Computer Hardware

In the beginning, shopper audio adapters were used only for games. In 1989, Creative Labs commenced the Game Blaster, which make available FM-synthesized sound to a handful of computer games. The Game Blaster was soon substituted by the Sound explosion. The Sound Blaster included a built-in microphone jack, stereo output, and a MIDI port for concerning the PC to a synthesizer or further electronic musical instrument. Finally, the audio adapter had the potential for users other than games. Transcribe Sound Blaster Pro featured improved sound when compared to the original Sound Blaster. Ideally, a Sound Blaster Pro-compatible card would be capable of using the same IRQ, DMA, and I/O port addresses as a Sound Blaster Pro card from Creative Labs and would be used by an application program in the same way as an actual Sound Blaster Pro. Some cards compulsory two separate sets of hardware resources, using one set of IRQ, DMA, and I/O port addressed for native mode and a second set for Sound Blaster Pro compatibility. Others worked well within Windows or within an MS-DOS session running with Windows in the background but required the user to install a DOS-based Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) driver program to work in MS-DOS itself. As a consequence, most MS-DOS game developers had to develop configurations for each of the most important sound cards.