Yeah it's either some weird interaction with ISA bus or something else. Soon as I switched back to a normal CF card the problem goes away. like you said most of these adapters are cheaply made, there's not much choice when actual CF cards are getting hard to get hold of and also expensive. the CF-SD adapter that I have used I bought along with my friend who's used them with no issues (he doesn't have an Orpheus). The adapter's marked Type1 ExtremeCF-Adapter - UDMA MicroSDXC.

You'd probably see these on e-Bay or similar sites. I did also try another SD card - similar issue. It's a weird one alright.

The only reason I can see an adapter to cause this is to be badly made and corrupt the bus or something... maybe even a CF if it's not 100% IDE compatible (if that is even a thing)
wasn't there a couple of threads here about users experiencing graphical corruption when using SD adapters?
Maybe in this case the corruption is subtle and is not presented as screen output - but still there and messing with other devices...

primetime wrote on 2023-09-22, 00:28:

I have CF-IDE adapter installed yes - the issue is with the CF card that is used. There are CF-SD cards that allows you to slot microSD card into a CF card - an adapter if you will.

It seems that Orpheus has trouble initialising if you use these CF-SD cards instead of an actual CF card itself.

If anyone else has ever experienced anything similar, it has never been brought to my attention. Nonetheless, it might be interesting to dig into this a little more, just to see if we can get a few hints about what is going on. To start with, it could be helpful to know a little more about your configuration; particularly which type/generation of Orpheus card you are using in this case (many people have more than one).

Aside from that, if you can spare a few minutes, it would be useful to see the full output from ORPHINIT, when the genuine CF card is installed, then with the CF-SD trouble-maker (apparently). To generate that, you would use:

ORPHINIT /vd > output1.txt

If we are inclined not to trust the adaptors for storage, it may be a good idea to write the output to a floppy disk (or similar), if your system is so equipped. Comparing the two might give us a few clues. I'm looking for something in particular, but I won't bother typing the details if you're not interested in trouble-shooting.

There shouldn't be anything going on in the init software to cause this, but we won't know for sure without a little more information. If there does happen to be a bug, I am determined to find and fix it, if you're willing to share the details.

Hey there 640K!enough, sure here are my config details:
+ intel 486DX4-100 on ASUS VL/I-486SVGX4 board, 16Mb RAM, Cirrus Logic VLB video card and VLB IO card.
+ The VLB IO card is DTK COMPUTER, INC. PTI-255W and it has two IDE ports so each one has CF-IDE adapter on them.
+ Orpheus II (with Ultrasound) sound card.

I have the two output files requested. the CF-IDE on Primary IDE has the boot CF (8Gb Sandisk CF) - this successful boot, is on output1 from your diagnostic. Second one is when I installed the CF-SD card in to the CF-IDE on secondary IDE port, it would be on output2.txt. When the CF-SD card is installed on the Secondary IDE CF - then ORPHEUS init fails. Remove it (leaving only the boot Sandisk CF on Primary), Orpheus successfully inits!

Whats' the best way to send these two text files to you?

Here is more information for the problematic adapter I used. I bought a couple of them at the time and they all exhibited the same behavior, so it wasn't as simple as a single bad unit.

Why does this CompactFlash to IDE adapter behave differently?

Yeap, I've concluded that none of these adapters are really fit for use as they are - if you get one working with little to no issues then that's great it's lucky. Most are cheaply made and who knows with little to no quality control and also cutting costs thru components etc. The other issues with these CF adapters is that they do not cater for 3.3V or 5V voltage selections - simply that they have no proper voltage regulators at all. My friend soldered voltage regulators on his adapter so that it's properly supplying 3.3V whenever he uses his CF-SD converter. These adapters in most cases uses only diodes to step down the voltages which is cheap and nasty way to do so. For that fact even proper CF cards really needs 3.3V even though the standard says they "should" work with both voltages! But we're digressing, I've got output files ready for 640k!Enough - just need to know how to get it across to him.

primetime wrote on 2023-09-22, 06:53:

Whats' the best way to send these two text files to you?

There are two obvious choices: either you simply attach them to a post here (or in the actual ORPHINIT thread), or you e-mail them to keropi (address listed everywhere on pcmidi.eu), and he will know how to make sure they end up in my in-box.

primetime wrote on 2023-09-22, 23:33:

Yeap, I've concluded that none of these adapters are really fit for use as they are - if you get one working with little to no issues then that's great it's lucky. Most are cheaply made and who knows with little to no quality control and also cutting costs thru components etc. The other issues with these CF adapters is that they do not cater for 3.3V or 5V voltage selections - simply that they have no proper voltage regulators at all. My friend soldered voltage regulators on his adapter so that it's properly supplying 3.3V whenever he uses his CF-SD converter. These adapters in most cases uses only diodes to step down the voltages which is cheap and nasty way to do so. For that fact even proper CF cards really needs 3.3V even though the standard says they "should" work with both voltages! But we're digressing, I've got output files ready for 640k!Enough - just need to know how to get it across to him.

Startech IDE to CF adapters allow setting 5v or 3.3V for CF and use an actual regulator to drive 3.3V, AFAICR

EDIT: Yup, regulator is a IRU1117-33
https://www.startech.com/en-ca/hdd/ide2cf
https://www.irf.com/product-info/datasheets/d … /iru1117-33.pdf

I can confirm that some CF-IDE adapters contain 3.3V and 5V selection via jumper. Maybe the voltage settings is affecting the SD card through the CF adapter.

Thanks Darry, I wasn't aware that there was a CF-IDE adapter with a proper voltage regulator I'll have a look. 640K!enough here are the two files.

Has anyone here with Orpheus II got any tips on how to get Terminal Velocity running properly? It requires ULTRAMID.EXE to be run first (in the game directory), however the Orpheus II has some crackles and pops in music and in game.

primetime wrote on 2023-09-25, 00:12:

Thanks Darry, I wasn't aware that there was a CF-IDE adapter with a proper voltage regulator I'll have a look. 640K!enough here are the two files.

Here are photos of one of my CF-IDE adapters with a voltage selector.

primetime wrote on 2023-09-25, 00:39:

Has anyone here with Orpheus II got any tips on how to get Terminal Velocity running properly? It requires ULTRAMID.EXE to be run first (in the game directory), however the Orpheus II has some crackles and pops in music and in game.

As per TVHELP info:

It seems that you are better off using SoundBlaster for the game - GUS support was an afterthought and not really worth it if you are limited to 11khz/mono sound.
Pretty weird since the music is tracked but as it is mentioned in a couple more places in the HELP they never implemented proper GUS support or fixed the swapped channels issues 🤣

btw, OprheusII has it's own thread here: Orpheus II soundcard thread *** LT board now available *** , it will probably serve better for questions about it

Thanks Keropi, well that sucked but yeah OK back to Soundblaster it is then. Greatly appreciate the help cheers! Hmm, interestingly if one was to use DOSBOX with GUS in TV, the music plays just fine without pops and crackles!

Also it's interesting that the TV setup program states that using ULTRAMID is the preferred solution and provides maximum sound quality.

keropi wrote on 2023-09-25, 08:54:

It seems that you are better off using SoundBlaster for the game - GUS support was an afterthought and not really worth it if you are limited to 11khz/mono sound.
Pretty weird since the music is tracked but as it is mentioned in a couple more places in the HELP they never implemented proper GUS support or fixed the swapped channels issues 🤣

Curious. I play Terminal Velocity using GUS cards and while it has issues with stereo sound, the music works fine in mono up to 44kHz.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-09-26, 00:17:

keropi wrote on 2023-09-25, 08:54:

It seems that you are better off using SoundBlaster for the game - GUS support was an afterthought and not really worth it if you are limited to 11khz/mono sound.
Pretty weird since the music is tracked but as it is mentioned in a couple more places in the HELP they never implemented proper GUS support or fixed the swapped channels issues 🤣

Curious. I play Terminal Velocity using GUS cards and while it has issues with stereo sound, the music works fine in mono up to 44kHz.

Using software mixing routines on the GUS is suboptimal and can decrease the overall performance as sample uploading into RAM is the only way to get sound out of it.

primetime wrote on 2023-09-26, 00:02:

Also it's interesting that the TV setup program states that using ULTRAMID is the preferred solution and provides maximum sound quality.

Not so much that it provides the best quality but rather it's the only way the game can actually output anything to a GUS.
ULTRAMID gives a software interface (using interrupts) that allows a game to just throw standard midi events at it like an MPU401, and it takes care of handling all the patches in memory and hardware pokes to make the right noise come out.

Can anybody explain the situation with WSS and the CS-4237? It sounds like certain games (ie. Sierra 16-bit and 32-bit?) have problems but there exists patches (thanks 640k!enough).

Is there a list of Sierra games that received official WSS support patches? (I'm interested in trying them)

Is there also a list of Sierra games that are 16-bit versus 32-bit? (not sure if this makes a difference)

sofakng wrote on 2023-09-29, 19:54:

Can anybody explain the situation with WSS and the CS-4237? It sounds like certain games (ie. Sierra 16-bit and 32-bit?) have problems but there exists patches (thanks 640k!enough).

How well any software will work with the CS4237 depends largely on the title's detection routines. If they specifically depend on the additional configuration features being present (ports 530H to 533H), as on Microsoft's original design, they are not likely to work. If they use other detection routines, or allow the resources to be specified manually, getting them to work is fairly likely.

What many fail to mention in such discussions is that the CODEC part of the CS4237 is actually a good deal more capable, in a number of ways, than the Analog Devices part that Microsoft originally used. At the time, the Crystal parts were often considered superior.

Where Sierra titles are concerned, it is important to mention that the driver that we are using is an official Sierra driver that was shared by Cloudschatze via keropi. That driver was originally released by Sierra, at the request of Mediatrix Peripherals, for the Audiotrix Pro. My only contribution was modifying one instruction so that the output was mostly correct for those using output via S/PDIF (and only when the base port is 534H).

I had intended to do a good deal more work with those drivers, but the machine I was using for the bulk of that work is basically dead. It could be fixed, but it would cost so much (time and especially cash) that it's not worth the effort. So, unless I have cash to spare for an extra machine at some point, or someone else adopts the task, the currently-available drivers will have to do.

sofakng wrote on 2023-09-29, 19:54:

Is there a list of Sierra games that received official WSS support patches? (I'm interested in trying them)

Is there also a list of Sierra games that are 16-bit versus 32-bit? (not sure if this makes a difference)

We're not really dealing completely with official support, but when we were first discussing this, mothergoose729 did a good deal of the guinea-pig work; the original posts can be found here and here.

640K!enough wrote on 2023-09-30, 03:11:

I had intended to do a good deal more work with those drivers, but the machine I was using for the bulk of that work is basically dead. It could be fixed, but it would cost so much (time and especially cash) that it's not worth the effort. So, unless I have cash to spare for an extra machine at some point, or someone else adopts the task, the currently-available drivers will have to do.

Do you need any parts ? I might be able to help. I believe that we live relatively close to each other. Please feel free to PM me.