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What is this soundcard?


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I've had this soundcard installed in my Gateway 2000 for awhile just for the CD-ROM ports and using an AdLib for sound. I was wondering if any of you know what it is and where I could get drivers for it (DOS/Win3.1). I'm guessing it is a clone of something but I'm not sure what.

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Reveal SC500 (R3)

 

https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/sound-cards-multimedia/REVEAL-COMPUTER-PRODUCTS-Sound-card-SC500.html

 

digging lands these win95 drivers for the v3 card (which that seems to be)

http://files.mpoli.fi/hardware/SOUND/OTHER/SC50R395.ZIP

 

It is based on crystal labs chipset-- (CS4232 = Controller+Codec 16-Bit 48KHz, PnP, SB/SBPro/WSS/MPU-401 compatible, IDE.)

 

Vogons lists this as a suitable driver package for that chipset...

http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=925&menustate=46,38

 

 

It is essentially an SBPRO/WSS clone with IDE (+sony, Mitsumi, Panasonic) CDROM interfaces.

 

apparently functionally identical to Crystal Acer S23 soundcard, according to the drivers in that package??

 

Give it a shot, and see how it works.

 

 

Edited by wierd_w
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Since there does not seem to be an OPL synth on your board, yeah. Magic S23A clone, with pirate Roland patches?

 

Deffo more interesting than just your standard issue SBPro + IDE clone.

 

You might get angry at it though, since you have a real soundcanvas. The real deal will surely sound better than a compressed pirate rip.

Edited by wierd_w
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7 hours ago, wierd_w said:

Unisound apparently also supports that chipset.

 

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=72553

 

I can confirm that. I have a board with the same Crystal chipset. A bit crappy sounding in some games like Wolfenstein 3D and Tyrian, but really good sounding in others like Doom and ROTT. It's a mixed bag with the Crystal chips and DOS compatibility in my personal experience, but it is not a bad card overall.

 

Unisound is such a great tool BTW. Makes it easy to quickly test lots of different sound cards in DOS without installing any drivers.

 

 

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3 hours ago, wierd_w said:

Since there does not seem to be an OPL synth on your board, yeah. Magic S23A clone, with pirate Roland patches?

 

Deffo more interesting than just your standard issue SBPro + IDE clone.

 

You might get angry at it though, since you have a real soundcanvas. The real deal will surely sound better than a compressed pirate rip.

Oh... it's just emulation of the SB Pro digital audio and not the synth?

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That particular crystal chipset lacks built-in opl synth. Presumably this could have been desirable, as a yamaha chip could be paired.  In this case, a crystal synth was paired.

 

When adlib or OPL is rendered, it is sent to the synthesis chip as general midi. This would be hit and miss, as the actual yamaha chips could do interesting things when given special parameters. This solution would not be fully adlib compatible due to not having an opl synth.

 

Most games did not try to do stuff like that in the SB era though.

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10 hours ago, eightbit said:

 

I can confirm that. I have a board with the same Crystal chipset. A bit crappy sounding in some games like Wolfenstein 3D and Tyrian, but really good sounding in others like Doom and ROTT. It's a mixed bag with the Crystal chips and DOS compatibility in my personal experience, but it is not a bad card overall.

 

Unisound is such a great tool BTW. Makes it easy to quickly test lots of different sound cards in DOS without installing any drivers.

 

 

I guess I'll leave the Adlib in there then, I must have great sound in Wolfenstein 3D!

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Interesting... dont have an answer.

 

Try some other titles?

 

(Well, not really an actual answer but... the original soundblaster had some 'feed it raw data and it does stuff' operation modes that became legacy in later models that included an actual DSP that did actual sound data processing. Crystals chips did not properly respond to being fed raw PCM like that, IIRC, and instead did DSP stuff only. This is one of the ways the clone boards were spotty on dos support.)

Edited by wierd_w
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1 minute ago, wierd_w said:

Here is an old tripod hosted writeup from yesteryear that describes the direct dac mode Soundblasters can use, (and that not all clones support)

 

 https://lateblt.tripod.com/directsb.htm

 

Some old dos games use that direct dac mode. They probably wont work on your reveal clone.

Ah! Ok, I'll try some more games. It'll probably work with Windows 3.1, right? I guess the Soundblaster 1.5 driver.

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