zuldan wrote on 2024-02-22, 11:00:

pan069 wrote on 2024-02-22, 10:56:

Where is what? The picoGUS? It's in my machine. Playing MIDI files atm... 😀

Lucky bugger! I should have selected the fast shipping.

Are you enjoying it? What are you using it for other than playing midi files?

Yeah, it sounds great! Like I posted earlier, I will work my way through the compatibility list when I have some time but in general for me GUS is mostly demos and tracker music. For games in general I don't really mind whatever but then again, I am not much of a gamer. 😀

For our Dutch enthousiasts, I have some extra PCB's for sale on Marktplaats.nl with a 3D printed bracket.

Update feb 24:

Only 1 left!

Sold out.

polpo wrote on 2024-02-17, 06:10:

I've determined the cause of silent audio in Doom and Dope reported by @Pickle and @HandOfFate, and I have a firmware fix! Many […]
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I've determined the cause of silent audio in Doom and Dope reported by @Pickle and @HandOfFate, and I have a firmware fix! Many thanks to them for sending the cards back to me. At first I thought it was due to shipping damage or chipset incompatibility, but in this latest batch of cards I just made I started testing with Doom and noticed quite a few cards had the same problem. After eliminating the possibility of bad PSRAM, bad bus interface chips, or DMA bugs, I wondered if it was due to the DAC. Another person who had the same problem said not only was the demo Dope silent, playing the Demo's song in any MOD player was also silent. Dope is a 28-channel MOD file, which corresponds to a 22.05kHz GF1 mixing rate. And would you know it, Doom also runs at 28 channels. On the affected cards, loading any song into Fast Tracker II and playing with the number of active channels reproduces the issue: playback goes silent at 28 voices. Poking at the I2S signals going to the DAC with my scope showed audio being sent at that rate, but the DAC just wouldn't play it. I looked at the PCM510xA datasheet and it doesn't seem that 22.05kHz is really supported, especially at 16 bits per sample. I experimented with padding output to 24 or 32 bits per sample but that didn't alleviate the issue.

After searching the web for PCM5100A (or its variants PCM5101A and PCM5102A) and 22.050kHz, I found a couple posts on the TI forums that also report the same issue of no audio at 22.05kHz:
https://e2e.ti.com/support/audio-group/audio/ … ate-of-22-04khz
https://e2e.ti.com/support/audio-group/audio/ … hz-audio-format

So it seems that 22050Hz sampling rate is not officially supported by the PCM510xA despite it working on 90% of cards. I have a feeling it's somehow being detected internally on the PCM5100A as 44.1kHz, since all of the other oddball GF1 sampling rates work just fine. In any case, I have a simple software fix: at 28 active channels, force an output sampling rate of 44.1kHz and double each sample. It's not interpolated so it pretty much sounds the same as "real" 22.05kHz. The fix solves the issue on all of the affected cards I've tested.

That raises another approach to a fix: constant 44.1kHz output rate for all number of channels, just as the Interwave does it. At first I didn't attempt it because I was worried about available CPU for mixing and PSRAM bandwidth. But @wbc has experimented with creating firmware that outputs at this rate and it doesn't seem to be a problem. I'm wondering how people would react to that since it's less true to the original GUS and its GF1. I could make it switchable via pgusinit.

Wow, that's a great discovery!

I would never have guessed it was caused by the "normal" behavior of a chip, with the issues being so random (and still I tried to see a pattern in it 😁). Glad that I could help out in some fashion 😀

Hi everyone!

I built a PicoGUS v1.2 today. My soldering is pretty ugly, but the card itself works beautifully in both DOS and Win95.

I tested it running Future Crew's 2nd Reality and it sounds amazingly clean. It's pitched a bit higher than when I ran it with an SB, is that normal?

I also tried running Crystal Dream II (which I saw some other folks had issues with) and it freezes on the sound card selection screen. I'm not able to use the arrow keys to even pick another option. I am able to run the whole demo when I swap the PicoGUS with an SB16 (DSP 4.05).

I'm running it in on a 486 DX4-100 VL/I-486SVGO (SiS 85C471/85C407 chipset).

Anyhow, thanks for reading, and thanks @polpo for the amazing work!

lisabadcat wrote on 2024-02-26, 06:16:

Hi everyone! […]
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Hi everyone!

I built a PicoGUS v1.2 today. My soldering is pretty ugly, but the card itself works beautifully in both DOS and Win95.

I tested it running Future Crew's 2nd Reality and it sounds amazingly clean. It's pitched a bit higher than when I ran it with an SB, is that normal?

I also tried running Crystal Dream II (which I saw some other folks had issues with) and it freezes on the sound card selection screen. I'm not able to use the arrow keys to even pick another option. I am able to run the whole demo when I swap the PicoGUS with an SB16 (DSP 4.05).

I'm running it in on a 486 DX4-100 VL/I-486SVGO (SiS 85C471/85C407 chipset).

Anyhow, thanks for reading, and thanks @polpo for the amazing work!

What you report in 2nd Reality is normal: the SB playback routine is lower pitched than it should be. The GUS playback routine is the correct pitch on a real GUS and the PicoGUS.

Interesting that you say Crystal Dream II freezes at the beginning. I just had someone email me with the same problem on a different 486 chipset, the VIA VT82C496G. I don't have a board with either of those chipsets, and I haven't seen a freeze like that in any of my testing, so I'm not sure what the problem would be. If I can get my hands on a board with one of those chipsets I'd be able to do a bus capture with my logic analyzer to determine the cause of the issue.

Hello everyone,
OK I soldered two guspico 1.2. One for me and the other for my friend. My bad on one board I forgot to check the pico before soldering and unfortunately it's DOA. However on the other board I have a strange behavior. When starting a 486DX50 on a Shuttle Hot 3.0 motherboard with UMC chipset the system hangs after the memory check. I've checked all the solder joints and everything seams to be fine. Any idea what can cause this? I've also set the ISA bus speed to 1/3 and then 1/4 of the system bus speed and nothing. I will also try after soldering another pico to check the other picogus board. Unfortunately I don't have any other motherboard ready to check if it's the motherboard fault or that some of the chips are faulty on the picogus.

Cheers,
diskers

It could be a PnP error or reserve conflict. Try to reserve in BIOS the IRQ and DMA you jumpered your card at.

Is it a DX/50 and not a DX2/50? With a 50 MHz bus, ¼ might still be too fast (12.5 MHz). You might try a divider of ⅕, the latest firmware has been tested with 10 MHz ISA bus speed.

digistorm wrote on 2024-02-28, 21:04:

Is it a DX/50 and not a DX2/50? With a 50 MHz bus, ¼ might still be too fast (12.5 MHz). You might try a divider of ⅕, the latest firmware has been tested with 10 MHz ISA bus speed.

Yes it's a Dx50. I lowered the bus speed to about 8 Mhz and nothing the same freeze.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-02-28, 19:31:

It could be a PnP error or reserve conflict. Try to reserve in BIOS the IRQ and DMA you jumpered your card at.

I reserved irq 7 but cannot reserve DMA on my bios and also it's a no go. I also removed all the cards in all slot and left only the video card.

polpo wrote on 2024-02-27, 22:36:

If I can get my hands on a board with one of those chipsets I'd be able to do a bus capture with my logic analyzer to determine the cause of the issue.

I've got access to a Saleae Logic Pro 16 and a DSLogic Plus. I could throw a header on my board and grab some data for you if you'd like.

polpo wrote on 2024-02-27, 22:36:

Interesting that you say Crystal Dream II freezes at the beginning. I just had someone email me with the same problem on a different 486 chipset, the VIA VT82C496G.

I don't believe it's the PicoGUS. I pulled the card and ran CD2 and it froze at the exact same location. Once I removed the SET ULTRASND line from autoexec, it ran fine. I wonder if the person that emailed you would have the same experience.

The odd thing is I can run CD2 with an SB16 on the same IRQ and DMA with no issues.

Just got my PicoGUS. Ultrasound firmware is working pefectly!

When I load the MP401 firmware and run GPUSINIT, it just freezes. I've removed all the sound cards from the motherboard but still have the same issue. Any idea what may be the issue?

zuldan wrote on 2024-03-02, 01:55:

Just got my PicoGUS. Ultrasound firmware is working pefectly!

When I load the MP401 firmware and run GPUSINIT, it just freezes. I've removed all the sound cards from the motherboard but still have the same issue. Any idea what may be the issue?

IMG_4605.JPG

Maybe an IRQ conflict or something? Any other soundcards in the computer? If you have the MPU-401 firmware loaded try using it without pgusinit. In my experience it isn't required for that firmware.

Delphius wrote on 2024-03-03, 03:34:

If you have the MPU-401 firmware loaded try using it without pgusinit. In my experience it isn't required for that firmware.

Thank you so much for that suggestion! SC-55MK2 is now working perfectly with the PicoGUS without the initialization. I didn't think of trying it without the software.

For future reference, the motherboard the MPU firmware froze on is the ASUS SP97-V (Socket 7) - SiS 5598 chipset

zuldan wrote on 2024-03-03, 05:50:

Delphius wrote on 2024-03-03, 03:34:

If you have the MPU-401 firmware loaded try using it without pgusinit. In my experience it isn't required for that firmware.

Thank you so much for that suggestion! SC-55MK2 is now working perfectly with the PicoGUS without the initialization. I didn't think of trying it without the software.

For future reference, the motherboard the MPU firmware froze on is the ASUS SP97-V (Socket 7) - SiS 5598 chipset

Glad to hear it works without running pgusinit. When pgusinit runs in MPU-401 mode, the card re-inits the MPU-401 emulation with the sysex delay and fake-all-notes-off settings (neither of which you'd need with a SC-55MK2). There's a chance there's some kind possible hang when re-initing, I'll take a look at it!

polpo wrote on 2024-03-05, 17:09:

Glad to hear it works without running pgusinit. When pgusinit runs in MPU-401 mode, the card re-inits the MPU-401 emulation with the sysex delay and fake-all-notes-off settings (neither of which you'd need with a SC-55MK2). There's a chance there's some kind possible hang when re-initing, I'll take a look at it!

Thanks for that. I’m happy to run any sort of debugging versions if required 👍

Ordinary day at the home office. My pimped Toshiba T5200 plays tracker music through PicoGUS. It had GUS MAX earlier but PicoGUS fits in the 8bit slot and network card can take the 16bit one.

Looking forward for the SB-firmware, MAXSBOS worked quite good here.

I’m waiting for them to be back in stock but looking forward to picking one up when they are!

dj_pirtu wrote on 2024-03-12, 09:57:

Ordinary day at the home office. My pimped Toshiba T5200 plays tracker music through PicoGUS. It had GUS MAX earlier but PicoGUS fits in the 8bit slot and network card can take the 16bit one.

Looking forward for the SB-firmware, MAXSBOS worked quite good here.

They made laptops with ISA slots? That's a really cool machine!