Category: Announcements

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New items in stock and product updates

Hello everyone!

TLDR alert! But… we have three new boards to announce!  We also have an update on a few older products but first, we are officially announcing the release of the X16 Dual MIDI / Wavetable Card.  This card will allow you to drive your external MIDI equipment, as well as a standard 26-pin wavetable module from your Commander X16!  Melodious now supports MIDI playback and you can play the MIDI enhanced version of Attack of the Petscii Robots with any General MIDI device.

Speaking of general MIDI devices, our second product announcement is the Little Dreamer wavetable module.  This small module uses the Dream SAM2695 single IC MIDI synthesizer.  This low-cost module packs a powerful punch for its size.  Not only does it boast an impressive General MIDI instrument set, but also an MT-32 sample set which sounds very nice.  This is the sound chip the 8-Bit Guy used in his recent X16 update video.  Hear it in action here:  X16 2024 Update

The final new product is one I developed while working on the Little Dreamer, and that is the USB MIDI Wavetable Header.  This simple device uses a single USB to MIDI IC and has the circuitry to drive most standard 26-pin wavetable modules.  Just plug it in, and use it with your favorite MIDI enabled software, or use your wavetable as a synth in favorite DAW!

You may have noticed the X16 Network / Serial card has been out of stock for some time now.  A HW bug was brought to our attention which caused the interrupt to fail.  We had worked out a patch to resolve this issue, but a larger issue appeared as we worked through ANSI support for ROMTERM.  In a nutshell, I redesigned the card making sure the data lines stay completely away from the ESP32 module. 

As we were testing the network card, another issue became apparent with the 90-degree riser board used by Lazer3D cases.  The problem is very intermittent, but it did seem to cause enough reflection for occasional failures.  We did more testing and redesigned this card with signal termination.  The terminators seem to resolve enough reflection to fix any remaining gremlins.

We finally feel that we’ve done enough testing to release them both for sale again.  If you own a riser or network card purchased before Oct 2024, please contact us and we’ll replace them free of charge.  Please accept our apologies for the issues, but we want to make sure everyone has what they paid for.  We haven’t received the final PCBs; they arrive later this week, but I wanted to make the announcement asap.  Please also allow us a little time to get them built.  If you do happen to place an order for another card, please let us know so we can send your replacement riser and/or network card along at the same time.

Whew! 

Thank you all so much for supporting TexElec and the Commander X16!  We are privileged to serve the vintage computing community, and we couldn’t do it without you!

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Jr IDE updated Rev B, Resound jr OPL3 Adlib Clone, TandyMod and more for the PCjr!

Hello PCjr fans!

The original Jr IDE Rev A went out of stock on the TexElec website about three months ago, when one of the CPLDs went out of stock. At the time, all of the suppliers said it would be May of 2023 before they were back! We decided to make a few updates and we are now happy to introduce the Jr IDE Rev B.

Functionally, the two cards are identical with a few minor changes. The POST display was removed, and we added a battery for the real-time clock. The IDE pinout was inverted, which allows a standard IDC right-angle box header to be used. We put a capacitor near the IDE power pin to help with CF card stability. But one of the most important additions is the new expansion header. The expansion header will allow for lower cost cards to be added on without another sidecar connector or enclosure.

This leads me to our second product announcement, the Resound jr OPL3 / Adlib clone! We ported our popular Resound 2 OPL3 card to the PCjr. We couldn’t add an expansion port without making a card for it! It has a built-in line-level 3.5mm / 1/8″ headphone jack built-in and a 3-pin header if you want to add your own port on the back of the sidecar.

I know, I know, you already bought a Rev A Jr IDE, but how are you supposed to add a Resound jr to your system? Not to worry, the third product we’re releasing is the TexElec jr Expansion / Prototype Board. This board has the same physical dimensions and expansion port as the Jr IDE Rev B. It also comes with a sidecar connector preinstalled! It can be installed in a sidecar just like the Jr IDE, and also has a prototype area for DIY projects!

Lastly, we are releasing the TandyMod for the PCjr. This board has been around for some-time now and will change the PCjr video memory map to match that of the Tandy 1000. This allows many Tandy 1000 specific games to run on the PCjr. With the release of the Resound jr, we thought it would be important to increase game compatibility as much as possible.

We made a video to release at the same time as the product launch. The video discusses the cards in more detail and shows a demo of them in action! It also shows how to install the TandyMod in your PCjr.

You can check it out here: https://youtu.be/az39Hpfn6KY

Whew, it took us a while to get here, but they are all for sale in the store today. Thanks for everyone’s patience, and continued support of our store. We couldn’t do it without our great customers, and we hope to keep making vintage PC parts for many years to come!

Thanks!
Kevin & Sara

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The Resound New Wave MCA is coming soon!

We’ve been working on this card for many months now, and I will need to type documentation longer than the Magna Carta to describe all of the features and caveats of this card. Honestly any Sound Blaster MCA or variant will encounter varying issues on different microchannel machines. But more on that later.

Thanks so much to Eric (aka TubeTimeUS) for the design of the original Snark Barker MCA and some assistance along the way. I decided to modify the card to be surface-mount and add an OPL3 instead of the original OPL2. I also removed the microphone input to save a little cost and used the same premium opamp circuit I use on our other Resound cards. In addition, I modified the roll-off filter used on the original Sound Blaster to a higher frequency. It may cause noise on some lower quality samples, but 22 & 44khz samples sound much less muddy. There were a few other minor changes, but they do not affect functionality. All the parts have finally showed up after numerous delays, but for now, here is a quick video of the card in action!

We should have them on sale in a few days after posting this video, so stay tuned and thanks for taking a look!

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The SNES Adapter for Attack of the PETSCII ROBOTS

This video describes how the SNES adapter works for The 8-Bit Guy’s new game Attack of the PETSCII ROBOTS. It discusses the pinout for the connector, how it was designed to work on multiple systems and how to connect the power and audio to the Commodore Pet. There is also some bonus footage at the end showing the construction of the adapters. Thanks for watching!

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Update to the IBM PS/2 to Standard Floppy Adapter

First, we have the adapters back in stock! More importantly, we want to make you aware of a small issue.

If you have one of the original adapters with a yellow resistor pack, and you are having issues, please feel free to contact us and we will be happy to chat with you about fixing this issue.

Please read Kevin’s details below, we have also added this information to the top of the product description:

The first batch of floppy adapters we sold had a few reported issues, so I took some time earlier this week to perform more extensive tests.  With only one adapter and one standard floppy or HxC, they work very reliably from several tests.  I was able to get some combinations of floppy drives to work using two adapters, but they did hesitate at times and could cause disk read errors.   Others would not work together at all, or only one drive would work properly.  The original design seems to be unreliable in certain combinations.  After some analysis we changed the resistor pack values to a less aggressive value and now all my standard floppies work together fine or standalone.

There is one bit of bad news however, the adapter will not work as a second or primary drive while using an original IBM drive.  I thought I had tested this before, but I realize now that I only made sure the drive would get through post, which it will without issue.  However, it will not work with one of the adapters installed.  This is what bogged me down this week and why we are a little later than planned on the release of the second batch.  Sadly though, I have not been able to answer why and at this point I want to make sure anyone who wants an adapter understands the limitations.  Fortunately, I suspect most folks are looking for a single drive to work in the PS/2, and it is certainly fine for that.