EverythingIBM
Experienced Member
So on the quest to buy an MCA sound card, I thought it would be cool to brainstorm a few ideas on building an MCA sound card from scratch.
My method for getting an interface would be to take an existing MCA card, desolder all of the components (or remove the majority of the card leaving only the connector edge), and then taking some wires to bring out those connections.
Then the circuitry can be made on a breadboard separately and wired up to the MCA connector as needed.
The two ESS chipsets that I was able to find used by the chipchat and soundpiper are as follows:
Now, these are just audiodrives, so, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of crossovers between the different models. There is also ES1868F (and probably a handful of others-- I happen to own a few ESS audiodrive cards. I like them for their OPL3 implementation called "ESFM", which offers a cool spin on OPL3's waveform generation).
There also happens to be chipsets from Crystal Semiconductor, such as the CS4236B (which is my favourite because it has the best of the best). This is basically the same as the audiodrive, but with Crystal stuff, such as Crystal FM synthesis instead of ESFM.
So basically with the audiodrive option (or possibly crystal), we'd be looking at mounting an audiodrive chip to an MCA interface-- along with audio jacks and an amplifier section with decoupling capacitors. Implementing serial for a gameport would require more work of course.
--> Another way around this would be to wire up an existing ISA soundcard to an MCA connector-- if that's possible.
Let me know if anyone has some feedback and/or tips.
My method for getting an interface would be to take an existing MCA card, desolder all of the components (or remove the majority of the card leaving only the connector edge), and then taking some wires to bring out those connections.
Then the circuitry can be made on a breadboard separately and wired up to the MCA connector as needed.
As NJRoadfan suggested, using a standard chipset (that many of the other cards that do) and then pointing it to a standard address. I'm assuming that would be done in a modified ADF file? This is probably going to the trickiest part.
The two ESS chipsets that I was able to find used by the chipchat and soundpiper are as follows:
- Chipchat uses: ES1688F
- SoundPiper uses: ES688F
Now, these are just audiodrives, so, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of crossovers between the different models. There is also ES1868F (and probably a handful of others-- I happen to own a few ESS audiodrive cards. I like them for their OPL3 implementation called "ESFM", which offers a cool spin on OPL3's waveform generation).
There also happens to be chipsets from Crystal Semiconductor, such as the CS4236B (which is my favourite because it has the best of the best). This is basically the same as the audiodrive, but with Crystal stuff, such as Crystal FM synthesis instead of ESFM.
So basically with the audiodrive option (or possibly crystal), we'd be looking at mounting an audiodrive chip to an MCA interface-- along with audio jacks and an amplifier section with decoupling capacitors. Implementing serial for a gameport would require more work of course.
--> Another way around this would be to wire up an existing ISA soundcard to an MCA connector-- if that's possible.
Let me know if anyone has some feedback and/or tips.