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Author Topic: Covox SoundMaster (1991)  (Read 5075 times)

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Offline chrisNova777

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Covox SoundMaster (1991)
« on: December 18, 2015, 05:27:15 AM »
YM3812 yamaha



Offline chrisNova777

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Re: Covox SoundMaster Plus (1991)
« Reply #1 on: December 18, 2017, 11:40:12 AM »
Quote
Early in 1991, Covox had redesigned their board and created the Sound Master Plus, which uses the same YM3812 as the AdLib and Sound Blaster which made it compatible with music, but the custom 8-bit DAC was incompatible with sound effects. However, this was old technology at this point, pair that with Covox dropping the two DA-15 ports to save money, and the board was a complete failure. Only one game is known the support it directly.

dates have been added by me

Quote
Covox made five important sound devices for the PC before going out of business in the early 90's.

The first was the Covox Speech Thing (1986), a cheap parallel port DAC. It could produce mono 8-bit digitized sound at a rate determined by the system. It also had the ability to connect another parallel device from the picture I have seen.

The second was the Covox Voice Master/Voice Master Jr./Voice Master Key (1986), which was also available for the Apple II in card form and the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 computers via an external box that attached to one of the joystick ports. I have read that the Voice Master came both as a parallel port attachment and as an ISA card. This operates on the same principle as the Speech Thing, but has extra hardware to convert speech into text. In addition, the software can do text to speech and rudimentary speech recognition.

The third was the Covox Sound Master (1990), Covox's first attempt to compete with the Adlib. It used an AY8930 chip for music, had two 9-pin digital Atari style joystick ports, and had a DMA driven DAC. While the I/O ports of this device are known, the number of Interrupts and DMA channels, including which, are not.

The fourth was the Covox Sound Master Plus (1991), a sort of a stopgap between the last and the next card. From the little information I have gathered, the AY8930 chip seems to have been replaced with the YM3812 chip of the Adlib. I don't know anything else about this card.

The fifth and final card from Covox was the Covox Sound Master II (1992). This 8-bit ISA card claimed to be Adlib & Sound Blaster compatible, but Sound Blaster compatibility had to be obtained with a TSR. This card definitely had a YM3812 and an regular analog gameport. As usual, the gameport doubled as a midi port. It had an 8-bit mono DAC, which used one interrupt while the midi port required another. Its I/O ports are the same as the original Sound Master's, not a copy of any Sound Blaster. It advertised Speech Thing compatibility without additional drivers. It also used a DMA channel for digital sound, and was better known for its speech-recognition


http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=13744
http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php/Covox
https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue142/112_Sound_Master_II.php
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.ca/2014/09/the-mysterious-covox-pc-sound-devices.html

Offline chrisNova777

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Re: Covox SoundMaster (1991)
« Reply #2 on: December 18, 2017, 03:14:39 PM »
the inventor of the covox products:
http://www.aerosynth.com/