2500 RSX has the reset populated. I was planning to share out that cap value when it came.
For some reason, the 2500 RSX does not have the rear audio jacks populated.
My 2500 RSX came in and the capacitor fitted next to the reset header is a small MLCC. It doesn't look like it could be more that about 0.1uF. I did not have any luck measuring it in circuit. I suppose I would remove it if someone really wanted to know the actual value.
A video on your cards and what they are best for.
soundcards i'd like to see a video about? CPS sound Blaster 2.5. My very first soundcard. Bit of an odd one too, being a rebranded product, just for the German market. There is a story to tell I suppose.
I have that one as well. I will keep that in mind.
Eh, the back isn't always easy to get at, depending on your setup. I'd just stick with the power switch. I forgot the board even had that header, though the thing I REALLY want is a hard drive light. Best I can figure is a rectangular LED mounted through the front grill. Anything else would require drilling a hole.
Good video - important to remember the Tandy's with digital sound have a DAC at DMA1 that will conflict with things. However, your solution probably requires a full power cycle to de-initialize the sound card (I don't think the reset button is sufficient because bus power is maintained); instead, why not just use a card that supports DMA 3? Since it's a 386 it should support that. I think the Sound Blaster Pro you had supported being jumpered to that. Tandy games would work at the same time as Sound Blaster without any conflict. This would also allow you to run the 1 or 2 games that support Adlib + Tandy digital, or Sound Blaster + Tandy PSG.
Thanks. Reset is sufficient and is just as good as a power cycle. In regards of DMA3, as I told in the video, many games back then didn't support anything else, but DMA1. It was basically hard coded into the games, so DMA3 wouldn't solve the problem. Also SBPro, which I have is basically the same low quality sound card as the SB 2.0. The only difference is, that it had two DSPs and OPL2s for stereo capabilities and no CMS. But it was the same noisy crap, so it would be not a good choice for the Tandy.
@@necro_ware Ah, makes sense; I do remember some games let you set IRQ/Address but not DMA. Many many years ago I had a "Sound Machine" (Sound Blaster clone) in a Tandy 1000RX and it was also very noisy like yours. Nowadays I have a Tandy 1000A that I just use Tandy sound with, and a separate 486 with a Reveal SC500 wavetable card; I find a lot of stuff that runs well on the older XT class machines supports Tandy sound more often than Adlib / SB, so that works out well.
I have the Sound Machine in my collection :) I showed it in my CMS video last year...
I had the same thought. Conflict? make that DMA change! but the games, this is why we do it after all. Thanks for clarifying, as I had the same thought... a lot of games have the option of auto detection of which addresses sound is located on.
As always, really good content. Freue mich auf mehr!. BTW: Meine Grafikkarten werden auch so gelagert. Allerdings habe ich in jeder Tüte noch so einen kleinen Beutel antimold.
I had crashing trying to run mine on the TL. May have to try it again.
Αnother nice video for a nice machine!
I think the noise on the Sound Blaster might be from the power supply not having a -5 volt line. You might be able to add a negative 5 volt regulator to the 12 volt line to supply a negative 5 volts to the sound blaster. I'm not sure if the power supply on your machine is missing the -5 volts.
The voltage regulator for -5V is directly on the mainboard. I addressed it in last year's #SepTandy videos. So, it's not the issue. Furthermore SB 2.0 doesn't work without -5V at all, same as the PAS16, wich I also showed. This topic was also covered by my cooperation with PhilsComputerLab on the Voltage Blaster.
Would like to see a video with best choice of sound card for 8086, 286,386 and Pentium. Also any caveats [like DMA & interrupt conflicts]
DMA1 is usually available, provided you're not using multiple audio interfaces, and is the default on most SB-compatible cards. DMA channel 5 is often used for 16-bit audio cards, either alone or along with DMA1.
IRQ5 and 7 are often used for audio. IRQ5 is also usually available -- again, assuming a stock PC with no other audio cards, network or SCSI cards. IRQ7 is used for LPT1 (the parallel port), but if you're not using your old dot-matrix printer, and can disable the LPT port, then you can use it for sound. Some people think IQR7 is the "correct" IRQ to use for a SB or compatible. Apparently there are some early SB 1.0-era games that assume you're using IRQ7 and won't let you change it. I haven't run into this myself.
I don't have quite this bad of a problem with noise on my SBs. I would imagine it depends a little on the system you put it in -- like how clean the power rails and ground are. The Sound Blaster isn't a _quiet_ card, but eh.. if I wanted perfection, I wouldn't be using a retro computer.
So, IMO (which nobody asked for), here's my recommendation:
*8088:* Do you really need sound in an XT-class PC? Use the PC speaker (or PCjr / Tandy 3-voice) like everyone else did back then! 😄
*286:* AdLib or Game Blaster
*386SX:* Sound Blaster, Media Vision Thunderboard (if you can find one), Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum (not PAS16 -- also, _good luck_ finding one)
*386DX:* Any of the above SB-class, or SB Pro. (SB Pro 1.0 is interesting for the dual OPL2, but not much uses it. SB Pro 2.0 has OPL3, but not much that runs on a 386 will use it either. So vanilla OPL2 is fine.)
*486:* SB Pro 2.0, Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum 16
*486DX2 or DX4:* SB 16, PAS 16, one of the Aztech or ESS cards capable of SB Pro emulation, maybe an SB AWE 32, or if you've won a lottery recently, a Gravis UltraSound
*Pentium:* AWE32, or if you're going to run DOS, any of the Aztech / ESS / Yamaha SB Pro clones with native 16-bit audio when supported by the game
*Pentium II:* AWE32 or AWE64 (especially if you're going to run DOS), or SB Live! (if Windows-only), or Aureal Vortex or similar
*Pentium III:* SB Live!, SB Audigy, or Aureal
*Pentium 4:* SB Audigy or Audigy 2
There are lots of other interesting cards, like the Windows Sound System (or compatible), that are probably not worth the trouble unless you spend a LOT of time in Windows 3.1. Some software natively supports it, but not a lot. Same goes for stuff like Ensoniq cards, which are insanely expensive and not well supported except in compatibility mode. You're really better off with a Sound Blaster, or 100% compatible card, if you're going to use DOS at all.
Once you get into Windows 9x, it doesn't matter much anymore, except if you want to use EAX (SB Live / Audigy) or Aureal 3D.
I wonder if it would be possible to put some small (point 1uf) bypass caps across the power and grounds to filter out high frequency noise.
Inspired by this video, I put my PAS 16 in my 2500 RSX (same mainboard in a different case). Unfortunately I did not have the same success. The card seems to be working fine but the bleed through noise is horrendous. Event the hard drive motor spinning up comes through loud and clear. Still didn't stop me from playing Spear of Destiny for an hour. Although it does seem very peaceful now that it is turned off.
That is very strange, did you use headphones, or speakers? How do other cards behave in your machine? I tested now also MediaVision Jazz16 in this machine and together with the PAS16 that were the only two cards, which were usable in this mainboard.
@@necro_ware It was with headphones. I have not tried other cards yet. I messed around some with the oscilloscope and there is about 2v peak to peak noise just between some of the ISA ground lines. I tried a few things which brought the measurable noise on the supply lines down but nothing improved the audio noise to be at acceptable levels. I may poke around some more later.
@@jayesonlee-steere5493 I have to admit, that this Tandy mainboard is the noisiest one I ever had, so you have to see it in relation. Also Tandy's power supplies were not very good and produce a lot of noise, especially if you still have the old capacitors in there. They are probably dry meanwhile and produce horrible ripple. It is so bad, that you can actually damage the hardware. I replaced the power supply in my Tandy and don't have the original parts anymore, but with headphones I still can hear some slight noise on the data bus even with PAS16. However on the speakers and during the recording it is not noticeable at all. Headphones seem to be more sensitive to it. If you didn't try another sound cards yet, just put any Sound Blaster from around that time (1.5, 2.0 or Pro) and you will see, what a "horrible" data bus noise really means :D
EDIT: As far as I remember, the 2500 RSX has no audio port soldered on the mainboard, right? So, you can't even use the Tandy Sound System on it. On the 1000 RSX there is one and if you try to plug your headphones into it, your ears will start to bleed. Unfortunately Tandy didn't bother to shield anything on this mainboard. It is absolutely horrible. With external speakers it is kind of ok though.
@@necro_ware I tried out a Sound Blaster 2.0 and you are right, it is worse. The noise bleed-through is at least as loud as the game sounds. Very unpleasant! :-) I decided to try the card that came with the computer: unbranded 8 bit ISA with YM3812 and Gallant DSP. It is much better than the others. I can only hear a small low frequency grunt every now and then during hard drive access. I am guessing this why it was chosen for the machine. Unfortunately it has a pretty bad signal to noise ratio (white noise, not the bus noises). DSP compatibility seems off too - I was getting digital audio dropouts that I did not get on the SB or PAS.
I decided to try my Audician 32 (OPL3-SA). It was silent. Some kind of black magic because it is only a budget 2 layer board. It is also plug and play so can be conditionally enabled on boot. A little new for the machine but at least it works.
Oh no, its September 24 and I haven't posted any Tandy videos! I really screwed up Septandy this year.
I love the RSX - its the fastest 1000 and still gets to have the elusive tandy sound chip. I attempted to turn my Magnavox 386 into an RSX-like machine w/ a TNDLPT but its just not the same thing. It works, but a Tandy it is not.
As i remember, there was possibility to set low DMA channel to 3 on various SB clones. I've personnaly had old machine with ESS 1868 (sb pro 2 clone) built on-board and ISA slot based SB AWE 64. There were no conflicts at all. First card had A220 I5 D1 parameters, the second card had A240 I7 D3 H5. Worked like a charm until one day... My PSU decided to burn every part that it was connected to. :(
As I told in the video, later sound cards starting from sound blaster pro allowed to select a DMA between 0, 1 and 3. But on sound blaster cards before 1992 it was not possible. DMA 1 was assumed standard and so many games had DMA 1 hard coded. If you take a newer card and set DMA 3 it will not run with many older games in real mode DOS. Wolfenstein 3D is a good example, it runs only on DMA 1.
@@necro_ware Ok. I've missed that "hard coded" part. Everything is clear now. Great content BTW.
@@necro_ware I hadn't realized they were hardcoded, the BLASTER environment variable was supposed to be what they used when it wasn't specified in an install.exe, and that was put in the autoexec.bat by the Sound Blaster install disks.
Huh. I've never had an occasion where I needed to change it, but always assumed the BLASTER env would take care of that too. Creative was pretty clear about that, so you'd have to be a bit bull-headed to hard-code it. :-) Could've sworn the SB had jumpers for DMA channel. I'll be darned. But like I said, DMA1 is almost always available anyway, so...
now you can add a scsi cdrom drive ;-)
One more thing that could complete your build is adding mt32 support. Im personally playing around with mt32-pi with softmpu. It works very well and it can even work over serial. But you could also use your mpu 401 midi output.
Yes, the machine has only two ISA slots and both are occupied now. But since the PAS16 can MPU-401, I can connect an external MIDI device through the joystick port. SCSI CD-ROM would be complicated however, since the case has no 5,25" bay for it :D I could however replace the network card by a SCSI card and connect an external SCSI CD-ROM if I need one.
Nice Video, maybe you could make a video with Gavis Ultrasound cards of course if you own it or Turtle beach Pinnacle great for retro games
Thanks, I have neither GUS nor any Turtle Beach cards. I borrowed once a GUS remake to play with it, but I don't have it anymore :)
@@necro_ware or if you had some gem in the collection with Wavetable synthesis it would please my heart
@@ctiborkoza8944 that shouldn't be a problem ;)
Nice work ! Is it possible to add a reset button to a Tandy 1000HX ??
I'm pretty sure, that it is possible, but I don't know if it's as simple as on the RSX. I don't have a 1000HX, but in the worst case you can search for a reset line on the mainboard and solder a wire in an appropriate place.
Could the card / mobo just have bad bypass caps causing the lack of filtering buss noise?
I'm afraid no, I tried also cards, where I replaced all the caps with the new ones. And the mainboard doesn't have any electrolytic caps at all.
Tandy 3-voice or nothing ! Just try Zeliard for instance ! :)
To be honest I started off with Microsoft XP Pro (worked alright but not properly because of the AHCI) then Microsoft Vista (which kept crashing because it didn't like my Trackball) then UBUNTU 12.04LTS which was brilliant but I really wanted to install GhostBSD (Open UNIX) but would not show up in the install menu so I went for Linux Mint CINNAMON 19.3 (Tricia) 64bit edition.
I started with.... well, you will probably not know with what I started, however, my first AT compatible was a 386SX-20 overclocked to 25MHz and it ran MS-DOS. I really didn't like windows from the beginning and stayed with DOS as long as I could. Then I switched to Win95 around 1996 and around 1998 to Linux. I never came back to Windows ever since. That's why my favorite operation systems I like to tinker with are DOS and Linux. But due to my job as a software developer, I had to look into the guts of various MS products as well. So I can't tell, that I have absolutely no clue about Windows, however my knowledge about it is not nearly as deep as about Linux.
Why you surrender so fast?)) I'm think SB 2.0 have issue with capacitors on +5V rail - but now we will don't know it ((
Can we change DMA address by hardware mod?
It has no issues with capacitors. I have multiple SB2.0 from different revisions, all the same. This cards second name is noise blaster as well and that's for reason. Mod can't be done easily, since the needed ISA contacts are not populated. You woul need to add new pads, but as I said many early SB games had DMA hardcoded to 1, you can patch the games as well, but that all is too much hustle if you can simply take a better sound card :)
Can you try FastDoom?
yes, but I wanted to make a separate video on that topic. Too many ideas, too little time :D
Oh, COME ON. :-D A Pro Audio Spectrum 16 in a Tandy?? That's just wrong, dude! LOL May as well put a GUS in there just to flex. haha
As I said in the video, that might be a bit too much for the Tandy, but my 1000RSX is from 1992, the same year where PAS16 was introduced. So from the time perspective it fits. However, I have to admit, that PAS16 was an absolute high end product back than, where the 1000RSX was more of a low end.
What about ditching that Motherboard for a DAA78L+AMD A10-7800k and 512GB of DDR3 RAM then you will be back up and running and go with Linux Mint CINNAMON 19.3 (Tricia) 64bit edition and Wine64+Winetricks64+Zip.dll and then you could play all your Windows or DOS games.
What a scary idea :D
@@necro_ware Not so scary as That is what I am running and I have no problems what so ever.
By scary I mean, ditching something, what is quite rare, with a big historical value and probably twice as expensive for something mediocre. Doesn't make too much sense to me, especially where I have a Ryzen 5 3600 under my table :D But again, it has to make fun eventually. If s.o. wants to make a "sleeper" out of a Tandy machine, it's a way to go. However, please don't get me wrong, I'm running a retro channel, because I have a heart for the retro machines. So this wouldn't be fun to me. As I told in the video, I was even fighting with myself, as I should drill a hole for the reset button :D
@Rex Warden My OS of choice is Linux Mint CINNAMON 19.3 (Tricia) 64bit edition and I am having no problem whatsoever.
What are you doing in a retro hardware video's comments pushing Linux and emulation for? Weird flex. Hit up an emulation channel or something.