LGR Oddware - Digispeech Plus: Sound Blaster Over Parallel
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
Siana
Under real mode DOS you can just trap and redirect IO writes, which is what this driver does. Well it does more than that, but that's the main thing without which the whole SB emulation cannot even be attempted. Under protected mode of the CPU such as with DOS Extenders, it's. not really possible. You'd need to reverse engineer each group of games using a particular audio driver one group at a time (luckily hopefully not each game separately, though some will for sure prove unique) to hotpatch the support for the device in.
ISA devices of course can implement compatibility directly in hardware. PCI devices may not, but they can include some helper hardware to help the emulation driver function under protected mode. But for this, but also AC97 USB etc, well there isn't such trapping hardware around.
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Under real mode DOS you can just trap and redirect IO writes, which is what this driver does. Well it does more than that, but that's the main thing without which the whole SB emulation cannot even be attempted. Under protected mode of the CPU such as with DOS Extenders, it's. not really possible. You'd need to reverse engineer each group of games using a particular audio driver one group at a time (luckily hopefully not each game separately, though some will for sure prove unique) to hotpatch the support for the device in.
ISA devices of course can implement compatibility directly in hardware. PCI devices may not, but they can include some helper hardware to help the emulation driver function under protected mode. But for this, but also AC97 USB etc, well there isn't such trapping hardware around.
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druidhills2005
How cool! I haven-t seen one of these in years!
I grew up attending a two different elementary schools in the DeKalb County School District, DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. The elementary schools had them attached to what I recall was IBM PS/2 Model 25 computers. The school system used Web-Cat computer program that tested different subjects like reading comprehension, Math and social studies. For students who had a heard time reading or couldn-t read on screen print (Kindergarten through second or third grades) the Didgispeech plus was used to read aloud the instructions and other on screen font displayed on the Web-cat program. Of course headphones were provided to students so we would not disrupt others in the class working in the computer labs on other computers.
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How cool! I haven-t seen one of these in years!
I grew up attending a two different elementary schools in the DeKalb County School District, DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. The elementary schools had them attached to what I recall was IBM PS/2 Model 25 computers. The school system used Web-Cat computer program that tested different subjects like reading comprehension, Math and social studies. For students who had a heard time reading or couldn-t read on screen print (Kindergarten through second or third grades) the Didgispeech plus was used to read aloud the instructions and other on screen font displayed on the Web-cat program. Of course headphones were provided to students so we would not disrupt others in the class working in the computer labs on other computers.
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KINGBOOBUSTUBER
I had the DSP Plus way back but with no driver disk for years, I remember getting it from my aunt who worked for the school district. LOL I remember using it with a 9v battery snap-type battery clip to dc plug I mocked together as a portable speaker hooked up to the the Line In port with my Sony DISCMAN. I eventually became intrigued enough and searched around, and found the dgsetup online one day. I was happy to get it to work with a few games and 3. 1 but very quickly removed it and its definitely sitting 20ft underground somewhere. RIP DSP!
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I had the DSP Plus way back but with no driver disk for years, I remember getting it from my aunt who worked for the school district. LOL I remember using it with a 9v battery snap-type battery clip to dc plug I mocked together as a portable speaker hooked up to the the Line In port with my Sony DISCMAN. I eventually became intrigued enough and searched around, and found the dgsetup online one day. I was happy to get it to work with a few games and 3. 1 but very quickly removed it and its definitely sitting 20ft underground somewhere. RIP DSP!
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MonochromeWench
I really wouldn't call sound blaster emulation in software t that doesn't work with protected mode software as actually being sound blaster compatible. The requirement of a 386 for sb indicates it needs to use virtual x86 mode to emulate the sb hardware maybe the device contains some hardware to make it eaier to emulate but no mixing of the opl and pcm sfx really suggests they were trying to avoid too much cpu usage in the emulation so didn't implement a software mixer except in windows with reduced sound quality
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I really wouldn't call sound blaster emulation in software t that doesn't work with protected mode software as actually being sound blaster compatible. The requirement of a 386 for sb indicates it needs to use virtual x86 mode to emulate the sb hardware maybe the device contains some hardware to make it eaier to emulate but no mixing of the opl and pcm sfx really suggests they were trying to avoid too much cpu usage in the emulation so didn't implement a software mixer except in windows with reduced sound quality
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TonyZi
Are you ever going to make a video about virtual guitar / vpick games made before Guitar Hero? There was all sorts of stuff. Quest for Fame game, Aerosmith Nine Lives CD-album and there was all sorts of equipment if you could get them somewhere. Quest for Fame Worked ok with Win3. 1 and W95 if you were able to install quicktime runtimes and such. Would make a nice video if you can get around the copyright on famous songs.
EDIT: Forgot to mention; they are all parallel devices; D
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Are you ever going to make a video about virtual guitar / vpick games made before Guitar Hero? There was all sorts of stuff. Quest for Fame game, Aerosmith Nine Lives CD-album and there was all sorts of equipment if you could get them somewhere. Quest for Fame Worked ok with Win3. 1 and W95 if you were able to install quicktime runtimes and such. Would make a nice video if you can get around the copyright on famous songs.
EDIT: Forgot to mention; they are all parallel devices; D
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CHRISMENENDEZ
I never knew you could have which is basically a sound card integrated into an speaker and just connect it to the PC via just a cable and, as you put it, let it speak for itself. Sure, USB sound chips are a thing now (and even those don't have an speaker built-in AFAIK, but this thing existed way before any of that. Too bad many great things were invented prematurely and are now lost to history, but at least they paved the way for the future.
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I never knew you could have which is basically a sound card integrated into an speaker and just connect it to the PC via just a cable and, as you put it, let it speak for itself. Sure, USB sound chips are a thing now (and even those don't have an speaker built-in AFAIK, but this thing existed way before any of that. Too bad many great things were invented prematurely and are now lost to history, but at least they paved the way for the future.
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Tyler
Me: -turns on computer-
Computer: -quickly starts up-
Me: -cracks knuckles- Time to play. -opens Steam and clicks play on the aforementioned game-
Computer: -taking forever to load AAA game-
Me: HURRY UP, YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF F---ING S---!
Computer: E-MERGENCY OVER-CLOCK MODE ACTI-VATED -hurrys the f--- up and finishes loading the game-
Me: Yay! :D
-It's ARK, in case you're curious.
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Me: -turns on computer-
Computer: -quickly starts up-
Me: -cracks knuckles- Time to play. -opens Steam and clicks play on the aforementioned game-
Computer: -taking forever to load AAA game-
Me: HURRY UP, YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF F---ING S---!
Computer: E-MERGENCY OVER-CLOCK MODE ACTI-VATED -hurrys the f--- up and finishes loading the game-
Me: Yay! :D
-It's ARK, in case you're curious.
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Dave
Back when I worked for Creative Labs in the 90s, we had a prototype of the -Port Blaster-, a sound card for the parallel port designed for use in Laptops that back in those days didn't have integrated sound. They were almost ready to release when they made an embarrassing discovery: many laptop parallel ports didn't provide power. The whole project was scrapped.
Bet someone lost their job over that!
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Back when I worked for Creative Labs in the 90s, we had a prototype of the -Port Blaster-, a sound card for the parallel port designed for use in Laptops that back in those days didn't have integrated sound. They were almost ready to release when they made an embarrassing discovery: many laptop parallel ports didn't provide power. The whole project was scrapped.
Bet someone lost their job over that!
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imark7777777
It fascinates me with all of the functionality that can be achieved over the parallel port I originally thought only printers and then I found out scanners and then zip drives and LapLink interface. and it boggles the mind to think that networking and sound was able to be interfaced over that. Now if I could only get my hands on a parallel port network adapter that's not ridiculously expensive.
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It fascinates me with all of the functionality that can be achieved over the parallel port I originally thought only printers and then I found out scanners and then zip drives and LapLink interface. and it boggles the mind to think that networking and sound was able to be interfaced over that. Now if I could only get my hands on a parallel port network adapter that's not ridiculously expensive.
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eDoc2020
Doesn't Windows 98 have some built-in Sound Blaster emulation for DOS windows? Combine that with the ability for Win9x to use Win16 drivers and you might just be able to play Duke3d with this. Of course there's probably something I'm missing preventing that from working. If somebody's written a Linux driver then you could get Duke3d working via dosemu (except I'm not sure dosemu does sound at all.
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Doesn't Windows 98 have some built-in Sound Blaster emulation for DOS windows? Combine that with the ability for Win9x to use Win16 drivers and you might just be able to play Duke3d with this. Of course there's probably something I'm missing preventing that from working. If somebody's written a Linux driver then you could get Duke3d working via dosemu (except I'm not sure dosemu does sound at all.
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