[PCI Rec Card][Alex Sloley's Digital Audio Card Overview]

Note:

I have no other relation to Elrad than as a satisfied user of their Digital Audio Cards.
By the way, if you main interest is digital in only, a Ensoniq Audio PCI or a Turtle Beach Montego both have a feature plug, to which you could connect a S/P-DIF interface. More info at my links page.

Another Note:

The ftp archive of Heise Verlag, the old publisher of Elrad no longer carries the driver software for this card. This could mean the board and GAL's are unavailable too. Please contact www.emedia.de for more info on this.

Take five optical digital interface card

Take five is a digital audio interface card for the pc. The card supports 32, 44.1 and 48 kHz datarates. There are two optical inputs and an optical output available. Below is one of the scanned pages from the German ELRAD magazine of August 1994. I asked and got permission to use this material.

Elrad published this card as a D.I.Y. project, but you can also order it prebuild. Thanks to Teemu Mottonen for the following info:

He (Andreas Spoo) has a small company, called AS Ware. His fax number is the same
as the phone (+49 221 138596, from outside Germany). The card price
is 450 DM, plus shipping (about 10 DM within EU). That includes the card,
two optical cables and 6 month warranty. I forgot to ask about payment
options (so no idea about Visa). 450 DM is about 270US$, not bad if
a self-made version would be $200.

I also got email from ELRAD, saying that photocopies of the article
can be ordered, the cost is 5 DM (payment on an Eurocheque). But I think
I will order the readymade card.

The $200 or fl.550,- is what it has cost me to build the board myself.

This is a scan of the article as it appeared in the Elrad of August 1994.

You can order the board and the GAL's via www.emedia.de

Technical info:

Input interface: Two optical inputs (software selectable) and a Yamaha YM3623
Output interface: One optical output and a Yamaha YM3437
Buffering: 8 kWord FIFO (16 kByte)
SCMS: Defeated
I/O addresses: 210h (default), 220h, 230h or 240h
IRQ: 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15

Notes on getting the parts

The Yamaha YM3437 was a difficult part to get. It is only needed if you want to use the optical output. I found it as a replacement part for Yamaha keyboards. Contact your local Yamaha repair centre for replacement part: XM530A00. Alas this is a SMD part, but the pin-layout is the same. Just wire it one-to-one on a DIL socket.

The FIFO's are made by Dallas Semiconductor. See their Distributers list for a local distributor.

The oscillators are made by Seiko. See their Distributers list for a local distributor.

Software

Including the original comment as it appeared on Elrad's ftp site.

hdrec95.zip   61668 09.09.95 Win95-Treiber fuer "Take five"
take_fiv.arj 117511 20.03.96 WIN-3.1X-Treiber fuer TAKE FIVE (1/95), um die
                             Karte unter CUBASE AUDIO zu betreiben
hdrecord.exe 159205 29.07.94 Treiber und GAL-Dateien zum Harddiskrecorder "Take
                             Five", ELRAD 8/94, jetzt mit Sourcen,
                             selbstentpackendes Archiv
a16linux.tar  61440 18.09.95 Linux-Treiber fuer "Take five" im Quelltext
hdrec_2.lzh    5834 21.02.96 16-Bit-Treiber fuer zweite "Take Five"-Karte im
                             gleichen Rechner

More digital audio cards:

You can find a great overview with lots of digital audio cards at Alex Sloley's Digital Audio Card Overview

A great source for semiconductor URLs is Gray's Semiconductor Pages

[PCI Rec Card][Alex Sloley's Digital Audio Card Overview]