|
Soundscape S-2000 was Ensoniq's first direct foray into the PC sound card market. The card arrived on the market in 1994. It is a full-length ISA digital audio and sample-based synthesis device, equipped with a 2 MiB Ensoniq-built ROM-based patch set. It was praised for its then-high quality music synthesis and sound output, high compatibility and good software support. ==Hardware overview== The card uses an 'OTTO' synthesizer chip with a companion 'Sequoia' chip for MIDI duties, along with a Motorola 68EC000 8 MHz controller (a low-cost variant of the ubiquitous 68000 with selectable bus width〔http://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheet/motorola/M68000AD.pdf〕) and a small amount of RAM. Note that although it has RAM, the card does not support uploading of sound samples for the synthesizer. The on-board coprocessor was a much-advertised feature of the card, marketed to reduce the overhead of music synthesis through the device. Digital-to-analog audio conversion was handled by an Analog Devices CODEC such as the AD1848, which was capable of sampling at up to 48 kHz.〔"http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/47932/AD/AD1848KP.html"〕 The Soundscape S-2000's sample-based synthesizer lacked an effects processor, meaning digital effects such as reverb and chorus were not supported. As was common with multimedia cards produced in the mid-90s, a variety of proprietary CD-ROM interfaces were supported. This was necessary as ATAPI IDE CD-ROM drives were not yet common, and the majority of optical drives produced required one of the many proprietary interfaces that were prevalent at the time. In addition, the majority of PCs purchased typically had only a single IDE channel, which might already be controlling two hard drives or a hard drive and a tape/disc backup device, so offering additional CD-ROM interfaces was often convenient to the consumer. The sound card runs its own operating system, which is uploaded to the board's RAM during system initialization via the card's 'SSINIT.EXE' utility program. There were no other TSR programs needed for software support, as were common with other popular sound cards such as Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE32. The Soundscape also has a hardware MPU-401 implementation which, combined with the lack of TSRs, allowed a high degree of compatibility with minimal memory footprint, which was a significant benefit as many DOS games often ran in a custom flavor of protected mode or were particularly demanding of conventional memory space. Soundscape S-2000 has several descendants, including the SoundscapeDB, Soundscape Elite, Soundscape OPUS, Soundscape VIVO90, and AudioPCI. The original Soundscape S-2000 was replaced by the Soundscape II, a board based on the ELITE but without the daughtercard (it was an upgrade option). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ensoniq Soundscape S-2000」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|