I've done a horrible thing!

http://i.imgur.com/kuQsHFx.jpg

For science! All pads seem to be doing well (note the slight heat damage on the jumper ... I guess those caps may not have liked it too much either, but I'll find out.)

Aaaargh! 😀

All clean and snug (at least for the purpose): http://i.imgur.com/zGUkHWx.jpg

I think they might like each other (nothing soldered yet): http://i.imgur.com/Fl5MnBL.jpg

shock__ wrote:

All clean and snug (at least for the purpose): http://i.imgur.com/zGUkHWx.jpg

I think they might like each other (nothing soldered yet): http://i.imgur.com/Fl5MnBL.jpg

Very nice.

FUCK YES (after I almost fucked up 2 pads while soldering)!

The GUS PnP Pro now is working with the AKC Revision of the chip 😀
Worked on the first attempt. Only tested Impulse Tracker so far (which also recognises the InterWave as Revision C opposed to Revision B), but things are looking quite good.

EDIT: All software previously tested working just as well 😀
Just Doom2 has some really weird instruments ... don't exactly remember if it sounded like that before, I'll try to get a recording so maybe one of you can compare them.

EDIT2: Soundtrack sounds just like it's played back here, guess everything is normal then
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6kBI1Sdbeo (not my video)

Photo here (as someone on another forum said ... the most unique GUS PnP ever): http://i.imgur.com/eEgZxaX.jpg

HELL YEAH!
Congratulations!!!

😎

Awesome work! Congrats!

Congratulations to you and all of us as well! We have the birth of a brand new, vintage baby. Job well done, sir.

Kodai wrote:

Congratulations to you and all of us as well! We have the birth of a brand new, vintage baby. Job well done, sir.

Uh? I don't think you're quite there yet... all he's done was test his source of Interwave chips on an old board? You still need the new board yet... but you're closer... 😀

That still must have been a pain in the ass to solder, so congratulations 😁

Stiletto wrote:

Kodai wrote:

Congratulations to you and all of us as well! We have the birth of a brand new, vintage baby. Job well done, sir.

Uh? I don't think you're quite there yet... all he's done was test his source of Interwave chips on an old board? You still need the new board yet... but you're closer... 😀

That still must have been a pain in the ass to solder, so congratulations 😁

Exactly that. I've created more of a Franken-GUS to confirm my source for the chips is good (I've had various other sources for the other, earlier revision - albeit at a higher price). Now it's actually back off to the PCB layout - fixing up some loose ends and adding some prototype-specific stuff and get an actual prototype PCB made. But yeah, this step was quite important.

Using a $40 hot air station and $13 solder paste it actually was quite easy to solder (was nervous as fuck tho, as this was the first time I was serious about soldering such a small pitch), I almost fucked up 2 pins during touch up (it's better to use too much solderpaste than too little as it's easy to remove what's too much) but those still came out okay-ish.

Picture of my touched up fuck-up: http://i.imgur.com/5LfTHLh.jpg
Might seem super picky, but those actually were shorted out at one point which was barely visible at all. Good thing I re-confirmed using my multimeter.

Its the Franken theory that I was cheering. That's the big win, the new board is going to be great as well, but getting the rough tech working means its down to working out all the details (which can take much more time and effort). That's the capstone of any new/revised electronics project and deserves a round of applause.

As for those cheap hot air stations, a word of warning. There have been a number of reports over the past 4-5 years of them shorting out and catching fire when left turned off and plugged in. I seen a couple of youtube vids showing the aftermath and a number of posts about it on eevblog. I have a elcheapo and a pace unit. Neither have ever given me a problem, but I do not leave the cheap on plugged in. I only use it for large parts (big old BGA's and stuff like that) because the nozzles are common and cheap. The nozzles that my pace unit are like $70-$200 each. But its fantastic for any SMD work, and I highly recommend any of the name brand hot air stations (used of course) if you decide you really like the hot air rework stations.

Kodai wrote:

As for those cheap hot air stations, a word of warning. There have been a number of reports over the past 4-5 years of them shorting out and catching fire when left turned off and plugged in. I seen a couple of youtube vids showing the aftermath and a number of posts about it on eevblog. I have a elcheapo and a pace unit. Neither have ever given me a problem, but I do not leave the cheap on plugged in. I only use it for large parts (big old BGA's and stuff like that) because the nozzles are common and cheap. The nozzles that my pace unit are like $70-$200 each. But its fantastic for any SMD work, and I highly recommend any of the name brand hot air stations (used of course) if you decide you really like the hot air rework stations.

I've head various horror stories about those as well, from the units not being grounded correctly, over to the flame thing over to exposing the power from the outlet straight into the handle.

Some high quality tools would be awesome of course, but so far I've not reached the end of what I can do with mine yet.
That would be roughly a $700 upgrade tho if I wanted to replace my cheapies (as Dave Jones would say) with some nice hakko/weller/fluke/agilent stuffs.

I've been pretty lucky over the years with ebay and electronic tools. My pace system was unopened government issue stock and had everything from the hot air rework tool, to the track repair kit (few hundred for that little kit alone) with everything in between. All of it for under $100 and free shipping. Over here in the U.S. we tend to want Fluke, but you have Gossen so keep an eye out for a used one on your ebay. I love all of my multimeters, but I still want a Metrawatt really bad. Hard to justify that when I already have a couple fluke 87V,s and several 27FM's with all the extras and the entire BK Precision test bench line up. But its like some disease when it comes to buying multimeters. You get one really good one and you cant stop from buy more, 🤣.

I know someone who would get a heart attack (the bad kind) if he saw what kind of multimeter I'm using 😉 $10 and always worked quite well for me - I don't use it beyond small signal stuff tho.

I guess I should be lucky I haven't started looking into scopes too much yet - seeing how some folks like to have 20+ for every occasion (like running through the mud)

InterWaves a plenty I guess I should say 😀
Just bought 196 (way more than I'll ever need) of those of eBay for $1.75 each. "Sadly" that's twice as much as I thought I might pay from the buyer, ending in quite a big overall price - but hey, that's still massively below the the price I'd have paid from China for the ICs in an amount to cover the donors.

So if anyone else wants to hop on with donations, you're welcome - as I just spent $150 on those out of my pocket.

Great job on the soldering, send me a PM with your PayPal address for a contribution.

Had some free time and decided to go through the datasheets carefully.
Some conclusions:

1. As already confirmed by testing, pinouts of Am78C201KC and Am78C201AKC are absolutely identical.

2. InterWave gives a variety of analog inputs, some of which seem to have not been implemented on the Philips card. I'll try to sum it up in the following way:
Name : stereo/mono : pin numbers on the InterWave IC : can be independently mixed or muted - commentary
AUX1 : stereo : 14(L)/19(R) : NO - it is multiplexed with the synthesizer DAC outputs, only one of these sources can be mixed and supplied to LINEOUT as selected in Configuration Register 3 (CFIG3I); I guess, this one is NOT implemented (does anyone have any idea if we need this or not?..)
AUX2 : stereo : 25(L)/21(R) : YES - I guess, this one is already implemented as CD-In
LINEIN : stereo : 24(L)/22(R) : YES - I guess, this one is already implemented on the bracket
MIC : stereo : 15(L)/20(R) : YES - I guess, this one is already implemented on the bracket
MONOIN : mono : 31 : YES - it feeds both the left and right mixer output paths. Typically, this input is used for mixing PC speaker audio; I guess, this one is NOT implemented, but can be rather useful!

Note: the minimum impedance for all analog inputs is at least 20k Ohm.

Also, a MONOOUT output is present at pin 30, it can drive a 5k Ohm load and provides the sum of the left and right LINEOUT signals and is independently mutable. As the datasheet says, it is typically connected to a speaker driver for a PC speaker - and this could be also implemented on our card being a nice add-on feature.

3. There are the so-called General Purpose Digital Outputs (GPOUT0 and GPOUT1, pins 3 and 5). Does anyone have any idea if these can be used for S/PDIF somehow?..

4. Reverting back to our MPU401 talk, I've found two signals that are related to this:
MIDITX (pin 107): MIDI Transmit output is used to send serial digital data from the internal Motorola MC6850-compatible UART,
MIDIRX (pin 106): MIDI Receive input is used to receive serial digital data from the internal Motorola MC6850-compatible UART.
I guess, these two could be used if some sort of a WaveBlaster-compatible header is going to be implemented.
But please have a look at page 26 of the InterWave IC Programmer's guide (can't attach it here as its size exceeds 5 Mb) where it says:

The MIDI port is built around a UART with a 16-byte receive FIFO. This UART can be programmed to behave like a Motorola MC6850 UART or a MPU-401 UART. In addition, the IC contains MPU-401 emulation registers with interrupt indicators. The IC can be programmed to generate interrupts when application software writes to the MIDI UART.
These interrupts can be captured by MPU-401 emulation software, which would in turn read the data written by the application and translate it into commands appropriate for the InterWave IC.

And there is even a whole chapter 10, the major part of it is devoted to MPU401 emulation.

5. Looking at the Philips PCA761AW card, I've noticed some small 8-pin ICs, but I can't read the marking. If they happen to be OPAMPs, why don't we follow the modern trend and make them swappable by putting an 8-pin DIP-socket instead?
I'm not an audiophile and/or audio engineer, so some advice from experienced users could be needed here.

So, my additional suggestions regarding the extra features would be:
a. Make MONOIN and MONOOUT available as pin-headers on the board (marked as PCSPK_IN and PCSPK_OUT). Some advice regarding the impedance might be useful.
b. Think about possible applications for General Purpose Digital Outputs (GPOUT0 and GPOUT1).
c. Implement swappable OPAMPs.

------------

Talking about the InterWave IC Programmer's guide, I've also started to study it hoping to address some probable hardware-related issues before they actually arise, and have already come across some useful points about ROM:
pages 32-33, tables 2-1 and 2-2:
Two possible conclusions come to my mind:
a. As the table 2-1 suggests, FFF file does actually reflect the ROM contents.
b. As the table 2-2 points out, the more ROM and RAM is installed, the better. Having in mind 1995 prices for both ROM and RAM, the authors clearly could not imagine a manufacturer putting 16Mbytes of ROM and supporting up to 16Mbytes of RAM at the same time - it was totally ridiculous. But in 2015 it's clearly the other way round 😀
page 140:

ROM must always be configured explicitly in LMCFI.

We'll have to configure the InterWave's LMCFI register for the actual ROM size in accordance with the table 8-5 on page 142.
It is confirmed on page 148:

Because ROM can not be probed reliably like DRAM, the configuration of ROM must be hard coded into the initialization device driver for the particular sound card.

------------

And as far as the Adlib emulation is concerned, it seems to be linked to SB emulation. If we turn it off in the EEPROM, then no conflict will occur. So there is no need for any special ACE-like jumper (and no possibility for such, actually).

hard1k wrote:

2. InterWave gives a variety of analog inputs, some of which seem to have not been implemented on the Philips card. I'll try to […]
Show full quote

2. InterWave gives a variety of analog inputs, some of which seem to have not been implemented on the Philips card. I'll try to sum it up in the following way:
Name : stereo/mono : pin numbers on the InterWave IC : can be independently mixed or muted - commentary
AUX1 : stereo : 14(L)/19(R) : NO - it is multiplexed with the synthesizer DAC outputs, only one of these sources can be mixed and supplied to LINEOUT as selected in Configuration Register 3 (CFIG3I); I guess, this one is NOT implemented (does anyone have any idea if we need this or not?..)
MONOIN : mono : 31 : YES - it feeds both the left and right mixer output paths. Typically, this input is used for mixing PC speaker audio; I guess, this one is NOT implemented, but can be rather useful!

both of those are indeed not implemented.

Note: the minimum impedance for all analog inputs is at least 20k Ohm.

Also, a MONOOUT output is present at pin 30, it can drive a 5k Ohm load and provides the sum of the left and right LINEOUT signals and is independently mutable. As the datasheet says, it is typically connected to a speaker driver for a PC speaker - and this could be also implemented on our card being a nice add-on feature.

hard1k wrote:

3. There are the so-called General Purpose Digital Outputs (GPOUT0 and GPOUT1, pins 3 and 5). Does anyone have any idea if these can be used for S/PDIF somehow?..

Those are actually connected to IRQ4 / IRQ10 on my card, I'll recheck with the GUS PnP, but expect it to be the same.

hard1k wrote:

So, my additional suggestions regarding the extra features would be: a. Make MONOIN and MONOOUT available as pin-headers on the […]
Show full quote

So, my additional suggestions regarding the extra features would be:
a. Make MONOIN and MONOOUT available as pin-headers on the board (marked as PCSPK_IN and PCSPK_OUT). Some advice regarding the impedance might be useful.
b. Think about possible applications for General Purpose Digital Outputs (GPOUT0 and GPOUT1).
c. Implement swappable OPAMPs.

Apart from the GPOUT* stuffs definitely possible.

hard1k wrote:

And as far as the Adlib emulation is concerned, it seems to be linked to SB emulation. If we turn it off in the EEPROM, then no conflict will occur. So there is no need for any special ACE-like jumper (and no possibility for such, actually).

I was just about to mention that at one point - good observation. Practically the MPU-401 interface can also be disabled so an option wavetable-header could work.

Just been thinking ...

Any recommendations for a name for the project? "Newly made Gravis UltraSound compatible card" isn't exactly a catchy name 😉

UltraSound Ultimate sounds kinda nice (and goes with the Gravis nomenclature [UltraSound Classic/Max/Ace/Extreme/CD3/PnP]) and has loosely been mentioned a few times, but maybe one of you guys/gals has a nice idea.

Perhaps it would be interesting to have a project name that refers to you in some manner?

A few might-be-lame suggestions:

ShockWave PnP (y'know... ShockWave, InterWave... *ba dum tss*)
UltraSound SUIC (shock__'s ultimate interwave card)

Wow... those seem even lamer after I wrote them down xD Guess UltraSound Ultimate sounds nice.