Building a Prelude Zorro 2 Amiga sound card
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
- Up until recently I never gave much thought to adding a sound card to my A2000 build. I mean why bother since the Amiga has fantastic sound out of Paula...
Well, when the opportunity came up to join a group buy with @GadgetUK164 and a few other usual suspects I decided to join in the fun and so let's build a sound card for my Amiga... Let's build a Prelude with its MP3 decoder the mpegit addon.
Prelude github - github.com/wiretap-retro/Prel...
Prelude software - aminet.net/package/driver/aud...
AHI Version 6 - aminet.net/package/driver/aud...
AHI record - aminet.net/package/mus/play/A...
Amiga Amp - www.amigaamp.de/
You may need to install MUI, this is the latest version - github.com/amiga-mui/muidev/r...
GadgetUKs Prelude Videos
Part 1 - • Building an Amiga Soun...
Part 2 - • Fixing the MPEG... Bui...
CRG Twitter - / yt_crg
CRG Patreon - www.patreon.com/user?u=13919007
CRG Discord - / discord
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:15 What we're building
03:56 Time for some soldering
04:35 My expansion slot brackets
05:19 Back to the soldering
06:32 Tantalums
07:42 Resistors
09:14 Finishing off the passives
10:04 Crystals and sockets
11:35 SMD soldering time
14:53 Amazon capacitors?
16:07 How will we attach the MPEGIT?
17:23 Cleaning
18:13 Populating the chips
19:13 What does the PAULA sound like and what is AHI?
26:04 Installing the PRELUDE and a weird error
27:31 PRELUDE drivers
29:55 What does the PRELUDE sound like
33:02 MPEGIT installation
35:36 MPEGIT problems
39:43 Mixer and a microphone test
42:56 Conclusion - Наука та технологія
There seems to be two types of people when it comes to Amiga: those who love it so much they still collect & use them to this day, sometimes going as far as building their own from scratch, and those who have barely, if ever, heard of them and never seen one in person. I am the later type but I can see the appeal and wonder what the world would be like if they beat out Mac and/or PC.
I had my first A500 in 1989!
I do love me some Amiga but I do also try to keep it in context. With the pistorm giving it a massive speed boost and now that it's online as well I could use it for some basic day to day tasks such as e-mails but I don't think I could use it as a main PC to be honest. My passion in this hobby though is building the hardware that I could only have dreamed of back in the 90s when my 1200 was my main computer. Plus I've got all those zorro slots just begging to be filled with something 😂
It had everything going for it. In 1985 it had roughly 39% of the market share, with MAC for instance only having around 13%.
Fantastic! So nostalgic watching the amiga, with the high res graphics, and hifi sound card, makes it even more cooler!
Thanks, I do love this A2000 build. Just need to think of something else to fill out the remaining zorro slots 😉
Good editing with the overlaid Amiga windows!
Thanks, it was all I could think of doing to get you a decent view of the screen. Do need to find a longer HDMI cable though, or move my Amiga closer to the capture PC.
Fantastic job on avawesome modern build!
Thanks
21:39 it sounds like crap because I made it 😂
Jokes aside, it's a great build!
Fun fact, I bought my first Amiga, a 1200 in a pc desktop case, to use it as a midi sequencer for my band, around 2001. This didnt work out too well (because of me of course) and I sold it in the end. 🤦
Thank you for mentioning my music ❤
Curious, did you end up switching to an ST? 😂
@@slaapliedje nope, I eventually sold all my instruments and became a boring software dev 🤣
@@Momentvm Haha, lame. Though probably more practical.
@@slaapliedje agreed on both ;)
Okay, I've searched all over the internet but apparently I'm the only one that mistook the full throttle intro for saying "whenever I smell asshole I think of marines"
😂
First time I heard it and I heard the same so then we're two!
Fantastic. this Amiga 2000 keeps getting cooler and cooler. one of my favorite build series.
Thanks, glad to hear you're enjoying it. I'm not finished with it yet though, still another couple of free zorro slots to fill 😉
I strongly recommend that anyone doing surface mount soldering by hand get a knife edge tip. I personally use a Weller T0054462199N and can't recommend it enough. Also, soldering iron tips do wear out over time and need to be replaced. You won't always notice when a tip is wearing through the plating immediately, but when you switch to a new tip the difference will be night and day. I've soldered hundreds of PCBs by hand with 4x 24 pin 0.4mm pitch TSSOP parts and two dozen 0402 parts on each. After 100 boards it was getting harder to get good results, so I cleaned the tip really well and found it had a cavity that had eaten through. Bought a new tip and went back to soldering like a dream.
I've tried using a knife edge tip before and while I can use it I must say I prefer the type of tip I'm using in the video. But yes they do wear out and I do actually need to order some more myself, could use a slightly smaller tip if I'm honest.
Really cool video. You have shown me that I should learn how to solder myself with through hole components like this card. Does not look too difficult. I am waiting for the AmiBlaster to be released on Amibay which hardware decides FLAC with a newer chip. My entire library is FLAC, with no MP3’s so a perfect fit.
Through hole soldering is straight forward enough, I'd recommend just getting yourself a half decent temperature controlled iron, some branded flux core solder and for starting out that's all you need.
I'm not familiar with the AmiBlaster, I'll have to look that up.
This brings back some memories.... 1998/9 with my Prelude 1200 ( clock port ) sound card and 66MHz 060.... fun fun times.... with Octamed SS and 168khz Mp3 playback... kinda jelly when looking over my shoulder at my A2000.... it certainly could do with some love...
If memory serves, the Aux 1 was used for the Amiga throughput, Aux 2 ( as you called it ) was used for the CDROM Audio - I didn't seem to have the input recording issue, I would record either the synth ( with low input gain ) and the same for the Electric Guitar - although my amp for that back then was old, at times crackly and quite sassy on the gain/crunch once it had chance to heat up... one of the hardest things to work with, but I do miss that thing....
A big thanks for sharing CRG - i look forward to the next adventure.
Sounds like you had a fantastic setup back in the 90s, I had moved onto PCs by that point. It does make more sense to use AUX1 as the Amiga passthrough so I'll have to fix that. Still struggling with the recording though, it still sounds terribly muffled no matter what source I try. Might look to swapping out the OPAMP or some of the associated components to see if that helps.
@@CRG a lot of my friends in the mid/late 90's were selling off their Amiga collections to buy into the PC's of the time, so I ended up getting quite a boon to my collection. I built / worked with PC's in the mid 90's for work / programming so I had no RUSH to have a PC at home.
I am unaware of Prelude ( replica ) project directly, however, sans a software fault - I suspect that there might be an impedance of "line in" that you record from. Since its an open source project when I get some time I will have a read of it.
Sounds like its being clipped to 8bit as opposed to 16bit, however saying that even my Megamix Sound Master ( 8bit parallel sampler ) sounded better than what you were able to achieve.
Also, do you have the direct audio files, I am curious of the sample rate / and bit depth of the recording, if it is 16bit at 44.1Khz ( or higher ) then is should sound a lot better that even my poor laptop speakers made it out to sound.
Z.
the old Paula works in DMA mode.
The CPU has to shovel the data over the Zorro bus. That's why it needs 10% power.
Would that partly explain the highish CPU usage even while hardware decoding?
For cleaning the flux ES132 even if it is a solvent for ultrasonic cleaners but I found it working quite well if you soak the board with HOT water. then ES132 on. scrub the board. let it soak for 5 minutes or so. rinse of with HOT water and scrub meanwile. result will be just fine!
Thanks for the tip Chucky. I've never tried washing a PCB but I suppose so long as its dried properly there is no harm in it really. I'll try to get some of the solvent and give it a go cause it would be nice to have clean boards to look at through my case window.
@@CRG yeah let it dry for some days and you will be happy about the result!
Glen, great build!! I tend to use those cheap cans of lighter petrol for cleaning flux and everything else actually. Evaporates really fast. No smoking though 😂😂😂
Nice idea but considering I once burnt my eyebrows off by incorrectly using other flammable liquids in a confined space its probably best I stay away from the lighter fluid 🤣
Love how it looks like program looks like Winamp a bit nostalgia when i seen that again . Great work superb video
Yeah its a great nostalgia hit, WinAMP was the go to MP3 player back in the day. AmigaAMP I think supports some of the plugins, visualisations and skins. I must give that a go and see if I can get the dancing baby on my Amiga. Whatever were we thinking in the 90 / 00s with that 🤣
@@CRG After the watch I downloaded winamp for the PC and went straight for the visualizations for that nostalgia in me - never seen an Amiga run them would be nice to include them at some time :) keep up the fantastic content
I'll have to see what I can get running on the Amiga version, if I can I'll incorporate it into the update video.
Maybe try a 44.1 khz mp3 or set the sound card to 48khz to match your test mp3? It would do a FIR conversion which eats up cpu cycles I think, and clarity could be impacted if the play rate conversion isn't high quality.
As for recording, that sounds like my soundblaster 16 card lol! Terrible distorted sound quality and added a lot of noise to boot! AC97 wasn't much better. Not until HD audio chipsets arrived anyway.
I never knew how the soundcards were implemented on an Amiga. I just owned an A500 and A1200 so I have no experience with that. Good to see how things work and how you can choose different sound card options.
Love this very interesting
Thanks David, glad to hear you enjoyed it.
The Micronas DSP on the MPEGit card could possibly be used for wavetable synthesis as well.
There was another expansion available for the original Prelude called the rombler which added a wave table header amiga.resource.cx/exp/rombler
It doesn't look that complicated of a card but without the code for the GAL on it, it'd be difficult to recreate. Not sure what software would be able to made use of the wave table though, other that perhaps some of the audio sequencers.
This is awesome. Where can I found the part name of FB6 (filter?)?. What arethat orange/red parts on the board?
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.
FB6 along with the other FB noted components are the ferrite beads, you should be able to get them from any of the various component stockists. The orange/red parts are film capacitors which again should be available in most places.
31:30m - An aside, but I am glad you mentioned your PiStorm performance with Emu68! Some how I "missed the memo" on the PiStorm performance improvements (with Emu68 c. 2021/2022), and I've been wondering some folks PiStorm Amigas lately are so much faster than my '040-based 2000 when others PiStorm Amigas are so close (to mine) in performance. Obviously the difference is that ones running Emu68 are blazingly fast... and those still back in the '040 performance were running Musashi instead of Emu68.
Anyway, just letting you know you taught me something else in passing.
Great work on the sound card... still on the bleeding edge, aren't you? :)
Not sure that spending a few hours building a sound card to play MP3s could be called bleeding edge, especially when the phone I'm writing this on can just stream the music directly 😂. And now I've given myself the idea of can I get streaming audio playing on the Amiga Prelude 🤣
As for the pistorm, emu68 is fantically fast. It is still hindered by a few bugs, much like the original Musashi software meaning that most demos for example won't run but it does make for a really nice and fast RTG Amiga.
@@CRG Ha, well maybe you are what we called a "heat seeker" in that you seek out the nascent (retro) things that might cause you more pain (for a time). :)
You can take heart that most demos won't run on my '040 2000 (NTSC). I am amazed that Mikes Retro Tech gets so many to run with PiStorm that I can't run on my vintage '040. (He has posted some great collections of demos.) I posted a couple demo videos recently including the preamble recording whether I needed to switch to PAL mode (which works fine with the ZZ9000) first and what accelerator settings worked (for me).
Cheers!
Great work!!!! o7 🙂
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.
There must be some Electronics Parts Centers near to You that might have what you are looking for.
the higher cpu usage with the mp3 decoder installed is likely due to overhead IO of the file sizes differences.
Yeah you're more than likely correct but for the most part I'll probably be using 128kbps MP3s keeping CPU usage to a minimum. Back when this was new in 1997 we were probably using 64kbps MP3s 😆
Just thinking if you could get the sample rate to 384000Khz might give a better quality sound.
Maybe the PCB gold plating is so thin to not be of a concern, but I recall there used to be a concern using tin/lead solder on gold contacts due to potential embrittlement?
I'm not sure what type of finish went onto these cards, I doubt its hard gold though and just to save on cost. The cards been in and out of the zorro slot a few times now and the pins are a bit scratched up but seem fine. Can't see me taking it out again though, no real need to.
Is the issue the chip or Emu68 itself? Have you or your pals tried to use another Amiga sound card to see if it has the same issue?
The MP£ playback issue is 100% the mpeg chip, some of the other guys have replaced their chip by now and it fixed both the noise and the slow playback. The static is another issue though, really not sure whats causing it and I suppose it might be something to do with the pistorm. I unfortunately don't have another processor to test with other than a stock 68k.
I think the slowdown in audio is due to the fact that you're playing a 48khz mp3 and playing it back on 44khz output device.
Possibly although when then does it play at the correct rate in the software decoding? MP3s bit rates and frequencies is something I've never really got my head around fully but we can test this further once the replacement mpeg chips arrive.
Soft Toothbrush + IPA. Get scrubbing.
Works with fully SMD hardware down to 0402.
Yeah, just needs more elbow grease. I was just to eager to test it 😆
I really need to stick my 1200 in a tower, one day :D
I had a 1200 in a tower in the early 00s but later sold it all. It wasn't particularly fast with just an 030 running it and I suppose that's part of the reason I ended up getting rid of it as that processor wasn't really up to the job of running the mediator board and the PCI cards I had in it.
I've found that the best way of removing flux residue is to start by spraying with IPA then scrubbing it with a brush, but then I make a second pass, except this time place some sort of cloth or paper (preferably something that won't leave paper/cloth droppings behind, such as a lint free cloth or Kimwipes) on top of the board, then use the brush to blot up the liquid (IPA mixed with flux residue) left on the board. Sometimes it takes a second pass with the cloth, and it is admittedly a bit of a hassle, but with this method I am able to get my boards looking factory fresh, with no nasty flux residue whatsoever. But yeah, an ultrasonic cleaner is definitely on my wish list. :)
Good idea I'll try that. I'd love to get an ultrasonic but they are very expensive and there's a massive list of other things I want as well. Next up on the gear purchasing is a new camera, in fact Santa should be delivering one in a weeks time 😁
I thought Z2 slots had left/right signals from paula? Or is that only on Z3?
Yeah as above there's no audio on zorro. Would be handy and save on the external cable but unless anyone has a time machine and the ear of Dave Hayne (I think he did Zorro) I'm afraid we're stuck with what it is.
@@Kobold666maybe that's part of the reason why they aren't there although I expect its more just because they aren't really needed on there.
That botched mpeg decoder music sounds like what my focusrite scarlett does sometimes in Windows when it bugs out. Sounds like a ring modulator lol
I'm not sure what the problem is to be honest, a bad batch or possibly an incompatible chip? The chip currently fitted as ES at the end of the part number whereas the replacements don't but I can't find any datasheets to state what the difference in the ES model is.
If a 68060 is like a pentium then it should just about handle playing mp3s.
The 060 can play MP3s and my analogy of comparing the CPU usage to MIPs probably isn't the most accurate but I was just trying to portray that you need a fast Amiga to do it.
I couldn't tell any difference between any of them they all sounded exactly the same too me
Very difficult to hear any difference between the various mp3 bit rates but you can certainly hear the difference between the frequency settings. UA-cam compression may also be masking some of the differences.
I hate when people critique soldering on UA-cam but flipping the PCB to solder every individual cap is the most tedious thing I think I've ever seen. Its pretty easy to get something to hold the PCB up, insert all the like components, splay the legs then flip and solder. I also don't understand why people think soldering surface mount is hard. It takes a bit more technique but you can handsolder a PCB with SMDs in less than half the time.
No need to hate yourself.
To be serious though... I do have one of those swivel PCB mounts but it's just not large enough to house this board. I could probably have fitted EVERY component then tried to solder but there would be so many legs on the bottom getting in the way of each other. I suppose at the end of the day what does it matter if I do it one at a time or if I do it all together.
And surface soldering isn't difficult but I know a lot of people see it that way hence my little joke about the dreaded surface soldering. I've completed plenty of surface mounted soldering projects and yeah it is a lot quicker. I did reference that it took forever to do the through hole on this board, probably about 3 hours or so. If surface I think I could have got it all done in an hour . But its my time to waste and I enjoy the process so...
@@CRG Wow dude, I think you need to learn to take simple criticism if you're going to make UA-cam videos. Of course it's a hobby, nobody in their right mind would even design a PCB with all through hole components these days other than to make it simple for beginners to solder. A stencil costs $7, if that PCB were SMD a guy with a hotplate and a tube of solder paste could have made 20 in the time it took you to solder that 1. My comment was more for people watching because while they may get a kick out of a DIY project, I doubt they want to take time cherish every solder joint as you do.
I can take criticism perfectly fine and I read every comment and try to take on board something from everyone but to say my methods were tedious, well, each to their own. There is actually a half size version of this board which has a more modern design and is mostly surface mount. We decided on the full length board for this build because why not.
I build one in January and I had a lot of problems with the drivers. But then the German group released there drivers and it works perfectly now.
About cleaning the card. I use bio ethanol the stuff you use for like fake fire places etc. I use 2 baths one to get the worst flux off it with a brush and the second one is just to get the last little bit off. The second bath you can just poor back in to the bottle and use it again. It will give you a brand new looking pcb without flux and for very little money.
Taking the Pi Storm out? Oh nooo! Because of your video's with the Pi-storm and the 2000 I know what works and what works not with the Pi-Storm, please put in a USB card before you remove the Pi-storm (that's a joke but again there are not many people making video's with Pi-Storm and expansion cards.
About your previous video with the LAN-IDE-CP card. I wrote a comment about it but it disappeared. What is the driver you used for the IDE part?
And you said something about a jumper that uses the second part of the eprom with a different driver in rom. Is there really a second driver in rom and what is it's name?
Anyhow nice video. I hope you enjoy the prelude, for me it was one of those fun builds that really paid off.
Take Care!
Thanks for the info, I'm hoping to get plenty of use out of the Prelude. Was playing some C&C on the Amiga last night and that sound track coming out of the Prelude was amazing. The Pi Storm will come out eventually as I'm waiting (patiently) on the Terrible Fire 2040. It'll reduce the speed of the machine considerably but will perhaps make it more period correct? Might just leave both in there to be honest then enable/disable the different CPUs as I need. That card is still a while off though so still plenty of fun to be had with the Pi.
As for the lan card and its IDE rom. I think you need to use a larger rom chip then that jumper allows you to select between lower and upper banks. I don't have a direct link to the file I used but if you drop me an e-mail casualretrogamer@outlook.com I can send it to you directly. Or I think you can use this IDE rom by LIV2 github.com/LIV2/lide.device It might even be a little faster!
@@MontrealKid389 It's being worked on and the date is when its done but I'd hope some time in 2024. But we've been waiting years for an affordable 2000 accelerator so I don't mind waiting a little longer. This time though I've bought the 040 chip before they get silly expensive.
To be honest I just grabbed one of ebay. You are going back a while though, I bought it not long after the project was announced. I think it cost about £40 and came from a seller is Czech if I remember correctly.
Was this a "sound" investment? 🤔
Why ? Paula is the best !
Because Amiga is a computer. Expandable.
Paula is great at what she does and as I said everything Amiga will still for the most part just use Paula. This card just allows me to get a higher fidelity in those applications that support it and sure like most things in this hobby we mostly do it because why not.
"There's really no chance you can achieve this with real classic hardware." - the lack of your faith in the powers of a 68060 is disturbing. ;) Great video otherwise. Tempted to build my own Prelude now.
the starts always a good place to start LOL why start at the end
It's a figure of speech. Maybe it's a localised thing to here in Northern Ireland, but it's essentially just my way of saying let's get started.
I would have placed all the components then soldered them all at once
Certainly could do that but I think a lot of the legs would get in the way of others. Each to their own though.
Why are you not using a microscope when you are soldering, especially when you are soldering SMD? You are not 20 anymore and your vision won't be better when you get older 😄
Can't use what I don't have. Microscope is on the list of wants although for this pitch of SMD work and I can still see it ok.
mpeg is a video format not an audio format
Mpeg audio is a layer of the format. Mp3 is mpeg 1 or 2 audio layer 3.
@@CRGWhy are you responding to this joker? He posted four comments, all pretty much asinine.