Uncreative Labs

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I bought this one on Ebay. I think the seller is in New York. I wasn't able to find anything in China this time.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Ugh, I've been having quite a time with sellers on Taobao lately. They're pretty lazy and always forget to remove their damn listings when they sell something. The last three times I wanted to buy some neat vintage hardware, I ran into this problem and ended up getting really disappointed. Finding cheap vintage PC parts has been pretty slow lately, so I always get myself worked up when I find something I want. It happened with:

1. Creative Video Blaster
2. Intel 8087 -1
3. ARK1000 VLB card

But, I was finally rewarded today with a nice SB16 and a Wave Blaster II MPU 401 expansion. It seems the Chinese really liked their midi. There are lots of MPU 401 daughterboards floating around here. I already have a Wave Blaster I installed in my 386, but the sound is hardly a step up from FM midi. These Wave Blaster IIs are supposed to sound the same as AWE32s with 2MB bank. I'm pretty happy about this latest addition, because it allows me to upgrade all of my vintage machines.

1. 386 goes from SB16 + WB I to SB16 + WB II
2. IBM AT goes from SB Pro 2.0 to SB 16 + WB I
3. IBM XT goes from SB 2.0 to SB Pro 2.0
4. IBM PC goes from PC Speaker to SB 2.0

So it seems that now all of my systems are happy. It'll be nice to see the 5150 again. I don't think it's seen daylight for five years. I'm really looking forward to playing with my pile of treasure when I go back to the US in a few weeks. It seems I have a lot of work to do during my one month vacation...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

You need a gravis ultrasound in there somewhere.

Have you ever tried a Yamaha dxb50 wavetable addon for the SB16?

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I've considered Gravis boards, but there is usually competitive bidding on those cards since they are "collectable". It's one of those things that I'd like to own, but not something I'd buy unless it was offered very cheaply...and, I think at the moment I'd rather have a Roland MT-32, CMS card (or chips), or an Adlib Gold. What is it able the Ultrasound boards that make them so popular anyway?

I haven't tried a DB50XG yet, but I do have a DB60XG, which is supposed to be an improved version. I haven't had a chance to test it, but if it works it will likely go on my AWE32.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

Dang it, before i left on vacation, i saw 2 garvis ultrasound, (i think) at work, there probly gone by now since my boss was talking to someone about an old 286 and wanting to know if it still can be fixed. Were i work, we have over 20 boxes of unused, brand new sb64!

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

AWE64s are pretty nice, but having the Gold model is much better. The regular AWE64 in many ways is a step down from an AWE32 except for harmonic distortion. It's too bad those asswipes at Creative had to make the memory connector proprietary. Some third parties made SIMM adapters, but they weren't that common.

Do the PNP versions of the Ultrasound work well in DOS?

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Most of the PC demo scene used the gravis ultrasound for their demos. The MIDI sounded better then what was available from creative labs.

I also used a ensoniq soundscape back then for midi, it sounded nice as well and was supported in many games.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Anonymous Coward wrote:

AWE64s are pretty nice, but having the Gold model is much better. The regular AWE64 in many ways is a step down from an AWE32 except for harmonic distortion. It's too bad those asswipes at Creative had to make the memory connector proprietary. Some third parties made SIMM adapters, but they weren't that common.

Do the PNP versions of the Ultrasound work well in DOS?

I would have to look at the manual. I have a PnP GuS with 8MB of RAM (it uses an AMD chipset to reproduce the GuS sound), and a GuS Max with 1MB of RAM.

I have a couple AWE32's with 8MB of RAM, they are ok but I like the SB16 + Waveblaster type add-ons better.

Honestly for real old games a SBPro 2.0 is great.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I've had an SB Pro 2.0 for years, but it wasn't until recently that I put it into a system. For the longest time I mistakenly believed it was an SB16. I only tested it to see if it was working. Is it that much better than a regular SB 2.0? I had an SB2.0 in my first PC, and I thought it was great in all of its snap-crackle n popping glory. When I decided to install a 2X CD-ROM drive, I bought one of those rip off unCreativelabs kits and upgraded to SB16. The SB 2.0 to SB16 upgrade was pretty underwhelming. The popping was a little less obvious, but I could never tell the difference otherwise..then again I am a little deaf. So what are some noticble differences between SB 2.0 and SB Pro 2.0 in terms of sound capabilities?

That Creative Labs CD-ROM kit still annoys me to this day. They made it look like such a good deal. Supposedly it came with all this "great" software, and they put it in a really enormous box to put emphasis on that. The box was mostly air, and the only games I got were Lemmings and Indycar racing....on floppy disks. I could never get Indycar racing going with the soundcard, and Lemmings didn't make use of the SB16 (just SB 2.0). It's pretty stupid to sell a multi-media kit and include software that doesn't even take advantage of it. The windows 3.1 software was equally bad. I think the highlight must have been the "mosaic" game (which I already had with my SB 2.0 anyway). After spending all my money on that worthless "kit", I didn't have any left to buy actual CD-ROM software. I didn't get CD-ROM games until 4X drives were common, and by that time they ran like crap on my system anyway. To make the situation even more enjoyable, my friend bought an almost identical kit a few months after me which included a superior 2X drive, and Syndicate Plus. Talk about a big kick in the cajones.

I'm really surprised that I still like unCreative Labs after that experience. I think if I had to do it all over again I would have started out with SB Pro, and added a SCSI 2x drive on an 8-bit controller later. Too bad there was no SCSI SB Pro.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

This site has some decent information on the soundcards:

http://www.crossfire-designs.de/index.php?lang=en&what=articles&name=showarticle.htm&article=soundcards&page=8

Mostly the Sbpro 2.0 was supported in most of the early games directly, had 16 bit sound (only 22khz) and stereo. Every soundcard made by creative after the Pro 2.0 is only soundblaster compatible and will play SB pro 2.0 games in mono (a bug hence sb only compatability). Without the stereo sound games like wolfenstein lose their ability to let you know which side the enemy is shooting you from.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Hmmm are you certain that SB pro can do 16-bit 22KHz? I was always pretty certain it could just do 8-bit 22KHz stereo. This is a debate that goes all the way back to the early 90s. I remember doing quite some research on the SB Pro, and found overwhelming evidence that it was indeed an 8-bit card. I think the confusion comes from the fact that it can do two 8-bit channels, but as we all know that does not equal 16-bit sound. Perhaps there is a way to get it to do 16-bit mono?

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

The pro 2.0 is an opl3 based card, and that should be 16bit I think.

Either way it was probably the most supprted card of its time in games, which is the reason you would want to use it anyway.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Yes, you are correct. It does use OPL3. Supposedly the older Pros used dual OPL2s (I wouldn't mind having one of those). But, I thnk the OPL chips just handle the FM midi. I don't believe they do digitised sounds.

UPDATE: Today's finds are 8087-1 and Sound Blaster 16 w/SCSI and volume control knob.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I picked up an ARK1000 based VLB card today. Does someone in here have any experience with them? I heard it was supposed to be faster than TSENG ET4000W32P, but since it was released rather late in the DOS-486 days I don't see too much information about them. While it must be fast, I wonder if it is buggy at all.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

I was thinking of getting one of those cards, seemed cheap enough on ebay. Suposedly it was very fast in DOS. They made VLB and PCI versions I think.

Never touched one, I had switched to PCI by the time they rolled around.

What are you going to test it with, how much RAM does it have?