Industrial PC (EPSON IM-425) as Retro Gaming Device

MS-Dos 5.0 plain or FreeDOS, both fail.
32Mb RAM, 486DX2 50Mhz, only ARGUS ISA Card is installed.
its almost the same Machine in the link above, only CPU is different.

It seems one of the channels is not working.
I'm only getting output on One Side, everything is correctly connected to the InterWave IC, checked everything according to the schematic.
The 3W Amplifier works. I can hear the static noise on the Earbud.

640K!enough wrote:

With the standard ROM, yes. As the development and testing of the ROM module and associated software progresses, there will be options.

I see. I thought it was possible to load the RAM 4MB GM Soundfile. Anyhow I can live with the ROM and I will try some *.pat files.
Looking forward to the ROM module for the future.

@shock__ , @640K!enough: awesome work.

The Interwave IC has damage, maybe ESD...

It only outputs one Channel, i checked everything twice.
There is simply no signal from the Interwave. 🙁

I have finally managed to assemble my card. We've seen enough of these things already, but since mine is a little different, here is the obligatory picture of the assembled card:

Something else that is new to this prototype; the full PCB sandwich:

With a few minor hiccups along the way (most of them my fault), the card works fine, for the most part. I haven't done any extensive listening tests yet, but for a two-layer board, the sound produced is surprisingly clear. I'd say better than the Gravis board with the older-generation InterWave, though the fact that I haven't replaced any capacitors may have something to do with that.

So far, the ROM carrier board has proven a little problematic. It's unclear as yet whether that has something to do with my substitution of the cheaper AHC373s for the F373s, but I don't expect it should be a problem. Another possible suspect is the model of 44-pin receptacles I installed. It could be that they don't make firm contact with the pin header on the carrier board. Software is usually able to read something, but not consistently, and not without corruption at some point. I may also just need to flush any residual flux out of the receptacles and clean the board; thankfully, it's a non-flammable, non-conductive formulation this time. I'll continue investigating as time and my budget permit; more news and commentary to follow.

Have I already said how much I love this thread? Time to say it once again I guess!

The ROMs I ordered came today so now I have everything I need to build my card.

Hopefully will be able to work on it this week.

hey that rom board looks very nice 😀

It's nowhere near final, of course. One problem is that this configuration obstructs at least one neighbouring slot.

The idea behind this design was that I could use the same ROM modules as on the Gravis board, so that I could be sure that that aspect of the design works, and can verify that the flash chips were programmed successfully, with a valid ROM image. That turned out to be really handy, since it isn't yet working, and this allows me to immediately eliminate some possibilities.

When I get to the final design, it should be a single, smaller board that will allow the 90º SIMM sockets and use of the neighbouring slot. It should also allow for capacities of up to 16 MiB, if all goes according to plan.

I think I've found and fixed the problem I was having with the ROM. It turns out that, despite being soldered down, one of the pins seems to have been slightly out of shape, and wasn't making proper contact within the receptacle. I re-heated it, and gave it a gentle nudge with the tip of the iron, and now the ROM is detected. It's still not as consistent as I'd like, so there may be another such pin.

I have already tried the old 2 MiB bank I created a while ago, as well as one of the 4 MiB banks. Both were detected and worked as expected. So far, it seems there are no problems with using the AHC373s as a substitute for the F373s.

Soon it will be time to test a more recent 8 MiB bank, once everything is a little more stable.

Looking really good. I'm excited for your future developments.

Is it already too late to contribute to this project in any manner? I could, e.g., assemble a card and test it in various retro PCs if further beta-testing is still desired?!

good news btw: my IW ROms from UTsource came this week and i soldered them today, and TAAADAAA ! It works. At least the MD5sum is correct, now i have to get some sound out of it. using duke3d and darkforces setup to test sound.
edit: no soundouput for MUSIC with GUS set up ....

So glad to see this project alive and well.

Finally, after a good deal of fiddling with the receptacles and re-soldering, the ROM module sandwich is working reliably. There is still a problem with the instrument map that causes the percussion to produce garbage, rather than proper playback, but only on bank 0. The other percussion banks seem to be fine. I'll have to look into that a little more before being able to properly test the 8 MiB bank. Other than the remaining problem, it looks promising.

Phreeze wrote:

good news btw: my IW ROms from UTsource came this week and i soldered them today, and TAAADAAA ! It works. At least the MD5sum is correct, now i have to get some sound out of it. using duke3d and darkforces setup to test sound.
edit: no soundouput for MUSIC with GUS set up ....

Do those titles explicitly feature InterWave support, or just regular (GF1) GUS support? If it's just GF1 support, did you install the 5.6 MiB .PAT set from the CD (via SETRAM.EXE)?

no. because i have no clue what to do. I only own a gus classic where just the drivers are loaded and it's good to go 😀 will try tomorrow or later if I'm motivated

^ I am also interested on that 5.6mb .PAT set since I also only have a GUS Classic , been too busy lately to mess seriously with ARGUS .
Is that .PAT set something like "pro patch lite" we have on the Classic?

The 5.6 MiB .PAT set is the original UltraSound 16-bit patch set. It is available on the GUS PnP installation CD as SETRAM.EXE (in the SETUP sub-directory, I think). It belongs in the MIDI sub-directory of your installation (so \GRAVIS\ULTRASND\MIDI) by default, and will be used when you install software that has GF1 support.

You can get other .PAT instrument sets, like Pro Patches Lite (a.k.a. PPLT) or Pro Patches 3.0 from other sources, but finding complete bundles without corruption can be a challenge.

These sets can also be assembled into an FFF/DAT bank, or written to a ROM. That is what I have been doing with the PPLT set, which still needs some work.

In any case, you should be able to do some comparative testing of your own soon enough. 😉

so best start setram.exe in the autoexec.bat then ? or does it just have to stay there ? (would be weird as it is an exe)