Author Archives: Michal Necasek

44-Voice MIDI on Yamaha OPL4

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Michal Necasek

In 1994, sound cards with wavetable synthesizers were all the rage. Typically these supported 24-voice or at most 32-voice polyphony. So 44-voice synthesis sounded fancy. The following text can be found in a README file in the driver package for … Continue reading →

Posted in MIDI, Sound | 9 Comments

Bad Month for Laptop Disks

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Michal Necasek

Instead of writing new articles, I recently spent a lot of time fighting laptop hard disks going bad. The first was a Seagate ST1000LM14 (apparently originally a Samsung design), a hybrid 1TB 5,400rpm disk with 8GB flash. The disk was … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware | 8 Comments

Do You Know This Sound Card?

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Michal Necasek

The guessing game is back, this time with a twist: I don’t know the correct answer. A generic-looking 1997 vintage sound card recently showed up: This is what I call a high-end low-end card… it’s a standard low-end sound card, … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware, Sound | 13 Comments

Sound Blaster 1.0 or 1.5?

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Michal Necasek

According to some sources, a Sound Blaster model CT-1320C is a Sound Blaster 1.5. But according to Creative’s own reference materials (which do contain many inaccuracies and cannot be taken as gospel), the only difference between a Sound Blaster 1.0 … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Labs, PC hardware, PC history, Sound Blaster | 19 Comments

Intel 420TX Chipset

Posted on May 9, 2015 by Michal Necasek

The OS/2 Museum recently obtained a somewhat unusual board: A 1993 vintage 486 PCI/ISA board equipped with the Intel 420TX chipset. The 420TX chipset, codenamed Saturn, was probably Intel’s first PCI chipset available to customers. It was probably first sold … Continue reading →

Posted in 486, Intel, PC hardware, PCI | 43 Comments

Sound Blaster: The French Connection

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Michal Necasek

Ever been wondering why there are chips labeled MHS on many Sound Blaster cards, and why there usually was some chip with a © Intel marking? For example this one, on a Sound Blaster 1.5 (1991): Or this one, on … Continue reading →

Posted in Intel, PC hardware, Sound Blaster | 16 Comments

Sound Blaster DIAGNOSE and Disabled MPU-401

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Michal Necasek

Today I finally solved a nagging problem that always seemed like it had to have some sort of reasonable solution. Creative’s DIAGNOSE.EXE utility is quite useful when working with any Sound Blaster 16 derivatives (Sound Blaster 16, AWE32, Sound Blaster … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Labs, Sound, Sound Blaster, Undocumented | 3 Comments

sips To the Rescue

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Michal Necasek

A few days ago I scanned a document and unwisely used MS Paint on Windows 7 to touch up a small selection of the scanned pages. Once the dozen or so files were re-touched, I combined them into a PDF … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, OS X | Leave a comment

OS/2 on ThinkPad T23 and T30

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Michal Necasek

Recently I had a need to install IBM’s OS/2 on real hardware rather than in a VM, and for various reasons I wanted “genuine” IBM OS/2 and not eComStation. One of IBM’s older ThinkPads was a logical choice. A T42p … Continue reading →

Posted in OS/2, ThinkPad | 11 Comments

SC-8820 Gripes

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Michal Necasek

After a long while, I dusted off my Roland SC-8820 sound module which I bought used about 10 years ago. The goal was to drive it from an older PC via MIDI. This turned out to be a lot harder than … Continue reading →

Posted in MIDI, Roland, Sound | 12 Comments