Hello, welcome back to the 8-Bit Guy. So,
in a previous episode, I covered this little guy here, which is a clone of the Covox Speech
Thing. And I was pretty excited about this because it finally allowed me to be able to
use my 486 laptop, which is my favorite DOS gaming laptop, and actually get some kind
of sound other than the PC speaker sound. Now, you know, it doesn’t work with all
games. But it works with quite a few, whether I’m using the covox or the Tandy emulator.
But, shortly after I did the episode on this, the same guy that created this, sent me an
email and asked me, says “Hey David, what would you think if I could put an Adlib on
a similar type parallel card?” And I said, “Well, you know, that’s pretty cool. Actually,
I have no doubt you could put the Yamaha YM3812 chip on a card like this.” But, I had serious
doubts whether or not you’d be able to get it to work with existing DOS games. Well,
I recently received this in the mail. Now, he claims he’s done it and so what I’m
going to be doing is I’m going to assemble this card and I’m going to hook it up to
my favorite 486 here and we’re going to find out “does it work?” Let’s get started!
All right, so let’s see what’s in the kit. There’s quite a few little parts, but
it doesn’t look too daunting. Here’s the actual circuit board. And this, of course,
is the main component, the Yamaha YM3812. It’s hard to believe you can still buy these
chips brand new. I’m not sure what they are used for these days. But this is identical
to the one made back in the 1980s. You could put this chip in an original ad-lib card,
or one of these old Yamaha keyboards and it would work just fine. I’m going to go ahead
and assemble this, if you don’t want to watch the assembly, just skip forward to about
8 minutes 30 seconds. He sent me these documents. He said he was working on some better assembly
instructions for future customers, but I actually received one of the first prototypes, so this
is what I get to work with. However, it isn’t that hard to figure out. These are all capacitors
because they start with C. J usually means some kind of jumper, and R is for resistor,
and so on. So the way we do this is look at this diagram and pick a part. This one, for
example, shows to be C3, and we can see over here on the bill of materials that C3 is this
part here. I’m going to start with this socket. I like to start with the shortest
components first, for various reasons. What you need to make sure on these sockets is
that you find the little notch and line it up with the notch that is etched onto the
board. Another thing I do is solder two opposite pins of the socket in place first. That way
I can turn it around and double check that it is completely flush with the board and
also double check the notch is lined up one more time before soldering the rest of the
pins. I guess I can take this opportunity to mention something. Every time I do a soldering
episode, I get a a few criticisms from people on my soldering technique. Everything from
the temperature of my soldering iron, to the fact that I let the solder touch the tip of
the iron, and even people complain of the way us Texans actually pronounce the word
solder, because we leave the L silent. So I can just say right now that I’ve never
claimed to be an expert at this. I never had anyone teach me to solder. I had to learn
how to do all of this when I was about 12 years old, and so much like my programming
techniques and my musical skills, they’re all self-taught. I do what works best for
me. I make no claim in my videos that it’s the right version or the best way to do stuff,
so that’s my disclaimer. Apparently my camera wasn’t running when I soldered this USB
power port, but it was probably the toughest piece on the board because the little pins
are so small. Moving along, I’m going to do this crystal next. There is no specific
orientation for this. It fits in there nice and flush. I’ll bend the pins out a little
to hold it in place while I solder. And there we have it. All that is left is to cut the
excess leads off with some wire cutters. The next part I will install is this little 14
pin IC. There’s no socket for this one. But you still need to be sure to line up the
notch on the chip so you know it is in the correct direction. One other problem you might
notice is that the legs are just a bit too wide to get it to fit down in the board. So,
one trick I usually do is press the chip up against the workbench surface until they bend
inwards just slightly. I do this on both sides. Now it will be much easier to fit it in there.
There we go, just need to solder all of those legs. So if you are wondering why I do the
shorter components first, the main reason has to do with making it easier to solder.
Because, when I turn the board upside down I want the part to stay in place, but if there
were taller objects on there already, then parts would fall out unless you held them
in place somehow. Next up is the reset switch. It apparently needs this because the synthesizer
chip is powered externally. So if you turn off the computer in the middle of game, the
notes will just hang rather than shut off. So you can just press this button to reset
the chip. Now, you might be thinking the orientation of this button would be confusing because
the pins look like a square arrangement. However, they are just slightly rectangular, so there
is no way to put this in the wrong direction. However. It does require some force to snap
it down in there. Next, I’m going to do these little resistor packs. These do have
a specific direction they go in, so you have to pay attention to this little dot that represents
pin 1. Then, on the board pin one is the one that has the square etched around it. So the
first one goes here, and the other resistor pack goes over here. And next up, I’ll be
putting in the headphone or line output jack. My understanding is it is amplified enough
to work for either one. And it goes right here on the board. OK, I’ll solder that
in now. All right, I’m going to do the resistors next. Now, fortunately, he has labelled these
with their values, which is really nice for me since I have problems reading the color
codes on these. So fortunately I don’t have to get the meter out to read these. However,
these do mount in a very unusual way. They’re meant to be vertically mounted. Let me pull
these end pieces off here and I’ll show you what I mean by that. OK, so you need to
bend these things all the way around 180 degrees. Like this. Then you need to slide it down
in the holes like so. This is done to help make the board more compact. It solders in
just like any other resistor, though. And that’s what a vertical resistor looks like,
and that’s pretty much how all of the resistors are going to be mounted on this board. In
fact, here you can see where I have finished mounting all of the resistors. Next up are
these disc capacitors. The print is too small for my eyes, so I have to use a magnifying
glass to see which values they are. These just slide in, like so. They are not polarity
sensitive so they can go in either direction. There is one jumper on the board. I think
this is for a bass boost option or something. Anyway, it mounts right here like so. There
are quite a few electrolytic capacitors, and these do have a very specific polarity. You
see the little white stripe there. That indicates the negative side. That needs to line up with
the thicker part of the circle. Also you might notice that the shorter lead is also the negative.
And when you’re done with all of the capacitors, it should look like this. Next I’ll put
in this LED. Now, you might be asking how you can tell which direction it goes? Well,
one of the leads is longer than the other. That is the positive lead, and the shorter
is the negative. Much like the capacitors we just did. OK, so this is the last big component
that I need to solder. It’s just a matter of lining it up popping it down in there.
I should mention that these larger end pieces don’t actually conduct any signal, but they
are used to carry the physical stress of the connector, specifically when pushing in or
pulling out a parallel cable. So you need a big ole’ blob of solder on these for structural
purposes. And there you have it. Next I’m going to insert these two chips, starting
with the small one, paying close attention to the orientation. And, of course, here comes
the YM3812, the main attraction in this build. And there you go. You might think we’re
done, but there’s actually one more part. And this is the only part I’m not fond of.
And the reason I’m not fond of it is due to how it goes on here. You can see right
here, that’s where it goes. What you have to do is bend these pins out 90 degrees, like
so. And then it goes in like this, and yeah, it just hangs off the side like that. OK,
time to test this thing out. I’ll use my favorite 486 laptop, who’s only downside
is a lack of a sound card. For power, I’ll use this standard USB cable and an iPhone
charger. Rather than plugging in speakers, I’m going to connect it to this USB audio
recorder so we can a clear recording of what comes out of this thing. All right, let’s
see what happens. A test program is included that makes it really simple to tell if the
board is working or not, it’s called OPL2TEST. Woo Hoo! So it looks like my board is working.
Before we go any further, I need to explain a few things about the design, and let’s
start with some terminology. This product is called the OPL2LPT, and I should probably
explain why. The OPL2 refers to the type of sound chip, and the LPT is an old MS-DOS term
and it refers to Local Print Terminal, or basically a parallel port. Now, let’s demystify
the terminology on the sound chip. The Yamaha YM3812 is an FM synthesizer chip, but it was
also nicknamed the OPL2, which stands for FM Operator Type L, version 2. It was used
in famous sound cards starting with the Ad-Lib and eventually in other cards like the Sound
Blaster and Pro Audio Spectrum. Later on, Yamaha came out with the YMF262 which is a
backwards compatible chip, but offering more voices and waveforms than the earlier design.
This was nicknamed the OPL3 and it was used in cards like the Sound Blaster 16, Pro Audio
Spectrum 16, and clones such as the ESS audio drive or Crystal Audio. And even though both
chips are technically Ad-Lib compatible, the vast majority of DOS games only made use of
the original OPL2 chip. And this is the chip that is featured in the product I’m about
to demonstrate. First of all, there are literally zero MS-DOS games that will work with this
natively. The Ad-lib card was always expected to be found on the computer’s main bus at
port 388. But the parallel port is expected to be found at port 378. So how do we correct
for this? Well, there are a few different ways to make this work. At the moment, the
most practical way is by using the driver that is included. You’ll need to start up
before you play your game. What it will do is intercept all of the attempted writes to
port 388 and redirect them to port 378 instead. So, that’s what I’m going to try first.
The first thing I’ll need to do is start up the driver. You can add this to your autoexec
if you don’t want type it in every time. OK, that’s started. Now, I’m going to
load one of my favorite DOS games that has really good music. All right! This is freakin’
amazing! I’ve never heard music like this come out of my 486 laptop. And this sounds
absolutely perfect. This is not an emulation, rather it’s the real thing. You know, I
might sound a bit like a heretic when I say this, but I actually prefer the Ad-Lib music
on Lemmings over the Amiga version. I’ve spent plenty of my life playing both versions,
and both are absolutely great. . But I think the Ad-Lib with it’s extra voices really
makes this musical score shine. With the Amiga having only 4 voices, one of them being needed
for sound effects, left this music being essentially 3 voices. The Ad-Lib really pulls this off
well! Although, admittedly the sound effects on the Amiga were much better. I really loved
the sound of the lemmings when they fell to their death on the Amiga version. Here on
the Ad-lib version they just make a little splatting sound. OK, so onto another game.
Atomino is one of those games that I absolutely love and I’ve spent a lot of time playing
the Amiga, DOS, and Commodore 64 versions. Yet, when I ask other people about the game
most people have never heard of it. But one thing all 3 versions have in common is they
have excellent musical scores that are really well tailored to the hardware. Anyway, let’s
try one more people will be familiar with. Oh man. I love the music in this game. And
this is another where I think the Ad-lib version actually sounds really nice, possibly better
than all of the other sound cards. I’ll have to duck the tomatoes when I say I actually
prefer it over the MT-32 version. Now, one thing I should mention is that Ultima 6 only
plays music through the Ad-Lib. The sound effects always come from the PC-Speaker, which
I’ve dubbed in here. Let’s try another game. This one is not heavy on music, but
does use the Ad-Lib for sound effects. And it seems to sound fine as well. Let me try
shooting something so we can hear some more sounds. OK, let’s move along to something
with more music in it. Sierra was one of the first companies to really help push the Ad-Lib
card into popularity by vowing to support it on all of their games. And they did a pretty
good job of utilizing it too. OK, so far just about every 1980s game I have thrown at this
thing works fine. So here’s a thought. It’s not very well known, but the Ad-Lib card is
actually capable of doing digital samples, it just wasn’t used very much because it
doesn’t have any sort of DMA so the CPU has to do all of the work, much like doing
samples on the PC Speaker. So, I thought maybe we should try a few games that actually do
use digital samples on the Ad-Lib. I’ll start with this one! And, to my surprise,
it works perfectly. This game has no music in it to my knowledge. Only sound effects.
Let’s try another game that uses both digital music and sound effects, Pinball Fantasies.
And, it also seems to be working perfectly. It sounds a heck of a lot better than the
PC-Speaker version. Ok, so this little guy, along with the driver,
worked with practically every game from the 1980s that I tried to throw at it. There were
a few problems, though. There were a few games, such as Tetris Classic that behaved strangely.
Technically, the sound worked, but for some reason it plays slowly. I mean, the tempo
is just dragging here for some reason. The music should be playing about 50% faster than
this. However, all of the sound effects are timed perfectly, so I have no idea what’s
causing this. So now let me give you the really bad news. So, the driver does require a 386
processor. So, you can’t use it with a 286 or an XT of any sort. And, this is due to
some special features of the 386 processor which allows it to essentially do some virtualization
where it can intercept all of the calls being made to port 388 and redirect them. Also,
as a result of this, any games that require 386 enhanced mode to operate will not work
with this driver. So, many of the games that were made during the 1990s that require a
more high-end DOS machine flat out aren’t going to work with this thing. However, not
all hope is lost. There are still some possible ways to make it work. And that’s by patching
the game. If you were to find the parts of the machine code that actually write to port
388 and actually change it to 378 instead, the game would not need a driver and would
just natively write to port 378 on its own. Let me demonstrate this with the game Heretic.
So, you just run this ADPATCH program. So, it looks like I need to add in a -I and the
name of the executable. So let’s try that. OK, it says it is patching the game. Well
let’s see if it works. Keep in mind this game would not work with the driver, and there
is no driver currently loaded. And it does appear to be working! Now, unfortunately,
this game does not support sound effects on the Ad-Lib, it requires a sound-blaster for
that. But you can at least get the music, which is more than I was able to get before.
The patch program is in an experimental stage right now and they’re still working on improving
it, so I imagine as time goes on it will support more and more games. In fact, Heretic wasn’t
even on the list of games that they had confirmed that it works with, but it still worked. I
suspect they just hadn’t tried that game yet. Of course, there is another way to get
this to work with more games, and that would be to encourage developers who are still making
DOS games today to actually add native support for the device right into the code on purpose.
One example is a CGA game that’s in development right now that supports it. It’s called
Castle Viana and it’s in an early stage of development but the author has pledged
to support this device. And myself, I’m planning on doing a port of my Planet X2 to
MS-DOS, I’m actually already working on that right now, and I plan to support this
device natively in my code as well. One other thing I wanted to mention about this board
is you can actually run it off of any 5 volt power source you want. In fact, he’s even
put these two little special solder pads right here on the board so you could solder it up
any kind of power source you have in mind. You could even theoretically use the PS/2
port on your laptop computer for example, if you didn’t want to use an external power
supply. All right, so you may be wondering where you can get one of these magical devices.
Well, if you happen to live in Europe, then you probably should buy from Serdashop.com
and I’ll put a link down in the description field for you. If you live in North America,
then good news, I have them available in my web store. I bought 40 of these from Serge
and they are for sale right now both in kit form and I’ve been soldering together some
pre-assembled units for those people who don’t feel like soldering their own kits together.
So you can buy it either as a kit or fully assembled. Anyway, I don’t know if 40 will
be enough, I might sell out tonight, but if I do, don’t worry I’ll get more. This
is a product that I’m going to be carrying from now on in my web store, at least until
the new version comes out. Speaking of the new version, Serge has been working on a newer
version of this that uses the OPL3 chip. And while not many games actually benefit from
this version of the chip, the main advantage is that it is surface mount and these can
be assembled by machine, which would reduce the cost and and time of manufacture. All
of the OPL2 versions were either assembled by hand or sold as kits like the one I got.
No word yet on when that one will be available, other than probably the first half of 2018.
So if you really want one of these right now, you might as well get the OPL2 version. Well,
I guess that about wraps it up for this episode. So, thanks for watching and stick around until
the next one, and I’ll see you then!
Who remembers the covox speech thing, which you could make with a parallel plug and some resisters.
Speech Thing
OK this is pretty cool, I would have loved to have this product back in the 90's.
You could use this with any computer with a parallel port, right?
This could be great for emulators of systems that used that chip or to add to systems that had no sound or not as good sound.
I wonder if there's anyway to use this on modern machines?
I wonder how exactly talking to the chip works—the Ad Lib card has two ports (one to select a register number, one to read/write data) but a parallel port only provides for a single port to transfer or read an 8 bit datum. How are the two ports mapped onto one in a way video games can deal with easily?
Very cool and seems such a simple idea. Has anyone come up with this same idea before?
i'm gonna throw my gripes about this here: what's with the mini-B for power? and the volume pot mounting is lame/chintzy. this board/kit should've had another revision in the last 12 months.
pulling power from the parallel port and/or serial port would be better. and a vertical mount for the volume control (preferably nearer to the stiffer port connection) would be an advantage/benefit.
[these are my concerns. please don't consider up/downvoting this. nobody else, so far, has expressed the failings of this device.. other than in the video considering the volume pot.]