Ardent Tool of Capitalism

ChipChat 16 & 32

@5150.adf ChipChat Sound Card

chipchat1.zip Drivers for DOS, Win (3.1, 95, NT), OS/2 (zipped image) (thx Lionel Harris!)
   Original image w/ corrupted SUPPORT.TXT file
chipchat1fix.zip Drivers for DOS, Win (3.1, 95, NT), OS/2 (zipped image)
   Same as above but w/ fixed SUPPORT.TXT file
cc1.zip Drivers for DOS, Win (3.1, 95, NT), OS/2 (zipped files only)
   Contains a slightly different SUPPORT.TXT file, missing boot files
chipchat2.zip Windows utilities and samples (zipped image) (thx Lionel Harris!)

chipchat155_1.zip Early ChipChat software rev. 1.55 - disk 1 (zipped image) (thx Christian Forstreuter!)
chipchat155_2.zip Early ChipChat software rev. 1.55 - disk 2 (zipped image) (thx Christian Forstreuter!)

ChipChat Sound User's Guide (Rev. F) (from disk 1)
ChipChat Site (still alive)

ChipChat Sound Card Rev. B
ChipChat Sound Card Rev. C
Wavetable Daughterboard
IRQ7 to IRQ5 ADF Hack
Generic Setup Values
ChipChat Under Linux
General Technics Sound Card
ADF Section

Note: ChipChat 32 is the same card as ChipChat 16 but it comes together with a Wavetable module.

ChipChat Sound Card Rev. B

Rev. B, FCC ID L8LMCAUDIO (photos by Ch. Forstreuter; came with disks v1.55)

There are no visible reference designators on the board. The designators shown here are made up.

Christian Forstreuter said:
   The card works nice, but the old dosmixer version has no IRQ option. I tried the newer dosmixer, but the IRQ change to 5 does not work. So, I think the early CPLD logic does not support IRQ change - it can only use IRQ 7.

ChipChat Sound Card Rev. C

Rev. C, FCC ID L8LMCAUDIO | | (photos by A. Paterakis, Ch. Holzapfel and Raymangold22)

There are no visible reference designators on the board. The designators shown here are made up.

Same as above, except the pads for U7 and U8 are missing, and the PCB layout is slightly different. The CPLD programming may be a newer revision.

Wavetable Daughterboard

The wavetable interface is standardized. Many different modules should be compatible with the ChipChat card.

TMI Multimedia TMI-1080B

P1 Base card header (male) U1 Yamaha YMF704-S OPL4 U2 Yamaha YAC516-E DAC16-L X1 33.8688 MHz xtal ChipChat Yamaha OPL4 WaveTable midi card (OPL4-WT) (dead link)

MD Wavetable Rev. 1.1A

JP1 Base card header (male) U1 i8032 MCU U2 MX27C512QC-15 64Kx8 EPROM U3 QDSP QS700 AdMOS U4 MX23C1010 QS703 AdMOS 1994,1995 U6 MX23C8000 QS702 AdMOS 1994,1995 Y1 16.000 kHz? xtal Y2 45.1584 MHz osc Found on an early ChipChat Rev.B.

IRQ7 to IRQ5 ADF Hack

The ChipChat sound card is set to occupy IRQ7, which might cause strange effects under Win95 with LPT1. Edit the "fixed resource" IRQ7 to IRQ5 (default setting for LPT2) - and everything will be fine.

From ChipChat:
   To use IRQ5, you need to make the following modifications:

1. Change @5150.adf file replacing "int 7" with "int 5"
   (you must re-configure your system after updating the ADF)
2. DOS Autoexec.bat, change DOSMIXER statement from "-7" to "-5"
3. Win31 SYSTEM.INI, change [auddrive.drv] from "int=7" to "int=5"
4. OS2 Config.sys, change device=ES1688DD.SYS from "/I:7" to "/I:5"
5. Win95, use device manager to change interrupt from 7 to 5
6. WinNT, re-install and select interrupt 5

Generic Setup Values

Sound Address 220 (may interfere with a primary TR adapter)
Interrupt Level 7 (5 supported, I see 2, 5, 7, and 10 listed in W95 doc)
DMA Arb 1 (maybe 0,1,3 supported)
General MIDI MPU-401 330

ChipChat Under Linux

Christian Holzapfel wrote (edited):
   The ChipChat can be used under Linux 2.2 and 2.4 using the built-in "SB" Sound Blaster driver module. It will correctly detect the ESS chip.

Auto-loading the module through /etc/modules always failed for me, but it can be loaded manually:

modprobe opl3 io=0x388
modprobe sb io=0x220 dma=1 irq=5 mpu_io=0x330

Set the IRQ according to your ADF (7 or 5).

General Technics Sound Card (from William Walsh, original HERE)

At first I didn't realize it, but this may be a relabeled ChipChat sound card... dunno for sure. Looks confusing to me, but that's what I get for asking and investigating.

Adapter ID is 5150 - same as the ChipChat version... but this card actually looks more like 5130 - the Piper Research SoundPiper... it would be the same card except for the sticker that's on the one Altera IC. Yet if we look at the SoundPiper page, neither of those adapters match mine and the one pictured above. So what the heck is going on here? ChipChat's picture (original) agrees with mine almost 100%.
Ed. Tom: Are all these cards different revisions of the same base design?

General Technics is still around. They sell industrial and rackmount computers of assorted types. At one time they also sold some different PS/2 and MCA upgrade parts. Don't go to their site expecting much in the way of information on these things.

ADF Section for 05150h "ChipChat Sound Card"

ChipChat Sound Card Selection
     <Enabled (io 0200h-020Fh 0220h-022Fh 0388h-038Bh 0330h-033Fh int 7 arb 1)>, Disabled

   Resources are fixed because many software programs assume and require these settings. Address Range (hex): [200-20F, 220-22F, 388-38B, 330-33F]
DMA Arbitration Level:[1], IRQ Interrupt:[7].