Applied Engineering (1988)

Although the IIgs came standard with an Ensoniq sound chip, the machine had no provision for using it to output stereo sound, or to record sounds. Applied Engineering supplied a means to access the potential of Ensoniq chip with the Sonic Blaster. This card allowed you to hook up a set of external speakers for stereo sound and to digitize sounds. This card could be installed in slots 1, 2, or 6 and provide stereo output without losing the slot's built-in function. To record sounds, however, the slot had to be set to "My Card" in the IIgs Control Panel, which meant that the slot's builtin function was not available.

The picture above shows the cables that came with the Sonic Blaster. The top cable has two mini stereo phone jacks on the plate that attaches to the IIGS backplane for plugging in a set of speakers and a microphone. The bottom cable connected the Sonic Blaster to the Ensoniq sound connector on the IIgs motherboard.

The Sonic Blaster software, shown below, runs under GS/OS and is hard drive installable. It allows you to record, play, and edit sounds. The playback and editing functions are available without having the Sonic Blaster card installed. The program disk is bootable and includes a program to play a sound during GS/OS startup. Applied Engineering also provided a disk of "Audio Art" which contains several digitized sounds.