Hello everyone,

I recently acquired and installed this amazing card, and so far it works well, but I can't figure out :
- how to use soundblaster features (for example wolfenstein 3d does not detect the card)
- how to get ultrasound music in compatible games (I tested rise of the triad and duke nukem 3d, but I am only able to get ultrasound fx, ultrasound music is selectable with no error message, but does nothing; general midi works fine).

To be more precise :
- I'm using win98 SE
- I set IRQs and DMAs on legacy ISA in bios (gigabyte GA-6VEM)
- The only other card installed is a PCI voodoo3
- All drivers look properly installed in the device manager
- I installed 16mo single sided simm ram + x2gs wavetable
- All jumpers on the card are left on default/factory positions

Could you help me to fix this ?

Also I'm no expert in dos / irq / dma / multi sound cards yet, so if you know a comprehensive tutorial on the matter, I'll read it gladly.

Thanks !!

vutt wrote on 2023-10-21, 14:11:

I have been searching for low profile 8MB SIMM module.

What is a low profile SIMM module?

The Orpheus uses an angled SIMM bracket which is probably nearly as low as mounting a SIMM module can be?

Crushdown wrote on 2023-10-22, 22:19:

Hello everyone,

I recently acquired and installed this amazing card, and so far it works well, but I can't figure out :
[...]

hello Crushdown, please give some more info
are you trying games under pure DOS or under win9x?
are both gravis and crystal drivers installed under win9x?
under pure DOS if you use ORPHINIT and ULTRASND.ZIP are you still getting detection issues?
the fact that you mention you get gravis sfx but not music points to the fact that the driver/game cannot find the ultrasnd directory to load midi patches so music will play
keep in mind you have to activate the card with both drivers: orphinit for CS4237 part (that does SB/WSS/OPL) and ultrasnd.bat (included in ultrasnd.zip) to activate the gravis part of the card

keropi wrote on 2023-10-23, 13:06:

hello Crushdown, please give some more info are you trying games under pure DOS or under win9x? are both gravis and crystal driv […]
Show full quote

Crushdown wrote on 2023-10-22, 22:19:

Hello everyone,

I recently acquired and installed this amazing card, and so far it works well, but I can't figure out :
[...]

hello Crushdown, please give some more info
are you trying games under pure DOS or under win9x?
are both gravis and crystal drivers installed under win9x?
under pure DOS if you use ORPHINIT and ULTRASND.ZIP are you still getting detection issues?
the fact that you mention you get gravis sfx but not music points to the fact that the driver/game cannot find the ultrasnd directory to load midi patches so music will play
keep in mind you have to activate the card with both drivers: orphinit for CS4237 part (that does SB/WSS/OPL) and ultrasnd.bat (included in ultrasnd.zip) to activate the gravis part of the card

Hello,

Thank you very much for your answer,

I am only playing under win98, and both drivers have been installed under win98. I do not use pure DOS mode.

I did not make/use ultrasound directory or .bat nor orphinit files during the process, so it appears I completely missed this step.

I will try to correct this asap, thanks !

Regards,

well you will need at least the midi samples to get GUS "classic" midi playback in games - I think your best bet is to download the CD ROM image, mount it and install stuff from it's menu
under DOS things are way easier as the driver comes pre-installed in the ULTRASND.ZIP archive and all you have to do is use the BAT to initialize

keropi wrote on 2023-10-24, 10:17:

well you will need at least the midi samples to get GUS "classic" midi playback in games - I think your best bet is to download the CD ROM image, mount it and install stuff from it's menu
under DOS things are way easier as the driver comes pre-installed in the ULTRASND.ZIP archive and all you have to do is use the BAT to initialize

Good evening,

OK, now that I installed the gravis CD, the ultrasound side of things is now working great, and I even managed to install pro lite patches, sounds awesome !

As for SB features, I downloaded the orphinit package on your website, but I'm not sure what to do : I tried to run the .exe, set the intrument to opl 2/3 in the win98 sound settings, but still can't figure out how get it working, it only makes my computer lag on desktop and games freeze on launch.

Could you help me one more time ?

Thanks a lot !

Crush

Crushdown wrote on 2023-10-24, 20:34:

[...] Could you help me one more time ? […]
Show full quote

[...]
Could you help me one more time ?

Thanks a lot !

Crush

orphinit is only used for DOS environment, do not use it for win9x
for win9x all you need to do is install the CRYSTAL drivers and you should have them appear on device manager like this:

if you do not have these "OrpheusII" devices then something went wrong
also keep in mind that if you had some previous sound drivers installed from another soundcard win9x could become borked and a clean re-install would be needed
Crystal part (and by extension DOS support under win9x) should not be a problem at all, things should just work - so please make sure things look OK in device manager

Hi guys, sorry for going slightly off-topic, but do you know if it's normal you don't get a confirmation mail after submitting the purchase form? I'm afraid my request (I sent it 2 weeks ago) might not have come through. How long does it usually take for a reply?

there is no confirmation email, once the form is submitted the entry gets added to the queue
currently no OrpheusII variant is in stock - but LT boards are made at the factory as I write this

keropi wrote on 2023-10-26, 15:15:

there is no confirmation email, once the form is submitted the entry gets added to the queue
currently no OrpheusII variant is in stock - but LT boards are made at the factory as I write this

It’s the PCMidi card for which I applied. But good to know it’s just a matter of patience, thank you! I’ll keep an eye on my mailbox. 😀

Erwin_Br wrote on 2023-10-26, 17:41:

It’s the PCMidi card for which I applied. But good to know it’s just a matter of patience, thank you! I’ll keep an eye on my mailbox. 😀

pcmidis also in production 😁

keropi wrote on 2023-10-25, 14:40:

orphinit is only used for DOS environment, do not use it for win9x for win9x all you need to do is install the CRYSTAL drivers a […]
Show full quote

Crushdown wrote on 2023-10-24, 20:34:

[...] Could you help me one more time ? […]
Show full quote

[...]
Could you help me one more time ?

Thanks a lot !

Crush

orphinit is only used for DOS environment, do not use it for win9x
for win9x all you need to do is install the CRYSTAL drivers and you should have them appear on device manager like this:

if you do not have these "OrpheusII" devices then something went wrong
also keep in mind that if you had some previous sound drivers installed from another soundcard win9x could become borked and a clean re-install would be needed
Crystal part (and by extension DOS support under win9x) should not be a problem at all, things should just work - so please make sure things look OK in device manager

Hello,

Thanks for your answer. Just made a fresh win98 install, and everything seems to be installed properly. I get windows sounds on dektop + midi file playback with crystal synth (but not with opl3), but still can't play SB in games. I took a few pictures to help. Could it be related to bios settings ?

Crush

Device manager screenshot

drivers seem to be installed just fine
you can select OPL3 or CSFM in midi mapper in control panel or use some player like TMIDI that will allow to select output device via it's menu

I actually have no idea why dos support under windows is not working, on device manager what resources are used for the OPL3 and System Codec ?
what does your autoexec look like? is CWBINIT running on startup?

keropi wrote on 2023-10-27, 20:33:

drivers seem to be installed just fine you can select OPL3 or CSFM in midi mapper in control panel or use some player like TMIDI […]
Show full quote

drivers seem to be installed just fine
you can select OPL3 or CSFM in midi mapper in control panel or use some player like TMIDI that will allow to select output device via it's menu

I actually have no idea why dos support under windows is not working, on device manager what resources are used for the OPL3 and System Codec ?
what does your autoexec look like? is CWBINIT running on startup?

Here are more photo following your questions.
Indeed cwbinit does not seem to appear in the autoexec.

EDIT: I managed to run cwdinit.exe through autoexec, but now I get "an error occured while updating the environnent" message

do this test , add in autoexec this line (assuming c:\windows is the win9x directory) :
c:\windows\cwbinit /a
reboot and test some dos games , do they detect the soundcard now?

edit:
also change manually the OPL3 address to 388 , it should be there not 394
and come to think of it, do some *pure* DOS testing with orphinit to verify that it is actually some windows thing and not some general system issue where resources are not allocated correctly or something

keropi wrote on 2023-10-27, 21:17:

do this test , add in autoexec this line (assuming c:\windows is the win9x directory) : c:\windows\cwbinit /a reboot and test s […]
Show full quote

do this test , add in autoexec this line (assuming c:\windows is the win9x directory) :
c:\windows\cwbinit /a
reboot and test some dos games , do they detect the soundcard now?

edit:
also change manually the OPL3 address to 388 , it should be there not 394
and come to think of it, do some *pure* DOS testing with orphinit to verify that it is actually some windows thing and not some general system issue where resources are not allocated correctly or something

I added the line + changed the adress. Games still not working under win98, but I get this message on startup, seems we are making progress ! I will try pure DOS testing asap.

Good night

Is there a "Plug and Play OS" setting in the BIOS ? It may be worth changing it, it looks like the BIOS assigns the card some not so useful values and the Crystal util and windows seem to respect those not so useful values BIOS assigned...

yeah these settings are definitely not good - and the "error updating environment" is not good either
toggle the PnP OS option and definitely enable the "reset configuration data" plus reserve the IRQ/DMA resources as shown in the OrpheusII website
maybe some previous soundcard configuration is saved and bios has the resources locked to it - even though it is not installed

keropi wrote on 2023-10-28, 07:24:

yeah these settings are definitely not good - and the "error updating environment" is not good either
toggle the PnP OS option and definitely enable the "reset configuration data" plus reserve the IRQ/DMA resources as shown in the OrpheusII website
maybe some previous soundcard configuration is saved and bios has the resources locked to it - even though it is not installed

Unfortunately I can't find any PnP OS option in the bios, although there is indeed a "reset configuration data" which I activated. I also made sure to reserve the IRQ/DMA resources as shown on the website.

I still can't get rid of the "error updating environment" message though.

At this point, would you agree that the problem is bios / mobo related, and not windows related ?