Amigaz wrote:

And the GUs PnP has clearer output 😀

didn't you just use the install floppy and the CD with the patches?

Well I didn't have the CD 🤣

I believe I found a torrent or a drive package can't remember. But I have saved the files of course!

retro games 100 wrote:

Re: GUS PnP "converted" to a GUS Classic.

Your question went straight over my head 🤣

But you can't "activate" GUS classic mode unless you have external memory installed (the card has 2 memory slots at the rear). I have 2 sticks in there, unknown size...

I think that you can activate GUS classic mode, if you have a GUS PnP Pro sound card, without having any additional RAM in the 2 RAM slots. The GUS PnP Pro card has 512K of built in onboard RAM.

My previous question was about the allowed size of the music patch set, when used in pure DOS, using the GUS PnP card. I wonder, are you only allowed to fill up 512K of memory, for GUS classic mode? Or will the GUS PnP card allow you to use 1MB of memory, for GUS classic mode?

There is a GUS classic music patch file set called PPL. I think it stands for Pro Patch Light. It's 1 MB in size. If you can use this patch set, with a GUS PnP card, in pure DOS, then that would be very useful.

Edit: Here is a Vogons thread, with a link to the PPL files. The challenge is to get this 1MB patch set loaded in to the GUS PnP, in pure DOS. I don't think it can be done, but I could be wrong.

So which GUS is the one to get for pure DOS?

Anyway I've had a fiddle but it looks like 15.3 is the max this board will do in 3DBench.
I tried to overclock the ISA bus but it turns out the only divider that will give me anything faster than standard is CLK/4 which gives 10MHz, and it won't boot at that speed.

Interestingly, there are no jumpers to set the CPU speed. I put this CPU in and it just went at 40MHz. Is there some sort of speed autodetect? I haven't seen a 486 do that, they all need jumpers set.
Here is my board:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/C/CO … 86-MS-3124.html

Ok maybe we should establish some definitions first 🤣

GUS classic mode = Run SETUP.EXE of a DOS games such as Doom or Descent and select Gravis Ultra Sound as music and sound device.

GUS classic mode <> Loading a SoundFont onto the card then running SETUP.EXE and selecting General Midi.

Every GUS card supports GUS classic mode. Some out of the box, some need to be initialized (like mine).

EDIT: Wikipedia states that the GUS classic had 256KB onboard RAM.

@donutking: Very nice 386 system! Would you mind running Speedsys and post the results? 😀

About the GUS PnP: It is possible to load the PPLT 1MB patch set on either GUS PnP and GUS PnP Pro, as long as you have enough RAM installed on the card.
Most games won't use more than 256K, and classic DOS scene demos won't exceed 1MB. Later demos often have native AMD Interwave (and sometimes AWE32) support. Some of them fall back to software mixing if the sample RAM isn't big enough.

The GUS PnP is not 100% compatible with the classic GUS, some tunes sound different, apparently because of a timing issue.
On the other hand, the GUS PnP is able to mix all 32 channels at 44.1 KHz and has a cleaner output signal.

5u3 wrote:

About the GUS PnP: It is possible to load the PPLT 1MB patch set on either GUS PnP and GUS PnP Pro, as long as you have enough RAM installed on the card.

Wow. So that means, if you are using a GUS PnP Pro card with the PPLT 1MB patch set, 512K of the required RAM comes from the sound card's onboard 512K memory, and the other 512K of the required RAM comes from the installed SIMM sticks. I always thought that the installed SIMM memory could not be used in pure DOS. Amazing! 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

EDIT: Wikipedia states that the GUS classic had 256KB onboard RAM.

That's correct. However, you can upgrade the GUS classic's empty RAM sockets. This can give you up to 1MB of RAM, for pure DOS use.

@ 5u3 Apart from Second Reality, can you recommend any Demos that make a GUS with AMD Interwave chip really stand out?

Also I was under the impression that the GUS was able to load instruments "on the fly".

E.g. the GUS Classic only has 256KB memory, however the patches in the ULTRASND\MIDI folder are much larger. The total folder is ~ 5 MB.

I had a look on ebay for some AMD 386-DX-40 chips, and found something similar to what DonutKing is using. The ebay listing is here. It's cheap, and I wonder if it's worth getting? Also, can someone please recommend any ISA video card to buy? I really don't care about speed. The one and only factor I care about is a clear looking signal, ie not blurry. Thanks a lot people. 😀

Edit: Is it possible to put a 16-bit ISA SoundBlaster clone PnP card in to a 386 mobo? The reason for me wanting to do this is because they have an IDE connector on them. Would the 386 cooperate with such a card, to allow me to connect a HDD to the sound card? Thanks a lot for any info.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

@ 5u3 Apart from Second Reality, can you recommend any Demos that make a GUS with AMD Interwave chip really stand out?

AFAIK Second Reality only uses eight channels, so the classic GUS and the GUS PnP should sound identical. When playing the demo on both cards, the classic GUS has a lot of bass in the technoish sections of the soundtrack, but sounds rather "muddy" overall, whereas the GUS PnP is brighter and more detailed in the atmospheric/movie-like sections.

As for other demos, I will try to compile a selection and post it later.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Also I was under the impression that the GUS was able to load instruments "on the fly".
E.g. the GUS Classic only has 256KB memory, however the patches in the ULTRASND\MIDI folder are much larger. The total folder is ~ 5 MB.

Yes, this is done by the GUS MIDI drivers. Demoscene stuff doesn't care about these and accesses the GUS RAM directly.

The best program to explore the capabilities of GUS(PnP), AWE and probably even EWS cards is the Open Cubic Player. Get this installed and configured (check out the documentation!), visit The MOD Archive for some modules and have fun!

@rg100: Recommended ISA cards: ET4000, Cirrus Logic, WD Paradise.

It is possible to use the Sound Blaster IDE port for harddisks, but you can't boot from it and it doesn't work in plain DOS. About 1997 I had an old 486 with a harddisk running off the SB IDE port. It worked under Win95 (wobbly) and Debian (with the help of some kernel parameters), but it was terribly slow.

Thanks very much for the awesome info.
BTW, who's just bought 3 of those 386 mobos, as featured in DonutKing's original post? 🤣

Well, from hindsight I could've just taken 2 maybe, but oh well, I pressed that stupid button!
I only have 1 386 board and it's completely inflexible as it doesn't appear to have any fsb jumpers, manual (it's not in th99) nor have a 387 socket.
This board is -exactly- what I've been looking out for for over a year now. Cache sockets, a manual and a 387 socket.
Only thing I'd still need is an I/O card that can take 2.88MB floppy drives and I'm all set!

I also got a couple of those 386 to 486 upgrade cpu's Cyrix made and am interested how they compare to the regular 386.

Tetrium wrote:

Well, from hindsight I could've just taken 2 maybe, but oh well, I pressed that stupid button!

Hehe! BTW, I have found a thread on the net about this exact board, from the exact same seller.

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/archi … hp/t-12723.html

The board has an 80 MHz oscillator, so you can attempt to get the mobo running at 10 MHz bus speed, (but the poster on this message board says it is not stable at that speed.)

Edit: If you only use an AMD 386 DX-40 chip, what kind of speed range can you expect to get, from this board? For example, if you adjust the bus jumpers, can you go from a 386 SX-?? up to the DX-40 speed range?

I have no idea. The manual states it won't take 16MB simm's also. Shame, but no loss.
At least I have plenty of cache chips laying around..will need to maybe bend a couple of those legs straight though 😜

With the right osci it should work at least down to 16 MHz.
The 386SX is much slower than the DX, it only has half the bus width.

Oh now I see. I have to swap the crystal on the motherboard to change the CPU speed. Like the one in the link, mine is an 80MHz crystal. Hmm... wonder if its worth tracking down a 90MHz or 100MHZ crystal 😁
Thanks heaps for that link RG100

I had a look on ebay for some AMD 386-DX-40 chips, and found something similar to what DonutKing is using. The ebay listing is here. It's cheap, and I wonder if it's worth getting?

I think this is actually where I got my CPU from 😜

Very nice 386 system! Would you mind running Speedsys and post the results?

I'm about to leave for work but I'll try to do this when I get home this afternoon.

@rg100: Recommended ISA cards: ET4000, Cirrus Logic, WD Paradise.

It is possible to use the Sound Blaster IDE port for harddisks, but you can't boot from it and it doesn't work in plain DOS. About 1997 I had an old 486 with a harddisk running off the SB IDE port. It worked under Win95 (wobbly) and Debian (with the help of some kernel parameters), but it was terribly slow.

I agree with the above. ET4000 is probably the go for ISA. I've heard some Number9 ISA cards are faster but they seem less common. The ET400 is often called the 'diamond speedstar' but there are some of these with different chipsets so check before you buy.

I have also tried to boot off a hard disk attached to sound blaster's IDE port, in my 486 system, and it didn't work 🤣
I did actually have a SB16 PNP in this 386 for a short time to test out the MT32, because I didn't have the right MIDI cables for the Music Quest card but I did have the DB15 adapter for the gameport. I don't see why it wouldn't work.

With the right osci it should work at least down to 16 MHz.
The 386SX is much slower than the DX, it only has half the bus width.

Yes I was under the impression that the 386SX is not pin compatible with a DX - at least, the motherboard design is different due to the different bus width? I haven't seen one before that wasn't soldered to a motherboard. The manual says it supports various DX CPU's but not SX.

I got a lot of cpu's from another forum where theres lots of cpu collectors active. It's faster and often cheaper then Ebay 😉

The 386SX is much slower than the DX, it only has half the bus width.

DonutKing wrote:

Yes I was under the impression that the 386SX is not pin compatible with a DX - at least, the motherboard design is different due to the different bus width? I haven't seen one before that wasn't soldered to a motherboard. The manual says it supports various DX CPU's but not SX.

Sorry, I was just referring to RG100's idea of slowing down a 386DX to 386SX levels...

The 386SX wasn't such a bad idea, since you got virtual 8086 mode and much better memory management for the price of a 286. Too bad it was too slow to be useful. An ambitious 286 could easily take on a 386SX.

Oh right, I thought you were talking about physically installing a 386SX cpu in this board.

Here is the speedsys results:

Also in norton sysinfo I score 41.5 😀

Thanks a lot for the Speedsys screen! 😀