[Openvortex-dev] Vortex 2 "SQ2500 Gold" Impressions. (SPDIF Hack Info Too)

[Zach Borgerding]

I ordered this card from Computergeeks last week, and eagerly awaited its 
arrival.

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=AU883

Now, I'm not trying to do some normal "review" of a card.  There's something 
special about this peice of junk.

First of all I'll get to some of the card's details...  Sound quality was 
actually pretty good for a $7.00 USD card.  Build quality is pretty bad.  This 
is the cheapest peice of junk card I've ever had, aside from some ALS100 card 
that I got for free in '97.  The PCB is so thin and poorly built.  It's 
mis-shapen in many ways.  It's not noticable to the human eye too much, but the 
PCI slot can tell.  As a matter of fact, it was really difficult to get the 
board seated in the PCI slot just right.  Once you had it set, you couldn't 
move it much without it making the card fail.  Once I finally got the card in 
the slot just right, I was able to get it to boot.  The AU8830 ALSA module 
worked just fine...  Until I touched the jack in the back of the soundcard 
(which caused the card to move too much in the slot).

I was surprised to see that the mixer wasn't a SigmaTel chip like I've seen on 
most Vortex 2 cards.  It's a TriTech TR28028.  It worked fine, and there was 
rear channel support, but there was no "3D" capability in the mixer, so I 
couldn't apply any effects like I can with the Montego II.

I had to pull the card because it was too unreliable.  My *real* SQ2500 arrives 
this week.  But there is something that is really special about this card...

Its board is so sparse that I can literally trace each and every connecter back 
to the AU8830.  Manuel asked if it was possible to trace the connections back 
to the chip.  With this card, it is (but input will be tougher to track down, 
but it is possible).  I've already traced SPDIF back to the chip, and plan to 
test it this weekend.  It traces directly back to pin 81 on the image below.  

http://zborgerd.freeshell.org/vortex_spdif.png

Also, it would seem that this SPDIF out connector draws +5V through pin 70.  It 
goes through a component as well (labeled "103".  I think it is a 0.01 uf 
ceramic chip capacitor).  I'll test it and see what I come up with.

I'll try to pull SPDIF directly off of the chip this weekend.  I need to get 
some SPDIF speakers first though.  Then, I'll try to track down SPDIF *input* 
(assuming it exists).  So, I don't have input discovered yet, but I'll try to 
find it.  At the very least, someone may be able to add SPDIF output to their 
card with this information (if it is worth it).

If I have to, I'll buy one of those TB add-on boards for the Montego.  Unless 
the Montego II daughterboard uses some other SPDIF decoding chips as well, we 
may be in luck.


Zach
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