Just got my Orpheus II LT in the mail. Don't have pictures to show unfortunately since I was in a rush to install it and try it out for myself. 🤣

Anyways, aside from all of the system resource nonsense, everything works wonderfully. Currently have it installed in a Pentium III build with Windows 98. Granted, there are at least two noteworthy issues that I have come across software wise.

Volume control: I'm very picky about these settings, especially when I'm streaming or capturing footage. While playing DOS games, the volume seems to be fixed at certain levels. Under a Windows DOS box, the Orpheus II LT seemed quieter (with the Windows 9x drivers installed and enabled). Conversely, under DOS, the volume was jacked up to 11. I've been using ORPHINIT for my sound card and I could not for the life of me adjust certain volume settings under it. Under Windows 98, the volume control panel seems to do nothing for DOS games aside from normal Windows applications. Speaking of volume control...

Xargon: As you may know, Xargon (and similar titles) are notorious for jacking the volume levels all the way up to 11 when booted up. There doesn't seem to be any workarounds for this either, at least to my knowledge.

To summarize, ORPHINIT did initialize the card just fine, but the volume controls are just not working. So, I tried using UNISOUND, which worked, and I was able to adjust the volume accordingly. Can't seem to use the external Yamaha OPL3 though, which sucks.

What I ended up doing was disabling the Orpheus II LT sound device under Windows, while keeping its OPL3, MIDI, and Joystick interfaces enabled, and added the ORPHINIT command in autoexec.bat. Interestingly, not only did it work when running DOS programs, but the volume for the Orpheus II seemed to be jacked all the way up much like in regular DOS. Seemed excessive, but after further volume adjustments, I kinda got the sweet spot that I wanted.

Xargon still sounds kind of distorted no matter what I do. Will probably have to investigate this further.

But otherwise, the Orpheus II LT is a solid card. I'm actually quite happy with it and it's really neat that the Yamaha OPL3 can now be accessed under Windows 9x, unlike the Orpheus I.

Also placed an order on the Orpheus II Black Edition. Can't wait to see what the Gravis Ultrasound scene was like back then. 😀

DoomGuy II wrote on 2023-07-09, 05:19:

Volume control: I'm very picky about these settings, especially when I'm streaming or capturing footage. While playing DOS games, the volume seems to be fixed at certain levels. Under a Windows DOS box, the Orpheus II LT seemed quieter (with the Windows 9x drivers installed and enabled). Conversely, under DOS, the volume was jacked up to 11. I've been using ORPHINIT for my sound card and I could not for the life of me adjust certain volume settings under it. Under Windows 98, the volume control panel seems to do nothing for DOS games aside from normal Windows applications. Speaking of volume control...

Assuming there hasn't been any changes how things work between the original Orpheus and Orpheus II the volume settings under dos work only when FMMode is set to CrystalFM in ORPHINIT. They don't work at all when it's set to OPL3.

Should really be mentioned on the first page of ORPHINIT topic and also in the .INI file if you ask me, I only found out about that after going through the ORPHINIT or the Orpheus thread page by page, can't remember which.

DoomGuy II wrote on 2023-07-09, 05:19:

[...] To summarize, ORPHINIT did initialize the card just fine, but the volume controls are just not working. So, I tried using UNISOUND, which worked, and I was able to adjust the volume accordingly. Can't seem to use the external Yamaha OPL3 though, which sucks.
[...]

I think it would be best to post about this in the orphinit thread , mixer settings should work just fine (well except for games that re-write the registers on boot) , maybe you have uncovered a bug/case

Sombrero wrote on 2023-07-09, 06:26:

Assuming there hasn't been any changes how things work between the original Orpheus and Orpheus II the volume settings under dos work only when FMMode is set to CrystalFM in ORPHINIT. They don't work at all when it's set to OPL3.

Should really be mentioned on the first page of ORPHINIT topic and also in the .INI file if you ask me, I only found out about that after going through the ORPHINIT or the Orpheus thread page by page, can't remember which.

this is no longer the case with the OrpheusII and the LT board though , it's been resolved like the "crystafm-only limitation" under win9x

@DoomGuy II
There is a line on orpheus.ini that you need to state is an OrpheusII, is it set?

Marmes wrote on 2023-07-09, 10:55:

@DoomGuy II
There is a line on orpheus.ini that you need to state is an OrpheusII, is it set?

Yes, it has been set for the 'OrpheusII' by default when I installed it on my system.

Hi!

I have just recently bought an Orpheus II and been having a blast with it in MS-DOS, experiencing the demos and games that work better with a GUS, as well as enjoying the MPU-401 intelligent mode games with my MT-32.
This card is just like magic !

I am now trying to install the card on Windows 95 and Windows 98.

On my Windows 95 machine, I had no problems installing the card, but my Windows 98 build seems to have a conflict between the "UltraSound Plug & Play Synth/Codec" driver and the "OrpheusII System CODEC" driver, with both using an IO range of 0240 - 024F.

Do I need both, or should I disable one of them? Alternatively, any other standard range I should change one of them for?

Thanks

So, I actually found out why I couldn't adjust the volume settings for my Orpheus II LT under ORPHINIT. And I feel kinda stupid for not realizing that there are specific 'sb-mode' mixer settings I'm supposed to adjust. Kinda confusing at first, but I was able to adjust the volume settings properly now... well, just the master volume at the moment, but it's something.

Regardless, it's no biggie if the mixer settings are gonna be maxed out, especially when games like Xargon do that anyway. I can just deal with it and make certain volume adjustments to find a balance, especially when streaming. I've actually been playing around with games like Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior, and Blood last night. I just couldn't get enough how wonderful my Orpheus II LT is, and it's actually kinda nice knowing that I don't have to juggle two physical ISA sound cards just to get proper PCM and MIDI support for DOS games. And yes, in my Pentium III system, I actually had an SB16 for sound, and a Crystal PNP exclusively for MIDI.

Seriously cannot wait for my Orpheus II Black Edition to show up. I actually have another system in mind to use it with once it arrives.

EDIT: Was able to further solve the issues with the ORPHINIT mixer settings and Xargon. Found a neat little program called MIDIto, which allowed me to lock the SB mixer settings so that games don't force it to their own.

keropi wrote on 2023-07-08, 06:00:

holaplaneta wrote on 2023-07-08, 00:54:

Update: OK, I got the GUS PND disc and installed most of its contents. But when I try to install the 4MB patch set under Win98 it says "IW.EXE cannot be modified without INTERWAVE variable set." Any ideas?

a reboot should fix this as it would activate the variables set by the installation

Thanks Keropi, but unfortunately after rebooting, all the 4MB patches installation from the Gravis UltraSound PnP CD did was to make my PC freeze. After that, Win98 starts very slow and now it freezes every time I want to shut down the PC. I ran Scandisk under DOS twice (took dozens of hours) and tried to install the 4MB patches again but it did the same thing. The 4MB patches installation crashes the computer and corrupts the Shutdown and Restart functions, making them hang.

I read on another old post by user Ratfink that the 4mb sets are for Windows and that for DOS you get the gf1 patch sets. Also that the 4mb sets are hard to find as there was a copyright issue. And that you need a pair of files, Gsfull4m.dat and Gsfull4m.fff (4Mb and 65Kb respectively). I saw that on the ARGUS project page there was talk about finding a way to make these available without the legal issues but I am not sure of how this could apply to the Orpheus II.

So I feel I am stuck with using the GUS feature of the Orpheus II card with just DOS games... that´s not so bad, but I really wanted to explore everything it can offer under Windows 98 and its MS-DOS mode.

@holaplaneta you can simply try if it works on any other PC - here it helped - Help with GUS PNP not working properly

And as for Windows 98 - there can be plenty of potential problems so you have plenty options to check.

Different GUS drivers, different chipset drivers, resource conflicts - so inspection of windows resources and all ot the resource related BIOS settings.

holaplaneta wrote on 2023-07-13, 00:43:

[...]
So I feel I am stuck with using the GUS feature of the Orpheus II card with just DOS games... that´s not so bad, but I really wanted to explore everything it can offer under Windows 98 and its MS-DOS mode.

sadly I have no advice to give you on win9x drivers: they should just work
if the issue is only the 4MB set then this is easily rectified: in the pre-installed ULTRASND.ZIP in the site the 4MB set is also installed.
It is located in the \PATCHES\ subdirectory: GSFULL4M.DAT and GSFULL4M.FFF inside it - that is what the Gravis installer creates.
It also edits IW.INI - at least on DOS and makes this change:

1[vendor amd_4m]
2gsfull4m.fff=C:\ULTRASND\PATCHES

I actually do not remember if under windows you can use the Gravis panel to manually load the 4MB bank (I assume you can).
It might sound weird why I just can't check but believe it or not I do not currently have any "full OrpheusII" in my possession - everything is sent out to people that ordered it 😀

I installed my Orpheus 2 LT yesterday and have played around with it a bit just in Win98. I'll mess with it a bit more in DOS once I get my MP32L setup for my MT32/GM solution, but I just have to say this is the cleanest card I've ever had in this machine. I pulled up Gabriel Knight 2 and watched the intro movies and whereas on my old ISA Labway card the output was dirty and noisy this is like totally clean with no background static at all, just wow.

it always bring a smile to my face when I read people are pleased with our stuff , thanks for the support teiresias and I hope the LT will serve you well in the years to come! 😀

I got my Orpheus 2 LT (green 008) today, it arrived in one piece 😀. Thanks Leo, everthing worked out

I had a pure DOS system on the bench ready to go , a FIC VA-502 mobo with Pentium MMX 233 (everything at stock settings) with a Matrox G400 (was there for a test, not the card I normally use - a GF4 MX 440 normally) and a Yamaha 219 using Unisound configuration. I just swapped the cards and fired, counting on the Unisound to get it started. It did work, but I noticed that the FM sound set was the Crystal, not the OPL3. It ran the games I tried (Duke3d, Doom, Indiana Atlantis CD, Lemmings 1, X-Wing 1993). I was very happy as the X-Wing 1993 did not hang when the first FX played, which happens to most cards except the ES1868 and YMF724/744. Good start

Then I tried to switch on Unisound to Opl3, got a status line, but games where not finding FM anymore. Rebooted and using Orphinit to initialize the card, got all working (Orpheus.bat /v). Duke3d worked, Doom also. But Indiana Atlantis CD, X-Wing all produced garbled FM. I kept my nerves cold, tried some changes on BIOS, read some instructions (2nd time) on the Orpheus I, II and LT pages to see if I missed something, plus again the Unisound.txt instructions. No good.

I put this bench aside, pulled up a P2-266 with a Intel 440LX chipset (everthing else the same).... Orphinit initialization and everything worked out on OPL3, including Indiana Atlantis CD and X-Wing 1993, no garbled sound and no freeze at FX playing. Plugged a SC-55, Doom, Duke3d, Descent, all playing nice.

Keropi, you can smile again! First impression is very positive in the limited testing done so far, very happy to use the midi cable that came with the board, now I can use the joystick without all the clutter due to cables and adapters: as lean as it gets.

My wife got home, I cannot continue for now, pending a X2GS test... and later going back to the Pentium MMX 233 setup, which is one of the machines I intend to have the Orpheus LT for older DOS games, MT-32 playback etc.

Kind regards and nice weekend to all.

PS:
1) I did ready this entire thread, plus the Unisound as the card was getting closer to home. I don't recall any info that might help with the issue I had (garble sound) on the MMX233. Anyone has any tips/ideas on this?
2) How to initialize with Unisound getting OPL3 instead of Crystal FM?
Yes I can use Orphinit, but normally I keep Unisound so I can switch cards without changing Autoxec.bat. Most likely I will switch a lot less now, as I have a card that is doing everything it should.
3) I will post setup screenshots or link to a video with the garbled sound if that helps

thanks for the update Aladim!

X-WING/Atlantis issues and freezes could also be related to speed of the system, garbled FM is also one of the indicators of this - this is why back in the day Lucas released "speed patches" for these games.
I found that ICACHE.EXE works great to disable L1 cache before launching such games and re-enable after the game session , this is what I do on my MMX setup
sometimes one hardware combo will work differently than the other, meaning that for example with an ESS card on this system you might not get this behavior but with a Crystal you will, I have experienced this several times already over the years with different sound and system combos - so the best way is to eliminate this via speed control.
I would also do a BIOS "ESCD data" reset, maybe some previous config from the previous soundcards remain.

UNISOUND does not fully support the OprheusII/LT cards, as you have found it cannot enable the Yamaha OPL3.
ORPHINIT is the only DOS tool that can enable/disable all features so use that instead.
Make sure no other drivers/unisound are also running before or after as they will mess with the initialization of the OrpheusII.

Doom II has incorrect drum sounds with my Orpheus II using the interwave. It sounds normal if I swap my GUS PnP into the same system. What would cause this?

Here is what is sounds like, sorry for the lazy recording.

https://youtu.be/KKaSNnXSAEo

Here is how it sounds with a real GUS PnP in the same system, same software, irq settings, etc. I only switched the card:

https://youtu.be/AFlLRb5LPJE

synacktic wrote on 2023-07-15, 15:40:

Doom II has incorrect drum sounds with my Orpheus II using the interwave. It sounds normal if I swap my GUS PnP into the same sy […]
Show full quote

Doom II has incorrect drum sounds with my Orpheus II using the interwave. It sounds normal if I swap my GUS PnP into the same system. What would cause this?

Here is what is sounds like, sorry for the lazy recording.

https://youtu.be/KKaSNnXSAEo

Here is how it sounds with a real GUS PnP in the same system, same software, irq settings, etc. I only switched the card:

https://youtu.be/AFlLRb5LPJE

probably a ram issue, try another ram stick that's all I can think and there have been various reports over the years of IW having weird issues when it does not like the installed ram: from complete failure to slight differences

Yeah, I have tried 4 or 5 diff sticks. All FPM, one parity, diff sizes from 4mb to 32mb and did a ram test on the 16mb. I can try others though.

keropi wrote on 2023-07-15, 18:00:

probably a ram issue, try another ram stick that's all I can think and there have been various reports of IW having weird issues when it does not like the installed ram: from complete failure to slight differences

ok weird, then
samples are loaded into ram on game boot and then played from there
is it absolutely certain that the same files and settings are used? maybe the extra devices on orpheus2 create some conflict?
can you try ULTRASND.ZIP from the site?
alongside orphinit so IW gets IRQ7 and DMA3 and CS gets IRQ5/DMA1 and then setup the game again before launching
wouldn't hurt to do a bios ESCD reset if it exists, OrpheusII has several IW devices disabled and CS4237 replacing them, could be a mixup there

So, I gutted my autoexec/config of all the stock ultrasnd/blaster stuff. I removed all cards except the Orpheus II. I made use of the Orphinit and ultrasnd.bat (et al) from ultrasnd.zip. I have tried various ram, but I don't think that is the issue since every piece of ram has the exact same effect on the sound. Ill move it to another machine and see if the same behavior is exhibited.

If it persists, is it possible there is a connection issue on the simm socket or some such? I can go at it with a multimeter, reflow on the simm socket side or maybe do a bodge if needed.

keropi wrote on 2023-07-15, 18:17:

ok weird, then samples are loaded into ram on game boot and then played from there is it absolutely certain that the same files […]
Show full quote

ok weird, then
samples are loaded into ram on game boot and then played from there
is it absolutely certain that the same files and settings are used? maybe the extra devices on orpheus2 create some conflict?
can you try ULTRASND.ZIP from the site?
alongside orphinit so IW gets IRQ7 and DMA3 and CS gets IRQ5/DMA1 and then setup the game again before launching
wouldn't hurt to do a bios ESCD reset if it exists, OrpheusII has several IW devices disabled and CS4237 replacing them, could be a mixup there

did you also do a ESCD reset? reserved DMA/IRQ in PnP section of BIOS (if applicable) for all the orpheusII parts?
if you do ultrasnd.bat /v , does the output show the correct amount of ram and resources?

a bad simm socket would result in ram detection issues or severe garbled playback , not a single sample playing wrong
I gotta say I never heard of such an issue , it is probably some weird thing that causes it

edit:
I insist on ESCD stuff because when I was testing original PnP and O2 the reset was essential with my HOT-591p SS7 mobo - else weird things happened from IW not detected or resources locked to ether