I own one sfx sound expander cartridge. Most seem to come from England, but you only see one or two per year. Actually, one just sold on eBay about a week ago. I bought the sound blaster with the intentions of making a cartridge but then I managed to find one. I have seen schematics to interface isa cards to the Vic-20. Steve On Jan 25, 2012, at 2:34 PM, Gábor Lénárt <lgb@lgb.hu> wrote: > On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 11:28:42AM -0500, Steve Gray wrote: >> The schematics for the sfx sound expander are available.. If you can't buy >> one, maybe you could build one? I picked up an old sound blaster with >> ym3812 and support chip off eBay for about $12, but you could probably buy >> the chip(s) separately. Get an 8-bit baby prototyping cartridge board and >> you're good to go ;-) > > Yes, you've just figure out some parts of my plan :) To be honest, I haven't > known anything about this cartridge. I was just thinking that TFE, RR-Net > ethernet solutions are so expensive, when you have tons of unused ISA cards > in your drawer with much more power, how unfair life is :) So originally I > thought about some ISA "bridge" between an ISA card and a the C64. It was my > wild idea to start with AdLib, since it's a simple enough card to do this > (so not just the chip: the card), or even some 8 bit SoundBlaster, which > also have the OPL2 chip on-board, and still 8 bit card, so it's possible to > play AdLib music on C64. Then two suprises I > experienced with (while google'ing a bit): > > 1. SFX cartridge exits, I've never heard about it before! With the chip > upgrade it almost the same as you would say: "I have AdLib for C64!". > > 2. Interfacing with an AdLib _card_ is also not too hard: > > http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/adlib/adlib_en.php > > It's a PC paralell port solution, but the difference > is minimal. If you map the needed address between C64 > (to be compatible with SFX cartridge) and the AdLib card > (388/389 hex) then you can even use an unmodified AdLib > card as SFX cartridge (maybe even 8 bit SoundBlasters with > a bit more I/O space usage you can address its DSP features > etc which is rather cool to play with, I think) > > So just after these happened I decided to write some code for C64, as I > already wrote AdLib S3M player for x86/DOS/assembly many years ago, and it > felt nostalgic :) > >> >> Steve >> >> >> On Jan 25, 2012, at 9:58 AM, Gábor Lénárt <lgb@lgb.hu> wrote: >> >>> Hi, >>> >>> On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 06:37:34AM -0800, andym00 wrote: >>>>> Sound Expander in WinVice 2.2 seems to work fine. >>>>> >>>>> More SFX Sound Expander stuff, cool, what are you working on Andy? >>>>> >>>> >>>> Ah, okay, I'll give 2.2 a go then.. Thanks.. >>>> >>>> As for what I'm working on, just really ideas at the moment.. I've always >>>> wanted to play with the thing and was curious if it was possible to push the >>>> timing requirements down a bit, or maybe use a timer based approach to avoid >>>> wasting loads of time waiting to send registers, or even piggy back >>>> register >>> >>> What do you mean? The needed time to wait before you can write a register? >>> With the OPL chip, you had to wait a bit after you selected the register and >>> before write the actual data and some wait too before you can address >>> another register. The needed time for this is quite low, before data/after >>> register select is something like four NOPs, so I wouldn't think it's worth >>> using timers to wait etc :) There is a bit more delay needed after writing >>> the data (and using another register) in my player code it's not a problem, >>> since it's far enough delay given by the player code itself :) >>> >>> Given by microseconds from the AdLib specification (so it's about the OPL2 - >>> YM3812 - chip, I am not sure the very same is true for the YM3526 which is >>> the one the cartridge is equipped with, however it seems some people >>> upgraded the chip since it's backward compatible): >>> >>> The AdLib manual gives the wait times in microseconds: three point three >>> (3.3) microseconds for the address, and twenty-three (23) microseconds >>> for the data. >>> >>> Given by the ~1MHz clock of the 6510 in C64, it's about 4 cycles to wait >>> after specifying the address (register selection) and 23 cycles after the >>> data. I am not sure why it's told (by more clever people than me) that 4 >>> NOPs is needed, as AFAIK a NOP lasts for 2 cycles, but there must be some >>> reason ... >>> >>> Or did you think about the timing needed for playing, not the individual >>> register access delays? >>> >>>> sends on the back of sprite multiplexer interrupts.. Really just experiments >>>> and with it in mind that I'd love to be able to use it for in-game music, if >>>> it doesn't prove too costly.. Its always bugged me that no game has ever >>>> supported the Sound Expander, yet :) >>> >>> I'm playing with the idea to write an S3M player (to be precise: S3M files >>> using only AdLib instruments, not digital samples), and a converter too >>> which "stripes down" the S3M for a more simple entity in sequence of BYTE >>> pseudo-ops in assembly source form, so it can be reused for an in-game >>> player engine which can be much more trivial than a fully-capable S3M player >>> with its complexity, and can be done in an IRQ routine or so ... >>> >>> Still, I lost the interest a bit currently, since it's so sad that I haven't >>> got a real cartridge, it's not so fun to do it in an emulator only. >>> Currently only my DRO player work (however I have my IMF->DRO converter >>> now). >>> >>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> View this message in context: http://nabble-com-cbm-hackers.2304266.n4.nabble.com/SFX-Expander-programming-and-VICE-tp4107070p4327376.html >>>> Sent from the Nabble.com: cbm-hackers mailing list archive at Nabble.com. >>>> >>>> Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list >>> >>> Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list >> >> Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list > > Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing listReceived on 2012-01-25 22:00:17
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