Did not see an ESCD option, I've tried a second motherboard board now, with a fresh install of dos and only the sound init and doom2 installed. Same issues. These are 486 boards, Socket 3. One had 32mb ram one with 16mb, one with a 486/66 one with an AMD-P75 586. One had PCI/ISA, and one with ISA/VLB.

at least the VLB mobo should not have any PNP stuff in BIOS so it's not the problem
I honestly cannot think why the drum kit would sound weird...
I will send you a PM for some testing

keropi wrote on 2023-07-15, 05:15:

thanks for the update Aladim! […]
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thanks for the update Aladim!

X-WING/Atlantis issues and freezes could also be related to speed of the system, garbled FM is also one of the indicators of this - this is why back in the day Lucas released "speed patches" for these games.
I found that ICACHE.EXE works great to disable L1 cache before launching such games and re-enable after the game session , this is what I do on my MMX setup
sometimes one hardware combo will work differently than the other, meaning that for example with an ESS card on this system you might not get this behavior but with a Crystal you will, I have experienced this several times already over the years with different sound and system combos - so the best way is to eliminate this via speed control.
I would also do a BIOS "ESCD data" reset, maybe some previous config from the previous soundcards remain.

UNISOUND does not fully support the OprheusII/LT cards, as you have found it cannot enable the Yamaha OPL3.
ORPHINIT is the only DOS tool that can enable/disable all features so use that instead.
Make sure no other drivers/unisound are also running before or after as they will mess with the initialization of the OrpheusII.

Thanks for the clarification on the Unisound, this is what I suspected (no way to activate the OPL3). Just wanted to be sure it was not something I've done wrong.
ORPHINIT is good enough, very easy to swap.

The remaining thing is the garbled sound on the Pentium MMX machine on 2 games (Indiana Jones / Fate of Atlantis CD and X-Wing 1993) - that happened using ORPHINIT, after a full reset / restart.
The tip you mentioned, disable CPU cache, worked.

Funny thing.... using faster CPUs (P2 or P3, at 300-500Mhz) does not cause that. I had such issues in the past with faster speeds (like a P3 1000 or Athlon), and it never occurred to me that I had to slow down a Pentium 1 CPU.
I would never though of that.

I will now move the Orpheus II LT to my main DOS rig and enjoy it. This card has everything I need, in a convenient way. Really happy with your work guys - and the Vogon community support and knowledge acummulated. It has been 30 years since I've handled the tech and I forgot a lot of things - plus there was no Internet at the time (BBS with very limited resources and reach) or it was at the beginning, no Google, Forums, Youtube - so very hard to dig and learn outside a circle of friends or magazines.

Cheers

To close the loop on my "weird Doom II sound" thread.. I have a PnP Pro with 512k, it sounds "normal" when there is only 512k on it. If I expand the memory, it sounds just like the Orpheus. Also, people on youtube get the same sound, even when they have 1mb on their GUS Classic. Something just seems weird with Doom II whenever more than 512k is present on the boards. So, the Orpheus is happy, but I'm still curious. 😉
but I found out what is up.

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/GUS_instrument_mappings_bug

There is a mapping bug, and while this wiki does not say so, it seems to affect cards with > 512kb of mem. There are some wad based patches out there like 1M-II.

Aladim wrote on 2023-07-15, 22:46:

[...]
The tip you mentioned, disable CPU cache, worked.
[...]

glad this is solved!
Unrelated to the soundcard used I always had to use ICACHE to disable L1 on my HOT-591p/200~233mmx systems for the majority of Lucas adventures , Sam'n'Max and Day of the Tentacle are also affected by speed bugs ... then there is the good'old mouse driver issue where the talkie versions can freeze , especially the 2 talkie Monkey Island games: the solution for me was to use DRMOUSE.COM from DR-DOS6 as the mouse driver: it works so well that I use it with every DOS system I have now
thanks for the support and enjoy the retro sounds! 😀

synacktic wrote on 2023-07-16, 00:07:

[...] but I found out what is up.

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/GUS_instrument_mappings_bug

There is a mapping bug, and while this wiki does not say so, it seems to affect cards with > 512kb of mem. There are some wad based patches out there like 1M-II.

I will make a note of this on the orpheus2 site since it's an easily overlooked issue and helps avoiding getting down to troubleshooting rabbit holes ... great job finding an "official" explanation 😀

keropi wrote on 2023-07-13, 12:58:

sadly I have no advice to give you on win9x drivers: they should just work if the issue is only the 4MB set then this is easily […]
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sadly I have no advice to give you on win9x drivers: they should just work
if the issue is only the 4MB set then this is easily rectified: in the pre-installed ULTRASND.ZIP in the site the 4MB set is also installed.
It is located in the \PATCHES\ subdirectory: GSFULL4M.DAT and GSFULL4M.FFF inside it - that is what the Gravis installer creates.
It also edits IW.INI - at least on DOS and makes this change:

[vendor amd_4m]
gsfull4m.fff=C:\ULTRASND\PATCHES
I actually do not remember if under windows you can use the Gravis panel to manually load the 4MB bank (I assume you can).
It might sound weird why I just can't check but believe it or not I do not currently have any "full OrpheusII" in my possession - everything is sent out to people that ordered it 😀

Man! This worked perfectly! Thanks!

I just copied the PATCHES folder from the ULTRASND.zip file from the Orpheus II site to my ULTRASND folder and edited the IW.INI file with the correct address. In my case it was:
[vendor amd_4m]
gsfull4m.fff=C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND\PATCHES

The Gravis UltraSound PnP driver (GUS_PNP_win95_v22.zip) does install a panel on Windows 98 called UltraSound Properties. There´s a Midi tab within it that contains a Current Patch Set option to choose between 1M ROM Patch Set and 4M RAM Patch Set.

One last question: Under this Midi panel, does it matter if I want to play old DOS games, if I pick the 4M RAM Patch Set? This 4MB patch set will only sound in Windows 98 and not affect the old DOS games that use the Classic compatible patch set. Correct?

Thanks!

holaplaneta wrote on 2023-07-17, 03:16:

[...]
One last question: Under this Midi panel, does it matter if I want to play old DOS games, if I pick the 4M RAM Patch Set? This 4MB patch set will only sound in Windows 98 and not affect the old DOS games that use the Classic compatible patch set. Correct?

Thanks!

glad you got it going!
and yes, games with gus classic support will load the "classic patches" from disk so the 4MB GS bank is only for windows usage (it would be possible to be used in DOS games too AFAIK only problem is that there is no such DOS game... so it is a lost opportunity sadly)

Hi folks,
I was testing the gameport on the Orpheus II LT today and noticed the Orpheus.ini uses I/O address 200h for gameport. I recall in the past using 201h, having some games not working on 200h (not sure but I think X-Wing was one of them).

1) Any issues expected if I change the .ini to 201? Is there a recommended I/O address by the community?

2) The jumper J3 1-2 default sets the joystick port to the Yamaha OPL3 chip. For some reason if I want to use the Crystall chip to control the gameport, changing the jumper J3 to 2-3 is enough? Anything else needs to be changed or installed?
Regards

keropi wrote on 2023-07-17, 05:52:

glad you got it going!
and yes, games with gus classic support will load the "classic patches" from disk so the 4MB GS bank is only for windows usage (it would be possible to be used in DOS games too AFAIK only problem is that there is no such DOS game... so it is a lost opportunity sadly)

Yes! Thanks Keropi!
I have another question regarding something that I read on the Orpheus I thread:

keropi wrote on 2022-04-21, 08:26:

nope it is not possible to do this choice without using the jumpers , the easiest way IMHO to achieve this is to enable CSMPU@30 […]
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red_avatar wrote on 2022-04-21, 08:15:

[...]
I actually already have one question: if I add the X2GS to the card, can I chose whether to use the X2GS or to output to my SC55 through the Midi port without having to change jumpers?

nope it is not possible to do this choice without using the jumpers , the easiest way IMHO to achieve this is to enable CSMPU@300 and jumper WT header to CSMPU
then PCMIDI will reside at the standard 330 that older games love and you can have your external modules connected to jack and/or gameport midi
so depending on situation you select in games if you want to use ports 300 or 330 and the corresponding device will do the playback

If this possible to achieve with the Orpheus II as well? In my case, both devices on Device Manager (PCMIDI's MPU-401 Compatible and OrpheusII Crystal MPU-401 Compatible) share the same IRQ 9. Would this overlap cause conflicts? I don't think I have another IRQ available for any of them. 🙁

Aladim wrote on 2023-07-17, 22:53:

Hi folks, I was testing the gameport on the Orpheus II LT today and noticed the Orpheus.ini uses I/O address 200h for gameport. […]
Show full quote

Hi folks,
I was testing the gameport on the Orpheus II LT today and noticed the Orpheus.ini uses I/O address 200h for gameport. I recall in the past using 201h, having some games not working on 200h (not sure but I think X-Wing was one of them).

1) Any issues expected if I change the .ini to 201? Is there a recommended I/O address by the community?

2) The jumper J3 1-2 default sets the joystick port to the Yamaha OPL3 chip. For some reason if I want to use the Crystall chip to control the gameport, changing the jumper J3 to 2-3 is enough? Anything else needs to be changed or installed?
Regards

Port200 is the default joystick port, if you find anything that does not work with it you can try to set 201
The jumpers are unrelated to opl3 and joysticks. they control which MPU (PCMIDI or CS4237 one) controls which midi output:
- there is the dedicated midi jack
- there is the wavetable header
- and there is the gameport that also carries midi signals and that's what the jumper controls, joystick function is unrelated

hope this helps!

holaplaneta wrote on 2023-07-18, 00:51:

[...]
If this possible to achieve with the Orpheus II as well? In my case, both devices on Device Manager (PCMIDI's MPU-401 Compatible and OrpheusII Crystal MPU-401 Compatible) share the same IRQ 9. Would this overlap cause conflicts? I don't think I have another IRQ available for any of them. 🙁

yes you can do that, that's the whole point of these midi-routing jumpers
there is no issue about this IRQ sharing, just try both interfaces in windows and you'll see they work fine

keropi wrote on 2023-07-18, 06:01:

Port200 is the default joystick port, if you find anything that does not work with it you can try to set 201 The jumpers are un […]
Show full quote

Aladim wrote on 2023-07-17, 22:53:

Hi folks, I was testing the gameport on the Orpheus II LT today and noticed the Orpheus.ini uses I/O address 200h for gameport. […]
Show full quote

Hi folks,
I was testing the gameport on the Orpheus II LT today and noticed the Orpheus.ini uses I/O address 200h for gameport. I recall in the past using 201h, having some games not working on 200h (not sure but I think X-Wing was one of them).

1) Any issues expected if I change the .ini to 201? Is there a recommended I/O address by the community?

2) The jumper J3 1-2 default sets the joystick port to the Yamaha OPL3 chip. For some reason if I want to use the Crystall chip to control the gameport, changing the jumper J3 to 2-3 is enough? Anything else needs to be changed or installed?
Regards

Port200 is the default joystick port, if you find anything that does not work with it you can try to set 201
The jumpers are unrelated to opl3 and joysticks. they control which MPU (PCMIDI or CS4237 one) controls which midi output:
- there is the dedicated midi jack
- there is the wavetable header
- and there is the gameport that also carries midi signals and that's what the jumper controls, joystick function is unrelated

hope this helps!

Yes that was my question, I'm sorry I was not clear. If I set the jumper J3 to 2-3 , gameport will be controlled by Crystall chip. Anything else needed? Will Orphinit take care of the rest?

You just enable crystal mpu on resources not used (port 300 most likely) by editing orpheus.ini and orphinit will enable it

keropi wrote on 2023-07-18, 21:26:

You just enable crystal mpu on resources not used (port 300 most likely) by editing orpheus.ini and orphinit will enable it

You mean this section?

; This controls the on-chip Crystal MPU-401-compatible UART.
; This tool has NO control over the PCMIDI device, which is configured
; with on-board jumpers.
MPUBase=disabled
MPUIRQ=disabled

By changing for example to:
MPUBase=enabled
MPUIRQ=9

Is that it (plus jumpers)?

Aladim wrote on 2023-07-18, 21:43:

You mean this section?

That is the right section, but MPUBase should be set to the desired I/O port; probably 300, as keropi said.

640K!enough wrote on 2023-07-18, 23:02:

Aladim wrote on 2023-07-18, 21:43:

You mean this section?

That is the right section, but MPUBase should be set to the desired I/O port; probably 300, as keropi said.

Got it. I have to make sense of the parameters, I was not sure what the string was expecting. You made it clear. Thanks!

It is working now. Playing X2GS on WT 300h, SC-55 via midi out cable 330h.

It is easy when one knows what to do. Thanks folks

awesome!
I just remember Serastros made a guide for the original Orpheus here: Guide for Orpheus ISA Card with optional PCMIDI, X2GS and MT32-Pi simultaneously on DOS and WIN98SE.
the same principles apply - except the eeprom flashing steps as they are not needed

Just got my Orpheus II in the mail earlier today as of this post. Wonderful looking card I might say. Haven't plugged it into a compatible system to test just yet though.

Just one question. I've got two compatible 16MB FPM 60ns single-sided SIMMs on the way, but at the moment, I could only find two double-sided SIMMs in my collection as you can see below.

They are what I believe are 32MB each, but should be FPM 6ons memory. Would these still be able to work with the Orpheus II regardless? I just want to be sure about this before continuing.

Awesome 😀
Just install one of these simms and if you use ultrasnd.zip for DOS then run: ultrasnd.bat /v
It will rerport the detected ram size among other things