So, new day, new firmware, new reports!
First I should mention what the heck am I testing the hardware on. Haven't noted it before if I remember correctly. SO:
The board was forged in the year 1993 in a quite big company called Shuttle and it was given name HOT-419 because it was the new hotness, brand sparkling new socket 3 motherboard with not one, not two - but THREE VESA slots, OPTi 82C895 chipset and shiny nice modern (and in my opinion fugly) graphical BIOS interface. It had pretty calm life, nothing serious happened to it and it worked quite happily, until it was decided the board is obsolete couple of years later and thrown into some dusty old box to wait for its reborning. In the mean time nasty Varta battery decided that the life has no meaning and that it should end it right there, right now. Like that it blown up, spilling all the caustic alcaline innards on the board. Luckily, that happened only a short time before the board was brought back to the light of the day and put on sale on Facebook for couple of bucks. That was the time I met the board for the first time. Gave it a good bath, scrub, welness, treatment. Mended the single broken trace and after proving its desire to live it was promoted my No.1 testing board and permanent resident on my table. With the old 486SX25 it wasn't a runner, more like crawler though so I started searching for a good CPU mate. And of course - I got it. Found the perfect mate for the old VESA board - 486DX50. Installed it and they lived happily ever after.
So... After you read all through this nonsense - which for some reason was living inside me and needed to be put on a paper - you can read the real specs.
Motherboard: Shuttle HOT-419 with 256k of L2 cache and 50MHz FSB (!)
CPU: Intel 80486DX 50MHz SX710
RAM: 4x4MB SIMM 72pin (each module from different maker sadly - didn't found 4 identical sticks yet)
GPU: S3 86C805-5 1MB VLB
HDD controller: Winbond W83757F (hate this one with passion) controlled by XTIDE custom BIOS
HDD: WD Caviar 2420 420MB
PSU: SFX form factor ATX PSU Eurocase ECO+ 250W with my custom ATX->AT adapter with -5V generator
And now after the lengthy introduction, let's report what happened.
DOOM:
- sounds better then last time though it still has ENORMOUS slowing down problem when trying to process many things at once. For example E1M7 is heavily slowed down
https://youtu.be/KjEcc8NkvPY
Duke3D:
- sounds better, I haven't noticed any problems with it apart from slow loading times
Blood:
- sounds HUMONGOUSLY better. I mean - the difference is MASSIVE. Before it sounded like gore-y screeching with chainsaws being crushed while running on full speed, now it sounds exactly like it should. Very good job indeed!
Hocus Pocus:
- behaves almost exactly how you wrote but for me it goes through the intro Apogee logo which sounds delightful, shareware notice appears and then it freezes the computer solid
Tyrian2k:
- sadly behaves the same as before. Randomly freezes solid and the notes keeps hanging.
https://youtu.be/ZjlEe-L0ko0
And now, some unexpected things 😀
Zone 66:
- sounds exactly like on real GUS
Rise Of The Triad Dark War:
- now, this is something special. Hear me out.
I am not kidding, I am speaking seriously.
It sounds better than original GUS.
Yes, you somehow managed to make it sound better than the real hardware. The sound is more pronounced, more bassy, clearer trebles - it sounds helluva better than the original GUS. So I tip my hat to you man!