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From: thinman@cup.portal.com (Lance C Norskog)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Sound Blaster MIDI box
Message-ID: <37427@cup.portal.com>
Date: 31 Dec 90 20:52:47 GMT
References: <1990Dec26.214030.2252@ultra.com>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 30

I bought the SB card from Creative Labs, Inc. (the vendor) in San Jose, CA.
This costs $249 list, and you get the Development Kit and the C/MS chips
also if you ask.  This is probably comparable in price to getting the 
pieces at street price, and I wanted to have some pull with the factory.

The SB has several functions: voice-quality sound digitization, ditto output,
at up to 13KHZ, AdLib compatibility ( 9 or 11 synthesized output channels,
which seems to do some MIDI standard?), C/MS compatibility (6 or 12 stereo
output channels; CLI's old sound card), a joystick port, and a MIDI
port (with a 64-byte input buffer!).  Voice output, AdLib sounds, and
C/MS sounds are mixed in analog at the back end of the output.
(It may be that the MIDI port follows some MIDI standard instead.
This is unfortunate, as the Roland MPU-401 card is what everybody clones.)

I was annoyed at what I got, because I wanted this sucker for part of
a multi-media project, and I badly want stereo sound effects.  With the
DK you get MicroSlime C libraries (binary) for controlling voice digitization
and its output, text-to-speech output, and AdLIb sound output.  You're 
on your own for controlling the MIDI port, but it's explained.  However,
you get no info on programming the stereo C/MS ports, and I'm getting
nowhere with Creative Labs.

Is the C/MS stuff available anywhere?  I'll check out the UCSF archive
mentioned here.  The joystick, MIDI port, and voice digitizers are 
useful for my project, and I will use them, but mono synthesized output
just doesn't make it.

Thanks,

Lance Norskog