VOGONS


Reply 1160 of 1252, by Shreddoc

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alexkb9lhn wrote on 2024-09-20, 17:15:
Pickle wrote on 2024-09-19, 21:35:
alexkb9lhn wrote on 2024-09-19, 20:37:

My gut tells me it’s a defective card… I should be seeing the LED come on at power on but it’s just dead now. And pulling the card to plug it into my Windows laptop over USB doesn’t work, card is just dead, does nothing. 🫤

id try updating the card through the micro usb and see if a computer sees the pi-pico hardware

I tried hooking it up to a computer with micro usb but it’s dead; does nothing.

I'm not aware of any quick fix for your situation. Consider privately contacting the seller, explaining the situation (or link here), and asking if a replacement card is warranted.

Supporter of PicoGUS, PicoMEM, mt32-pi, WavetablePi, Throttle Blaster, Voltage Blaster, GBS-Control, GP2040-CE, RetroNAS.

Reply 1161 of 1252, by alexkb9lhn

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Shreddoc wrote on 2024-09-20, 21:43:
alexkb9lhn wrote on 2024-09-20, 17:15:
Pickle wrote on 2024-09-19, 21:35:

id try updating the card through the micro usb and see if a computer sees the pi-pico hardware

I tried hooking it up to a computer with micro usb but it’s dead; does nothing.

I'm not aware of any quick fix for your situation. Consider privately contacting the seller, explaining the situation (or link here), and asking if a replacement card is warranted.

Great tip, it seems as though a warranty replacement is in the works. Thanks!

Reply 1162 of 1252, by myne

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Silly question, perhaps, but given it took a lot of effort and processing to interface with Isa, would lpc potentially be easier to implement?

I'm thinking about the folk playing with the dISAppointment, and getting it to work on modern boards.

Maybe a picogus, direct to lpc would be a simpler solution.

I built:
Mechwarrior 2 installer
Re: A comprehensive guide to install and play MechWarrior 2 on new versions on Windows.
Dos+Windows 3.11 auto-install iso template (for vmware)
Script to backup Win9x\ME drivers from a working install
Re: The thing no one asked for: KICAD 440bx reference schematic

Reply 1163 of 1252, by rasz_pl

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LPC is trivial with pico
https://github.com/MrGreensWorkshop/RasPiPico … sPostCodeReader
https://github.com/stacksmashing/pico-tpmsniffer
but you dont get the DMA on newer boards so no SB emulation without TRS

https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module for AT&T Globalyst
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 memory board
https://github.com/raszpl/440BX Reference Design adapted to Kicad
https://github.com/raszpl/Zenith_ZBIOS MFM-300 Monitor

Reply 1164 of 1252, by LSS10999

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rasz_pl wrote on 2024-09-25, 19:04:

but you dont get the DMA on newer boards so no SB emulation without TRS

LPC DMA exists and is fully functional in Intel chipsets up to 9 series (up to Z97/X99), so for these boards there's no problem with that so long as you have your board's boardview to show you where to access it (usually LDRQ1#). However, you may have issues with IRQ on those boards as the ones commonly used by sound cards (5, 7) can be highly contested that many onboard devices would try to claim them. In my case with X99M Killer/3.1, IRQ5 simply can't be used as it's wanted by many PIRQ lines, but I can use IRQ7 so long as I disable onboard audio as it was placed on a separate PIRQ line exclusive to it.

You do need to configure the LPC controller beforehand, in order to allow access to the I/O ranges used by sound cards, as well as resetting DMA registers so it can be properly accessed. With proper boot loader chaining tricks you can even make the devices accessible even on other OSes such as Windows.

For newer chipsets that have since ditched LPC DMA (Intel 100 series) there's little one could do without any form of emulation, but GUS functionality may still be utilized in PIO mode (not relying on DMA).

myne wrote on 2024-09-25, 12:27:

Silly question, perhaps, but given it took a lot of effort and processing to interface with Isa, would lpc potentially be easier to implement?

I'm thinking about the folk playing with the dISAppointment, and getting it to work on modern boards.

Maybe a picogus, direct to lpc would be a simpler solution.

nukeykt already made a LPC Sound Blaster implementation which can also be found in the dISAppointment thread.

A PicoGUS over LPC would certainly save I/O pins which allows more features at the same time if system resource permits, and can in theory be designed in a way that can easily fit in a standard chassis coupled with an ATX motherboard. Currently dISAppointment works best when paired with a MATX board in a standard chassis.

Reply 1165 of 1252, by dreamblaster

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I made special edition of S2 to "feed the Polpo" :

s2red_feedthepolpo.jpg
Filename
s2red_feedthepolpo.jpg
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52.73 KiB
Views
1165 views
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Fair use/fair dealing exception

Visit http://www.serdashop.com for retro sound cards, video converters, ...
DreamBlaster X2, S2, S2P, HDD Clicker, ... many projects !
New X2GS SE & X16GS sound card : https://www.serdashop.com/X2GS-SE ,
Thanks for your support !

Reply 1166 of 1252, by Delphius

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dreamblaster wrote on 2024-09-28, 12:35:

I made special edition of S2 to "feed the Polpo" :

s2red_feedthepolpo.jpg
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s2red_feedthepolpo.jpg
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52.73 KiB
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1165 views
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Fair use/fair dealing exception

Awesome! Looks good!

Reply 1167 of 1252, by appiah4

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dreamblaster wrote on 2024-09-28, 12:35:

I made special edition of S2 to "feed the Polpo" :

s2red_feedthepolpo.jpg
Filename
s2red_feedthepolpo.jpg
File size
52.73 KiB
Views
1165 views
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

Of the GM gear I have S2 is probably still my favorite ❤️

Reply 1169 of 1252, by Mastran

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Hey there!
Recently I received this amazing card in the mail (purchased from Joe Computer Museum)

I have been loving it and having fun testing stuff and hearing Ultrasound stuff for the first time (was not exposed to it as a kid)

So far the games I have tested in GUS MODE are:

-Blackthorne WORKS -there are separate "SetupG" and "BthorneG" executables for Ultrasound
-Wacky Wheels WORKS
-Raptor Call of the Shadows 1.2 WORKS
-Realms of Chaos HANGS -the setup mentions that Ultramid will have to be pre-loaded to work, and that the executable "RocGus.bat" is used (I will try to run a newer version of Ultramid)
-Alien Rampage NO SOUND when configured for Ultrasound
-Eradicator WORKS

...and many more that I cannot remember now.

The test system is a

PCChips M571 mobo, it has SiS 5598 chipset TXPro and Pentium 200mhz

if I am not mistaken.

The only thing I have not gotten to work is my USB Gamepad, I have a 8bitDo Wired Pro Controller, I believe it is an XInput controller.... but when i plug it and configure some games to control through joystick I can`t calibrate anything. I know the card is supplying power to the controller cause of the LED on the gamepad. Don`t know how to make this work... maybe this gamepad is incompatible as of yet?

Last edited by Mastran on 2024-10-02, 11:44. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1171 of 1252, by snipe3687

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Hello everyone. I'm on kind of a PC104 kick lately. I built a backplane motherboard with a PC104 socket and since then I've been building whatever I think could run on it into PC104 modules. this leads me to my actual question. I built a PC104 adaptation of the PicoGus. it looks great and I was able to drop the firmware on it however, it is not being detected by pgusinit. I had it assembled by JLC so I know the soldering is ok. Although I did opt to solder 3 of the chips myself since I already have them on-hand and they were a bit pricey through JLC but I went over them several times to make sure everything was solid and there are no bridges.
I also poked some of the address pins coming from the RP2040 with my oscilloscope and I see activity. so i'm wondering if I messed up when I copied over the schematic. I already found that I didn't attach IOW and IOR properly. this was due to the setting the label as active low on the bus side but not on the other end so KiCad didn't say anything about it not being connected. I bodged both of them and have continuity on both ends. I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to review my schematic and tell me if there's anything obvious (or not so obvious) that I messed up.

I've attached it here. I know it's a little messy, but I will clean it up once I'm sure everything is working properly!
And I will of course share the project files when it's done for the select few people who actually want something like this 😉

Thanks in advance!

Attachments

  • Filename
    PicoGus 104 .pdf
    File size
    260.79 KiB
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    30 downloads
    File license
    Public domain

Reply 1173 of 1252, by Caligula

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snipe3687 wrote on 2024-10-03, 01:58:
Hello everyone. I'm on kind of a PC104 kick lately. I built a backplane motherboard with a PC104 socket and since then I've been […]
Show full quote

Hello everyone. I'm on kind of a PC104 kick lately. I built a backplane motherboard with a PC104 socket and since then I've been building whatever I think could run on it into PC104 modules. this leads me to my actual question. I built a PC104 adaptation of the PicoGus. it looks great and I was able to drop the firmware on it however, it is not being detected by pgusinit. I had it assembled by JLC so I know the soldering is ok. Although I did opt to solder 3 of the chips myself since I already have them on-hand and they were a bit pricey through JLC but I went over them several times to make sure everything was solid and there are no bridges.
I also poked some of the address pins coming from the RP2040 with my oscilloscope and I see activity. so i'm wondering if I messed up when I copied over the schematic. I already found that I didn't attach IOW and IOR properly. this was due to the setting the label as active low on the bus side but not on the other end so KiCad didn't say anything about it not being connected. I bodged both of them and have continuity on both ends. I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to review my schematic and tell me if there's anything obvious (or not so obvious) that I messed up.

I've attached it here. I know it's a little messy, but I will clean it up once I'm sure everything is working properly!
And I will of course share the project files when it's done for the select few people who actually want something like this 😉

Thanks in advance!

I compared it to the current git schematics of the chipdown version I could not find anything obvious. Also the PC104 seems to be wired correctly. Best guess: some wireing/soldering/chip could be broken, another device is using the I/O ports 0x1D0..0x1D2.

Since you were able to flash the board, I would assume that the RP2040 is working kind of properly. What error message is pgusinit reporting exactly? If it is ERROR: no PicoGUS detected! then it already fails by writing out 0xCC and 0x00 to 0x1D0 or not reading properly 0xDD from 0x1D2. If you get a different error message it means that your board should work in principle, but something else is broken.

Maybe to narrow the issue a bit down (depending on what equipment you have to test):
- Do you have an logic analyzer that is fast enough for your bus? Even with a small number of pins you can still record some pins e.g. AD0..x, SA0..x, SD0..x, IOR, IOW and ADS(x should depend on the number of channels your LA has) to see if the adress and data toggling is working properly.
- Do you have ISA to PC104 adapters? Does your board work in a regular ISA slot or does a regular PicoGUS work in your PC104 machine?
- Do you have an Debug probe for the RP2040 (just use another RP2040 for that: https://mcuoneclipse.com/2022/09/17/picoprobe … as-debug-probe/ ) then you can compare what is RP2040 is sending/receiving compared to what pgusinit is doing.

Reply 1174 of 1252, by snipe3687

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Caligula wrote on 2024-10-03, 09:29:
I compared it to the current git schematics of the chipdown version I could not find anything obvious. Also the PC104 seems to b […]
Show full quote
snipe3687 wrote on 2024-10-03, 01:58:
Hello everyone. I'm on kind of a PC104 kick lately. I built a backplane motherboard with a PC104 socket and since then I've been […]
Show full quote

Hello everyone. I'm on kind of a PC104 kick lately. I built a backplane motherboard with a PC104 socket and since then I've been building whatever I think could run on it into PC104 modules. this leads me to my actual question. I built a PC104 adaptation of the PicoGus. it looks great and I was able to drop the firmware on it however, it is not being detected by pgusinit. I had it assembled by JLC so I know the soldering is ok. Although I did opt to solder 3 of the chips myself since I already have them on-hand and they were a bit pricey through JLC but I went over them several times to make sure everything was solid and there are no bridges.
I also poked some of the address pins coming from the RP2040 with my oscilloscope and I see activity. so i'm wondering if I messed up when I copied over the schematic. I already found that I didn't attach IOW and IOR properly. this was due to the setting the label as active low on the bus side but not on the other end so KiCad didn't say anything about it not being connected. I bodged both of them and have continuity on both ends. I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to review my schematic and tell me if there's anything obvious (or not so obvious) that I messed up.

I've attached it here. I know it's a little messy, but I will clean it up once I'm sure everything is working properly!
And I will of course share the project files when it's done for the select few people who actually want something like this 😉

Thanks in advance!

I compared it to the current git schematics of the chipdown version I could not find anything obvious. Also the PC104 seems to be wired correctly. Best guess: some wireing/soldering/chip could be broken, another device is using the I/O ports 0x1D0..0x1D2.

Since you were able to flash the board, I would assume that the RP2040 is working kind of properly. What error message is pgusinit reporting exactly? If it is ERROR: no PicoGUS detected! then it already fails by writing out 0xCC and 0x00 to 0x1D0 or not reading properly 0xDD from 0x1D2. If you get a different error message it means that your board should work in principle, but something else is broken.

Maybe to narrow the issue a bit down (depending on what equipment you have to test):
- Do you have an logic analyzer that is fast enough for your bus? Even with a small number of pins you can still record some pins e.g. AD0..x, SA0..x, SD0..x, IOR, IOW and ADS(x should depend on the number of channels your LA has) to see if the adress and data toggling is working properly.
- Do you have ISA to PC104 adapters? Does your board work in a regular ISA slot or does a regular PicoGUS work in your PC104 machine?
- Do you have an Debug probe for the RP2040 (just use another RP2040 for that: https://mcuoneclipse.com/2022/09/17/picoprobe … as-debug-probe/ ) then you can compare what is RP2040 is sending/receiving compared to what pgusinit is doing.

I'm relieved to hear that the schematic looks correct.
The error message I'm getting is the dreaded "no PicoGus Detected!" which tells me something on the data or address bus is not working properly. I suppose it's possible that data on IOR and IOW is not flowing properly as those are the ones I had to bodge to the PC104 connector. I did verify that they are the correct pins a few times, but I've been known to make some pretty dumb mistakes in the past with these projects, so I'll verify that again later tonight as that's the only part of the bus I know for sure was not connected originally.
I do have ISA to PC104 adapters so I can test it out on one of those later. I did test one of my regular PicoGus in an ISA slot on the board, so I know that the system itself is working properly.
I have the debug probe for the RP2040 but when I connected it, it didn't show me anything in the terminal. Maybe I have some settings wrong for the serial connection.

I don't have a logic analyzer. is there any that are relatively inexpensive you would recommend? I do projects like this pretty regularly so it would probably be a good investment to have one.

I appreciate the quick response!

Reply 1175 of 1252, by stamasd

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dr.zeissler wrote on 2024-10-02, 08:17:

MCA Version please 😉

And NuBus, why not 😒

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 1176 of 1252, by Matchstick

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stamasd wrote on 2024-10-03, 17:43:
dr.zeissler wrote on 2024-10-02, 08:17:

MCA Version please 😉

And NuBus, why not 😒

Cause NuBus is not a pc spec. That's an apple/mac/next spec. And these soundcards were never made for Nubus and would never work as they are architecturally different.

MCA on the other hand while it would need a PCB with an MCA connection, the Adlib and SB cores could be made to work under MCA, as those cards had MCA equivalents the GUS did not. So it would no longer be a PicoGUS.

Maybe someone could make a PicoMSA card.

Reply 1178 of 1252, by akimmet

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Matchstick wrote on 2024-10-03, 20:13:
Cause NuBus is not a pc spec. That's an apple/mac/next spec. And these soundcards were never made for Nubus and would never work […]
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stamasd wrote on 2024-10-03, 17:43:
dr.zeissler wrote on 2024-10-02, 08:17:

MCA Version please 😉

And NuBus, why not 😒

Cause NuBus is not a pc spec. That's an apple/mac/next spec. And these soundcards were never made for Nubus and would never work as they are architecturally different.

MCA on the other hand while it would need a PCB with an MCA connection, the Adlib and SB cores could be made to work under MCA, as those cards had MCA equivalents the GUS did not. So it would no longer be a PicoGUS.

Maybe someone could make a PicoMSA card.

I'm fairly certain that the nubus request was sarcasm. If we are going to make ridiculous requests, I'd like to see unibus. So you can play some tracker tunes on your pdp-11.

Having GUS implemented on the MCA bus may actually be possible. Since The DMA lines are accessible to the bus. However I doubt anyone is going to volunteer to design a MCA expansion card.

Unless I'm mistaken, a full PicoGUS on MCA would be annoying. Considering to how MCA bus resources are configured. Reconfiguring the card would likely require rebooting with a reference disk every time.