OPL3LPT AdLib and YAMAHA OPL3 Sound Card for Parallel Printer Port 

I know the feeling :)

Yea I plan to setup this Thin Client somewhere dedicated in the house to play some of the classic DOS games :D

Yea I often feel the same. My first sound card was a Sound Blaster with OPL2, so that's what I grew up with. Later General MIDI though.

You clearly don't watch enough LGR...

JohnnyNismo If it has something like a pcmcia slot, i've heard that some pcmia soundcards are better compatible with msdos, but i dont kmow myself.

@@eduardoavila646 I have not been able to find a PCMCIA sound card that will work with the laptop. Do you have some recommendations? I looked every so often for about a year.

Yup this device would be perfect for a 486 laptop!

@@AshtonCoolman Actually not, i've heard about some models in the past but i dont remember wich ones were. If i'm not mistaken there was a guy who i can ask to in a discord channel, i will try that and if i get an answer write it here to you. Edit: i found a website that list some of these soundcards: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=30840 But i will try to reach that guy anyway.

@@eduardoavila646 This Vogons post is the one I referred to as well. I've kept searching for these but they never show up. I fear that PCMCIA sound cards may be some of the rarest on the planet at this point. They never appear on eBay.

Not sure, I don't do laptops, but the OPL3LPT should work great on a 486 laptop.

If you can find a PCMCIA sound card it'd probably be a better option since it could also do digital audio instead of just AdLib midi, but anymore they're pretty rare and hard to find. For retro gaming on Laptops your usually better off with a Pentium era system since Active Matrix displays were more common and laptops were generally coming with SB compatible sound, 486 laptop were pretty much built to do business stuff on and usually only had passive matrix displays that are ghosty and awful for playing games with the exception of a few models that offered active matrix displays at a high cost premium , not many were sold at the time and they tend to be sought after by collectors and thus are comparitively expensive compared to more common pentium machines.

Brandon Upchurch Yeah, i found out that after some research. Its not worth it. Better off getting the pentium laptop anyways. I still dont have a retrogaming laptop, but i will certainly get a pentium one.

Yea many games support PC speaker and Adlib. The t5720 has a rather loud PC speaker inside, but it works quite well otherwise.

That is a good idea :) I do remember that the t5720 has some sort of DOS sound compatibility from Windows 98 SE, so mixing this with OPL3LPT is a good idea :)

Yea Protected Mode games will not work with the driver, but if you are motivated enough, you can have a crack at patching the game for native support.

I'm not up to date with latest prices with Raspberry Pi, but I remember looking into this with Fluid Synth and Munt. Once you add up everything, like SD card, PSU (I don't think you can power it through the USB port on a Thin Client) it's certainly not cheap. Add a MIDI interface as well, plus AFAIK you also need a USB sound card? So yea, it sounds great on paper and at first glance. Do you have a video maybe showcasing your solution? Would be interesting to watch.

I don't know, I was asking whether it's possible to use a Pi for this.

@@RealNC Oh I see. Well do keep us updated if you make progress with the Pi, definitely an interesting topic.

1. You can use either port, just run ADLIPT LPT2 or ADLIPT LPT1 to tell it which one you use. 2. Not sure about that one I have reviewed OPL2LPT. The OPL3LPT is the replacement, same price but SMS components and can do Stereo FM thanks to OPL3. The device is really straight forward, I see no need to do another video.

Sam and Max supports the OPL3, so you get nice FM and Stereo as well. But most of the older games do indeed only support Adlib with Mono FM.

Yup, Serdaco also sells one of those. I reviewed one, but it's incompatible with most games and the sound is average. This OPL3 is much more useful.

@@philscomputerlab Old times when MOD music is the only option in pure MS-DOS ! Thank you for replying!

I tried running DOSBox on such a 1 GHz Thin Client, and only old and basic games run well. You also have to optimise settings, anything fancy like MUNT emulator, or pixel perfect patch, and it falls apart.

@@philscomputerlab It's unfortunate to hear that, but I'm not entirely surprised. DOSBox is clearly being developed on newer systems where I'm fairly certain a lot of sub-optimal solutions are being used. That's why I'm hopeful that DOSEmu2 gets to a state to be a useful replacement for DOSBox on Linux systems since virtualization should mean even with sub-optimal solutions there should be a massive amount of breathing room for emulation of things like MUNT, Gravis, 3dfx (there's at least some discussion of it), etc. Still, it's very far from some sort of solution today.

Well the main feature is that there was nothing before that one could buy to add OPL3 FM to such a machine. So it's a real breakthrough to be honest.

DOS games obviously won't work since USB wasn't a thing then and even if it was, ports on USB adapters don't have the same DMA as a real port. Emulated under windows would probably work.

We will do some other fun stuff with that thin client soon :)

Lel

Realtek is a common modern manufacturer of integrated pc parts, but its too modern to some bother to get a msdos driver. Its probably hard to get msdos to run well and compatible in xp era and newer machines

@@eduardoavila646 Is that because of HAL which is generally geared to windows?

@@johntrevy1 Yep, DOS just has no APIs and its doubtful that the integrated Realtek has any hardware FM operators, so you'd have to emulate any synth work on the CPU, which would add massive driver overhead.

Without going into much technical detail, first you need to write a driver to access the chip, which is already very complicated, then you have to emulate somehow the FM sound that most DOS games expect and then you have to patch the games to add support to them (DOS games don't use standard drivers, hardware support was built in the games not in the OS) so it's highly unlikely that you ever see a realtek sound driver for DOS.

I haven't seen any Thin Client with a second printer port!

It replaced the OPL2 version I believe and is 100% compatible.

Well through VGA it does the usual double scanned output, as for DVI a lot depends on what monitor you are using and to be honest, the details escape me, I don't remember!

…but it was kind of convenient to tell my router to send a "magic" WakeOnLan packet to the box (port 9, right?), in order to wake / boot it up.

Time to repurpose it for msdos gaming perhaps? (edit:) or with a router OS like OPNSense!

Yea maybe someone out there can patch it. There are instructions, but it's a bit too deep for me, assembly code it seems >< In Windows these Thin Clients have fully functioning sound.

Well.. if you find drivers for windows it would possibly work well, as different from msdos, i guess windows routes the audio to the certain soundcard detected. Maybe even those msdos games wich didnt work with opl3lpt maybe could work.

Change sound to Adlib or PC speaker not Sound Blaster.

What command do you enter and what happens? I think I had the folder with the patch files in my PATH, so that it runs from anywhere. Copy the patch files into your Duke3D folder, then run the command again?

@ Could be possible regarding the version. Check if the documentation mentions anything. I believe my version is from the 3d Realms Anthology.

The t5720 does have an internal PCI slot, but no riser and it cannot be used. An additional expansion bay (it makes the hole machine thicker) is required. Often this bay sells for more than the actual Thin Client.

All good, I have a ton of 775 CPUs already!

@@philscomputerlab That's cool. I thought you'd be interested in a low powered C2Q.

This device achieves something that hasn't been possible for over 20 years. So I cannot relate to your comment at all. It's a night and day difference compared to the PC speaker.

@@philscomputerlab - Sorry but that answer is kind of a dodge. I was very clear in my line of questioning. There are lots of games, for which there will exist no soundFX right? Because they use digital audio samples or whatever, and do not do their SFX via FM ? For some people that is a deal killer. For others it is not. The remarkability of the achievement is not in question - the practicality of how I might use it is. I never said you couldn't enjoy it.

The device is compatible to the YAMAHA OPL2 and OPL3 standard, so that's what the game needs to support. In older games this is the AdLib option, in newer games you might see an option to select OPL3 for Stereo. Sam & Max is an example of such a game.

Yes, a thing like this would be best for those all-MCA PS/2 machines. From the same shop you can also get the CVX4 Covox clone, a Tandy clone (which just came out so I haven't seen any reviews of it yet), and there are also several MIDI devices clones available on Serdashop. Who knew that one day, one LPT port wouldn't be enough? :)

LOL that makes no sense at all :D You have an IBM PS/2 and complain about 53 EUR? Have you checked prices for IBM computers and accessories? For example try finding a MCA sound card, good luck with that.

@@philscomputerlab it has an adapter. But it is that, everything is expensive. That computer was discarded and the given to me. I still don't have use it.

My first DOS PC, a 386, came with 80 MB (Mega Byte) Hard Drive. So 1 GB is plenty!

???

@@philscomputerlab ; a file_id.diz is an ascii text file that pirate groups used to describe the software ("warez") they where distributing.

@@xmaniac99 Funny :) I do own the GOG and Steam versions of Fate of Atlantis, but can't remember if that game is one of those versions or from one of those 1000 DOS games collections.

@@philscomputerlab , same here I own Civ II and III boxed, but sometimes I just run things of my an harddrive which for some reason (xd) still has a pirated copy.