Re: ZVG firmware / the future of ZVG

I had lots of trouble with my Dell P4 / OEM Soundblaster Live! value. An
Ensoniq 1371 based Soundblaster worked fine. It's a time intensive but
inexpensive crap-shoot.

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 10:20 PM, Jamesjonhagen <jamesjonhagen@gmail.com>wrote:

> Not to be overly negative but I've had failure with SB live cards too.
> Especially with MBs using integrated sound. Turning that off in the BIOS
> allowed to use the Live card but the frequency sounded double or just
> didn't work.
>
> I'm just saying, it can be a real crapshoot depending on the BIOS.
> That said, I've had good luck with PIII Gateway AMD based MBs
>
> James
>
> On Apr 16, 2012, at 8:00 PM, Al Warner <alw@alsarcade.com> wrote:
>
> From what I found out, if you want a PCI sound card to work in DOS, it has
> to be a Soundblaster Live! Now that said, i paid like $12.00 shipped for
> one on eBay.
>
> -Al-
>
> On 4/16/2012 7:26 PM, Jamesjonhagen wrote:
>
> Not all PCs of the PIII P4 era work well with sound cards in DOS. Having
> a parallel port is just half the battle. That's good that you can spread
> the word of a model that works Al.
>
> James Hagen
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 16, 2012, at 7:22 PM, Al Warner <alw@alsarcade.com> wrote:
>
> I used a Pentium 4 Gateway to build mine - still real easy to buy cheap
> on eBay. Video of the details at:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL51665B28C8D84DA5&feature=plcp
>
> Just sayin'
>
> -Al-
>
> On 4/16/2012 7:04 PM, Gary McTaggart wrote:
>
> I'm not too deep on this, but I've heard from coworkers that have done
> some general latency testing (not related to ZVG) that USB can introduce
> quite a bit of latency compared to even an add-on parallel port, although a
> lot of the newer add-on parallel ports can be terrible too. They takeaway
> they had from these tests is that anyone that really wants low latency
> should buy an ancient PC. :(
>
> Gary
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 3:59 PM, Jeremy Abel <jeremyabel@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Well crap, there goes that idea. I'm going to call Zonn, see if he's into
>> me redesigning and recoding the zvg for usb. That's pretty much the only
>> option at this point, assuming he set the lock bits (although I never have
>> for any of my projects...)
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 6:39 PM, GamingDevices <gamingdevices@tx.rr.com>wrote:
>>
>>> The Atmel ATmega16 & ATtiny2313 devices used in the ZVG have lock bits,
>>> so I doubt that you can just read the part.
>>>
>>> Mike
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 4/16/2012 4:59 PM, Jeremy Abel wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello all!
>>>
>>> So, I've got my vector monitor (or at least the post office does; I
>>> have to go pick it up), and I've been investigating ways to control it. So
>>> far, the ZVG seems like the best / only option. However, they seem to be
>>> hard to come by, and a bit out of my price range, not to mention the fact
>>> that they just aren't being made anymore. Making it even more complicated,
>>> I don't even have a PC with a parallel port (only a macbook). Instead, I've
>>> come up with several other options, which I will talk about below.
>>>
>>> Using the schematic that's available online, I've managed to re-enter
>>> the whole thing into EagleCAD, and have begun to design my own board for
>>> it, using only through-hole parts (because I don't have the patience /
>>> skill to solder SMDs). So far, only the power supply area is done, because
>>> I don't want to put too much effort into it before getting some more
>>> information about the whole thing. I'm doing this only because it would
>>> cost me $100 to print the board, and then $50 in parts, which is about $100
>>> less than I'd end up paying for an original ZVG. There is one snag though:
>>> basically, I need the firmware that goes on the two Atmel chips. Without
>>> that, I might as well not even bother. So, I've come up with some solutions
>>> to that problem. Here's what I've been thinking:
>>>
>>> *Option 1: *I somehow manage to get ahold of Zonn (no luck with that
>>> so far), and somehow convince him to open-source the firmware (something he
>>> talked about here<http://www.ukvac.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=328991&PID=752487&SID=5dbcd2zb-da95-5c822ae9-cezbbae5-3z84c2e1&title=zektor-zvg-limited-run-hurry#752487>,
>>> about a year ago). With access to the actual code, I could pretty easily
>>> convert it to communicate over USB. With Zonn's permission, I would then
>>> open source the entire thing, and thus you all would have a lovely new
>>> open-source USB-enabled ZVG. This, I think, is the best option, as I don't
>>> need anyone to dump the firmware for me, I don't need to logic probe the
>>> thing and figure out what's being sent over the parallel port, and I don't
>>> need to program an interpreter to convert the thing into USB.
>>>
>>> *Option 2*: Someone with a ZVG solders up headers to J5 and J6, and
>>> uses an AVR programmer to read off the firmware and sends it to me as a hex
>>> file. I can then use this to program my own atmel chips, and proceed.
>>> However, this will make it difficult for me to get around the parallel port
>>> problem without a large amount of logic-probing and then adding another
>>> microcontroller to convert the signals being sent to the parallel port into
>>> signals I can send over USB. In order to keep Zonn's IP safe, I'd keep the
>>> whole thing to myself. Still, this feels shady.
>>>
>>> *Option 3: *I buy a ZVG from someone, dump the firmware myself, then
>>> sell it back to someone else. This feels just as shady, maybe more, than
>>> option 2.
>>>
>>> What do you all think about all of this? I'd love to get the ball
>>> rolling on this, preferably on option 1 if anyone knows how to get ahold of
>>> Zonn.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> ~Jeremy
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
>

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Received on Mon Apr 16 22:57:20 2012