![]() ![]() CMS chips were now socketed in order to be more economical for Creative Labs. The CT1320 is sometimes called "Sound Blaster 1.5". Its predecessor was the CT1300 which was the CMS/Game Blaster. The CT1310 is not known to actually exist as a model beyond Creative's literature. It was the first sound card on the market to have digital sample playback capability. Sound Blaster 1.0/1.5 (CT1310 and CT1320)Ĩ-bit mono 22 kHz playback, 13 kHz recording.ĬMS chips soldered on board gave backward-compatibility to their Game Blaster. The second was rev 6.9 which was signed off in week 37 of 199 2. This means the first was rev 4.9 which was signed off in week 19 of 199 2. The first two digits represents the major and minor revision of the board, and the last three digits refer to the year (in the 1990s) and week number it was signed off.įor example, the first Sound Blaster Pro 2 (CT2600) board revision isĤ9219. One member on Vogons reported that Creative Labs' board revisions appear to be pretty logical in their structure. Most Creative Labs boards have their board revision number etched in the bottom-left of the component side of the board. The changes from v1.5 to v2.0 were all in the DSP chip - this meant that existing owners of prior models could upgrade to a v2.0 card by purchasing the v2.0 DSP chip from Creative. This new CT1350 used fewer, more tightly integrated components, as hence was a physically shorter card than its predecessors. The sampling rate capabilities were also increased to 44 kHz (CD quality) for playback, and 22 kHz for recording. In October 1991, Sound Blaster v2.0 ( CT1350) was launched which added support for "auto-init" (automatic initialising) DMA which allowed the card to produce a continuous loop of double-buffered sound output. These models dropped the C/MS chips completely, otherwise the card was similar to the Sound Blaster 1.0. In 1990, the CT1320C and CT1320U were launched which were also a Sound Blaster 1.5. Having recognised that C/MS was unpopular, they replaced the two C/MS (Creative Music System/Game Blaster) chips with sockets - you could still purchase the C/MS chips for $29.95 if you wished and install them into these sockets. The CT1320B (Sound Blaster 1.5) was a cost-cutting measure. By adding this feature to the sound card, it freed up an expansion slot and at the very competivie price tag the Sound Blaster was being sold for, it was an easy decision for prospective sound card buyers. Back in these days, PC owners would need to spend around $50 to buy a game port adapter or a multi-I/O card that had a game port if they wanted to use a joystick with their PC. Game Blaster card, the C/MS chips were installed in sockets on the board.Īnother key selling feature of the Sound Blaster was its inclusion of a game port. For backward compatibility with the earlier C/MS a.k.a. In reality, this transformed DOS games, as this sampled sound was used to introduce sound effects into games while simultaneously playing music via the OPL2 (FM synthesis) chip. This brand new feature brought the ability to play back mono sampled sound at up to 22 kHz sampling frequency (about the same as FM radio quality, so quite poor by today's standards), and record at 12 kHz (which was similar to AM radio quality - even worse). ![]() ![]() This meant that all games which supported Ad Lib would produce similar audio output quality on the Sound Blaster.īut what made it different was the "DSP", or Digital Sound Processor, which is what Creative Labs called the "digital audio" part of the card. First announced in September 1988, the Sound Blaster had an 11-voice FM synthesizer which made use of the Yamaha YM3812 chip, often referred to simply as the OPL2 chip - this was the same chip used in the Ad Lib card, so it was 100% Ad Lib compatible. The original Sound Blaster v1.0 and v1.5 ( CT1310, CT1320A/B) were released in 1989 as the successor to their Game Blaster.
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