Logitech Soundman Games

There isn't a ton of available information about this card online. It seems to be a quite functional, but relatively unexciting, SoundBlaster Pro clone. This isn't a bad thing.

Hardware

The Soundman Games consists of a MediaVision MVD1208 chip, an OPL3, Sony CD-ROM controller, and a Joystick/MPU port. I do not have a Sony 34-pin CD drive to test the CD-ROM interface. I can't find any information about the MVD1208 online. I can only assume it is some sort of 8-bit version of the MVD1216 (Jazz 16) chip. This is also not the same chip as the earlier SB 1.x compatible Thunderboard.

This card apparently supports 44khz sampling, which is better than a "real" SB Pro.

A couple pieces of hardware information I found from old Linux OSS documentation:

http://www.kenharker.com/linux-tm4000m/sound.html

"The Logitech SoundMan Games supports 44 kHz in stereo while the standard SB Pro supports just 22 kHz/stereo"

https://www.kernel.org/doc/readme/Documentation-sound-oss-README.OSS

"There are just a few fully 100% hardware SB or SB Pro compatible cards. I know just Thunderboard and SM Games. Other cards require some kind of hardware initialization before they become SB compatible. Check if your card was listed in the beginning of this file. In this case you should follow instructions for your card later in this file."

Drivers and Installation

Addresses, DMAs, and IRQs are configured by jumpers. The card is labeled fairly well. The MPU, Joystick port, and CD-ROM interface can all be disabled to free up resources.

I found the driver disk on Driver Guide. I scanned it with a couple different AV programs and I'm pretty sure it is OK. SoundmanGames.zip.

The installer program hung my PC. I looked over the REAME file and installation scripts however and there isn't much to the DOS software. Many of the files are just assets for the installation program itself.

I wasn't able to find the "real" Windows 3.1 driver disk. The SBPro drivers from Windows 3.1 Driver Library - Audio Disk 1 seem to work fine, my only complaint is that MS's default FM MIDI Synth driver is really bad. wdl_aud1.zip.

DOS files
---------
...
SOUNDMAN.INI   Configuration file for DOS
SMG.SYS        DOS Driver (for CONFIG.SYS)
SMGPLAY.EXE    DOS Utility Program to play a WAV file
SMGREC.EXE     DOS Utility Program to record a WAV file
SMGKEYB.EXE    DOS Utility to volume hot keys
LGEXPAND.EXE   DOS Utility to decompress xxx.xx% files
...

I was able to figure out the arguments to SMG.SYS from the install script and put it in my config.sys file. All it needs is the port and the volume.

DEVICEHIGH=C:\SOUNDMAN\SMG.SYS /S:220 /V:75

This SMG.SYS TSR takes up about 3K of memory. As far as I can tell, the only thing it is used for is volume control. The card works fine without it loaded.

Recordings

In general, this card seems to have pretty good output quality. The digital stereo channels are not reversed in Duke Nukem 3D.