Keropi, would you mind giving a status update on the Orpheus II Red PCB batch?

I'm pretty sure all of those have shipped out already.

gordon-creAtive.com wrote on 2025-02-10, 13:08:

Keropi, would you mind giving a status update on the Orpheus II Red PCB batch?

everything is shipped since 2~3 months now , only the Canadian orders were delayed because of the postal strikes
did you have an order placed? you should already have your tracking for quite some time now
email me with your info if something needs investigating and you have not received your card yet

Thanks for the update, I'm going to reach out to you via email.

I wanted a new Orpheus (already have two) and I just got to know that they are not longer being manufactured... 🙁

However then I saw this post and...

keropi wrote on 2024-09-01, 09:15:

OrpheusIII will happen in the future - but it will take some time as it needs to be something good 😉

I can´t wait to complete my "trilogy" of Rev0 Orpheus cards.

Please, please, please, tell me there´s a way I could put my name right now on a waitlist for now. Does not matter if I get the In Stock Alert email in a couple of years.

Thank you for the great work and congratulations again on such amazing products.

Something I'd like to see on an Orpheus III is hardware CD-ROM emulation with redbook CD audio support.

Kevin Moonlight figured out a way to do it on a PCMCIA card
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L59Bp61Je4Y

Sorry if such arleady was on topic but I wanted to share my experience if anyone struggles with Windows usage (Windows 98SE to be precise).

I have installed my second card to my K6-2+ system replacing an ESS/AWE32 which both I had issues 🙁
Installation was straight forward but skipping my long days of figuring things out the main thing is to set the resources properly manually. My issue was to get everything working under DOS (not DOS mode, just starting a DOS game in Windows). I had set resources for GUS as 7,7,7,7 address 240 to be proper and it was working. Then I set other resources as 5,1,3 address 220.

DOS games were fine but I have noticed sound issues in Croc game. It has asf format audio files which under the intro or in the game was completely off. 1-2 senond playing then repeating. So I have changed back to automatic configuration for resources after set up the manual and everything was okay, even for DOS games the resources didn't change back but in Croc the sound is okay.

One thing remained, like in DOS I experienced on the other machine is the volumes. GUS is much louder, CD music is much louder than SB synth and effects. It can can be conpensated via mixer just strange and even varies game by game. Does anyone has same experience and some other method solving it?

atomeec wrote on 2025-02-17, 09:09:

[...]

One thing remained, like in DOS I experienced on the other machine is the volumes. GUS is much louder, CD music is much louder than SB synth and effects. It can can be conpensated via mixer just strange and even varies game by game. Does anyone has same experience and some other method solving it?

all volumes are controlled from CS4237:
- cd rom is ofcourse assigned to cd rom audio
- interwave is assigned to synth together with opl

so you adjust volumes via orphinit and you should be fine
if you want to further adjust the interwave volume then you can adjust the interwave mixer and make it output lower or higher volume until you like the balance

there are many games that mess with mixer settings and most of the times they put everything to max, you should use their own game volume settings to adjust volumes

One of the most annoying issue with trying to get sound mixing perfectly in DOS is that games will try to modify these settings and leave them that way when you exit. To avoid this, you can make a .bat file to restore the old mixer settings after the game runs, but it is an extra step.

I should keep an eye on this board more often. I am absolutely gutted I missed out on this one.
Are you sure you won't do a second batch??

cursedverses wrote on 2025-02-19, 20:17:

I should keep an eye on this board more often. I am absolutely gutted I missed out on this one.
Are you sure you won't do a second batch??

well we do get more requests, that is true
and I suppose some kind of preorder can be arranged again - to create again the exact needed numbers as it is still possible to do
but then all that talk about final batches would be for nothing , so there is kind of a conflict here, say one thing do the other...
what 2 bald guys are supposed to do in this situation? 😁

also taking this chance to warn about 3.3v ram used with OrpheusII - interwave is not designed to be used with 3.3v ram sticks (that most common EDO sticks from the pentium1 era are) and it needs 5v DRAM to work.
Using a 3.3v ram stick will work fine for some time but depending on the hours used interwave will eventually get damaged.
This was not an issue with the original Gravis PnP card because it used 30pin simms and they are always 5v parts , OrpheusII uses 72simm socket and while this allows to easier and cheaper max out the ram it has the danger of using a 3.3v simm .

If you are unsure of the memory you want to use with the OrpheusII feel free to contact us so we can verify it is suitable to use.

cursedverses wrote on 2025-02-19, 20:17:

I should keep an eye on this board more often. I am absolutely gutted I missed out on this one.
Are you sure you won't do a second batch??

Don't feel gutted. Join us over here.

MK1869 and MK1869 XTREME : new soundcards with ESS1869 and ES690 or Interwave chips

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-02-20, 01:14:

cursedverses wrote on 2025-02-19, 20:17:

I should keep an eye on this board more often. I am absolutely gutted I missed out on this one.
Are you sure you won't do a second batch??

Don't feel gutted. Join us over here.

MK1869 and MK1869 XTREME : new soundcards with ESS1869 and ES690 or Interwave chips

I love this place...!

keropi wrote on 2025-02-19, 21:33:

well we do get more requests, that is true and I suppose some kind of preorder can be arranged again - to create again the exact […]
Show full quote

well we do get more requests, that is true
and I suppose some kind of preorder can be arranged again - to create again the exact needed numbers as it is still possible to do
but then all that talk about final batches would be for nothing , so there is kind of a conflict here, say one thing do the other...
what 2 bald guys are supposed to do in this situation? 😁

I'm not here to force anything, just saying - if you decide you want to make more, I'll be in touch!

keropi wrote on 2025-02-19, 21:33:

If you are unsure of the memory you want to use with the OrpheusII feel free to contact us so we can verify it is suitable to use.

Hello, I've used GUS about 10-15 minutes of runtime on this kind of a memory, including RAM test from the utility

https://ram-co-shop.de/4-MB-FPM-RAM-non-Parit … 60DZ-70-g1111_1
https://www.ebay.com/itm/153813163169

My stick has 4 of these TMS418160DZ chips, the last line on them is "2C 65A63H P" and "2C 65A7K9 P".

I assume this stick is 5V but won't power on the system until somebody else confirms it 😀

zb10948 wrote on 2025-02-22, 16:27:

Hello, I've used GUS about 10-15 minutes of runtime on this kind of a memory, including RAM test from the utility […]
Show full quote

keropi wrote on 2025-02-19, 21:33:

If you are unsure of the memory you want to use with the OrpheusII feel free to contact us so we can verify it is suitable to use.

Hello, I've used GUS about 10-15 minutes of runtime on this kind of a memory, including RAM test from the utility

https://ram-co-shop.de/4-MB-FPM-RAM-non-Parit … 60DZ-70-g1111_1
https://www.ebay.com/itm/153813163169

My stick has 4 of these TMS418160DZ chips, the last line on them is "2C 65A63H P" and "2C 65A7K9 P".

I assume this stick is 5V but won't power on the system until somebody else confirms it 😀

TMS418160 is a 5v FPM dram chip so you are good to go!

Hi,

I'm having a hell of a bad time getting my Orpheus II going in my 486 system, I have little to no idea why but whenever I run ORPHINIT, it prints something on the screen, then it crashes out entirely, to the point I have to power cycle the whole system.

I've so far only managed to get it to work only once (I didn't set the InterWave up yet since I don't have the proper RAM for it) before it started misbehaving like that.

I don't know if my system (some obscure ALR EISA board, detailed below) is to blame or if it's something else (like an address or IRQ conflict, or the Orpheus having gotten stuck in a weird state where it doesn't quite know where it is).

In any case, here's the whole system specs:

Edit: I'm using the default Orphinit ini file, if I understand correctly it's using IRQ5 by default? This is what MSD.exe says about IRQs on this system:

Cheers,

Vynix wrote on 2025-02-23, 14:23:

Hi, […]
Show full quote

Hi,

I'm having a hell of a bad time getting my Orpheus II going in my 486 system, I have little to no idea why but whenever I run ORPHINIT, it prints something on the screen, then it crashes out entirely, to the point I have to power cycle the whole system.

I've so far only managed to get it to work only once (I didn't set the InterWave up yet since I don't have the proper RAM for it) before it started misbehaving like that.

I don't know if my system (some obscure ALR EISA board, detailed below) is to blame or if it's something else (like an address or IRQ conflict, or the Orpheus having gotten stuck in a weird state where it doesn't quite know where it is).

In any case, here's the whole system specs:

CPU: 486DX2-66
RAM: 16MB
HDD: 400MB (unsure)
Other cards present: None, except a NIC (some 3Com 3C509-C and a VGA card)
Motherboard: ALR VEISA ASIC

System Specs

Cheers,

Can you run ultrasnd.bat and see if this works?
Orphinit crashing might have something to do with the EISA system, I am not sure anyone tried on one before...
You can test the card on that 430vx system in your signature, I can almost guarantee it will just work on it

Also if you do this: orphinit /v >output.txt and then reboot when it freezes, do you see anything in the created output.txt file?
another idea is to try without having loaded that network card tsr

Hiya,

I tried doing a verbose Output.txt thing, and I'm afraid it did not yield anything either, I just got a blank file regardless of the NIC driver being loaded or not 😢

I don't have the Ultrasnd.bat file for some reason, but I have a PNPCFG.exe file in my Ultrasound driver directory, that one also completely bombs out (same as ORPHINIT, black screen and unresponsive keyboard) when I run it, there's also IWINIT.exe I tried to run and it output a bunch of garbage on screen before quitting:

keropi wrote on 2025-02-23, 14:43:

Orphinit crashing might have something to do with the EISA system, I am not sure anyone tried on one before...
You can test the card on that 430vx system in your signature, I can almost guarantee it will just work on it

I was afraid this would be the case I know there's a guy on Vogons (his username escapes me atm) who managed to get his Orpheus II running in a Compaq EISA system, he did mention having to create a CFG file so that the Compaq EISA utility would assign the correct ressource ranges.

I'll give the Orpheus a try on my P233, should I remove the existing sound card I have in it or can I leave it just for testing?

Cheers,

Vynix wrote on 2025-02-23, 15:36:

[...]
I'll give the Orpheus a try on my P233, should I remove the existing sound card I have in it or can I leave it just for testing?

Cheers,

damn so no luck to see anything verbose prints out...
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
sadly I know nothing about EISA systems so I can't be of any help on how their CFG files work