VOGONS


Reply 1160 of 1199, by igna78

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keropi wrote on 2024-12-27, 15:58:
igna78 wrote on 2024-12-27, 14:58:

@keropi
Hi Keropi, sorry for the off-topic, but since you presented PCMidi Plus in these pages, any times ago, I wanted to ask you if there is any news on this other exceptional project! (in my head, perfect companion for SB AWE64) 😉
Thanks 😁

we did not move forward with this at all , probably if we will the "lpt dac" option will get removed though

Thank you very much for the news 🤗

Reply 1161 of 1199, by priangle

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Hey everyone! Just got my hands on the Orpheus II and began my journey to get it working on my pc.

The system is IBM PC 330 type 6577
it has a Pentium 200Mhz MMX CPU, 80+smth (4*16 sticks plus extra special IBM stick) RAM
Voodoo PCI GPU

details are here(haven't updated yet)

also i added the 16mb fpm memory stick to the Orpheus.

my main OS is Windows 98 SE, so i began by installing the drivers there.

Unfortunately, my first experience was the terrible screeching sound on windows startup, see for yourself: https://youtube.com/shorts/uRxD3AKY3hA?si=vhj6_v6T9nG6d2Y_

This is what device manager show me:

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i checked the sound output devices, and this sound distortion is happening when the "Ultrasound CODEC Wave Driver" is selected as an output:

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when i choose the Ultrasound SYNTH, the sound seems OK

but when i choose the CS4236 the sound loops (for example, when i move the windows volume slider, the sound repeats itself about 20 times)

well, as the most obvious place to start, i dived into the IRQ headache.

as it happens, the IRQ 5 is occupied by LPT1 port:

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Which is very weird, because i disabled the LPT, COM and infrared in BIOS. Ok, let's go to the BIOS. Indeed, they are all disabled

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but it's obvious now that they still occupy their IRQs. Only thing i can do is change the IRQ for LPT, and the only options are 5 or 7 - and both of them needed for crystal chip and GUS on the Orpheus.

when i change the LPT IRQ to 7, Crystal chip began functioning properly , but there's no more GUS in devices:

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So i suppose there's no way to truly disable these ports on my machine in order to free the required for the Orpheus IRQs, which makes me very sad(

Maybe there's some workarounds you can point me to?

Or the only option is to change the PC to something more versatile?

Reply 1162 of 1199, by keropi

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Do things work OK under DOS?
On the first attempt everything is a mess, Crystal is on IRQ9 for example which will never work correctly as PCMIDI's default IRQ is also 2/9 - this does not look like a fresh win98 installation right? It will probably worth to re-install with the orpheusII already present in the system
You might also need to manually assign IRQs after installation - windows might pick weird values so a little juggling could be needed

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 1163 of 1199, by priangle

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keropi wrote on 2024-12-28, 08:35:

Do things work OK under DOS?
On the first attempt everything is a mess, Crystal is on IRQ9 for example which will never work correctly as PCMIDI's default IRQ is also 2/9 - this does not look like a fresh win98 installation right? It will probably worth to re-install with the orpheusII already present in the system
You might also need to manually assign IRQs after installation - windows might pick weird values so a little juggling could be needed

Thanks! I haven't yet tested in the pure DOS environment.

Tried the fresh install. Seems that it didn't help, but i've managed to free both 5 and 7 IRQ by disabling the LPT port in Device Manager. Then i've manually set the Crystal chip to IRQ5, and the sound from crystal is now functioning properly as it seems.

Unfortunately, i cant set the IRQ for GUS to 7. Here's how it looks right now:

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So what we have here is that the crystal chip works and gravis is now identified by windows, but behaves weird - the screeching sound of CODEC output is still present, and when i choose SYNTH is clicks when i change the volume in windows volume cotrol, otherwise sounds normal. Haven't tested any games yet though.

BTW, until i installed the Orpheus crystal drivers, windows installed its own drivers, and in sysinfo there was a MPU401 device at IRQ9, but it had an exclamation mark. Now the IRQ9 is free for some reason.

Reply 1164 of 1199, by keropi

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I believe it is still doable to get good resource management - you might have to go to BIOS to enable/disable PnP OS and maybe mess with PCI IRQs - if any of these options are available...
You should have a ROLAND MPU401 device at IRQ9/port330 , and Crystal MPU should be at port300

also point #11 from the OrpheusII site might be applicable :

11. Under win9x I cannot allocate the resources I want for GUS PnP and/or CS4237 even though I reserved resources in BIOS

This could happen on an ACPI system and all you could manually allocate are resources that are less than ideal for ISA soundcards.
The solution to the issue is to disable the "Get IRQ table using ACPI BIOS" option. Instructions to find the option follow:
- Open "Device Manager" navigate to "System Components" and select "PCI-Bus".
- In properties of the PCI-Bus deactivate option "Get IRQ table using ACPI BIOS" (untick the box).
- Click "OK" and restart your computer - hopefuly on next reboot you will be able to allocate the desired resources.

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🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 1165 of 1199, by priangle

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keropi wrote on 2024-12-28, 14:03:

This could happen on an ACPI system and all you could manually allocate are resources that are less than ideal for ISA soundcards.

Forgot about it after the quick install 😀

Don't know if it helped, but I managed to set the correct IRQ for GUS by selecting different "Basic Configuration":

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Then I opened the "OrpheusII Crystal MPU-401 Compatible" device settings and discovered that there was no IRQ assigned to it in "Basic Configuration 0000", switched to Conf. :0001: and it's now on IRQ9:

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Question is - should it be on IRQ9, or it must be IRQ2? Also it seems that the port for "Conf. 0001" is 300, not 330.

anyway, it seems I managed to get all the devices at their correct IRQs:

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Despite the seemingly correct IRQs, I keep having the abovementioned problems (clicking noises on the GUS "Synth", and a pure noise on "CODEC").
Here's a short clip demonstrating the issue.

I suspect the incorrect settings on MPU-401 (the jumpers on OII is at default position)

Reply 1166 of 1199, by keropi

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priangle wrote on 2024-12-28, 20:10:
[...] […]
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[...]

Despite the seemingly correct IRQs, I keep having the abovementioned problems (clicking noises on the GUS "Synth", and a pure noise on "CODEC").
Here's a short clip demonstrating the issue.

I suspect the incorrect settings on MPU-401 (the jumpers on OII is at default position)

yeah it seems there is still some conflict, perhaps something is on the IW Codec address? What interwave address you are using? 240? try something like 260 and see what happens
the Crystal MPU does not need any IRQ even if it reports one , make it use port300
PCMIDI is jumpered on port330 and IRQ2/9 and I do not see it being detected on your list (probably because of conflict with Crystal MPU) so you need to do a manual hardware scan and it will come up as a Roland MPU-401 interface

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 1168 of 1199, by priangle

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keropi wrote on 2024-12-29, 20:53:

yeah it seems there is still some conflict, perhaps something is on the IW Codec address? What interwave address you are using? 240? try something like 260 and see what happens
the Crystal MPU does not need any IRQ even if it reports one , make it use port300
PCMIDI is jumpered on port330 and IRQ2/9 and I do not see it being detected on your list (probably because of conflict with Crystal MPU) so you need to do a manual hardware scan and it will come up as a Roland MPU-401 interface

Thank you!!! Fixing a problem a day 😀

I've detected the proper MPU-401 device and it got itself IRQ9, so that's fixed:

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concerning the IW sound that's what it looked like:

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out of curiosity i switched the DMA 1 and DMA 2 like that:

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after that the sound from SYNTH and CODEC are both ok EXCEPT the clicks when something changes - like start of the sound of changing the volume.

i couldn't switch i/o address of IW, only select one of the Basic Configurations, gonna check through them again after the DMA switch

Reply 1169 of 1199, by Kahenraz

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I had a lot of trouble getting my Orpheus II setup but every one of my problems was always due to a resource conflict or user error. This card is just very resource hungry and requires a lot of extra care and attention to get going. It's still easier than having two separate cards, due to how configurable the resources are through jumpers.

Keep at it. It will be worth it, once you finally get everything working.

Reply 1170 of 1199, by keropi

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I think what makes things worst are the OEM systems... early adopters of whatever pnp/acpi/doodah technology was new at the time and ofcourse limited BIOS options...
but eventually all things will just work from what I have seen
might even worth the effort to do a BIOS settings reset and another fresh re-install now that you know how to juggle the resources

but sometimes things are just strange with OEM systems - case in point I have a very nice IBM valuepoint DX2/66 tower and I wanted to have 2x 10GB HDDs in it and I happen to have from old xbox upgrades identical 10gb drives with the same firmware: only 1 out of 7 works in the system , for no real reason at all. The rest just make the IDE controller bomb with an error and to the day I have no idea why.

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 1171 of 1199, by Kahenraz

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It's especially hard with BIOS menus which do not provide IRQ/DMA reservation. I have seen boards which provide IRQ reservation but not DMA or IRQ but only 1-5 and not 7 and boards that don't reserve either. Sometimes DMA reservation exists but doesn't work at all.

Reply 1172 of 1199, by NJRoadfan

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The biggest problem with "Plug-and-Pray" was that there were multiple ways you could control and initialize resource assignments. You could have the BIOS do it, or a PnP compatible OS like Windows 9x do it. This setting was usually controlled by an option named "PnP OS Installed" or the like. Back in the day, I would almost always prefer the BIOS controlled assignments, as it was generally less buggy, and cards were configured and ready to go if you booted straight into DOS. Having Windows do it sometimes resulted in resource assignments shifting after booting into Windows....and the fact that you usually had to boot into Windows to initialize the cards.

Technically the Orpheus card should "work fine" as both the Crystal and Interwave chips are PnP compatible and have the preferred configurations in their NVRAM. The issue is way too many BIOS prioritize IRQs to PCI devices first over ISA PnP devices.

FWIW, I somehow got the Orpheus II fully working in a machine side-by-side with a SB Live! card. That machine has a BIOS with extensive control over IRQ/DMA reservations and PCI slot IRQ assignments.

Reply 1174 of 1199, by priangle

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after some vacation time returned to my old friend PC 330 😀

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-12-31, 01:32:

Fun fact. I have absolutely encountered motherboards where the "PnP OS Installed" option seemed to behave backwards. So if it's not functioning as expected, try toggling that option.

my mobo doesn't have "PnP OS Installed" option, instead there's "Set Device Node" in PnP menu, as other user pointed:

Yart wrote on 2019-09-10, 06:33:
The biggest lie I've ever known. https://i.imgur.com/sO6tT0s.jpg […]
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The biggest lie I've ever known.
sO6tT0s.jpg

interestingly, I've found out that setting this option to OFF finally disables LPT, COM and IR ports on BIOS level and frees their IRQs. Well, that's some progress!

After I made the change, tried fresh install of Win98SE, hoping that the OS now gonna designate proper IRQ/DMAs to GUS and Crystal. But unfortunately no - it's 7 for Crystal and 9 or 11 for GUS by default

keropi wrote on 2024-12-30, 18:18:

might even worth the effort to do a BIOS settings reset and another fresh re-install now that you know how to juggle the resources

my current question is: GUS and Crystal both have two DMAs in Windows device options. On the official Orpheus page I haven't seen info on that matter, it's just 5/1 for Crystall and 7/7 for GUS. Maybe you can elaborate on DMAs and recommended ports for the devices?

NJRoadfan wrote on 2024-12-30, 23:38:

Technically the Orpheus card should "work fine" as both the Crystal and Interwave chips are PnP compatible and have the preferred configurations in their NVRAM.

so I wonder what are those configurations hidden it the NVRAMs are, so I can recreate the on the windows side. as I understand its "port220, irq5 and dma1+_" for Crystal and "port240, irq7 and dma7+_", but I'm not sure. Also, there's three io ports for both devices, how can I check if all 6 of them are correct?

Next question is about the DOS environment. I've rebooted to DOS (not a separate install, but the DOS side of my Win98SE installation), and tried running Intel ICU to see which IRQ and DMAs are designated to the devices by DOS, and it was the same as for windows side. I've made the proper changes and going to test the sound on the DOS side. ICU says it made the changes to config.sys, but these changes are dos-specific as I can tell, because in the windows environment the config.sys file is still empty after the ICU tinkering.

Does the Windows influence it's DOS counterpart (and vice versa) and I should make an independent DOS installation, or it's independent already? Sorry if it's noob's questions, i was a little kid last time i delved into dos troubleshooting 😀

Reply 1175 of 1199, by priangle

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sofakng wrote on 2024-02-04, 01:01:

I'm trying to setup my Orpheus 2 (v1.1) on my IBM PC 350 (Pentium 200 MMX) but I'm having some problems...

Hi! Did you manage to run your card successfully on your machine? Maybe you've tried running it on Win98SE? It seems you and i have the same mobo (my machine is PC 330 and also P 200 MMX), and i have some troubles with the card because of the stupid IBM Surepath BIOS

Reply 1176 of 1199, by keropi

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priangle wrote on 2025-01-05, 22:04:

my current question is: GUS and Crystal both have two DMAs in Windows device options. On the official Orpheus page I haven't seen info on that matter, it's just 5/1 for Crystall and 7/7 for GUS. Maybe you can elaborate on DMAs and recommended ports for the devices?

this single DMA thing for GUS is an old trick because one DMA is meant for playback and the other for recording - both at the same time
so under DOS to free up resources we use one DMA because it is unlikely someone will record+playback at the same time
under windows the 2nd DMA will be whatever is free, on my system it is 6 for example - doesn't really matter ultimately since the chances to do simultaneous record+playback are slim (but if you want to do it then it will work - bottom line is that we don't care about the 2nd DMA assignment)

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 1177 of 1199, by zb10948

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Hmm... no sound out from wavetable on Win95 on Orpheus2 LT, on DOS on same system it works normally on port 300h, same port allocated to MPU device on Win95, no sound. OPL3 and Crystal MIDI work.
Tried moving 'official' driver to Microsoft MPU-401 compatible, no change. Also checked nothing is muted in the mixer...

Reply 1178 of 1199, by keropi

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zb10948 wrote on 2025-01-18, 18:01:

Hmm... no sound out from wavetable on Win95 on Orpheus2 LT, on DOS on same system it works normally on port 300h, same port allocated to MPU device on Win95, no sound. OPL3 and Crystal MIDI work.
Tried moving 'official' driver to Microsoft MPU-401 compatible, no change. Also checked nothing is muted in the mixer...

Have you actually selected CSMPU or MPU-401 device (depending what controls the wavetable board) as a MIDI output under windows?
because there is no other reason the setup would work under DOS and now under windows

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 1179 of 1199, by zb10948

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ofc I did.

It's not a mapper issue either because Winamp also doesn't work, opening the device directly.

Both players (Winamp with internal plugin and Media Player through mapper) switch their respective system normally but no audio.