640K!enough wrote on 2021-10-01, 03:01:

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-09-30, 19:18:

The Orpheus sound card is only compatible with SB Pro 2 in this case due to the presence of the YMF-262 OPL3 chip.

That is mostly correct, except that Orpheus uses the YMF289.

Oops, I stand corrected. 😜

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-09-30, 19:18:

OPL3 programming for stereo is different (especially panning and initialization) compared to a dual OPL2 chip setup, you won't get stereo panning on OPL3 if you choose a setup meant for the original SB Pro instead of SB Pro 2.

The Orpheus sound card is only compatible with SB Pro 2 in this case due to the presence of the OPL3 chip.

Oh my! I didn't think about about that. Thanks for bringing it. My mind was on SimCity 2000 which have a nice soundtrack, but for what I remember doesn't use anything fancy. But for some games that uses special programming of OPL chips, indeed they can sound different. As many games of the time, the musics of SC2K were made with a MT-32, then adapted to standard MIDI for playback on other chips. That means no special programming of OPLs.

I guess you guys forgot to send a tracking number, I was fairly confused when I got a notification of a package from Portugal all of a sudden 😁

No harm done, can't wait to try it out!

Sombrero wrote on 2021-10-01, 09:58:

I guess you guys forgot to send a tracking number, I was fairly confused when I got a notification of a package from Portugal all of a sudden 😁

No harm done, can't wait to try it out!

Took a while but I finally got to play with this and I have to say while I expected the card to sound good, I didn't expect it to sound THIS good! The damn thing sounds amazing, part of me wants to get quality speakers for my Win98/DOS pc now but I would probably get myself evicted from my apartment if I'd do that. So well done guys!

And if there are any DOS novices like me out there, if your motherboard bios lets you manually control IRQ/DMA resources it's apparently not a good idea to manually assing IRQ5/DMA1 (or what ever you set in orphinit) for Legacy ISA expecting BIOS would reserve them for Orpeus. Apparerently that doesn't work, at least for me it didn't, Orpheus got assigned who know what IRQ/DMA and I was getting weird background distortions and peeps every time hard drive was being heavily used. Maybe the card was sharing resources with IDE controller or something, got sorted out after I cleared ESCD and let BIOS handle that stuff automatically.

Thanks for the kind words Sombrero ! I am very glad you enjoy our card - thanks a bunch for your support 😀

I bet since the CS4237 is a PnP chip then your BIOS assumed that the resources you reserved are not for it - but some times PnP is called "Plug n Pray" for a reason 🤣 🤣 🤣

Hello, how longish is the waiting queue right now ?

^ I want to say that until xmas everyone will be served

Hmmm. I filled out the expression of interest form [1] quite a while ago (early this year or late late year) but never heard anything... 🙁

[1] https://www.cognitoforms.com/PCMIDI1/purchasi … cardwwwpcmidieu

pan069 wrote on 2021-10-26, 19:52:

Hmmm. I filled out the expression of interest form [1] quite a while ago (early this year or late late year) but never heard anything... 🙁

[1] https://www.cognitoforms.com/PCMIDI1/purchasi … cardwwwpcmidieu

Send me your details so I can check out what happened

keropi wrote on 2021-10-26, 12:21:

^ I want to say that until xmas everyone will be served

Well ok added myself to the queue ^^

Got mine last week. Finally managed to play around with it today.
Actually had almost "oh s*it" moment.
Started my Win98 P3 in Dos 7.1 mode and initialized card with unisound.
Card initialized correctly.
Decided to start testing safe - with OPL3 player http://adlibtracker.net/
Fried up included ADT2PLAY.EXE which have worked with all my OPL3 cards and ... ...loud static noise and PC hung....
Then went to test all other features including adlib (388) support in games - card passed all tests with flying colours.
It actually turned out that adlib tracker player has special (fix latency) command line parameter. With that parameter card worked just fine.

Also Keropi I'm somewhat impressed how you have managed to streamline your team production - delivery pipeline in context of high demand. Ordered in May got it in October. A lot faster and robust compared to Sony with PS5 delivery. 😀

So SB32 out, Orpheus in:

vutt wrote on 2021-11-06, 17:28:

[...]
Also Keropi I'm somewhat impressed how you have managed to streamline your team production - delivery pipeline in context of high demand. Ordered in May got it in October. A lot faster and robust compared to Sony with PS5 delivery. 😀
[...]

🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
enjoy the card and thanks for your support vutt!!!!

I ordered the full package and have since realized that I won't be needing the DreamBlaster and in fact it will get in my way since I want to use the header in order to internally connect an MT32 emulator. I assume that when my order comes up I will be able to downgrade? Also, and this is very important, what is the address the email will be coming from so that I can make sure it doesn't get marked as spam?

DieKatzchen wrote on 2021-11-08, 16:31:

I ordered the full package and have since realized that I won't be needing the DreamBlaster and in fact it will get in my way since I want to use the header in order to internally connect an MT32 emulator. I assume that when my order comes up I will be able to downgrade? Also, and this is very important, what is the address the email will be coming from so that I can make sure it doesn't get marked as spam?

contact info sent , thanks!

Hi all. I received my card a few weeks back and I have to admit to starting to pull my hair out with it. The card does work, but for quite a few (but not all) DOS games, I just simply get no sound effects out of it at all. Doom, Duke Nukem 3d and Simcity 2000 all refuse to play any sound effects, with DN3D being unable to find the card (arguing an IRQ conflict), Simcity 2000 seeming to initialise the card (causing a popping sound) before complaining that it won't work and Doom simply not playing anything except music over the MIDI. Descent, Dune 2 and Wolfenstein 3D all work however ( though I can't convince Dune 2 to use midi for music and SB Pro for sound).

I have tried both Orphinit and unisound drivers with no change in the behaviour. Any ideas would really be appreciated now.

*update*

I have the issue licked. It seems to have been an unreported IRQ conflict. Things seemed OK, but when the system tried to initialise sound, the ethernet card got in the way. Long story short, a combination of IRQ juggling and ultimately swapping the card over solved the problem. Now I get to start appreciating the goodness of the card. I will update again when I get the chance to really play with it.

ah the joys of retro computing... it's not good until you spent some days chasing dragons 🤣 🤣 🤣
glad you found the issue coherentbaboon , hidden conflicts like this are the worst!

Hi! I bought an Orpheus Sound Card some weeks ago and just received it! I have installed it on a Packard Bell Pulsar 16.
What a difference! Amazing sound card with great quality sound and 0 noise.
I bought the standard version as I'm only interested in using the OPL3 FM. Sorry, I'm not that fan of MIDI music!!!! Yes I know.....😬
I would like to comment that the purchase of the card went perfectly! Leo really made everything super easy for me. I ordered the Sound Card and received it in less than a month. Really impressed with the service. Top Quality!
I really recommend the purchase.

This community really owes keropi a lot 😀

thanks for the kind words guys!!!
it is always nice to see people like what Ed and me made 😀
the support we received from the community just amazing, can't thank you guys enough!
this support is what allows us to develop more things, pcmidi led to Orpheus, Orpheus will surely lead to something else eventually in the future 😀
it already allowed for the mega-pc card to be created, a very niche piece of hardware but there is no stopping just yet 😁
all I can say is thank you again and I hope you all get countless hours of retrojoy with our hardware!

Yesterday I filled in the form. What will be the next step? And how long it can take from filling up the form -> payment -> receiving the card?
I am very hyped to get my card.

Can I connect the MT-32 and SC-55 mkII simultaneous and use one or the other depending on the game?