0083 PicoGUS emulating a Sound Blaster, DRAM testers and a clip on Mac accelerator

On today's SMMC episode, we have an update on the awesome open source PicoGUS project where it can now emulate a Sound Blaster 2.0 card. We also take a look at a mini DIP IC DRAM tester and then try out a MicroMac accelerator -- which sadly doesn't appear to be working. Can you help me find drivers for it?
0:00 PicoGUS and Sound Blaster support
31:52 DRAM Testers
54:54 MicroMac 68030 accelerator
-- Video Links
PicoGUS:
polpo.org/picogus/
github.com/polpo/picogus
MicroMac's dead website:
www.micromac.com/products/acc...
eBay store for the DRAM testers:
www.ebay.co.uk/usr/analog-kid
Adrian's Digital Basement Merch store:
my-store-c82bd2-2.creator-spr...
Support the channel on Patreon:
/ adriansdigitalbasement
Adrian's Digital Basement (Main Channel)
/ @adriansdigitalbasement
My GitHub repository:
github.com/misterblack1?tab=r...
-- Tools
Deoxit D5:
amzn.to/2VvOKy1
store.caig.com/s.nl/it.A/id.16...
O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)
amzn.to/3a9x54J
Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:
amzn.to/2VrT5lW
Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:
amzn.to/2ye6xC0
Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:
www.rigolna.com/products/digi...
Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier:
amzn.to/3adRbuy
TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)
amzn.to/2wG4tlP
www.aliexpress.com/item/33000...
TS100 Soldering Iron:
amzn.to/2K36dJ5
www.ebay.com/itm/TS100-65W-MI...
EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter:
www.eevblog.com/product/121gw/
DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer:
amzn.to/2RDSDQw
www.ebay.com/itm/USB-Logic-DS...
Magnetic Screw Holder:
amzn.to/3b8LOhG
www.harborfreight.com/4-inch-...
Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)
www.ebay.com/itm/14-16-18-20-...
RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)
www.retrotink.com/
Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)
www.ebay.com/itm/1-2-5-10PCS-...
Heat Sinks:
www.aliexpress.com/item/32537...
Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)
amzn.to/3b8LOOI
--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
• How to remove chips wi...
--- Music
Intro music and other tracks by:
Nathan Divino
@itsnathandivino

[@laserspaceninja]

If you go to the wayback machine and go to a earlier version of the website, you can download the file. In my testing, I chose a version in the year 2000 and got it to work.

[@Loki-]

Sounds like maybe those need to be compiled and put on archive for easier access!

[@volvo09]

Wow, that's crazy. Even in 00 way back machine was storing data from links that I would have assumed would be ignored for storage concerns. I thought it was crazy that way back machine bothered to cache a few RC car images from my home hosted childhood webpage back in 98... Nevermind old drivers! I'd love to know how their process works. If anyone knows of a good video to watch documenting their start i'd really enjoy it!

[@Toby_Q]

I was able to download it from their website. I had to right click and "save as" from the main downloads page. Once I did that, Chrome also decided the files weren't safe and I had to say "keep anyway".

[@markx9995]

You can paste the 404 page address with the .hqx extension and download it directly from 2006.

[@RowanHawkins]

Hqx is is the mac equivalent to UUEncoding, so text based binary encoding. If you have problems getting an hqx file, try using something like wget and forcing the encoding to 7bit mode instead of 8bit mode. Modern OS and software expect files to be in 8-bit mode and have special handlers for uue. You'll hit this if you try to download from a wintel instead of a mac.

[@sarahts21]

Ian has basically blown the doors off the retro sound card market. Because the dream was always a Sound Blaster (preferably a Pro) and a Gravis, because the Gravis had really crappy SB emulation and well... this is a one stop card for doing both. If/when it gets SBPRO/OPL3 emulation as well... going to suck to be a scalper of old hardware.

[@Insomniator1]

if he'll boost cpu to some like pi zero 2, it wll be possible to create ANY-IN-ONE isa soundcard, emulating SB16,OPL3, GUS, SID, AY, CMS,MT-32, GMIDI Roland, GMIDI Yamaha

[@sarahts21]

@@Insomniator1 I honestly hope he doesn't as it'd be impossible to use a full Pi and keep the £45 price tag. Being "cheap & cheerful" is equally important to the PicoGUS's popularity.

[@jorgelotr3752]

It would be even better if it could emulate several cards at the same time, with software select and wthout needing to reset the firmware, but I don't know how feasible that would be.

[@maxtornogood]

Clip: 1 hour, 12 minutes & 55 seconds. Adrian: This is a Super *Mini* Mail Call! In Adrian's world, Mini has no meaning 😝

[@adambaranek]

Shhhh! I love the long videos! Don't ruin it for me!!

[@KeesAlderliesten]

Every time he says mini you know you're in for a treat 🙂

[@bonemar66]

Super and Mini cancel each other out. Mail call is as long as he says it is.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

How the Heck did you comment 2 days ago while the video was posted just an hour ago?

[@RetroPC-vy3kt]

@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 Patrion preview?

[@Really........]

$45 for the PicoGUS is amazing!

[@insanelydigitalvids]

The thing I love most about Adrian's videos is his kid-in-a-candy-store, unbounded glee at working with old tech. Inspiring! 🙂

[@DrGonzo-1337]

And yup, the Performer will run like garbage without the extension. A gentleman at 68kmla pointed me at macintosh garden to look under apps and then micromac-accelerator-software. The 2.2.1 sit file you need should be the first one on the list. Hope that helps and hope to see you again this fall at VCF Midwest.

[@jandjrandr]

These mail call episodes are such an adventure every time. Can't wait for the next one.

[@anthonyblacker8471]

I love the fact that technology has moved so quickly that a project like this can be a reality. I could never afford a GUS when I was younger, heck I was lucky to have an official sound blaster back then.. Been watching you for quite some time now Adrian, and I've been away from older at systems for, well forever really but man videos like this are making me really really really want to go build a nice 486 system and buy some of these kits and build out these awesome cards to have a really sweet vintage setup. I had all these computers back in the day, got rid of them over the years. I knew one day they'd have value but I really didn't care.. man I wish I'd have kept some of my older systems. I have one motherboard I found in a box of junk I was going through with a cyrix 386 on it.. not building that thing though, it was a dog back in the day, it'll be one again today. Oh well.

[@JamesPotts]

I love the Retro Chip Tester; it was worth its weight in gold when debugging a 5170 motherboard. That said, I'm not sure that it exercises ram at its timing thresholds.

[@adambaranek]

I can't believe that even after all the upgrades the v2 picogus is only $45. Now to just wait for it to be in stock...

[@jammi__]

It would probably not be even a problem to re-manufacture except that there are no 68030 processors manufactured anymore, and that the PAL chips (predecessors of CPLD and FPGA) have unknown internal logic, although they could probably be fairly quickly reverse-engineered by modern systematic machine testing, since the inputs and outputs of the chips are known, and there are only so many alternatives to record. PAL chips are fairly simple things, and would be very easy to replicate using CPLDs.

[@dawnmitchell8213]

I spent my day cursing modern technology. A little retro reflection calms me dow now, lol.

[@GYTCommnts]

I'm a big fan of soundcards, mods, trackers, demos, retro gaming... This project is a wonderful dream and the guy behind it is a Hero! Thanks Adrian for letting me know about this incredible project! 💪

[@ultraviolettp3446]

Adrian, your channel is AMAZING! As someone whose first computer was a present I received from my dad back when the computers were new - a Timex Sinclair (don't remember the model), I was hooked by computers. I bought a Commodore 64 that I kitted out with memory expansion module, thermal color transfer printer (!), and upgraded to using GEOS that got me through college turning out term paper after term paper during my years through 1986. I love older computers (accepting what their limitations are and how they pioneered the way for what we have now). The fact that you have such a passion for these systems and you can repair them is heart-warming. Through you, another generation of people can see what used to be and where we have come from in the past forty and fifty years. Your passion is first rate and your channel and information is on the same level. Thanks for being there and keep up the great job!

[@bad.sector]

What an ironic twist, that a GUS can finally emulate the BS properly! ;) Have the PicoGUS 2.0 as well and was also in contact with Ian, concerning some compability issues. It should run with 80-90% of GUS compatible software, but doesn't work with all. The original SB Pro (have one) is indeed just a supercharged SB with 2 OPL 2 instead of one, and a small circuit switching between Mono and Stereo playback, so it's really easy to make SB Pro support when SB support is already there. Fun fact about the SB Pro: The DSP is essentially the same. The little circuit, when enabled, switched the (Mono) DAC output between L and R for each successive sample. About SID: There was the Innovation SSI, which is probably one of the rarest cards on the planet, and employed one SID chip. I have so many cards, but this one only as a clone.

[@jammi__]

A good reason to use the a processor clip instead of the processor direct slot is that you might want something else in the PDS slot, such as an ethernet card or a display card, and still also want a CPU accelerator.

[@absurdengineering]

A chip tester that tests chips fully needs to have programmable voltage/current drivers for each pin. It needs to verify that each pin’s behavior is within manufacturer’s spec. You don’t want to be driving any TTL chips for test with NMOS CPU outputs, since they don’t exercise the full range the TTL chip should work with. The CPU used is not of much importance in testing accuracy - it’s all about the FPGA that generates the waveforms, and the pin drivers. A test of a basic TTL LSI chip like 7400 produces about a megabyte of data, sampled at 1Gs/s, for a rudimentary test, so a Z80 or 6502 will have a bit of a workout going through it. RP2040 will do just fine for that. As for what would be physically driving the pins: ironically they may be CMOS op-amps :)

[@herbertschuster9088]

Yeah, sure. There are testers that will meet your needs... for only a few $10,000. btw DRAMs are MOS devices so why do you talk about TTL? Despite of that testing a TTL chip using a MOS device is usually not a problem.

[@klocugh12]

Those Ghirardellis look delicious 😋Also props to PicoGUS maker for giving credits to people who contributed!

[@madmanfrommars]

I recently bought the very same DRAM tester, as I needed to swap out the ram in my 5150 plus its memory expansion card. I bought about 100 4164 chips off aliexpress and I don't know what I would have done without the tester - no fewer than 20% of the chips were bad! That would have been a nightmare to try to troubleshoot any other way.

[@ricardog2165]

Raspberry Pi connected to a breadboard...

[@Retroguyuk75]

That card is super cool! I've put myself down on the wait list :) Awesome vid as always Adrian :)

[@SiD3WiNDR]

Proud owner of two Pico de GUSso's. Love this project, great guys on the Discord too!

[@erinwiebe7026]

Immediately added myself to the PicoGUS wait list. This project is a no-brainer. Fantastic!

[@eddiehimself]

The perfect thing to watch while I'm flying from Chicago to San Fransisco (in MSFS lol)

[@tomteiter7192]

It's only 45 bucks? That is quite amazing! That said, the RP2040 was a stroke of genius from the Raspberry Pi Guys. It seems people are just starting to get into the fascinating possibilities of the PIOs

[@der.Schtefan]

It's sad that they released the RPi5 without an on board version of the PIO

[@tomteiter7192]

@@der.Schtefan Aren't there some hints that suggest that theres PIOs, but bnot (yet) documented? The RP1 is another cool invention chip. I hope that it'll be available as a part or as a PCIe card some time in the future....

[@frankdevinlp]

3:15 ENIG (Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold) also has a longer overall lifetime, if taking cards out of boards frequently, compared to HASL (hot air solder levelling) where they just take the normal solder paste and flatten it out.

[@humidbeing]

ENIG also wears through very quickly. It is not the same as hard gold plating, which is what real mass produced cards use.

[@BottIsNotABot]

PicoGUS is such a cool project, added to my wishlist!

[@joshj88]

As you mentioned a SID emulator for the picoGUS I started up a program called SIDplay on my PowerPC Mac. It’s so fun to listen to songs from that as I watch you.

[@homelate1306]

I made a few picoGUS cards, and I have one running in Adlib mode in an XT. It's an awesome project!

[@Colin_Ames]

The PicoGUS is amazing!

[@RamonSmits]

Wow cubic player! A while back I was tinkering for so long what that player I used back in the day on my 486dx33 but couldn't come up with the name. Now seeing it here is just perfect!

[@KaldekBoch]

Remember when emulation was first a thing but performance was always a concern. And now here we are with teeny processors that cost a dollar which can do it all. It's a grand time to be alive.

[@bestformspielt]

What a wonderful project the PicoGUS is! Faith in humanity is officially restored.

[@andrewsuvorow6818]

regeneration (refresh) time can be critical for the DRAM functioning. When the tester counts rows and columns, it usually refreshes DRAM contents much quicker than in specs. So many designers of the chip testers forget to include refresh period testing. It means write and wait! for 2 milliseconds for each row. It can be possible that leaky bits loose it's content in 1.5 ms - but will work OK in tester or video board where it is refreshed much more intensively than every 2 milliseconds.

[@matthewmartin238]

FYI, Bolle on the 68kmla forums has cloned the MicroMac Performer, so you can buy them new when he occasionally has them available.

[@8antipode9]

Thanks Adrian, surprised you don't have these DRAM testers yet! I have both myself, and they're really handy for finding bad chips right away (lights go red almost immediately), as I find a lot of chips that are obviously bad, not too many that are marginal.

[@vintagekyoshodotcom]

The pico gives us so many possibilities for cards. Limited only by your imagination. Love it!

[@mattsword41]

PicoGUS is just so cool :)

[@Stormbolter]

Oh Man, a MicroMac accellerator! I wanted one for my classic badly in the before times! :D

[@Topher_Knows]

What? $45? That's a ****in steal! Thanks Scott and Adrian for showing it off. I ordered two, one for me, and one for a friend.

[@ricardog2165]

Wait - the site is still working?

[@gerbenwelter9197]

'I'm gonna stop gushing about it'. I see what you did there 😛

[@draggonhedd]

Adrian, you can get those PDS connectors on your hardware supply site of choice still. But you can also just use standard pin headers, i believe the pitch is the same.

[@ingmarm8858]

But Adrian you didn't read out the big red writing saying DRAM is highly ESD sensitive and to use appropriate precautions 🤣

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

HAHAH nope!

[@eric67361]

The original Gravis Ultrasound is compatible with an 8-bit ISA slot. It merely loses the ability to use the higher IRQs and DMA channels. Silly things I tried back in the day when I didn't value this hardware as much as I do today. 😅

[@horusfalcon]

"It would help if I actually plugged in the VGA Cable..." Just a bit too excited about the PicoGUS? 😆

[@cdmechanika9990]

The picogus projest is amazing! Only thing is that i would like to see something simular but with 16 bit ISA to expand the compatibility of the card.

[@dogecode386]

1:12:00 You could try plugging the link to those drivers into the Wayback Machine, sometimes it has download links archived. Recovered a few drivers for an old laptop that way.

[@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365]

I would love for it to support installing an EEPROM/boot rom. Then it would be the perfect all-in-one solution for combining it with XT-IDE.

[@TheInkieSquid]

Wow, such high energy and gushing over that PicoGUS board. Almost had my wallet in my hand before realising that I don't know what it is or why I would need it. My bank account might object to me stumbling onto the 2nd channel, lol.

[@Rocket_Try]

An MCA version would be a dream.

[@humidbeing]

It doesn't matter if the cpu/micro is CMOS. The Retro chip tester is not driving the chips directly from the GPIO pins of the mico.

[@SiaVids]

There were two pins that appeared to be bent and touching on the processor IC of the accelerator board that you were testing.

[@phoenix71232]

Out of stock... oh well. At least you had a chance to enjoy this, Adrian. :(

[@TheAtomstrike]

У меня был GUS в 1995 году, но он был плохо совместим с большинством игр и звуковых программ. Поигравшись с ним несколько лет я выбросил его в мусор из-за отчаяния дождаться полноценной программной поддержки. Вдруг вижу, что сейчас есть фанаты этой провальной карты. Очень удивительно!

[@raelik777]

You need to do a video on the mt32-pi!

[@freeculture]

The SB 2.0 has a physical volume wheel because it has its own amp, you are supposed to set it to the middle when not using unpowered speakers (ie. line out like). Of course its noisy. There were some later SB Pro / 16 where you could disable the amplification via jumpers. This is also the card you could put the CMS chips so you would have both sound/game blaster. I wonder if this PicoGUS could do something like Fluidsynth, just take your .sf2 file (that you could use with an SB32 etc) and work like a regular midi device... I would totally not use Scc1t2.sf2 to listen to the Doom music the way its composer intended (not that unworthy FM degradation).

[@Pickle136]

add scrap computing mt32-pi wavetable and you also have builtin mt32 and midi soundfonts. My fav combo right now :-)

[@Mr76Pontiac]

Insta-buy for me, but, got put on a waiting list (End of April, beginning of May). NO PROBLEM. I didn't make it 10% into the video, saw the price and was like YUP! because my 486 is SOooo miserable with the hardware setup I need to use.

[@awilliams1701]

ah I found it! It's the furyGPU and it does glquake at 720p 60FPS. It will be interesting to see if this heads into pci old form factors.

[@mikesilva3868]

😊 great

[@viewer377]

The clip adapter looks already brittle at the 58:08 mark, before it went into the Mac.

[@richardbrobeck2384]

cool !

[@awilliams1701]

A week or two ago on gamer's nexus hardware news they were talking about a video card that is dos compatible and can play GLQuake at 60 FPS in HD (I don't recall if it was 720p or 1080p), but it's FPGA based, and it uses HDMI. The downside is that it's pci-express. So it would potentially let you play dos games natively on modern hardware. However it is or will be open source. So they could potentially be make into a PCI version as well. It sounds really cool. You can get a new C64 thanks to the U64 board. But now we're getting to the point where you could get a new dos computer as well.

[@Qyngali]

Only thing that could improve the PicoGUS would be GUS + SB compatibility at the same time, but I assume that'd require more horsepower than a single card can provide. You can always buy 2 lol. I do have several GUS and plenty of SB cards but I want at least one of these for the ease of use. Still... having a more powerful version that can run SB+GUS simultaneously would be a dream card.

[@root42]

Can't recommend the PicoGUS enough. If you want to build a gaming/demoscene retro PC it is THE way to go if you are not prepared to spend a lot of money. I do have a GUS ACE, SnarkBarker, LAPC-I and other cards, but most people will have missed the window where those were available for little money, so having the PicoGUS is really a nice thing.

[@anthonyblacker8471]

They're NEVER going to be able to keep assembled boards in stock. Not for a long time at least.. SO amazing!!

[@timcross3461]

Oooh, cool! Need to update the PicoGUS 1.1 I built and try it out. Funny enough, I have the one 486 board listed in the wiki as not supported...

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

DOH! Is it just the firmware update that is broken (from DOS) or does it not work correctly at all?

[@timcross3461]

@@adriansdigitalbasement2 Seems that the firmware update works, it is just that I don't get music in Doom.

[@joshj88]

1:08:45 you may need the system extension to make it work.

[@rogiervanlierop]

JerryRig has nice boxcutters on his channel 😉

[@steveny.3616]

I have this accelerator in a Plus and have the driver disk.

[@bananaboy41]

CubicPlayer does have support for SoundBlaster 2.0. It might not have worked because your BLASTER environment variable was set to the SB16 settings, which might have confused CP's SB detection code.

[@ianpolpo]

Yep, that's exactly it. I've tested it and the PicoGUS works great in Cubic Player if the BLASTER variable is set correctly.

[@charlesdorval394]

just wondering, is it possible to use the menus in autoexec/config to choose a "profile" that will load the appropriate firmware then set the rest? If I can allow myself a little suggestion for the PicoGUS, if there's a couple spare pins on that RP2040, maybe a MUX or 2 to set the SB settings in software?

[@kenfagerdotcom]

Two weeks ago I found a 1.8 GUS just sitting on a shelf at work. Now I'm trying to find a computer to pop it into.

[@Roxor128]

Can you put both of your PicoGUS cards together and try out the dual-GUS mode of Cubic Player?

[@louismazzei5862]

A clip on accelerator was a pretty cool thing back in the day when your PDS was already occupied by the video card required for a Radius pivot display or one of the large, multi-page monitors used in desktop publishing back then. Nowadays, though… Not so much. Most of those monitors don’t exist anymore. 😕

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

I remember those displays, the "HUGE" 19 and 21 inch CRTs, weighed a ton, which in my branch were used for CAD. The monitor cost a fortune, and the video card even more just because of the vast amount of DRAM which cost more than gold in weight back then.

[@greypatch8855]

I love my AWE32

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

I had both, first a GUS but swapped it for an AWE32 because of the wider support. Have to say the GUS sounded better though. I put 2x4MB in the slots for the wavetables.

[@TheShadow0515]

Awweee

[@ozzyp97]

​​@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 The default AWE wavetables are pretty rough, yeah. GUS had way better electric guitars for Duke 3D and Doom, for instance. Orchestral stuff is more of a wash. That wouldn't be such a problem if you could use SF2 banks in DOS, but Creative never bothered updating the drivers, so you have to play through Windows. If you don't mind that (and aren't hugely into old demos), the AWE32 is a very nice card. Unfortunately it's also not very affordable anymore, especially not the CT1747 equipped versions which include real OPL3 hardware.

[@SamuelFlint]

I wonder if the USB port could be used to emulate an IDE controller and drives using a thumbdrive.

[@twocvbloke]

For those PDS connectors, wouldn't rows of pin headers soldered in those holes work for connecting that MicroMac board to the motherboard? Would be a lot simpler than fidning the matching connector, given how hard older connections can be to find... :)

[@jjock3239]

BTW, I want one! Particularly, if it it can be used with a flight sim wheel or yoke. I have both parallel and USB yokes and control stations, and would love to run one of them through this card. As a note, one of my control sticks, came with a Gravis card. I don't know if I still have it or not.

[@IgnacioCarreraAR]

2:18 "RP2050" had to check whether they'd released a new mcu

[@transistorbaluba]

old time sound blaster noise... i thought the sound came from the fan on the computer LOL

[@RoyAntaw]

Already Out of Stock on Tindie so I have joined the wait list...

[@christopherdecorte1599]

I'm curious can 2 of those cards be installed at the same time with different irq dmi settings as gus and sb so both can be used at same time for mixing.

[@danielrossi3465]

Tried the "Wayback machine" for the driver?

[@morenauer]

Clip-on

[@graealex]

Devices like the GALEP can actually drive and read arbitrary logic levels. They employ a special pin driver ASIC, but unfortunately the device is rather costly, and to my knowledge, the manufacturer only offers programming modes, no testing modes, despite the device being fully capable.

[@nickwallette6201]

Something that just occurred to me re: Cubic Player and offloading MODs... How does it support the real-time visualization when the card is doing hardware mixing? It wouldn't have access to the mixed stream, would it? Is it actually software-mixing the audio in parallel just to give you the pretty graphics? EDIT: Oh, and it might not have worked in SB mode because the SET BLASTER statement was calling it a Sound Blaster 16 (T6) with High-DMA 5 (H5), and that obviously was not backed by hardware.

[@TLang-el6sk]

A distributor in Europe would be great as regulations become more and more complex...

[@rager1969]

Hey, that's an Orange Count phone and fax number on that MicroMac. Maybe Santa Ana.

[@rager1969]

The web site you mentioned shows different phone numbers and an Aliso Viejo address. Maybe they moved to south OC at some point?

[@calculusentropy]

I'd suggest it a FemtoGUS now.

[@rtechlab6254]

So, question. If that accelerator is purely interfacing to the 68000, what would it do in an Amiga or ST?

[@dh2032]

like it, but am little sad it lost Pico, being stuck on the top as surface mounted component at once you new what it was Pico at heart, but it looks great 🙂

[@gryzman]

fire it up on XT!

[@galeng73]

Hmm... Have you had anyone send you anything from Maine? If not, I might have to think of something just so Maine can be on the list.

[@Vaskomyr]

I know this intended for older pc's but this would be cool as a usb audio card to use on my current rig playing older games. I would love a older rig but space and inflated costs just make that pretty unappealing. If there was a good sbc solution I'd be interested.

[@JapanPop]

I wish we could see some new compact Mac accelerators produced with a Pi or other FPGA cores like the in the Amiga community. Wouldn’t a drop-in logic board be awesome? I love the work on the new SE boards. But components will run out and I hate emulation.

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

Yeah, there were a handful of PC programs that supported SID, I used to have an ISA card that took 4 SIDs, don't recall the name of the software packages off the top of my head though

[@poofygoof]

HardSID Quattro was PCI, but the original 1-sid version was ISA.

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

@@poofygoof 99% sure the quad card I had was ISA so perhaps not a HardSID but it was more than 20 years ago now so possibly I'm misremembering.

[@kencreten7308]

"Guess I have to go read the documentation...." hahah. Said by all.

[@nickwallette6201]

Just some thoughts on sound cards... probably not worth reading. :-D 1) SB 2.0 / Pro / 16 In DOS, everything was limited by RAM and disk space. A game would have to pre-load the audio samples into RAM that it would be using. And you would have to get them to the user somehow. Nobody wanted to use 6 more 3.5" floppies to store the audio for a game. (Or spend an additional hour or more to download it from a BBS.) You weren't just going to compress them -- OGG and MP3 weren't a thing yet, and we wouldn't have had the CPU time to decode them anyway. So, samples were (for the most part) 8-bit PCM, sampled at something like 8-22kHz. Typically, 11-16kHz. So, even if you had a SB16 or AWE32 or PAS16 or WSS, at best, you were probably getting a 16-bit mix of one or more 8-bit audio samples. (One or more, because you might have some kind of environmental sound effect mixed with a gun shot or voice clip.) Suffice to say, you weren't missing that much if you "only" had a Sound Blaster Pro with 8-bit audio. The main advantage of anything better than the original SB 2.0 was stereo sound. For DOS gaming, that's pretty much the top of the hill. 16-bit mixing is just a little cleaner mix of fundamentally awful samples. Nice if you have the DAC and the CPU time and RAM to spare, but certainly no big deal if you don't. Now, 16-bit was a little better for playing back sampled music, like MOD files -- which were also made up of awful quality samples, but there were more of them playing at once, so you could actually benefit from more resolution in the mixing stage. It still wasn't going to fool you into thinking you were listening to a CD, but it did sound better. GUS and AWE32, with hardware interpolation, better still. The only time 16-bit really mattered is when you were playing full resolution audio, like a rip from an audio CD. Never mind that one song would use a considerable percentage of your hard disk to store .... (Bear in mind, even as late as the Pentium, we still had BIOS limitations of 500MB hard drives -- not quite yet equal to the capacity of a single CD.) 2) GUS in general The hardware sampling of a GUS was rarely used to its potential. If you were a fan of MOD files or the demoscene, then you probably know what it can do for you. If you're mainly in it for the games, there's not much to love. It wasn't a Sound Blaster, which automatically limits its breadth of support right out of the gate. SB emulation was nearly worthless. OPL emulation was absolutely worthless. Most games that DID actually support the GUS, still treated it like a 2-channel sound card. The ones that supported it as a sampler might run a little better, what with not having to mix samples in software. On a faster 486, that didn't matter much anymore. Only a handful of games used it directly for music, which sounded better than software mixing. Not WORLDS better, but definitely better. Games that used General MIDI could use it as a MIDI synth, which was its target market, and the real reason to get one. But, frankly, the GUS was tragically early to this party. The original ones had tight RAM limits, which required balancing whether you wanted more instruments loaded, or better quality for fewer instruments. Also, whether you wanted more voices playing at once, or better quality voices. Later GUS chipsets improved on this, with more RAM and less limitation on polyphony. NONE of them (AFAIR) had any support for hardware effects like chorus and reverb. When the AWE32(/SB32/AWE64) came out, it had built-in ROM samples (to give you at least a baseline full GM sample set using 0 bytes sample RAM), the ability to augment or replace the ROM set, full quality at full polyphony, and hardware effects. Better in every way, less rare now (and thus less expensive), and with full SB compatibility. Of course, now, you can have an MT32 or Sound Canvas or Yamaha XG synth, so who cares about any of that. TLDR: The GUS is an aspirational card for those of us who were there in the early days, when our CPU struggled to play back an 8-channel MOD. And that's about all it has going for it. _Super_ cool, but nearly pointless today. Which, let me be clear, is to say nothing of the PicoGUS project. Just having a software-defined audio card as a concept is enough reason to justify its existence. But if you were wondering what you missed by not having a GUS -- not much, unless you were in the nichiest of niches. 3) High-end DACs This is a trend I don't really get. As per #1 above, a super high-quality 24-bit 96kHz DAC is not doing anything for you. "ISA noise" wasn't a DAC problem. It was a grounding and signal integrity problem. Good electrical design practices will resolve that for you, and a 16-bit / 44kHz DAC is _more_ than enough for anybody. For the most part, it still is. Now, granted, at this point, it's probably just as cheap and just as easy to use an HD audio DAC, if not cheaper and easier, since it's a baseline requirement for compatibility with modern audio sources like DVD, BD, and HD streaming. But don't think your Windows 3.1 WAV files are going to sound any better through it. ;-) Garbage in, very high fidelity garbage out. To sum up: PicoGUS: Good. Hype about uber elite sound cards from back in the day -- mostly nonsense or for specialty cases that don't apply to nearly anyone anymore. FOMO over 16-bit support or creme de la creme DACs: Little to nothing at all there to miss.

[@krad2520]

Couple little expansions on what you said because it's almost entirely spot-on: > If you were a fan of MOD files or the demoscene, then you probably know what it can do for you. Even then it was still rarely used to its full potential because at a time when most people were connecting to BBS with 14.4k modems, most all musicians were still using 8-bit, low-fidelity samples in their tracks. Most tracks using all 32 channels or 16-bit samples were seen as flexes that were almost universally devoid of artistic merit. > Games that used General MIDI could use it as a MIDI synth, which was its target market, and the real reason to get one. And even then, only programs that used Real Mode (ie. no EMS or XMS) could really do this, and some still had problems with other TSRs. If you were using a game that used Protected Mode to access memory higher than 640k, you were SOL on General MIDI compatibility and were dependent on a GUS-specific driver. > "But if you were wondering what you missed by not having a GUS -- not much, unless you were in the nichiest of niches." Truest words ever written about the GUS. There's a reason why they were almost universally moved-on from by the mid-late '90s.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@krad2520 I've always been an audiophile (in the "I love audio" sense, not the "I love $2000 power cables" sense), and fascinated by computers, so the confluence of the two in the 90s made me lust after both the GUS and AWE32. By the time I had a computer that could benefit from any of this, they were both options, and I was a little torn between the two. Ended up going with the AWE, and it was 100% the right choice. I did love demos, and lamented that I couldn't run some of them with hardware mixing. Also, the famed "GUS patches" that you could use in software mode with CP even on plain 2-channel cards.. that had a mystique about it that made the GUS desirable. Today, I do own a few genuine GUS variants. One of them is in a Cyrix 6x86 running Windows 95. I love it, but it's almost more trouble than it's worth under Windows, and being of the fledgling PnP era, barely any better under DOS. As a wannabe MIDI musician back in the day, I would've killed for this computer. I'm proud to have it now, but it can be ornery, and if I'm blatantly honest, doesn't do much of anything the AWE32 couldn't do better. It's just a long-overdue dream fulfilled.

[@krad2520]

@@nickwallette6201 I feel you on all of that, and am in (mostly) the same boat-- except in my instance, I opted for a Sound Blaster 16 and a Wave Blaster. Picked up GUS 2.4 later ~1998. It's nice to actually see someone writing something very relatable here LOL. I was also a little wannabe MIDI musician who hung out on the AOL "Composer's Showcase" board. I really do wish that a lot of the hype that is given to the GUS was counter-balanced by the card's historical context. You clearly get it, you were there, but I don't think I've seen any KZbin creator explain that when the card came out, the general public's access to the things that took relatively full advantage of the card was limited & often arrived belated. Like, if I'd even had my GUS in 1992 when it came out, I certainly didn't have access to the *two* BBSs in my area code that kept active mirrors of scene releases... those BBSs were not readily published in BBS lists and were very selective in granting membership. Until internet access got widespread and people could get on the Hornet FTP, Scene.org, or Modarchive, your only real access to scene releases as a member of the general public would be if your local BBS had any reuploads or you bought a 'shareware/freeware' compilation disc that just so happened to contain them. But by the time internet access got widespread and any of those resources I mentioned were available, the GUS's heyday had already passed. If nothing else, I'm actually pretty happy that the PicoGUS is here to democratize access to the GUS experience so that maybe some of the astronomical hype around the card can be cut through :P

[@korneliuszo]

where RP2050 are available?

[@tonysofla]

Instead of ST mcu, should have used a 5v WCH, all pins have Schmitt triggers very close to TTL.

[@andrasszabo7386]

I have an old (1987, designed here in Hungary)286 laptop with an extra 8-bit ISA slot,(and also an extra 16-bit ISA slot, occupied by an ISA RAM card) and 1MB RAM. Will this PicoGUS card work with that? DOS games with B&W CGA-compatible graphics, and Windows 3.11. Nothing else I want from that computer.