Category Archives: Sound

ThinkPad Audio PnP Hell

Posted on May 4, 2020 by Michal Necasek

The other day I pulled an old ThinkPad 770X (300 MHz Pentium II, good old 440BX chipset, released in late 1998) out of the closet to see if it still works. It does, but I had the terrible idea to … Continue reading →

Posted in Crystal Semi, IBM, Sound, ThinkPad | 14 Comments

A Sound Card Before Its Time

Posted on August 15, 2018 by Michal Necasek

A mysterious full-length sound card recently arrived at the OS/2 Museum. It was clearly manufactured by IBM in 1985, and sports a 20 MHz Texas Instrument TMS32010 DSP (the DSP is the large black DIP chip near the lower left … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, PC history, Sound | 20 Comments

Making The Simpsons Sing

Posted on March 1, 2018 by Michal Necasek

The talk is, in case it wasn’t clear, about the Kurzweil VGM MIDI synthesizer board. The two larger synthesizer chips are named Homer and Marge, and the three smaller ROM chips are Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The VGM looks a lot … Continue reading →

Posted in E-mu, Kurzweil, MIDI, Sound | 3 Comments

Audio Frequency Data Acquisition

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Michal Necasek

Readers of this blog may have noticed that besides OS/2 software, I have interested in PC sound cards. I thought I had a decent idea about the major milestones in PC sound history, but I had to perform a few … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, MCA, PC hardware, PC history, PS/2, Sound, Sound Blaster | 17 Comments

Of G-Men and Farmers

Posted on July 9, 2017 by Michal Necasek

There’s an interesting story concerning this Midiman GMan General MIDI sound module. It involves Midiman (better known as M-Audio), the Farmers Insurance Exchange, and also Dream/Atmel, Crystal Semiconductor, and Roland. (Apologies for the beat-up specimen.) The story of course concerns … Continue reading →

Posted in Crystal Semi, Dream, Legal, MIDI, Roland, Sound | 20 Comments

Rich Heimlich’s Patch Set Overview

Posted on June 9, 2017 by Michal Necasek

Resurrected from the depths of the Internet, here comes an interesting and useful historical resource.  In 1994 and 1995, Rich Heimlich published several iterations of his “patch set overview” covering mainstream wavetable sound cards, daughterboards, and modules (“mainstream” being defined … Continue reading →

Posted in PC history, Sound, Wave Blaster | 33 Comments

How Many Gravis UltraSounds?

Posted on May 20, 2017 by Michal Necasek

The question came up a while ago. Just how commercially unsuccessful was the Gravis UltraSound? There appears to be no public information about the sales volume of the UltraSound. But now, looking at a sample of 3 (three) classic GUS … Continue reading →

Posted in PC history, Sound, UltraSound | 51 Comments

More Peripherals

Posted on January 20, 2017 by Michal Necasek

Remember this post from a while ago? Several new peripherals have turned up, but what are they? This time, the manufacturer names vanished together with the model numbers, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Do you know these peripherals? PS: … Continue reading →

Posted in MIDI, Sound | 11 Comments

Gravis Ultras

Posted on December 21, 2016 by Michal Necasek

While researching 1990s sound cards with wavetable synths, I came across an interesting resource called Rich Heimlich’s Patch Set Overview, namely issue #5 from July 1995. When I tried to unearth older issues of same, I stumbled upon a curious … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Labs, Internet, PC history, Sound, UltraSound | 18 Comments

Tahiti + Rio = Monterey

Posted on December 11, 2016 by Michal Necasek

The talk is, of course, about Turtle Beach sound cards. I finally got hold of a 1994 Turtle Beach Rio daughterboard which came mounted on an ISA sound card. On closer inspection the card turned out to be a Turtle … Continue reading →

Posted in MIDI, Sound, Wave Blaster | 22 Comments