This is a fully functional SAM driver for use with a Dolphin Series 2 Serial synthesiser. This includes the Apollo 2, Juno and Gemini. (These synthesisers are all compatible with each other).
The internal PC-Card ISA synth (Europa 2) is not supported by a SAM driver yet. For Windows 95 you can use our SSIL driver. For Windows NT there is no solution yet. We are looking into the possibilities of a kernal mode driver for communicating with the PC-Card.
This driver uses the WIN32 Comms API to talk to the synthesiser so will work in Windows 95 and NT as there is no 16-bit code involved.
Please report any bugs to Dolphin. If it crashes please tell us the crash address and registers etc, from the crash message box, also report the driver version number (check with explorer - file properties).
Rom Versions
To make full use of this driver you should have engine version 2.x ROMS installed in your synthesiser. If you have version 1 roms you will have limited language switching ability, although most other functionality will be maintained.
Baud Rates
This driver will auto-detect your synthesiser if it is configured for 9600 or 19200 baud. (4800 and 1200 baud is not supported). By default the synthesiser powers up to 9600 baud, but if you have a version 2.2+ engine ROM you can use the driver configuration panel to select 19200 baud for faster response.
Comport Configuration
If you experienve protection faults when trying to use the driver, the most likely cause is a IRQ clash.
You must make sure that the COM port that your synthesiser is plugged into has a unique IRQ value. You can check this in Windows device manager. If the COM port is sharing its IRQ with another device, including another COM port then the Microsoft Windows Com port driver tends to crash.
This problem did not tend to occur with DOS, because DOS screen readers did not tend to use interupts to operate the COM port.
Also make sure that the IRQ configuration in device manager actually matches the settings in your hardware. Your hardware settings will be set by either jumpers on the card, or in possibly in the BIOS.
Features
Automatic detection of synthesisers.
Supports multiple units simultaneously.
Supports all the Apollo's voice commands.
Driver information panel will give you engine version and ROM info.
Supports 9600 and 19200 baud rates (user selectable).
Automatically uses full-duplex mode for v2.2+ engine ROMS.
Indexing can be to the nearest character.
Supports 16 sound FX and several pauses.
Prompts are translatable. UK and US prompts are built in- others can be read from a prompt file.
Speaks numbers as words providing external prompt file exists.
