piteball wrote on 2023-11-14, 20:24:
Hi from Sweden.
Would it be possible to connect a RPi Zero with PicoGUS firmware to the 40-pin connector? I would love to have working Gravis Ultrasound emulation, like in my youth when I was playing on my 486 with the GUS MAX I got as a christmas present from my aunt's husband who traveled a lot to US as he worked as a pilot. I hardly knew about SoundBlaster other than sbemu back then, it was years later when I upgraded PC that I got a SB AWE64 Gold as replacement.
Also if your planning on ordering more batches, sign me up for one. I'm marketing this motherboard to other retro fans, so I'm pretty sure the demand is gonna go up. 😀
Tjena! 😉
Sorry to disappoint, but the PicoGUS is based on the Raspberry Pi Pico (not Zero/Zero2) - and connected to the ISA bus. What the 40-pin connector on the ITX-Llama does is allow you to connect a Raspberry Pi 2/3/4/Zero2 to be used as a MIDI/MT32 synth - ie., converting a MIDI signal coming from the sound chip on the motherboard into analog audio. The Pi is not hooked up to the ISA bus at all.
I've had several people asking me earlier if I couldn't have integrated a PicoGUS onto the motherboard directly. The answer is, I sure could, wouldn't have been hard at all - BUT: unfortunately the Vortex86EX only has a single hardware DMA channel exposed on its slimmed-down ISA bus, and that DMA channel I'm already using for the sound card (the CS4237B).
If you want me to put you on the list for an upcoming batch, just send me a mail at orderitxllama@gmail.com 😀