The amount of noise depends on the motherboard/PC. Some are simply noisier than others! The CF idea is good. What I did back in the day (before getting a CF card) was loading a RAM disk, copying the game I wanted to record music from, to that, and then spinning down the hard drive (via a power saving tool) before doing any recordings. This helped noticeably.

I used my PAS-16 in a Pentium-II 450 (Intel 440BX chipset) machine, without any problems (W98 and W2K). As I recall, even the SCSI bus worked, but it was slow...

I can offer an Ogg Vorbis version.

Batteries like these are often Nickel Metal Hydride rechargeables. They are actively charged by the circuit they're placed in and cannot simply be replaced by normal CR2032 cells.

You can find one example here: http://www.batterymart.com/p-3_6v-60a-3-pin-nimh-battery.html

But of course I don't know if this is the same voltage or capacity as yours. There are no markings on the battery?

Very nice, 688 Attack Sub is quite atmospheric and the samples really add something compared to the Adlib version. For the others, I have to admit, I prefer the C64 versions since they offer a bit more variety than just square wave

Any chance you can post the Adlib version of Kings of the Beach somewhere? for some reason I could never get that game to run.

I don't think links to pirated software, no matter how old, belong in this forum.

Nice stereo. Shouldn't there be quadraphonic output with the OPL3?

Here's a "raw" recording of the same tune (YM3812). Made a couple of years ago while experimenting with digital Adlib capture (using my own interface).

Intermittent contacts generate noise spikes which in turn crash/reset the CPU? wouldn't surprise me.

Haven't seen problems with solder joints on Roland gear, but plenty of other equipment from the 80's suffers from it

I'm pretty sure I tried this many years ago, it may even be documented in ancient threads in the forum, but suffice to say, a ROM swap doesn't work.

To be honest, these elaborate tricks to have to versions seem rather pointless to me. Just keep one of each synth around

BTW, I really wish people would stop perpetuating the myth of the PCM55's superiority over the PCM54, since it as never been substantiated (and the datasheet explicitly says otherwise)

That's a curious piece of hardware. Are you sure can produce FM sound? I note a complete lack of Yamaha chips. Maybe it's only for sample playback, unless you add the CMS chips which I presume the sockets are for.

Two custom/unmarked chips and a chip used in the design of fault-tolerant memory systems (the 74LS631). Interesting mix for a sound card

Let us know what kind of sound you get out of it...

It's great now - looks like a normal post in fact - which I suppose is the whole point of a preview

I'm actually somewhat surprised, that this color has to be set manually and isn't merely inherited from the colors used as post-background in regular threads.

Looks very pleasant. Now that the layout is being worked on, may I suggest that the post-preview page's background color be changed to something a bit lighter? It's a bit hard to read the text in a preview, in my opinion (and shouldn't it be the same color as a regular post's background to really be a preview?).

Maybe no one previews their posts since no one else has mentioned it (it was true for the old color scheme as well)

In my experience, some computers are just more noisy than others. My 386 is also more noisy than the 486 I normally use. Using a CF card as the harddrive will definitely lower the background noise level. A trick I used to do, before replacing the HDD with CF, was to create a RAM disk and run the game out of that. After having spun down the harddrive via a DOS power management tool first, of course.  However, you might not have enough memory for that, I have 128MB in my 486

Since a lot of Yamaha's FM chips (including the OPL2/3) are digital in nature, it is also possible to capture the audio signal directly at the FM chip, removing all noise. Unfortunately, you need some custom hardware for that, like the old Adlib Digisnap project, so it's not really a practical approach.

I think all MT-32s are wedge shaped? if they look different, it's probably due to the angle, the photo was taken from...

If it's anything like the classic IBM PS/2 keyboard (which it bears a striking resemblance to), then I can understand why. I use one of those, but only at home (try it at work and you risk angry stares from passers by, I suspect! ). It's not exactly a silent keyboard.

On the upside, it has excellent tactile feedback and personally, I don't miss the extra (Windows) buttons.

I'm pretty sure, but it would be safer to have someone else verify it too

But as I said, only the old-style MT-32 is like this, other similar modules might be different (CM-xx definitely is, it uses the 9V DC to generate positive and negative voltages for the analog audio circuitry).

12V isn't harmful, the MT-32 will just run a bit hotter. The 9V input is routed straight to another voltage regulator, an 7805. These have a wide input range, all the way to 35V. However, the capacitors on the input are only rated 16V, so I wouldn't go beyond that...

Keep in mind that this only applies to the old-style MT-32 (not sure about the new one). I know that the CM-xx does "more" with the 9V input than route it to an 7805, so those units could be damaged by trying this.

The MT-32 already has caps on both sides of its own 7805 voltage regulator, which probably explains why it works well enough, but adding extra caps is of course the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, the LCD controller isn't compatible with the popular Hitachi chip. I forget the name of the one in the MT-32, but I did manage to find a datasheet and command descriptions some years ago (I'll try to find the PDF). As far as I remember the LCD controller was also "standard" (used by several vendors), just not as widespread, so you can probably get replacement LCDs, but they''ll be harder to find.

Apart from that, the controls and display work in normal operation and not just in test mode, so the mod is feasible.

Edit: the LCD controller is called SED1200, from Epson. There's more info here.

Simply supplying power on the pins on the ISA conenctor is not enough (I couldn't make it work anyway). I think you also need to trigger the RESET signal to get the card initialized.