I like the chirpy sound of the PCjr and Tandy, but there were a bunch of early PC games that just sounded best with a MT-32 or Adlib card.
I've seen these adapters for the Tandy systems but I can't find anything like this for the PCjr.
There's a bunch of opensource projects like HardMPU that can add MIDI support and simular projects for OPL cards so it's definitely possible to make them with mostly modern parts and AFAIK they don't require DMA access so it should be compatible with the PCjr's "ISA" bus.
ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
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chuckphd53
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Re: ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
Wht happend to this Idea ???
“I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book.” (AE)
Re: ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
Yeah! Is there any info on the modem card? Maybe it could go there also?
Re: ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
I have a PDF file that outlines a Serial/MIDI/XT Keyboard/2nd and 3rd floppy multifunction card for the PCjr. I don't know much about this card but here is a link to that PDF. http://www.linearlogix.com/PCJR/PCjr_Combocard.pdf
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RiverBoa99
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Re: ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
Was this ever actually made or just designed? I'm sure we could source the parts and I've got enough soldering equipment to put one together. If we had a printed board, we could make this work.
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chuckphd53
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Re: ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
Wish I had time to play with this,,
Hoping someone can pick this up and run.... would love to have a Jr with MP3 files
, so cool....
Hoping someone can pick this up and run.... would love to have a Jr with MP3 files
, so cool....“I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book.” (AE)
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DoctorOctal
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Re: ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
TexElec now has an Adlib card for the PCjr.
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RiverBoa99
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Re: ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
I’m more interested in the MIDI out. If I could get MT-32, that would be really neat.
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t9999clint
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Re: ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
I was going through some old emails of mine and seen that I missed this one...
Sorry for not wording that first post properly... I was more just seeing if anyone was interested in the idea. I had no idea how to implement such a thing myself at the time.
I'm taking a electronics course now though, so maybe I'll try and figure it out this summer. (no promises)
Sorry for not wording that first post properly... I was more just seeing if anyone was interested in the idea. I had no idea how to implement such a thing myself at the time.
I'm taking a electronics course now though, so maybe I'll try and figure it out this summer. (no promises)
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chuckphd53
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Re: ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
cool.... keep your progress posted
“I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book.” (AE)
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t9999clint
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Re: ADLIB/MPU-401 Expansion bay
What little research I did on this project shows that It's more than likely possible.
If I were to do it, I'd probably reuse a bunch of work that the jrIDE and PicoGUS guys did.
I would use a rp2040 or similar mcu to keep things cheap.
As far as I could tell, Soundblaster wouldn't be possible, but Ad lib should be fine (been done already by TexElec). MT-32, I'm not sure about yet. (I couldn't track down the memory addresses to the databus pins on the external connector). But what little documentation there is, is very cryptic for a beginner like myself.
It'd be cool if we could integrate some of the IDE emulation stuff I've seen other pico projects use, but after looking at their code for a while it seems like the method they were using to intercept IDE calls at the BIOS level wouldn't be possible with the PCjr. So that probably couldn't be done without a bunch of extra hardware so it's probably not worth it.
But yeah, this project is still well beyond my current capabilities, so this wouldn't be anything that would see any work for a while.
If I were to do it, I'd probably reuse a bunch of work that the jrIDE and PicoGUS guys did.
I would use a rp2040 or similar mcu to keep things cheap.
As far as I could tell, Soundblaster wouldn't be possible, but Ad lib should be fine (been done already by TexElec). MT-32, I'm not sure about yet. (I couldn't track down the memory addresses to the databus pins on the external connector). But what little documentation there is, is very cryptic for a beginner like myself.
It'd be cool if we could integrate some of the IDE emulation stuff I've seen other pico projects use, but after looking at their code for a while it seems like the method they were using to intercept IDE calls at the BIOS level wouldn't be possible with the PCjr. So that probably couldn't be done without a bunch of extra hardware so it's probably not worth it.
But yeah, this project is still well beyond my current capabilities, so this wouldn't be anything that would see any work for a while.