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Snark Barker: A 100% compatible replica of the famed SB 1.0 soundcard
- pmorici 8y agoWhat's the motivation or use for this?
- segfaultbuserr 8y ago1. Retrocomputing. 2. This is a Free implementation. 100% of the schematic, PCB and mechanical design is released under CC By-SA 4.0. So, it's for retrocomputing hobbyists, history preservation, it's also pretty educational and can be used as a model to teach (or self-teach) electronic design to the new generation without the overwhelming complexity (not limited to this, it's a common aspect of retrocomputing in general).
- tyfon 8y agoFun? I have an old computer where I might be able to use this for some of the games. I have another with a GUS MAX but not all games supported that. Sound Bastard (as we GUS owners called it) was pretty universal!
- anyfoo 8y agoInstead of directly answering the question this time, let me ask you: It’s an old, classic sound card. What do you think it’s used for?
- tubetime 8y agoi did it for fun, and also because real sound blaster 1.0 cards are going for a lot of money on ebay. i don't actually own an original card, this was reverse engineered entirely from photos.
- tomcam 8y agoAs a software guy I’m... astounded. That’s incredible to me. Hats off to you, brother. And thanks for sharing your experience.
- EvanAnderson 8y agoI had absolutely no idea that the original SoundBlaster had embedded firmware running on an 8051. It never occurred to me that our PCs were loosely-coupled piles of microcomputers all the way back then. (Now I'm off to go learn what that firmware was doing...) Some background I dug up quickly: Snark Barker creator's blog: http://tubetime.us/index.php/2019/01/19/sound-blaster-1-0-principles-of-operation/ http://tubetime.us/index.php/2019/01/19/sound-blaster-1-0-pr... http://www.os2museum.com/wp/sound-blaster-the-french-connection/ http://www.os2museum.com/wp/sound-blaster-the-french-connect...
- JohnBooty 8y agoYeah that's incredible. I'd no idea. I'd assumed that the chips on devices like this were essentially dumb "slaves" controlled by the CPU. I had some vague idea that the chips had some autonomy (ie, when playing digital sound, they knew enough to request/fetch more data via interrupts, DMA, etc) but I'd never spent the time to really learn what was going on there.
- segfaultbuserr 8y agoActually, having computer boards with their own CPUs was NOT a modern phenomenon due to excessive computing power. They have always been made, as early as in 1980 (without the s), and for good reasons. Some were even a bit unimaginable today: for example, we had Z-80 Softcard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard), a Z80 expansion card made (by Microsoft!) for computers with 6502 CPUs (Apple ][) to run existing business applications written for CP/M, like WordStar. It can also be connected with a modem to utilize its additional processing power to run a BBS server. There were also cards that packed multiple CPUs to implement a poorman (home computer) version of parallel processing. The simplicity of single-task operating systems and hardware architectures of that time allowed multiple independent computers to shift control of a physical computer back and forth. Today it's - pretty much - impossible, but nobody needs it either, you can just run everything simultaneously.
- detaro 8y ago
- JohnBooty 8y agoThis is insane, and I love it. It seems almost entirely pointless: the SB 1.0 has a big place in history but that's due more to market share than technical excellence or uniqueness compared to, say, the C64's SID chip, or even a true contemporary like the Gravis Ultrasound. And unless I'm mistaken vintage Sound Blaster boards are not exactly in short supply... though I'm not entirely sure about that; it's tough to search for them thanks to the countless scads of products bearing the "Sound Blaster" moniker. And yet, this is cool. This is a complex piece of work, a very nice piece of engineering by the look of it! Preservation of computing and gaming history is important, and ensuring we can make more physical copies of things if needed/desired is crucial when it comes to keeping that history alive.
- segfaultbuserr 8y ago> the SB 1.0 has a big place in history but that's due more to market share than technical excellence or uniqueness compared to, say, the C64's SID chip, or even a true contemporary like the Gravis Ultrasound. Cultural value is as important as technical advancement, at least in the long run. I think you could agree with me. A notable cliche is still VHS. In the 80s, it was a far-from-optimal video system, but recently it has became a symbol of the 80s. Another example is the proliferation of home computers in the 80s, while many were groundbreaking, we also had some that were closer to a market bubble than a technical accomplishment, and were known as "Trash 80s" but now it's still something different. And thanks for your additional commentary on soundchips.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- escherplex 8y agoCultural value is as important as technical advancement, at least in the long run. I think you could agree with me. True but, EG, resurrecting the old 360KB 5.25-inch floppies tech used on the '80s era IBM PCs is probably not worth revisiting.
- 8y ago
- kalleboo 8y agoThey also have a reproduction AdLib card https://github.com/schlae/adlib https://github.com/schlae/adlib http://tubetime.us/index.php/2016/07/22/a-reproduction-adlib-sound-card/ http://tubetime.us/index.php/2016/07/22/a-reproduction-adlib...
- codetrotter 8y agoSpeaking of AdLib, a couple of years ago an AdLib Gold 1000 ISA card sold for US $3,400 on eBay. The starting ask price was 99 cents and the first bid was US $50. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ad-Lib-Gold-1000-ISA-Sound-Card-/272163544820 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ad-Lib-Gold-1000-ISA-Sound-Card-/27... via https://twitter.com/lazygamereviews/status/708475622927044609 https://twitter.com/lazygamereviews/status/70847562292704460... Also, speaking of sound cards, here is another thread from a few months ago about old sound cards: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17779741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17779741 In that thread a user named rahimnathwani said: > Did any of you, back in the 90s, build a parallel port DAC to use with Linux's PC Speaker driver? And someone else, dharma1, replied: > My friend's dad built one for him, for DOS/windows though. Must have been around -89 when we were 12. > I think Scream Tracker had the schematic bundled with it as an ASCII drawing. We were taught how to solder in primary school, but I remember the schematics being way too advanced for us. Looking at it now it's just a simple resistor ladder tree > I think it was roughly the same as Covox, someone had written a sound blaster emulator for it, and it worked pretty well on games, scream tracker/fast tracker and demoscene demos - for the price of a parallel port connector and a few resistors, pretty cool. If that person (dharma1) sees this thread, I have a question for them: Could you take a picture of that schematic and post it?
- xorcist 8y agoThere were multiple designs floating around the BBSes at the time. I don't remember the Scream Tracker one but they should be fairly similar. That kind of DACs were compatible with Covox, which has a schematic on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing
- 8y ago
- Vaslo 8y agoDid anyone notice the “Made in Anger” label on the card? Lots of detail!
- EvanAnderson 8y agoThat silkscreen had me giggling. The juxtaposition of the text in the requisite serious typeface and the fact that typically only "SERIOUS ELECTRONICS MESSAGES" are communicated in that way, I guess, was the source of The Funny. I am reminded of the names of B-52's songs on Amiga motherboards. (I had an Intel server board that had the Marmaduke cartoon character screened on it, under the "Slot 2" retainer. Alas, I got rid of the machine and never photographed it.)
- myWindoonn 8y agoWasn't this card one of several that could damage the motherboards that they were installed into? I wonder whether they've reimplemented those details; given that, just like the original, this version has idiosyncratic power management, I wouldn't be surprised.
- tubetime 8y agothere's nothing inherent in the design that could damage a motherboard. perhaps you're thinking of some other card?
- Geee 8y agoWe burned our 486 motherboard with Sound Blaster 2.0. The computer wouldn't boot when the card was installed, so the next logical step was to first start the computer and then install the card. Didn't quite work out, and dad wasn't happy.
- deckarep 8y agoOh good I’ve been needing to talk to my psychologist again. His name is Dr. Sbaitso... https://books.google.com/books?id=fpQP3e54P-gC&pg=PT80&dq=sbaitso+1991&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3hpD96ZjRAhWm8YMKHUxrA4EQ6AEILDAE#v=onepage&q=sbaitso%201991&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=fpQP3e54P-gC&pg=PT80&dq=sb...
- schoen 8y agoI still remember the kind of weird intonation and prosody on "Doctor Sbaitso, by Creative Labs, please enter your name".
- cannonedhamster 8y agoParity Error.
- myself248 8y agoHello Schoen, my name is Doctor Sbaitso. I am here to help you. Say whatever is in your mind freely, our conversation will be kept in strict confidence. Memory contents will be wiped off after you leave. So, tell me about your problems.
- schoen 8y agoAfter doing some work on computer forensics, I remember wondering whether the "memory contents will be wiped off after you leave" message from Dr. Sbaitso was actually true or not.
- slater 8y agoYou're in luck! https://classicreload.com/dr-sbaitso.html https://classicreload.com/dr-sbaitso.html
- tyfon 8y agoFor real DIY audio on PC, try the covox. It's a resistor based "dac" for the paralell port that we used to build as kids too before we could afford a proper sound card. You could also buy a commercial version if you didn't want to solder [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing
- ak1394 8y agoNow, where these days would you get a parallel port to plug it into?
- robin_reala 8y ago$23 on newegg: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158148 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681515...
- afandian 8y agoI seem to recall that the USB ones don't work for this kind of thing. From my teenage memories, you could bit-twiddle by writing to a memory address. I presume the USB ones use a UART that doesn't allow direct memory access, or precise timing, or something. The one linked in the parent is a PCI card, so this might not apply.
- tyfon 8y agoI still have a few computers from the 90s. One of them is running openbsd and I think it might be fun to write a driver for it actually. I see OpenMSX also support covox.
- throwaway2048 8y agoeven lots of modern motherboards still have serial and parallel port headers.
- tubetime 8y agoalternative names i considered: SNOOD BLOOBER, SOUND BLUSTER, EAR BUSTER, SNART FARTER, SNUD BLUFFER, SNARD BLARGER, SNEED BLEEPER, SNORP BLORPER, SNOT BLOTTER, and SNOOT BOOPER.
- Sendotsh 8y ago> SNOOD BLOOBER I love the name you chose, but this is definitely tied as my favourite purely due to it sounding like something from Hitchhikers Guide!
- kazinator 8y agoThat's awesome; but where are you going to plug this in? And if you can find that hardware, you can probably scavenge an original SB 1.0 too. You know, just the other day last week, I was thinking about how good it would be to have real hardware FM synthesis for those vintage sounds.
- Tempest1981 8y agoWould love to hear more about the reverse engineering journey.
- iheartpotatoes 8y agoI'm most impressed that it uses ZERO surface mount devices. My surface mount rework skills have been getting worse over the past 10 years. (Fuck arthritis, man. Too young for this shit.)
- Neil44 8y agoWill it still need a SET BLASTER= environment variable?
- kyberias 8y agoGot me thinking... Is there a open-source design of some PC motherboard somewhere?
- tubetime 8y agoyes: http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/xi-8088 http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/xi-8088 although it's a CPU card that plugs into a backplane. lots of other good designs of his here: http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects