Digidesign d24 PCI Card

[Phipli]

Does anyone have a Digidesign d24 card? Would you be willing to download the ROM from it for me?

I believe I can give instructions for downloading it from the card without having to remove it from the card from DOS or FreeDOS. I believe it is also possible from Openfirmware on a Mac, but I'd have to do some reading or asking to work out how that is done.

Finding someone with the card is the first step

 

[paws]

I've got one, but I've never made it work - I *think* the problem was that it needs an audio interface connected to it (because the interface is the clock master? I think?), and the ones I have are too old. So the card might not work.

I also think I have a working PC with a PCI slot that has FreeDOS on it, actually.

What do you want the ROM for? I'd imagine most of the magic is in the drivers. Isn't it basically a 56k DSP on the PCI bus? And isn't it useless without an attached DSP/Mix Farm?

(On the subject of Digidesign hacking - I'm 95% sure that the AudioMedia and Sound Accelerators are basically just enough glue logic to be able to upload code through the 56002's host port via NuBus, and that it wouldn't be totally unreasonable to wire up a 56002 emulator to QEMU, which has Nubus support now I think?)

 

[Phipli]

the problem was that it needs an audio interface connected to it (because the interface is the clock master? I think?)

Mine works fine, I have an external box. The ADCs are in the box. You should grab yourself an 888, they sell fairly cheap. Get one with the right cables. The cables cost more than the boxes.

I also think I have a working PC with a PCI slot that has FreeDOS on it, actually.

Sounds perfect! How familiar are you with ripping ROMs?

What do you want the ROM for? I'd imagine most of the magic is in the drivers.

Cough. They... Made two cards with the same board. I have the cheap one, a... Session 2 - that they hobbled. It doesn't support ProTools, only the ASIO driver, so I can use it with Cubase / Logic / Reason, but not ProTools.

And isn't it useless without an attached DSP/Mix Farm?

I don't believe you need the DSP Farm, but it isn't an issue, I have one.

(On the subject of Digidesign hacking - I'm 95% sure that the AudioMedia and Sound Accelerators are basically just enough glue logic to be able to upload code through the 56002's host port via NuBus, and that it wouldn't be totally unreasonable to wire up a 56002 emulator to QEMU, which has Nubus support now I think?)

Absolutely no idea I'm more of a real hardware kind of person. Sound tends to be quite poor on emulators, I'd be amazed if you could manage many channels of high quality audio!

 

[paws]

Mine works fine, I have an external box. The ADCs are in the box. You should grab yourself an 888, they sell fairly cheap. Get one with the right cables. The cables cost more than the boxes.

I have a couple of non-24 bit 882s and I haven't been able to make them work. Apogee made a compatible box that's meant to be much higher quality that I've been considering getting, but I'm not sure if it's worth it for me. I'm not exactly short on ways to record audio...

Sounds perfect! How familiar are you with ripping ROMs?

I have an EEPROM reader and I understand electronics well enough, but I don't know much about PCI. You'd have to guide me. I think your cause is very noble!

Do you happen to know anything about the differences between Mix Cores and Mix Farms? They're very, very close, but Mix Farms are much common. But you have to have one Mix Core for the system to work.

Absolutely no idea I'm more of a real hardware kind of person. Sound tends to be quite poor on emulators, I'd be amazed if you could manage many channels of high quality audio!

I don't think that's true anymore in the general case TBH. There's some people who made full-system emulators for synths based on later 56k DSPs which easily match the original hardware on a recentish PC, so it's feasible. But I don't know if QEMU has accurate enough timing for it to actually work.

 

[Phipli]

I have an EEPROM reader and I understand electronics well enough, but I don't know much about PCI. You'd have to guide me. I think your cause is very noble!

I'll break out my FreeDOS machine and write down what steps are needed. Hopefully I can write it in the card too in case they've bit swapped or similar. I suspect the ROMs will be similar so I'll compare them before I do anything else. My preference would be to fit a socket to my board.

It might be worth checking if your board has a socketted ROM. I think some did.

Do you happen to know anything about the differences between Mix Cores and Mix Farms? They're very, very close, but Mix Farms are much common. But you have to have one Mix Core for the system to work.

I haven't looked into the specifics, but I don't believe you specifically need a Mix Core to use a Mix Farm. The Mix Farm should work if you have a d24 and a DSP Farm I think I read. That is my plan anyway. I'm only slowly building a setup. I still don't have a TDM ribbon cable. I'll be forced to get one soon for testing.

I don't think that's true anymore in the general case TBH. There's some people who made full-system emulators for synths based on later 56k DSPs which easily match the original hardware on a recentish PC, so it's feasible. But I don't know if QEMU has accurate enough timing for it to actually work.

I assume running on a RealTime OS of some kind? Because it's hard to get rid of jitter when you're emulating something timing critical made for running directly on hardware, on top of a modern OS with all its distractions. Be good news if it is improving.

 

[Phipli]

I have a couple of non-24 bit 882s and I haven't been able to make them work.

Strange. My Project II card, a d24 with a different ROM, lists the 882 in the interface selection menu on my G3 :

 

[paws]

Unfortunately I just tried and there's no way the d24 can fit in the computer I have. It's a small PC thin client, and the card is a bit too tall to fit in the riser, and without the riser there's an ethernet part in the way. So unless I can do it from a Sawtooth G4 with OS 9 I'm afraid I can't help you.

I assume running on a RealTime OS of some kind? Because it's hard to get rid of jitter when you're emulating something timing critical made for running directly on hardware, on top of a modern OS with all its distractions. Be good news if it is improving.

It's just a VST, actually. They're emulating the DSP and the wee microcontroller that runs the panel and such, the whole thing. Modern computers are good.

 

[Phipli]

So unless I can do it from a Sawtooth G4 with OS 9 I'm afraid I can't help you.

I'll look into it. It's possible, I've just never found good instructions. And I feel guilty just asking people who know