@Dirik619 Thing is, a lot of other people are enjoying these. And I enjoy making them. If you don't like them, don't watch. Problem solved.

@AndyTrampke

6 жыл бұрын

LGR wow was somebody really giving you shit 6 years ago?? If they only knew how beloved the oddware series would become. Thank you for all your wonderful content LGR!!!

@DumbArse

4 жыл бұрын

Oh god, when youtube just decided to fuck up all of it's replies by not making them appear as replies and never bothered to fucking fix it. Good old memories

@JaredConnell

3 жыл бұрын

So glad you never listened to this jerk. Oddware is probably my favorite series of yours. That or tech tales but I just love seeing these strange products I've never heard of that I'd never see without your videos. Keep it up Clint!

@BabusGameRoom

3 жыл бұрын

@@tolentarpay5464 Pretty sure he did...the comment is 9 years old! lmao

@smeezekitty

3 жыл бұрын

@@DumbArse It was astounding how long Google took to fix the KZread comments after they royally fucked them for no reason at all.

Thanks, awesome to hear! I hope you continue to enjoy, lots of retro goodness coming in the future.

@ChrisCahill17

3 жыл бұрын

And lots of retro goodness we have here in 2020! 🤘

Probably the first time in history anyone has used a parallel port DAC with a subwoofer! I do remember seeing circuit schematics for building your own DAC, as well as a parallel port ADC, for digitizing and recording your own sounds, in all their gritty, metallic 8-bit glory.

WHY IS THIS MUSIC SO EXTREMELY GROOVY?!

@dumdum7786

7 жыл бұрын

Per Kristian WHY AM I SO SMOL

@Charlesb88

3 жыл бұрын

Maybe Because it was copied from a phonograph record?😆 Remember records are groovy but CDs are the pits.

Bangin' soundtrack. 19:06: Space Debris 24:14 What is Funk? 26:47 Acid Jazz Evening

I want Pinball Fantasies solely for that awesome amazing opening... Damn that's some serious opening for a pinball game. Like I am about to witness the best of pinball that is to ever exist.

@GarethKK

8 жыл бұрын

I remember being amazed by the Pinball Fantasies audio back in the day when everything else was using AdLib effects.

@Bark777

8 жыл бұрын

Same here. The PC speaker usually sounds like crap but Pinball Fantasies used the pc speaker in way that I couldn't believe it wasn't a sound card involved.. From what I recall the pc speaker in pinball fantasies sounded the same as the Covox device in this video.

@Scalibq

7 жыл бұрын

Yea, Pinball Fantasies was originally an Amiga game, and as such, had MOD music. The PC version got a direct port of that music, using software mixing. It sounds virtually the same on SB, Covox and PC Speaker, because you're essentially listening to the exact same stream of digital samples. PC speaker is slightly lower quality, because it uses the PWM method of sample playback rather than PCM, which only has about 6-bit precision (see RealSound mentioned elsewhere), and can have an audible 'carrier whine' if you have to use a low mixing frequency if your PC is not fast enough. But still, you can make MODs sound quite good on PC speaker, and indeed close to an 8-bit DAC like early SBs or Covox.

@sotesz

6 жыл бұрын

This video reminded me how awesome music that game had. I didn't appreciate it as much back then like now I think. I'm tempted to toss some cool mod based music in the mix of mp3s onto my player now...

@Halo3machenima

6 жыл бұрын

And to think that game was made by the studio that now makes Battlefield.

Space Debris is one of my favorite pieces of mod music ever, hear it all the time on KZread.

holy crap, I was expecting really bad chiptunes out of such a simple device. For something you can make yourself, this is unbelievably impressive. Thank you so much for sharing this.

How on earth did Pinball Fantasies manage to find the CPU time to render smooth-scrolling graphics like that, while bitbanging audio out the parallel port, on a 386?

@burgundyyears

7 жыл бұрын

It was written in pure assembly on the PC. Possibly the best Amiga to PC port of all time. Not for the weak of heart.

@remisclassiccomputers341

5 жыл бұрын

Actually it runs smooth on my 286@12mhz with lpt sound as well.

@owlstead

4 жыл бұрын

This kind of thing came out of the DEMO scene. So they made demo's with smooth scrolling and great sounrds, and figured out that those could be used for gaming. So this kind of game was written *after* the tech was figured out. Of course they would still have had to do this for the PC, after having had the game created for Amiga. Early PC's were rather limited to home computers, which had standard (and standardized) sound and video (of course, the CPU speed, memory layout and expand-ability was much better). The current game computers are a hybrid of both.

3 жыл бұрын

I guess it uses VGA register level feature to split screen and scroll, so it needs almost no CPU power at all to do the scrolling. Just the ball and other visible effects should be drawn, and the display at the bottom. Surely, if CPU should refresh all the screen in the name of scrolling, it wouldn't be so simple case. So, I guess, a 386 is more than enough for this.

@awhooley

2 жыл бұрын

Old comment I know, but You should try pinball fantasies with just the pc speaker.. also plays amazing and sound effects!

Wow, it's all been made clear now. I see the game composers, the classic EDM crowd and the demoscene influencing each other. Fruitfully. What a seminal time that must have been.

I was really active in the Amiga / Demo scene back in the 90's I'm surprised I never heard about this. Makes that PC sounds like an Amiga. Good job making this video.

I built one for my 386SX back in the day using a simple resistor network. MOD files sounded a lot better!

This video is now almost old enough to be oddware itself.

@matsv201

10 ай бұрын

It's is now

@ThunderspearNZ

8 ай бұрын

Me in 2023 looking at your comment from 5 years ago. Now I can tell you this video is definitely an oddware haha

Space Debris. One of my favorite mods that I'd play on my Amiga all the time. Kinda funny to hear it again like this.

Bro, I love your videos and the fact that you have created playlists for everything you've done makes working so much easier for me. Well, maybe not easier, but it's certainly more bearable and entertaining :D

Pinball Fantasies has superb sound code. So many different sound hardware options. It can even use the PC speaker (or Adlib) to play the digital audio. I think it even worked quite well on a 286. The programmers of this game did some amazing work.

I fell asleep to this and it put me in a very hazy dream state. I didn't want to get out of bed so I kept going back to sleep. I slept for over 12 hours. It was incredible.

I built one of these "Covox" devices, and still use it occasionally for entertainment and some audio fun. There's a few "tracker" programs that also use it, I believe. So, you can actually create the music that you are hearing, but it's a bit of a geeky interface - takes awhile to get used to it. Perhaps I should do a video showing a few things I have that run on it.

Awesome reviews LGR! Checked out your channel at random and for some reason these retro hardware reviews just tickle the 5-10 year old me messing around with computers in the late 90's early 2000s. You definately earned my subscription!

@5kogur High CPU demands due to lack of DMA, low publisher and developer support, and internal cards like the AdLib (and soon, Sound Blaster) coming along shortly after its release that were more versatile. Those are the biggest reasons I can think of.

Space Debris is a cool song.

dude you`re rad!! love your content. and those mod soundtracks demos are so freakin cool.. they all inspired me as a profesional audio engineer these days! Thank you!

@waymuu "Space Debris" by Captain is the first MOD, "What Is Funk?" is the second MOD, "Acidjazzed Evening" is the third MOD.

Rewatching all the oddware/hardware videos, because they are so interesting. Must admit I have learned a lot from you LGR and although I remember having/using computers from the late 80s and on, I can't remember any of the details and it is fun seeing this stuff talked about and explained. Wish I could remember what model my first family computer was, just remember it being a Packard Bell.

the idea of a LPT DAC is so simple yet giving great results, even for real wav sound. the only thing that might break down speed and performance is the fact that it uses the cpu for conversion of the sound data.

Thanks to your channel I rediscovered my love for retro games and my Saturday rocks! :)

@HarryMatic Good to know, thank you!

Oh man Acidjazzed Evening

This sounds amazing. I didn't expect it to sound so good.

Love this kind of "primitive" engineering where somebody wires a couple of resistors together and suddenly we're in another galaxy (compared to the PC-speaker). An A/B test would have been fun, just to illustrate the dramatic difference; straight from PC-speaker to COVOX on Pinball Fantasies :)

@matsv201

10 ай бұрын

It's worh saying that the PC speaker could be run with PCM drivers, then the sound was a lot better. No where close to covex, but still, something that could play actually was sounds. There even was hackad windows 3.1 drivers to do it in windows. The main issue is that unlike the parallel port that at least could buffer up the next output. For the PC speaker the CPU need to precise controll every movment of the speaker. This took even more cpu power. To the amount that the windows drivers totqly locked up windows. But it could be used in pinball games with no issue.(on a 486)

Awesome vids dude..keep up the great work..been binge wattching over the last few months..seeing how your channel has grown and how you have aged lo.l...greetz from the uk...

@ImperialProductions I know, right? I assume its low usage was due mostly to its lack of DMA, resulting in lots of CPU load, and publishers being approached by and eventually utilizing Adlib instead.

Sound device reviews makes me a very happy KZreadr. Thank you again, sir.

Space Debris!!! I had this file searched for eons, Thanks! i love the mod files

@side2sideful

9 жыл бұрын

I knew I had heard it before, and had it in my collection! The pesky thing was hiding among about 6000 tracks, and I would never be able to find it if it wasn't for you. Thanks a lot, man.

@Dirik619 Happy to be of service!

@rastaxp I'll go one better: I'm currently working on a pretty lengthy video about Jazz Jackrabbit, its history, its gameplay, its relation to the Gravis Gamepad, and a review of each version of the original game. How's that sound?

@GeoNeilUK It may have been, I'm actually not sure. I know a lot of the MOD files I have were originally created for the Amiga.

@opticburn It's that little DAC only, I swear! Craziness, isn't it? I couldn't believe it myself when I first heard it, it's just insane how awesome it sounds for such a dinky little LPT device.

IF you haven't already, Totally got to do a history vid on demoscene and all the wonderful nuances of mod, xm, it and such. Especially games that tended to use them (Just about everything by epic comes to mind)

Holy crap the memories this video evoked. I recognize everything. Loved this music back then. Still do now that I hear it again.

@Clearstarsummer They're listed in the video description. You can just download and play the MOD files using the links provided.

Man i love mod audio. I used to have a lot of cdroms with thousands of mod files on them, and I would just spend hours browsing through them and listening, on my old 486.

@LoticaStudios I don't have a DSS yet, but I hope to get one and cover it here eventually. The circuitry and logic is a bit different from the Speech Thing from what I gather.

@ff5x2 Out of This World/Another World supports the Disney Sound Source, which is rather similar to the Speech Thing, but it is not compatible.

It took a few dozen episodes to realize you were a scener! Let's hear it for observation! When you demo'd the CMS/Game Blaster, am I right to think you also compose music? Perhaps even, tracked music? Heh. You showed excellent taste here, too! Thanks for posting these fun videos!

Such a simple and elegant construction!

The inertia player music you're playing reminds me of very good old Amiga times. thanks!

Oh my God. Forgive me, I was on subs in the Navy and we used 688I for training. It definitely got the boredom down right followed by five minutes of stark terror. I don't blame you for not playing it. Spent almost six years of my life underwater and underway. Man, that brought back some memories.

This just sounds awesome. I love it !

@JonteP0nte Yes, it's a big strain on the CPU. That's why I had to play the songs at something like 11khz. You can achieve higher rates the faster the CPU is.

I understand what youre saying about how crappy the sound was on the pc speaker, but personally I just love it. it has so much charm and i just love it.

@R33Racer It's the Oddware sound! Truthfully I don't remember. I recorded it a long time ago and recently found on a backup disc.

Pinball Fantasies had sound effects because it was onto the .mod itself with the music, so instead opening separated files, the game just opens the .mod and plays everything.Also, PBF sounds good even with the pc speaker, it's awesome.

Wow that music is awesome! Also, love the spider at 27:55 ;p

@VoceCorale

6 жыл бұрын

"acidjazzed evening". You can read it at 26:45

The Speech Thing idea lives on, at least to a certain degree, in today's USB sound cards. The Speech Thing is VERY impressive when you consider how simple it is though.

@Robloxian182 You could likely use it with a Widows driver to play back WAV files and such, but I'm not sure what else. I have a Windows driver for the thing, PM me if you want it. I haven't tried the Speech Thing with Windows yet, but questions like yours have made me curious!

This thing is seriously great. Such a simple, dare I say crude (not in a bad sense) device that allowed for such great sound! People must've flipped out back then hearing it. Flipped right out! Well, maybe not, but it is still cool. And it plugs into the parallel port! Awesome!!

@mistamontiel You can hear the whole song here: watch?v=wTLhWXv2I4A

It's an NCR Comten 386SX, there's a video of on my channel.

Angry bird at 26:26 , you make the best videos on the internet of this variety. Other videos can be too short, and not in detail without the hosts opinion. and you actually have a sense of humor, too.

I owned a Covox Jr. for the C64. Speech recognition in 1988!!!

@sumienietwoje8689

3 жыл бұрын

Every Digital sound can be convert to covos. At the "93 I had software " comak. exe" which I convert main file which I run the game. This software could direct the sound to LPT covox. So I converted game another world to covox.

ahh cool mod music, kinda forgot about it. amazing what you could do with only 4 channels of sound. thinking about the amiga mainly. Keep on the good work phreakindee

I gotta say this thing is fascinating that something like this even exists i never heard of it till today, if I ever seen one I'll pick it up, would be pretty cool to own!

@TeamRocketReviews I've seen some Gravis sticks for the Apple II, like the Mark VI. Their analog joysticks are quite nice, although really I'm not fond of their gamepads. Never liked the feel of the D-pad, even on their later versions like the Gamepad Pro.

I played StarControl 2 with it , it was freakin awesome Nice reviews dude!

So awesome music! The quality was amazing too! X3

@Psyke89PT Sounds awesome! Haven't tried it yet, but I certainly will soon.

@serginietor I know it was big in the computer music demo scene, as shown in this video with the MOD files and all that.

@ModernDoomer89 I agree, the name is just fantastic. It does its job of keeping the device memorable, too! I still wanna grab a DSS, since it doesn't seem to be really compatible with the Speech Thing, and vice versa.

@surfingthechaos Well, what I meant was that you don't have to install any drivers. It still needs a driver as far as I know, which the games that utilized it often came with. COVOX.DRV or something like that is in the game directory, chosen via the game setup. So for Windows, you do need a driver. I have some drivers for Windows 3.x, but I'm not sure if they would work on Win7 or not. That would be freaking sweet if they did, and I'd test it myself but my modern PC doesn't have a parallel port.

Acidjazzed Evening is by far one of my favorite c64 tunes. the mod version is pretty sweet too.

Sounds great! Really reminds me of the Amiga.

I was trying to find how I found out about Space Debris again. THIS IS THE VIDEO! But in all seriousness, I was trying to find the video that introduced me to Space Debris and I have found it. Space Debris is possibly my all-time favorite MOD file. :)

@Segadude3000 I have now! Sounds a lot like the Iomega drives that were so popular at the time.

You should cut in that depth dweller audio whenever you thank someone in one of your videos. You did that on one of your first videos, and it was awesome haha.

Great work Sir thank you

New favorite reviewer.

@MobyGamer Hehe, I wish I had a real Speech Thing to show! The software in particular interests me, and I've seen the box in that video you uploaded a while back. It looks awesome, I'd love to see the contents.

@rthijssen84 That it does. Still, it's pretty crazy what you can get the PC speaker to pull off, if only barely!

Oh my gosh - Pinball Fantasies had such a cool soundtrack. I remember playing it on Amiga.

This will add to my ocd to now always look through all plastic boxes of electronics in thrift stores looking for this curious device!

Well if this isn't mind blowing i don't know what is :D Being an old amiga musician and very familiar with the amiga sound system and mod files. I really did not expect that good sound when you booted up Pinball Fantasies. I used to play this _a lot_ on amiga back in the day :) Awesome!

@TeamRocketReviews You should be able to use them with a Tandy, so long as you installed a card with a game port. I actually still have the original Gravis Analog Joystick, boxed and everything! Love Gravis hardware.

@phreakindee thanks! I cant believe I didn't click on the description. Music entranced me ;)

Awesome video!!

Angry bird ! I saw it ... Hi Clint ! I'm Steve from western Canada. I have watched almost all of your videos.. You rock. Cool cameo on techmoan yesterday ! Good old tapes. I still have over 200 ! .. Bring back the beard ! Im a self trained IT .. All my life. Started with fixing personal electronics in the early 90's.. I would love the chance to speak with you some time. Maybe Skype over coffee ? Keep doin what you do bud. Cheers !

This is great Clint! I wonder what it sounds like if you try to print to it?

They have made some nice pieces of music on this thing!

you are awesome... great stuff!

LGR you are Awesome!

Wow, I had forgotten how awesome so much of the music from back then was. It really made flying a spaceship/saving the world/stacking blocks feel like an epic journey.

The music for the stones n bones sounds amazing

@FinalBaton

8 жыл бұрын

+Justin Dotson so phat

That is some... ridiculously epic-sounding music for a PINBALL GAME COLLECTION. :D

Your PC Vids Are Great

I remember building one of these from a diagram in a magazine back in the day and using it on my 386sx25, then playing pinball fantasies and being in absolute awe at the fact that the little machine could play that game in a strange semi high-resolution non-standard VESA mode (wasnt it like 320x400??) with smooth scrolling and output reasonable quality digital audio over a parallel port simultaneously.. and not even frameskip

The music you play at 19:00 sounds exactly like ModPlug i used to listen with in the late 90s. There was a PC magazine "PC För Alla" if i remember right that hade tons of ModPlug music like this and the ModPlug player on every CD-Rom...brings me some momories :D

I don't know much about the oddware here but dang, those songs are now in my head for years to come.

Nice to see Inertia Player! awesome hehe I had forgotten about it Also there were a lot of mod players that supported PC speaker. I actually modded my 386 machine's pc speaker output to support an external audio jack and connected it to better speakers. It sounded a little noisy and shitty compared to a soundcard, but I could output mods at 44khz and more or less get by with it.

@JMfanboy weird, I live in Europe and I had never heard of it.. do you know any other uses it was given apart from gaming? musical production maybe?

Going from NO music [beyond bleeps] to this... yeah this is awesome :) If I had a PC in that time I wouldn't mind one of these sound dongles.