New Media confirms sound cards disappearing.

19931215 Intel Development Extension #2:

Port to Wave output. As predicted, writing to Windows 3.1 audio services exposed the impossibility of working under the Microsoft audio system.

A key reason Satie worked, is that it worked OUTSIDE of windows. Intel’s Advanced Technology group (Bob Davies) had given us a slim 32-bit VxD-Virtual Device Driver (when 16-bit was the MS legal limit), that gave us control over the CPU’s Interrupt. As long as we were polite, this gave us a constant 11-millisecond cycle of processing opportunity, and abundant memory space in which to do it.

This law-breaking VxD proved to be the ticking time bomb that set off the NSP wars. We were aware of the implications and ever so willing to flout Microsoft, in pursuit of the importance and relevance of the work to synthesis itself.

Perhaps that is in part why—we later learned—Intel deliberately sought for the work “a West-coast group of Birkenstocked hippies.” (And why in all pictures from that period you’ll find me dressed for that role.)