Any enthusiast wanting an original AdLib card will have to pay hundreds of dollars for it. If they want a Gravis card, the number may be even larger. But none of them qualifies as the 'first' in its class, and the truth is that there were stranger sound solutions. One of them was the Mindscape Music Board, created by the people at Mindscape for their application Bank Street Music Writer. The Oldskool PC just published a documentary dedicated to that card, in which it traces its origins and shares some very valuable interviews…
1985. DNS was invented, Michael and Lionel recorded We Are The World, Gorbachev took control of the Soviet Union, Studio Ghibli was founded, and the NES invaded the United States. But at some point that same year, Bank Street Music Writer also hit the shelves, a music application created by Glen Clancy and developed by the people at Mindscape, whom we know much better for Lego Island.
Mindscape Music Board: Exploring the 'Wild West' of PC Audio in the '80s
The documentary from The Oldskool PC explains that Music Writer had versions for Atari, Commodore 64, Tandy, IBM PCjr, Apple II and IBM PC, but these last two systems had a problem: their sound systems were very limited, or directly nonexistent. The Apple II found a shortcut in the form of the Mockingboard, a module developed by Rod Nakamoto (who made his first prototypes in a bathtub to contain the chemicals) and distributed by Sweet Micro Systems.
One of the editions of Music Writer for Apple II included only the software, while another came with the Mockingboard module in the same package. The next step, and by far the most logical one, was to request from Sweet Micro Systems an IBM PC–compatible equivalent of the Mockingboard, but the company's owners refused (even though Nakamoto already had the prototype ready). The only option for Mindscape was to create their own 'Mockingboard' clone on PC. That led them to make contact with electrical engineer Thomas Durgavich of DuraLogic, and the result... was the Mindscape Music Board card.
Like the Mockingboard, the card generates six voices with the help of two General Instrument AY-3-8913 chips, relatives of the AY-3-8910 series, very popular in arcades (Gyruss comes to mind), the Intellivision and Vectrex consoles, the Amstrad CPC, and the ZX Spectrum 128. Its design is simple and relatively easy to reproduce, but by taking the clock signal from the ISA bus, it has some sensitivity to speed changes. At the same time, the Mindscape Music Board works in mono, and is not compatible with voice synthesis.
This barely covers half of the documentary, and I definitely recommend watching it in full, but I only have one detail left to share: Including support for the Mindscape Music Board in emulators shouldn't be complicated (that also applies to the PicoGUS project), and there are already PCB clones out there...
Source: Hackaday
