keropi wrote on 2025-02-23, 16:17:

ULTRASND.BAT is inside the "DOS: Gravis UltraSound PnP PREINSTALLED driver v.4" ZIP file you can download in the orpheusII site but since you already tried with the gus pnp driver you already have it won't behave differently I think
it is better to remove the other sound card - so you can have more free IRQ/DMA to work with

I see, I didn't download that zip file, I used the floppy disk images, though for the sake of completeness, I'll give that other zip file a try. I'm almost tempted to give Unisound a try as well.

Embarrassingly, I've pulled out the P233 from storage, only to find out that I forgot to bring an AT keyboard 🤦‍♂️ I've already pulled the existing CT4180 (yuck!) that was in that other system, tomorrow I'll bring my AT keyboard there and I'll test again.

Cheers,

I can confirm that ORPHINT works fine on EISA systems. Both it and the Interwave initialized without a problem on my 486 SiS EISA/VLB board.

Vynix wrote on 2025-02-23, 17:30:

I see, I didn't download that zip file, I used the floppy disk images, though for the sake of completeness, I'll give that other zip file a try. I'm almost tempted to give Unisound a try as well.
[...]

no need to bother with the original gravis installer , the ULTRASND.ZIP is already pre-configured and with the clutter that is irrelevant to the O2 removed
there is also GAMES.TXT and Orpheus2.TXT in the archive that provide more info on how things work
also keep in mind the original gravis diag/test program is super buggy and almost of no use...

unisound is OK to initialize the gravis portion, orphinit is mandatory for the CS4237 portion as unisound does not fully support the orpheus2 enhancements

NJRoadfan wrote on 2025-02-23, 18:12:

I can confirm that ORPHINT works fine on EISA systems. Both it and the Interwave initialized without a problem on my 486 SiS EISA/VLB board.

nothing extra needed? just plug and use as normal?

Nothing extra needed. Just installed the Orpheus II card into the system, downloaded the software and ran ORPHINT and ULTRASND.BAT to initialize the card. The motherboard has the SiS 85c406/411 EISA chipset.

One nice thing about EISA NIC and SCSI cards is that they use 32-bit I/O resources like PCI cards, so I don't have to worry about the MPU port configuration clashing with them (Ethernet NICs usually use 300h range as a default). You still have to be mindful of IRQ and DMA assignments, but those are easily changed in the EISA configuration utility.

Okay,
So, I tested the Orpheus II on my P233, no questions there it worked first try, no fuss no muss whatsoever, ran Orphinit just fine it detected it and initialized as it should.

I'll try it again in my 486 system and use the other zip file.

Although, it just dawned on me, yesterday when I booted up my 486 system, it started throwing Memory Parity errors and prompted me to press S to "shutoff NMIs" [sic] and upon doing that, I could get Orphinit to run without bombing out, I have little to no idea if that means anything or if it was just a fluke.

Vynix wrote on 2025-02-24, 12:23:

Okay, So, I tested the Orpheus II on my P233, no questions there it worked first try, no fuss no muss whatsoever, ran Orphinit j […]
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Okay,
So, I tested the Orpheus II on my P233, no questions there it worked first try, no fuss no muss whatsoever, ran Orphinit just fine it detected it and initialized as it should.

I'll try it again in my 486 system and use the other zip file.

Although, it just dawned on me, yesterday when I booted up my 486 system, it started throwing Memory Parity errors and prompted me to press S to "shutoff NMIs" [sic] and upon doing that, I could get Orphinit to run without bombing out, I have little to no idea if that means anything or if it was just a fluke.

that could just be bad ram that causes instabilities , this error is never to be taken lightly in my experience

Welp, I let it run Memtest during the night, no errors popped up. I can't get that parity error to happen again or disable the NMI thing.

Trying again without the network card installed, same thing, it just bombs out and locks the machine up.

I've also tried to run ORPHINIT from a blank DOS disk (no Himem or anything like that), same as before.

Seems like anything PnP breaks on that machine, oddly enough... I can run my network card's PNP utility without lockups or anything.

I had some PnP problems as well that was resolved by toggling the BIOS option for "PnP OS Installed." You can try that, if the option exists for you.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-02-25, 13:46:

I had some PnP problems as well that was resolved by toggling the BIOS option for "PnP OS Installed." You can try that, if the option exists for you.

Hi,
I appreciate the tip, I'm afraid that the BIOS I have (Phoenix ROM Plus) doesn't have this option.

I've done some further testing, I found out that when anything attempts even accessing the sound card, it just crashes and hangs the machine up.

Vynix wrote on 2025-02-25, 22:09:

I've done some further testing, I found out that when anything attempts even accessing the sound card, it just crashes and hangs the machine up.

This doesn't tell us very much. If ORPHINIT and IWINIT won't run, then the core functionality of the card is likely not active on the bus (therefore one can't use the sound card). Also, if both of those tools crash consistently, then something is guaranteed to be wrong somewhere. One thing to try that might offer a few hints is to run ORPHINIT with the /vd option, without trying to re-direct the output, and see what it displays before becoming unresponsive. Just posting a picture of what you see when it stops working should give us some ideas.

640K!enough wrote on 2025-02-26, 00:57:

Vynix wrote on 2025-02-25, 22:09:

I've done some further testing, I found out that when anything attempts even accessing the sound card, it just crashes and hangs the machine up.

This doesn't tell us very much. If ORPHINIT and IWINIT won't run, then the core functionality of the card is likely not active on the bus (therefore one can't use the sound card). Also, if both of those tools crash consistently, then something is guaranteed to be wrong somewhere. One thing to try that might offer a few hints is to run ORPHINIT with the /vd option, without trying to re-direct the output, and see what it displays before becoming unresponsive. Just posting a picture of what you see when it stops working should give us some ideas.

Hi,

I tried this real quick, I can briefly see the copyright and other stuff popping up, then the "Using configuration file C:\DOSDRV\ORPHINIT\..." then the screen blanks out and the whole system freezes.

I've filmed this so you can see: https://youtu.be/SNL10OJaKHw

Cheers,

So to recap...

• Orphinit prints out stuff until "using configuration file..." then the whole screen blanks out and the keyboard becomes unresponsive, and that even when using /v, /vv, /vdm or not. (as can be seen in the video I linked)
• IWINIT.bat doesn't print out anything, it just directly crashes before I can see anything pop up on the screen.
• Thus far, I was only able to get Orphinit to work once and that was when the system complained about a memory parity error and prompted me to press a key to turn down NMIs, doing so allowed Orphinit to initialize the card without crashing (!) but since then, I wasn't able to repro this.
• That probably doesn't mean anything relevant, but when Orphinit crashes, I can hear a loud "pop" in the speakers, whereas without NMIs enabled, I didn't hear anything yet the card worked as it should.

Cheers,

@Vynix

Are you sure you don't have a hardware fault on your board somewhere?

@Vynix, do any other soundcards (PnP and non-PnP) work in the machine at all? Does UNISOUND work with the Orpheus II? Its possible its a hardware fault, or something on the board doesn't like the PnP register poking that the configuration tools are doing (if that is the case, any card being configured via PnP registers would have an issue).

Do you have any other device drivers loaded, or is this a clean boot?

@Duffman
I'm afraid I have no idea, other than this slight hiccup with the Orpheus, the board seems to work fine otherwise, that parity error I had brought up went away after I had swapped the sticks round (not that they're probably suspect too).

The Orpheus works fine in my P233 system, surprisingly it didn't give me any issues there regarding IRQs.

If I still can't get this working, I'll put the Orpheus into my P233, which was my original plan.. I'll put my CT4180 as a stop gap card in my 486 system.

------
@NJRoadfan
I didn't try Unisound yet, but I can try this tomorrow (it's almost midnight here in France ^^)

Regarding the rest, I have a 3Com Etherlink III in the system (it's PNP utility works fine without crashes), and it's corresponding packet driver loaded (I tried with and without the driver loaded beforehand), other than this I don't have anything else loaded besides Himem and EMM386, it's a bone stock install of MS-DOS 6.22. I'll try again with a boot disk just to rule that out.

I do have a CT4180 on my P233 that I can test in the 486 (I just need to dismantle the P233 and take the card out of there). I also tried a CT1350B (one of the later ones with the CT1366A chip) and it worked fine, albeit its output was extremely quiet, but I think that's another unrelated fault on that card.

NJRoadfan wrote on 2025-02-27, 22:21:

@Vynix, do any other soundcards (PnP and non-PnP) work in the machine at all? Does UNISOUND work with the Orpheus II? Its possible its a hardware fault, or something on the board doesn't like the PnP register poking that the configuration tools are doing (if that is the case, any card being configured via PnP registers would have an issue).

Do you have any other device drivers loaded, or is this a clean boot?

Just tried Unisound (using the /CL switch at first), I got the same thing, the screen just blacks out and the whole machine just completely hardlocks... Going to try with the CT4180 next.

Aaaaand with the CT4180 Unisound successfully detects it (still using the /CL switch), the Orpheus works fine in my other (Pentium 233) system.

This is really curious.

well it looks like for some reason the mobo/bios does not like the CS4237 and Interwave (which is strange as both are shown as independent devices on ISA bus so one should at least work)
very unlucky but it happens apparently - so far only some OEM systems are found to be incompatible or needing a BIOS update to make things work
we never actually found out why this as there is no real reason... wonders of old hardware 😐

I'm curious if this is something that happens on other cards with the CS4237 or if it's something endemic to the Orpheus?

keropi wrote on 2025-03-04, 17:38:

well it looks like for some reason the mobo/bios does not like the CS4237 and Interwave (which is strange as both are shown as independent devices on ISA bus so one should at least work)
very unlucky but it happens apparently - so far only some OEM systems are found to be incompatible or needing a BIOS update to make things work
we never actually found out why this as there is no real reason... wonders of old hardware 😐

I'm starting to think it might be the BIOS, I'm waiting on a EEPROM to arrive so I can test the stock ALR VEISA bios on my board... After all I have no idea what modifications Siemens did to the BIOS on the motherboard.

@Karenhaz - I don't have any CS4237 based cards, but if I find one for cheap I'll test it and see if the bug also happens.