Sound cards on PC-compatible computer systems have a rather involved and convoluted history, with not only a wide diversity of proprietary standards, but also a collection of sound cards that were never advertised as such. Case in point the 1985 Mindscape Music Board, which was an add-on ISA card that came bundled with [Glen Clancy]’s Bank Street Music Writer software for IBM PC. This contrasted with the Commodore 64 version which used the Commodore SID sound chip. Recently both [Tales of Weird Stuff] and [The Oldskool PC] on YouTube both decided to cover this very rare soundcard.
Based around two General Instruments AY-3-8913 programmable sound generators, it enabled the output of six voices, mapped to six instruments in the Bank Street Music Writer software. Outside of this use this card saw no use, however, and it would fade into obscurity along with the software that it was originally bundled with. Only four cards are said to still exist, with [Tales of Weird Stuff] getting their grubby mitts on one.
As a rare slice of history, it is good to see this particular card getting some more love and attention, as it was, and still is, quite capable. [The Oldskool PC] notes that because the GI chip used is well-known and used everywhere, adding support for it in software and emulators is trivial, and efforts to reproduce the board are already underway.
Top image: Mindscape Music Board (Credit: Ian Romanick)
Only four are known to exist! What a lovely story :-)
I came to dispute this fact. Any mention of ‘how many exist’ needs to be tempered against how many were produced. I would accept “one of 4 whose location is known” as much more accurate. At the absolute minimum cite your source: “according to —–“, so the facts can be tracked down.
Since this article said there are 4, and a previous article said there were 2, I assume the next article to have a number around 8 🤣
https://brassicgamer.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-almost-definitive-pc-sound-card.html#mind
Now I can read the article. Red flags came up when I heard the line about ‘only 4’, that’s ridiculous, if it was only 4 how can 2 youtubers procure them. More believeable is how there are only two 16 cylinder Rolls-Royce 100EX presumably. One made for the prototype, and one refitted with the engine for the movie Johnny English.
Something that entered production has more than 4 usually. So while the whereabouts are not known, there is a high probability more exist, but it is unknown their location. So proper would be a mention that only the locations of 4 are common knowledge.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski
:)
“You will never own this sound card”. TubeTime says “here, hold my beer”.
a bank of DIP switch, 6 TTL chips, 2 GI sound chips AY-3-8913, and one small chip possibly op amp. Seems like it’d be easy to clone. If someone could provide high res scan of both sides and there’s only 2 layers, someone else might be able to reverse engineer it for fun.
Naw, that’ll cut into the speculative sound board market. How else will people fund their children’s education?
A link to the schematic is shown in the video:
https://github.com/pancakepuppy/mindscape_music_board_re
Is this just a Creative Music System with incompatible drivers?
No, the AY-3-8913 of the Mindscape card are completely different from the SAA1099 of the Creative card.
Lovely story, horrible product. It doesnt really sound any better than PC speaker :| All I hear are beeps and horrible screeches. Musical notation interface doesnt help either.
Best part of first video was beep boops followed by Youtuber proclaiming “I admit that sounded pretty good” :)
SID was much better at making pleasant sounds than crappy Spectrum AY beeper, but Innovation SSI-2001 was waaay to late in 1989.
Im really sad and surprised Ensonic didnt even try entering PC market in the eighties. SID designers Bob Yannes follow up ES5503 DOC from 1984 Ensoniq Mirage landed in 1986 Apple IIGS. It was a total no brainer to simultaneously offer ISA version for PCs, a Stereo 15 voice Wavetable Synthesizer would have been a killer product.
This card spec is now surprisingly a new common standard for the ZX Spectrum. It’s called TurboSound. The Speccy used one PSG for 3-channel sound. Just like what this card does, it adds two of the same PSG’s for double the channels. So in a strange way the card lives on through a new hardware add-on for a different computer.