I vote to make them as good as you can. I want them to last for decades if possible.

Me too!

Well, can't have the best GUS ever with a subpar PCB now, can we? 😉 I vote for v-groving

Same here. I'd gladly pay a little more for a higher quality manufacture on the board.

I'm sold, v-groving ftw

+1 for v-groving 😀

Me too, please add v-groving!

Alright 😀
I've made some conservative assumptions for the 5 folks who didn't report back in yet and the price per board would be 24,29€ (wedirekt) for a board with a high quality ISA connector (v-groving + hard plated gold contacts).
I'll try to get in offers from other places as well (as wedirekt seems not the most inexpensive one and also only offers green PCBs, which I consider a no-go unless disaster strikes [yet they have the most feature extensive online calculator]). So 24,29€ or less per board.

For what it its worth; I will probably buy one too, and one of these newly made midi daughterboards. but so far 2015 is about a new house and not about retro hardware (which is all in storage and out of reach)...

Definitely a worthy purchase. Gravis UltraSound was an legendary card.
What I wonder is, how much is the bare PCB + logic + processor chip (With out passives)?

Bare PCB + InterWave presoldered = 25,29€ or less

Everything below are estimates and _NOT_ offered by me!
logic (2x 74F373, 1x 74F32) ~3€
other ICs (ROM, Amps, SOJ-RAM) ~10€
Passives ~5€
Jacks ~2€
SIMM socket 2.50€ (might potentially be included for free along with the PCBs if 1 round of prototyping is enough)
License for sample ROM - $10-$15 (or you dump & copy it yourself for free)

As of now I won't be accepting new donors, as I reached another financial milestone (will be revealed once the project has been finished), am running out of space to include more donors on the PCB and am reaching the maximum order size most PCB plants can easy offer 😀

Thanks to everyone who donated, contributed or showed interest in the project so far.

awesome news then!

is it correct to assume that ARGUS can work like a gus classic without the sample rom? can we avoid it completely and just use a 16mb simm instead?

You'd need to hack/crack the drivers for that - as the midi capabilities always check for the presence of that ROM chip regardless whether a ROM or RAM bank is used for Midi samples.
Sample based stuff (as in .mod players/sample based games) work without the chip being present.

I really need to contact the Eye & I folks again - that somehow slipped past me for the last weeks.

ah, thanks for the explanation... so it's better to license the rom and be done with it.

After the prototypes are dispatched, I'd be interested in a production model or two. Is this possible: I'd like to pay one person, and they send me a fully working ARGUS?

I don't really have the time to solder/test and chase parts and so on; just have too many things going on. Thanks in advance, and great work from all involved.

^ if you arrange some pcbs with shock__ I can build your card(s) , pm me for info if interested.
the pcbs that shock__ will send out will be the "final version" after he checks the prototype ones AFAIK. So no point to wait for something better in the future - again AFAIK

Btw, why don't we add a "Designed in Germany / made in XXX / assembled in Greece" string on the PCB? 😀 As the original GUS was proud to be made in Canada (quite opposite for the Taiwanese GUS PnP designed by Synergy) the ARGUS can be proud of being designed and assembled in the EU. Not that I put EU in front of Asian countries, but it's a rare feeling nowadays to hold a European PCB in your hands.

@keropi: Thanks for the offer - I'm still deciding whether I need another sound card, which is why I could wait. There is the logistics of multiple payments and parts moving all over the world. I suppose one option would be:

1) Pay shock__ for basic kit, order from shock__
2) shock__ ships to keropi
3) Pay keropi, and keropi ships fully assembled/ tested ARGUS to me
4) Profit

Kinda like that...?

Yup, we've just reached the stage of a first prototype and me probing the demand for a later series production run.
Keep in mind prototypes can always fail - to a degree where the card sets my test system ablaze - even tho I can virtually rule that out and am positive that 1-2 prototype runs will be enough for this project.

If all works well, series production will start in 6 weeks at best or in a few months at worst.

Once everything is confirmed working I'll release the schematic (so it's confirmed as working), who knows ... maybe someone will use it as a base to build an even better card in the future (i.e. a super audiophile output stage, possibly with a SPDIF converter right on board or an alternative approach to bind in RAM/ROM, there are a few things I could think of but those certainly go beyond my competences and resources). Or someone decides to get on board with me and actually work out a new revision with whatever feature. But that's something that's not up to me - as the current plan is to finalize the design shown in this thread and let the project be after 1 or 2 production runs, as I have a future project already in the pipeline with 2 others (it's top secret and not x86 related but something big - if it becomes reality ... you might guess it's still in an early stage). There's also a full ISA header on the card, so people can independently develop add on boards.
The layout file (which is where most of the work went into) will remain closed, so folks who're just in for the money will have to spend quite a bit of time instead of getting "their" work done for free (which I mentioned quite early in the project already). That's why I'm organizing the PCB production and distribution myself this time so folks will still get 98% of the outcome of the project anyways (I guess for most people a physical PCB is more useful than the production files themselves anyways).

About "designed/made/assembled in xxx" I thought about that - but nah, it's an international/global project with at least 4 continents involved in one way or another.
I think the 2 ARGUS logos, the wacky names for some parts (magic smoke escape hatches/data superhighway), contributor and thanks sections along with an easter egg no one realized it was there yet (or understood) is enough 😀

Also yes, this is quite a DIY style project. Since I don't enjoy acquiring/assembling/testing/shipping stuff too much. At one point I will write up some documentation for soldering/assembling even if you have little to no technical understanding and/or experience on where to get your stuff to populate the cards.