[sdiy] Old Computers

[Johannes Öberg]

I (who wrote a couple of months ago about my semi-on-going project of
building a sampler/groovebox out of a industrial PC-on-a-card and an
AWE32 or GUS) am still interessted in some sort of collaboration; of
making an opensource modular "os" for this type of synth. If anybody
out there is interessted.

Anyway, from experience, if you are using an old computer like a 486,
you'll want DMA for the sound. LPT DAC won't sound very good, but
still, if you want something simple and mono, you can crank out 12
bits with just a simple R2R network at a reasonable rate IIRC.
However, too much processing power will go to the DAC service, so your
synth engine will suffer. Also, you can get a pretty good multichannel
MIDI interface via the LPT, which IMHO it is better suited for.

/J