Category Archives: Wave Blaster

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

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

E-mu SoundEngine

Posted on September 5, 2016 by Michal Necasek

An interesting piece of hardware popped up at the OS/2 Museum not long ago. It’s an E-mu SoundEngine General MIDI sound module from 1993. This module has very close ties to the original Creative Wave Blaster upgrade module, even though that’s not … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Labs, E-mu, MIDI, Sound, Wave Blaster | 13 Comments

The Wave Blaster II Does Talk!

Posted on May 8, 2016 by Michal Necasek

As previously mentioned, the Wave Blaster II (aka WB2) documentation makes no mention of possible bidirectional MIDI communication. But while trying the Wave Blaster II control panel with various host cards out of desperation, an interesting thing happened: When attempting … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Labs, Wave Blaster | 15 Comments

Deeper Into Wave Blaster

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Michal Necasek

I have continued to dig into the mysteries of Wave Blaster (WB) connectors, daughterboards, and DB-50XG MIDI. To recap, the objective is to find how to convince a Yamaha DB-50XG to send MIDI data, if at all possible. A closer … Continue reading →

Posted in MIDI, Wave Blaster, Yamaha | 6 Comments

Can a DB-50XG Talk?

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Michal Necasek

I seem to have embarked on another crazy research project. It was spurred by a broken Yamaha DB-50XG wavetable daughterboard. The DB-50XG was a bit dirty but not obviously damaged. It produces no output but gets warm exactly like a … Continue reading →

Posted in Sound, Wave Blaster, Yamaha | 1 Comment