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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ธ.ค. 2020
- Yes its the 486 out again but with good reason. I got a new BIOS chip with the latest AMI BIOS for this PC Chips motherboard so lets see if that will fix the cache issue and allow us to see all 1024KB.
Then and with massive thanks to Serge its time to drop in one of the most famous of DOS sound cards. The Gravis Ultrasound Max 2.1. Getting the GUS to play nice with everything else though turns into a bit of a headache.
Music featured in this video, apart from the obvious, is taken from the DOS game Descent.
For those who asked this is the BIOS I upgraded to - vogonsdrivers.c...
These are the cache chips I used and the eBay seller I bought them from (no affiliation) - www.ebay.co.uk...
![[Full Episode] MasterChef Junior Thailand มาสเตอร์เชฟ จูเนียร์ ประเทศไทย Season 3 Episode 9](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Jsjwpd_ER8g/mqdefault.jpg)
Haha, I wasn't sure the GUS worked, since I had no way of testing it prior to shipping. Glad it did, and somehow, glad it turned a bit difficult, since it makes it more interesting ;) This machine is turning into quite a nice PC :) Again, thank YOU for all the time you put in for us :) Merci ! S
Many thanks again for your generosity. I'm not 100% of the way there yet and I think the problem I'm having can be resolved but that's just part of the fun of working on these old machines.
@@CRG Exactly :) (must admit I forgot how good it sounded :))
Glad i could help
Thanks again :)
That sound is in fact really awesome! Thanks for this awesome content. You’ve made my day (again)!
Nice 486!
I went with a CF card and VLB 32 IDE controller and XT-IDE (and Smart Boot Manager) on mine and it now has very snappy disk access!
Thanks.
Hopefully I can get the vlb controller that I showed at the end working then I'll be sticking cf cards in raid in this machine. Should give a nice speed boost.
Huge difference with the sound. Sounds incredible
1st: read on vogons
2nd: watched on yutube
Sweet :)
You should put the model of the motherboard in the title/description for future look ups.
It's listed in the search terms for the video but yeah it wouldn't do any harm being added to the title to make it more clear. I'll edit it later.
Lovely card and nice video dude. Honestly sometimes I prefer the OPL3 sounds because that's what I grew up with. But when it comes to soundtracks I'm not familiar with, the GUS wins hands down.
That's the reason why I want to keep the sound blaster clone in the system too.
Very nice! I worked on the team at eTek Labs (nee Forte Technologies) back in the 90s on the GUS PnP (AMD Interwave). :D
Very cool, so you worked on the development of the pnp card? Are there many differences on that card compared to the one I have?
I had a GUS PnP, making it work was ... challenging.
My recollection of the differences:
GUS: Just the GF1 wavetable chip, max 1MB of sample memory
GUS MAX: GF1 + CS4231 which adds WSS support. The CS4231 can be used for PCM playback with GF1 dedicated for just the music
GUS PnP: AMD Interwave/GFA1 (essentially GF1+CS4231 on a single chip), fixes some limitations of the GF1 (on GF1 the sample rate drops the more simultaneous channels you use, GFA1 can go to full 32 channels w/o quality drop), adds chorus/reverb type effects, ISA PnP support of course, supports up to 16MB of sample memory
I still have my original GUS PnP Pro modded to take two additional SIMMs for the full 16MB of RAM ;)
Would be fascinating to hear some war stories from the good old days of Gravis/Forte...
Holy cow my friend you are a beast popping chips and changing jumpers while the board is still installed in the case :)
Good job changing out the Crystal card. I have a few around, some OEM branded with stickers.
You know when Packard Bell puts a sticker on a sound card that it is crap!
Probably should have dropped the board out to better film changing everything over but lazyness got the better of me 😁
such a nice card that GUS MAX. I also have one paired with sound blaster 16
I think I'll keep an eye out for a SB16 to pair with this one. Would be better than the Crystal card and hopefully would work without the problems I currently have.
no need to pair. SB16 yet included in GUS MAX. But GUS Classic is NEED to pair with SB16 bcoz Classic's SBOS (SB software emulator) is not a good as it wish.
Oh i loved this Bios in my 486 PC back in time.
It certainly is user friendly with the GUI interface. You can even use a mouse in it which I still find odd on modern machines.
Nice! For the 0WS, I had a WD90C30 (Paradise) card I had to flip a jumper to make it work with 0WS. Also I'm using an Am486DX4, 60ns EDO and 256K of 15ns cache. I remember lowering my ATCLK slightly just to stay in bus specs because some cards will not like it, but I can't remember by how much. As of last week I was experimenting with some TCP/IP stuff in DOS and Win16 environments and ran out of resources like you with the Gravis. I had all my slots populated and ISA networking cards can't really do IRQ sharing like PCI ones. While I tried to ping the machine it froze every time (while sharing an IRQ with a UART). I have also caused an address conflict while experimenting that reset my CMOS settings. The machine hard reset suddenly, then dropped me right to the AMI WinBIOS screen. Now I'll have to redo some stuff and put them in a spreadsheet just in case. :) I f I get my settings right again I'm going to have a 30min duke test also and get back to you.
That sound familiar. While trying to get this working I had an issue whereby when the gravis was initialised by a game the system would reset. I'm fairly sure my ongoing problem is a conflict in midi resources between the 2 cards, even despite the fact its disabled on the crystal card. I'll keep working at it and also keep an eye out for an actual sound blaster. If I get it sorted I will of course let you know.
Please let me know how you get on with your system tweeking also.
It;s absolutely amazing that on that 486DX2-66 Duke 3d runs fine - in my collection I need at least DX4-100 to run it ok
I must admit I was a bit shocked by how poorly Duke3D runs on other DX2 66 systems. I remember watch LGRs video on his rig with a similar spec and the game crawled along. Can only call it a win for the budget PC Chips motherboard lol.
@@CRG I keep though two DX-66 machines in the collection - but htay are "branded" - made by DEC)
Nice video. Cool about the L2 cache.
Yeah it was great to see the full 1mb getting used. Obviously must of been the old bios and the fact it was patched to show the original fake 256k or I suppose it maybe didn't support 1024 but regardless its all working now.
Nice BIOS upgrade. I remember back then, some people would go through the HUGE pain of upgrading (or trying to) to get an AMI. They found their original Phoenix or Award BIOSes far too limiting or infuriating to use. Of course, this was back in the EPROM days where just a few people in town would have an EPROM burner.
Thanks, an eprom burner is on my post Christmas shopping list. Very handy tool to have and it's about time I got one.
The AMI bios is very good. Lots of options plus the GUI interface is nice to use, even works with a mouse.
@@CRG The cheap EPROM burners aren't bad now. Just can't burn some of the really old chips. The 2708's are out of the question, and some of the early 2716 and 2732's that had the higher programming voltages. There are some work-arounds using an adjustable bench power supply, though.
@@CRG It's also kind of strange that the GUI BIOS had such a short lifespan. It pretty much disappeared along with the later 486's. Then it went back to the boring blue background BIOSes.
You don't need an eprom burner, you already have one if you have one of these motherboards. You can hotswap the bios chip with the chip to program, and then flash the bios (or something else) to it.
26:04 loving this Adlib sounds, even better than Amiga version.
Sacrilege!
@@Wallygjs Yeah, but that SOMI 1 intro really NEEDS more channels and voices, in my personal opinion. That's only a few times I cheated on Paula, I truly love her! Cheers, M
@@mark12358Indeed, PAULA generally reigns supreme over most Adlib titles but Secret is one of those exceptions. To be even more sacriligeous, I even think the CMS sounds better than PAULA.
Great video and reminds me to dig my two Ultrasound Classics out to install and try,
Keep the brilliant videos coming m8, cheers.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed the video. Hard to beat an Ultrasound card, have you seen the new project to emulate one using a raspberry pi connected to an isa slot?
@@CRG can you please point me to the PI/ ISA project , that sounds great !!!
@@hardcore8uk I seen it via a linked twitter thread - you can check it out here.
twitter.com/ianpolpo/status/1535136937211613184
I don't think the project is public yet but I'm sure it will be a some point.
There were also add-ins for GUS that worked with Miles Sound System games. You could add the GUS Miles driver to any game that used the Miles sound system...most of the time you'd have to overwrite one of the other options (like one of the Roland ones) and choose that in the config utility. That truly was a card way ahead of its time...but CPU speeds moved so far ahead that software mixing of audio channels became a trivial task, so this card really never had a reason for mass adoption. Too bad, I remember it fondly.
This 486 series of videos have been so fun to watch! I'd love it if you could come back to this computer and try out different cards and some simple hardware level overclocking by swapping out for faster crystal oscillators.
This board supports multiple fsb clocks and multipliers so overclocking would simply be a case of swapping a few jumpers.
I do have plans to revisit this system at some point in the future, want to see about getting fast storage in there.
@@CRG Sounds great, I'll be on the lookout :)
I built a 486 DX2 66MHz in '94. DOS 6.22.
That's long gone, but I still have the soundcard,
and use it in my current "new" MS-DOS gaming rig.
Advanced Gravis Ultrasound ACE (Audio Card Enhancer).
About 1/2 as long as MAX, I got the extra 512 from Israel.
It is designed to be used either stand alone, or with another FM card.
It comes with a 1/4" stereo phono patch cord, to go from
other card OUT to Ultrasound IN.
Without other cards, if you need Soundblaster emulation, you must
first load in Config.sys EMM386.EXE RAM to utilize high memory/pagefile,
then after Ultrasound initialization ULTRINIT.EXE you must load
a file named SBOS.EXE. You'll know if you're successful if you
hear and see the message "SBOS installed".
Ultrasound uses two DMA & IRQ addresses for stereo and emulation.
I always use A260, IRQ 5, D1, D5, T1, T11.You can also just try the basic
A220, I5, D1, T1 will usually be fine.
Another hidden trick= *@**17:38* On the main SETUP page, go to "RESTORE FILE(S)"
and type in "wildcards" ASTERIX PERIOD ASTERIX to get extra, hidden stuff. No idea why.
Please- get these and all correct files here (even your MAX)
Look on the ACE files for that SBOS.
www.gravisultrasound.com/index.htm
Man, the Gravis Ultrasound Max was what got me to switch to PC (from Amiga, granted Amiga was more or less dead then). Such a great soundcard, too bad support was not great in all games, even with the soundblaster emulation ("SBOS installed").
I've been enjoying a lot of the PC demo scene with it lately. Some awesome music which is very reminiscent of the Amiga scene but with visuals I could only dream of on my 1200.
@@CRG Yeah the pc demo scene was what really sold me on it (and there support for the GUS was quite good, as it was liked in the demo scene).
Never did get to the A1200, only had A500s (and A500+s). But man graphics and sound on the A500 was impressive compared to CGA, EGA graphics on the PC (and PC speaker).
That card with Cache NEEDS DRIVERS!!!!! And btw, even with no RAID enabled it will speed up your system like there's no tomorrow.
Great vídeo CRG
Man, I remember drooling over the good ole GUS, PC Magazine had a huge spread on it asking the question, was it worth it. As a budding musician on a shoestring budget at the time, I thought it was, especially compared to buying a whole rack of MIDI and other devices to do the same thing, admittedly, a fair bit better. It certainly beat my SoundBlaster 2.0, damn that thing had dirty inputs.
I run a GUS Classic 2.4 and SB AWE 32 CT3900 pair together in my main classic DOS Gaming PC. They are awesome but you do have to do a ton of setup to get everything working properly.
I've got it to the point now where they work together, mostly. The SB is wired through the line in of the GUS but if I use the GUS the line in gets muted. All I need to do is run ultramix le,e to enable it again but I wish I new why its doing this. It is an awesome card but does take a fair bit of work to get setup properly. All part of the fun though.
Upgrading the cache past 256kB probably has very little speed gains indeed. I'd rather upgrade the ISA HDD controller with a 32-bit VLB one, that should speed up the disk access.
If you watched to the end of the video you'll see I have a cached vlb controller for this system but unfortunately it's faulty. If I can figure out the fault I will make sure to get it installed and of course do a video on it.
@@CRG Nice, hopefully you'll get it working! I wonder how much faster it is than those those bog-standard VLB multi-I/O cards w/ integrated IDE.
I'm hoping it's just going to be a bad rom but I'll not know until I get my eprom reader, hopefully after Christmas. At the minute it just flashs the hdd led and throws a generic failure on screen which can mean anything from a dead board to bad ram. Tested the ram and its good but plenty left to still do before calling it dead.
RIP Cirrus Logic card. I hope one day you resurrect it.
It's in the parts bin for now but maybe it'll be brought back into service one day.
Cyrix at that point was using equivalent (to Intel's offering) speed on their packaging. a 33Mhz equivalent Cx486DX2 would only run at 22Mhz. I don't know if the performance matched the marketing, but that is what's going on there.
No, that's not what going on there. The Cx486DX2 in this system is running at 66MHz, just as an Intel 486DX2 would do, too. What's actually going on is that the Intel and Cyrix 486 execute the instructions used in the CPU clock measurement benchmark at different speed, because those processors are different. It's normal that SpeedSys reports an 66MHz Cyrix processor as 22MHz and an 80MHz Cyrix processor as 27MHz.
In '94 I built a 486 DX2 66 MHz.
That's long gone- but I kept the soundcard.
Advanced Gravis Ultrasound ACE (Audio Card Enhancer).
Works perfectly as a "stand alone" card.
I always used A220, I5, D1, T1.
*@**17:38* on the SETUP/INSTALL screen, go to "RESTORE FILE(S)"
and type in what's called a "wildcard" (ASTERIX PERIOD ASTERIX) meaning "all"
to get hidden files. No idea why they did that.
Look for a file "SBOS.exe". After loading EMM386.EXE RAM in your config.sys
after HIMEM.sys. Then load SBOS.exe. In your AUTOEXEC.bat, after
ULTRINIT.exe load SBOS.bat. You'll know it's working when you hear
and see message "SBOS installed". (Sound Blaster Operating System).
At this repository, download, unpack & burn to a CD-ROM all, including
the ACE files. All your wonderful MAX stuff is there to!
www.gravisultrasound.com/index.htm
Overkill on the cache and DOS benchmarks? Count me in!!
I appreciate you played a game other than Duke 3D. It gets boring seeing the same first level of the same game being played.
Thanks, I do enjoy the game Duke 3D and the music is awesome but as you say it's played to death.
Just don't watch my next video since I repeat Transport Tycoon :)
It's big, it's red and it's fucking overpriced. 😉
And you got a sub.
I owned a Gravis Ultrasound back in the day. I still kick myself for ever selling it when it made obsolete years later.
Another tip=
Ultrasounds dominate the entire Address. If it's at 2hex your other SB must
be at 3hex.
Eq. Ultrasound is A220, I5, D1, T1 / SB is A320, I3, D5, T5.
Ultrasound is superior, because it uses .wav patches, not FM.
That SBOS.exe will turn on SB, AdLib, Roland, etc.
When I first time heard U and I knew it - Scotish ;)
Close but you need to look a bit west on the map.
F for CL-GD5446, I was a fan of the Cirrus cards, my 486 had a 5428, my Pentium had a 5446, had a couple of 5465 in friend's systems - and picked up a 5480 from a computer fair junk bin - dead :-( , mentioned it the next time, not so much complaining as bemoaning my luck that a card I really wanted to work didn't, and accepting that it was "pot luck" - to which the guy said they should be working, pick another one you like.
It was a Matrox Millennium 2, and while way past their heyday, I could still remember what they once cost.
PS. Kicking myself for ever more for NOT picking up Voodoo 3 for a fiver, as I was on the verge of retiring my 3.3V AGP system
That my friend is why when PNP was introduced on the 486 era it was called Plug'n'pray...
I can understand why...
With my Cyrix 468DX2 I also get 22 MHz. The CPU is running just fine though.
Yep same here the cpu is fine, sysspeed just seems to identify it wrong.
Must be cyrix thing, my Cx486DX4-100 displays as 34mhz usually
@@mikeyjnz maybe whoever wrote sysspeed just didn't like cyrix cpus 😂
Dude, both sound cards can work fine at the same time.
Put the Sound Blaster clone at A220 I5 D1
Put the Gravis Ultrasound at A240 I7 D7
Yep I've since got it working like this.
That poor Cirrus Logic :(
I know! :( It sacrificed itself(?) for something awesome, though!
Another old video but one thought just occurred to me about this build: It seems to me that you kept the Crystal card in just for the OPL and the Sony CD ROM controller. However, you built an Adlib card for your Olivetti 286. Wouldn't it work if you removed the Crystal card, put the Adlib card in this machine and connected the CD ROM to the GUS? The GUS insisting on using 220 may be a tiny issue but surely it's worth a try?
EDIT: OK, so by now you have probably replaced the Sony drive with an IDE drive but I believe the GUS has an IDE interface too.
The Sony drive was eventually removed as it won't read cd-r discs. There is now an ide cd drive as you guessed but it's still on the crystal. That may soon be changed though as I do now have a spare sb16. I think it would be nice to have that in there paired with the ultrasound.
The address and irq settings have all been changed from what is in this video to make it more standard to what applications are expecting.
@@CRGVery nice. I think I would still try and use the Adlib card in this machine because if that is the only thing extra you need, as I believe the GUS does SB16 compatibility well enough, then the extra OPL is all you need. But I can also see the point in trying an SB16 card, as I believe that one has an OPL3 chip compared to the Adlib clone's OPL2 chip. I just don't know how many games actually take advantage of the OPL3 extra abilities over the OPL2. Either way, great little system you built there a few years ago, despite the headaches with the sound cards, network card, and cache.
I'm pretty certain my 486DX2 BIOS would auto-detect hard drives. I did need a manufacturer "drive overlay" to get the HD's full capacity when I upgraded to a massive 4.3GB, tho. :)
That is a massive hdd for a 486 system. I think 4gb is the max my current io card supports.
If you want to play Doom with the GUS, check out gusgonna.wad which works around a bug in DOS Doom where the wrong instruments get played (it's particularly noticeable on Doom 2 MAP01)
Thanks for the tip I'll check it out.
These scams always intrigue me, I wonder how common fake cache chips were? I remember hearing stories about overclock scams with Pentiums. 10MHz was a huge price premium back then. It's a good reminder that fake video cards of today are nothing new.
From what I've been able to gather and mostly from comments on the original video it was mainly pc chips who were putting out fake cache. Never heard of the Pentium overclock scam, that's an interesting one though because as you say a few MHz was a lot of money back then.
I bet that's why the multiplier is locked starting with the later Pentium II models.
Release prices from 1997:
Pentium II 233 $636
Pentium II 266 $775
Pentium II 300 $1981
Do you know if, by chance, your 486 motherboard could support a faster 486 processor, like 486DX4 running at 100Mhz? A non-Cyrix CPU at least?
A CPU replacement bya better 486 could be a good addition to your system...
Yes it supports considerably faster processors and I do have an AMD DX4 100 chip although not sure I want to change from the DX2 66. Cyrix might have a bad name for their 6x86 chips but their 486 offerings aren't that bad.
Did you ever get a chance to work on the multi I/o card? Would love to see that in action.
Not yet *cough* DOScember *cough* 😉
@@CRG excellent stuff :) i look forward to seeing the outcome.
What's the diagnostic software Syspeed?? TY.
You should try DRAM PAGE MODE = Slow, its on opposite speeds up ram.
I saw the back of that card and just about creamed myself lol. had one in my early 20's and lost it to a house fire. Don't think the clone's are out yet.
The Ultrasound max contains a SB emulator that must be clashing with the real one. I had one at those times....
I don't think it can be disabled by jumpers. But I think I achieved it changing the port jumpers and changing the order on which the drivers were loaded... Sorry that was like 30y ago.
I think I've got it more or less sorted now. Loading the SB clone first then the GUS with its SB settings disabled.
There is still an issue with the pass through on the GUS card. It likes to mute the line in randomly but that's easy fixed with a command.
Judging by this www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Gravis_Ultrasound the GUS does use port 0x388, the Adlib port as part of its SB emulation. You may be able to use those GUS TSRs/config programs to disengage it without rebooting.
Hi you have to replace the Crystal SoundBlaster Clone card I use with Gravis Utrasound MAX 1.8 + ESS1688 Gold-16 Plus and everything works without problems, or orginal Sound Blaster 16 or SB Awe 32
I still have the crystal soundblaster clone in there and I've since, for the most part, got the issue fixed. The only outstanding problem is that after using the gravis it will mute the line in through which I have the soundblaster connected. Going to get an external mixer to solve this plus it'll let me keep my other machines hooked up to speakers at the same time.
@@CRG ok i see you find solution ,Gravis UltraSound MAX is a Holly Gral for MS-DOS gaming The problem is that many games need Path Games and in some it doesn't work at all
Does the BIOS allow you to set the DRAM Page Mode to something other then fast, like maybe EDO... and have you tried EDO memory in this computer?
I'm not sure on the bios setting, I'll check, but as for the ram I haven't tried edo sticks. I expect the would be considerably slower.
@@CRG My testing shows EDO is typically 10-20% faster then FPM ram.
Needs the full complement to work so no go.
Amazing, glad it works now! I think I have the same problem in one of my 486s, one bank doesn't seem to get recognized. Can you share that BIOS file or point to a download link? Great video, I have the same MAX 2.1 together with an SB32 CT3600 with absolutely no issues so I wonder what causes it...
I've added the vogons link for the bios to the video description.
I've since also tried one of my ESS cards and its even worse for playing along side the GUS. Both cards are setup without conflicts but beside the ESS the GUS doesn't work in a fair few games. The seem to crash when trying to load the samples into the GUS memory but I really don't understand it.
I think I'll keep an eye out for a proper sound blaster card. Maybe a nice SB16.
@@CRG Thank you! Looking forward to your next update, fire up that GUS with Cubic Player and some trackers!!!
I didn't have that particular model of Ultrasound, but this one didn't run SBOS to have full sound blaster emulation/sound ?
I'll try it to be sure but from what I've read the gus can only do sound blaster digital effects and no fm music.
@@CRG From a quick read, yeah, seems Ultrasound does not have OPL2/Adlib functionality. Given that the Ultrasound can have some SoundBlaster sample playback capability, perhaps replacing your SoundBlaster clone with one of those Adlib-clones from the retro community may fill exactly that gap while avoiding resource contention problems you may be experiencing. edit: apparently the SoundBlaster sample playback support is somewhat unreliable, so just adding in Adlib wouldn't cover all use cases.
@@maikmerten I've been working at it some more and I think I might have a solution. Need to confirm it tonight then I'll update everyone via the community tab.
@@CRG Cool, looking forward to your updates!
SBOS does, in fact, emulate all functions of a Sound Blaster, both digital and FM music. If I remember correctly, it uses some custom patches to fake emulating FM sound, and it does it pretty poorly, but it does work. Fun fact, I had the original GUS card, not the max, and I remember when SBOS was released by an independent programmer...I think Advanced Gravis hired the guy and bought SBOS to include with the cards. :)
Ok… monkey island = instant upvote
I think the BIOS date is the 2nd of December, rather than the 12th of February, as it's probably formatted in the US month/day/year format. Anyhow, I see that this board supports DX4 CPUs, as well as a Pentium Overdrive, perhaps you can squeeze a bit more performance out of the system with one of those?
Funny you should say that cause I do have a DX4 100 system lying doing nothing. I'm very tempted to pull the chip of out that and drop it into this system. Not sure though, something nice about the DX2 66 even if it isn't the fastest.
@@CRG It might make for an interesting comparison, and show whether the faster CPUs really would have made a difference, vs actually buying a Pentium system, say.
if you can track it down, a Soundblaster AWE32 or AWE64 would be period-appropriate - I had an AWE32 w/ 2MB of RAM on it (it took 30-pin SIMM memory) back in the day. Wavetable synth + actual Soundblaster hardware made gaming sound the best you could get in the era.
Funny you should mention that as I do have a AWE64 gold sitting here but I'm keeping it for my Pentium build along with a few other bits. The GUS is dated 94 so more appropriate to this machine. Have to admit I did consider putting both cards in this machine but probably overkill.
I was thinking the same. For me it was PC Speaker -> Soundblaster -> Soundblaster 16 -> Soundblaster AWE32 -> AWE64. I think the AWE32 was my favorite as AWE64 Gold just seemed kind of cheap by comparison.
Agreed - for me it was PC Speaker > SB16 > AWE32 > AWE64 > Live!. The jump from PC speaker to SB16 was an obvious and significant leap in quality, as was the jump to AWE32 (though ironically I actually had the hardware needed to make it unnecessary, in the form of a Yamaha keyboard with wavetable synth, just never hooked it up). The jump from AWE32 to 64 was non-existent for me -- because I had already upgraded the 32 with 2mb of memory it was basically a 64 already - none of my games saw any difference. The Live! added features again, but most games simply couldn't or didn't take advantage of it because we were already in the era of mp3 soundtracks on games. That was the last discrete sound card I ever bought, but the last one I actually felt like made a difference was the AWE32
GUS MAX 512Kb = WT+FM sound card
two things: have you tried to emulate 486 or pentium 1 with fpga? also, from 486 era, we have come more than 1000x, but not in core clocks, only 100x
Personally I'm not a big fan of emulation. I'd use dosbox the odd time for testing stuff and use the likes of WinUAE (Amiga emulator) for setting up drives but that's about it. I jut prefer messing with the real hardware.
@@CRG ok. i see fpga's to be as close to bare metal as possible not having the original hardware
Yes I agree an fpga is about as close to the real thing as you'll get and if anything with all this old hardware aging it probably is the future for many retro systems.
i want a gravis but damn are they expensive
Yep, if this one wasn't donated I don't think I could justify the cost.
A wavetable board might be the solution if you want a similar sounding setup. Won't be Gravis but still a lot better than just SB or adlib.
damn, i hate you! :D that soundtrack of TTD just forced me to turn on OpenTTD and play it .... ahhh :D
is there a driver for XP for this card?
Not that I am aware of, but if you ask over on vogons those guys might know better.
@@CRG thanks for the answer
use dma 1 and 5 instead of 1 and 3
I've since changed to all dmas 1 and irqs 5. It's mostly working well now although there is still an odd issue of the GUS randomly muting it's line in which I'm using as passthrough for the SB clone.
The Tekram card as you show it does not really support "RAID". You have a version 1.40 BIOS on the card, which only supports write mirroring, so it can copy everything you write to the master drive of a channel also to the slave drive on the same channel. All readsy are served by the master. If the master fails (either for some sector or completely), yor system fails. You need to change the "mirror target" drive (the slave drive) to be the master drive to have the system come back to life, using the disk all writes were mirrored to. That's not what you would expect of a real RAID system.
You can get a bit of RAID feeling if you upgrade the card to BIOS 2.02. The update is a bit tricky, because you will only find images for the chips with numbers 2 and 3. What no one is going to tell you: BIOS version 2.x puts the card into a special mode where ROM chip number 1 is replaced by a small stub ROM integrated into the ST300ALI chip, so it does not matter what you plug into the socket for ROM number 1, you can even leave it empty.
Thanks for the tip, that'll come in very useful for when I get my eprom writer. I'm really hoping I can get this card up and running. I don't suppose you have a link to the 2.02 bios?
@@CRG files.mpoli.fi/hardware/HDD/TEKMAR/DC680TR.ZIP works perfectly if the hardware is OK. Your story about the DC680 sounds like we already exchanged messages on vogons.org, without getting the card working.
@@tw11tube Its very possible we did, my account over their is a lot older than this channel when I went be a different name online, unite. I dare say I'll be picking your brains again when it comes time to try and get this thing up and running.
Your first problem is a PCchips mobo.
Normally I'd agree but I have to stand up for it here and say that it's actually not a bad board. From benchmarks I've seen it's certainly up there as a decent performer.
@@CRG cool, I just never had much luck with pcchips anything in the past, I'm glad it's working for you
It's big, it's red and it's fucking overpriced. 😂😂😂