I feel you, i had a hellova time with this FX5700 ultra that shat itself after its first boot.. i tried frikking everything, minus a hot air rework on the bGA. Dead, Dead Jim.. thinking of framing it and hanging it on the wall.. with reference "All heat, no action!" below it.
I’ve been on a retro PC sound adventure over here and it’s been an emotional rollercoaster as usual. My goal was to add a Roland MT-32 option to my socket 7 setup – I’ve had the real deal in the past but disliked the extra device on my desk + cables, so I sold it off years ago. I’m a big fan of my Serdaco X2GS (basically a Roland SC-55 on a bite sized daughterboard) so decided that a Serdaco McCake was the ticket when it came to MT-32 emulation. The McCake (what a terrible name) is a slightly larger daughterboard that hosts a Raspberry Pi Compute module, which in turn runs Munt to emulate the MT-32 (in the same way the external MT32-Pi does). The McCake then neatly sits on your sound card’s wavetable header and bob’s your uncle, you have an internal MT-32 that can run any version of the MT-32 firmware that you want. The McCake can also switch to general MIDI sound fonts, which means it could technically cover my GM needs too, but I don’t want sound fonts, I wants my X2GS damn it. That means a second wavetable header was required, which is where things got messy. First I tried a second sound card – one for sound duties and hosting the X2GS, and the second one used purely as an MPU-401 for the McCake. This almost worked out but dual sound card setups always kick you in the nuts at some point I’ve found - there were a couple of games for example that auto detect your sound blaster based on a scan of your IO ports, they don’t allow you to specify the port in there setup program and they ignore the SET BLASTER line. These games were choosing the wrong sound card. Of course they were. So I decided that I finally had an excuse to buy a PicoGUS. This of course was originally created to emulate a Gravis Ultrasound (Raspberry based again!) but it’s since been expanded to do all sorts of cool stuff, including emulate an intelligent MPU-401. It looks great and couldn’t be easier to configure – a few jumpers that let you select IRQs and DMA, and then a nice little DOS app to initialise it and flash it. For whatever reason though mine refused to behave itself, as an MPU-401 anyway. Sometimes I’d get the odd-wonky note, sometimes it’d be wonky as hell. Sometimes it seemed to be working OK but there might be some intermittent clicking – the kind of random stuff that’s hard to troubleshoot. I tried all sorts of things and had lots of great help from Vogon’s folks, including the guy who created it, but nothing seem to make any difference. It seemed to work fine in GUS mode so I assume that the card itself is OK. So the PicoGUS is safely packed away for now – it’s feature list keeps growing so I’m sure it will come in handy for something one day (I have no interest in the GUS). My next idea (probably should have been my first idea) was to use a dedicated Roland compatible MPU-401 card with a wavetable header, so I ordered myself a newly made PCMIDI card from the Orpheus guys. This thing just does one thing but does it well, and when paired with the McCake it's basically just a clone Roland LAPC-I (particularly when the McCake is configured to use the CM-32L firmware). Finally this solution works perfectly - the only configuration consideration is around the MIDI ports. I have MT-32 on port 330 and General MIDI on port 300. And after all that it sounds fantastic. The main games I wanted MT-32 for are Ultima 7 and Gateway, but Vikings, Rise of the Dragon, Leisure Suit Larry, etc also really come to life with a MT-32 – it’s capable of such a beautiful warm sound, and in stereo too. Fail: Success:
badmofo I do enjoy your sound card travels - how many cards have you been through over the years? It might have been in the PicoGUS Vogons thread where the developer detailed a small but consistent failure rate of PiZero chipsets, all of which are running slightly overclocked in this configuration. These were identified before shipment but maybe yours is one that got out there just can't quite get over the line? I've got one too in my 486 (with your ASUS board and tank of a desktop case!), it's all for GUS having loved the early demoscene with an SB16 in there too. You're welcome to borrow mine if you want to test another.
Yes I've been through a few sound cards and it always gives me a thrill to see what they can do. I'm just trying to re-live the day I got my SB 2.0 Value back in the day I think And yes I do remember seeing something about some cards have an issue but that was a while back, but I thought that had been resolved since via firmware updates...? Polpo didn't mention it while helping me troubleshoot anyway. Thanks for the offer of the loan that's very generous, I'll keep it in mind
what's that saying ? don't meet your heros (sometimes though ) the rest of us can live vicariously through you
More progress on the World Rally arcade cab. It has been cleaned more, marquee lighting up, monitor installed with work done ensure it sits in a blacked frame/space, sub with two speakers added and force feedback setup for MAME plus M2. More work ahead over the coming days.
Look on the bright side, at least you didn't accidentally plug in your McCake upside down like some other poor bugger in the community did. A trail has been blazed possibly at +12 to -12V, for maximum effect. It's hard to say what the issue with yours was. As we discussed, some other users seem to be using the same PicoGUS+McCake combo successfully. So we can only assume there's some kind of edge-case scenario going on, for your combo to act weird. Whether that's a glitchy card hardware-wise (e.g. something missed in QA), or alternatively, some weird complex incompatibility that might undergo future fix, may come to light eventually. Either way, not your problem any more, and you've now got the ultimate suitable card in the form of the PCMIDI. Quite the setup.
Aww man that's a disaster, not sure how they got it so wrong though! Ah so that was you over there at Vogons? Thanks again for the help. Yes it could be a dodgy card I suppose and I probably should have sent it back, but it did seem to work OK as a GUS so that suggested to me that the hardware was OK. The MPU-401 functionality would be way less intensive than the GUS emulation. And Serge (who I bought it off) is such a good guy, I didn't want him to go to the trouble and expense of re-sending. None of those chaps are getting rich off these devices that's for sure.
Got around to installing a Live! Dive II in my 98 machine. Sitting above my Zip drive the PC feels a little more complete.
PicoGUS v2.1.0 release is out: MPU-401 simultaneous with all modes "MPU-401 emulation is now available in all modes. This can enable simultaneous digital sound effects in SB or GUS modes with MIDI output. If you have another MPU-401 card in the system, to prevent conflicts this can be disabled or moved to a different port with the /mpuport option to pgusinit". I bought one a while back which I will play around with on the weekend if all goes to plan. Also now is the time to grab an Orpheus II / LT before they move to the retired section: "...the very last batch of Orpheus II sound cards - in red pcb color to commemorate the occasion. Once these are made and sold they will consume all our CS/IW chips stock and there is currently no plans to make more of these. Both the full Orpheus II and the LT will move to the retired section - as usual support will continue to be provided for any card we made no matter how old. Thanks to all the support you have given us over the years these Crystal-based cards were made possible and now recognizable as an excellent option for retropc gaming needs - but the time has come for this journey to end and another one to begin".
Built a throttleblaster https://github.com/scrapcomputing/ThrottleBlaster Its a device that let's you set the cpu speed. Since I regularly force my socket 7 to run games way older than it was intended to run i needed some way to throttle it , but all the software solutions only go so far. With this project I should hopefully have a bit more accuracy and granularity when it comes to picking the appropriate speed.
Cool! I'm interested to hear how that thing works. I'm using a '+' K6-2 450 so the software speed adjustments are pretty good already, but with caches off and the lowest multiplier it still runs at about 33MHz 486 speeds. It would be nice to go lower for some games.
Yeah according to the the guys youtube videos you can go down to 4mhz and play like 1981, 82 circa 5150 era games but don't quote me on that. But yeah ill let you know how it goes.
Another benefit of the PicoGUS that I was interested in which was enabled in the previous v2.0.0 firmware release, as one of my 486’s doesn’t have PS/2 etc:
It is neat to be able to use modern gamepads and mice with actual DOS machines and games. I haven't had a chance to thoroughly play with these functions yet but they are of great present and long term utility.
Today, I managed to get more work done on the World Rally Referb/Modernisation. Work to date: - A big clean of the cab - Removal of original controls and dash to preserve them - Built a new dash, leant to vinyl while doing it, to fit where the original was but also to fit a T300 wheel base. - Laid black rubber for the floor peddle area - Kept the 4.3 monitor frame and complimented it with more framing to box in a 25” 16:9 IPS display. - Added 2.1 sound - Made a gear mount and added a H shifter for manual use - Created a carpeted base for a seat - Installed a PlaySeat, seat setup, on the base - Got light back in the marquee - Added some stickers - Added yellow skirting to the seat base Left to do: - Make and install a Sega four colour button view box plus start button, later this month - Tidy up and refinement of some items - Long term get a coin solution working Photo of how it started to what it looks like now, above.
