ARGUS - A New Gravis Ultrasound Clone
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- Опубліковано 13 бер 2022
- Testing a borrowed prerelease ARGUS sound card! It's a community-built Gravis UltraSound PnP clone based on the AMD InterWave chip. Unfortunately it's not currently available for sale but it's great that it exists at all! EDIT: Now available! www.micronick.com/argus/
More info on the project here: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?...
So check this out: The person who loaned me the card, Nick, has worked out an agreement with the creator of the ARGUS project to produce and sell them! Finally! No need to go through forum posts or find a source for PCBs anymore. www.micronick.com/argus/
keropi (of Orpheus soundcard fame) is also joining in ... and a 3rd producer/distributor currently in negotiations with me. Things can be so nice if people just interact with one another rather than consume :)
But what now? It’s sold out :/
Fun(?) fact: I actually went back to record some more demos and tracker tunes for the end bit showing off how good the ARGUS sounds, only to be met with Content ID claims on the upload! Apparently, certain famous tracker tunes are in the copyright system now and can get videos blocked. That's news to me! So I removed them and only left in "the good, the bad & the ugly" demo by Surprise!Productions. Now I'm curious if that gets claimed too someday 🤷♂
Time for LGR Music label
*surpised pikachu face* Whaaaat??
Blocked tracker tunes on UA-cam? So the alternative of listening to them without the proper hardware isn't an option and that's just as frustrating as it is devastating.
If one that got content blocked was Space Debris, I remember it was featured in a game a few years back. Which might be why it's in the Content ID system.
I've seen some of the tracker guys actually heavily monetise their mod and tracker songs, it's weird to me that they would copyright claim this stuff though. Wasn't the whole point of demos and tracker stuff to be public domain to demonstrate the capabilities of the machines of the times?
Oh ... and a proposal that would _instantly_ make me go open source ... if there's any FPGA designer who can synthesize an InterWave compatible design, I'd love to adapt the layout of the ARGUS. Since that would allow to flood the market with inexpensive clones. Not gonna happen that easily with the current status tho ... since InterWave chips have become kinda hard to obtain as well - this project uses new old stock I obtained before/while starting the project which is a limiting factor.
One thing that would go a long way towards getting that would be getting die-shots of the chip in enough detail that it could be reverse-engineered. Would be nice to get them of the GF-1 as well, but that would require finding someone with a dead GUS to donate it.
@@Roxor128 Die-Shots of the InterWave exist, but haven't been vectorized to my knowledge. I actually donated a working chip to someone to decap and photograph it ... inside you can still find the project name "AMaDeus" which was what the InterWave was called during development along with some PCB art resembling a tenor
I have an Interwave card (the Compaq one I think) and it took similar extraordinary efforts to get it working, even following guides on VOGONs... I also had to use a combo of files from different versions and even had to install Windows 95 and use files that got installed with it! It was a nightmare and gave me a similar bad taste.... So I think this is just a problem specifically with these Interwave cards ...
Wow, it seems I vastly underestimated how different it might be to set this up versus the original GUS.
Yup, an open secret about the GUS PNP PRO... it sucks for DOS. It's a rite of passage of sorts for anyone who wants to get into all things GUS :P
The Compaq InterWave card can be used with the normal GUS PnP drivers ... once you re-flash the PNP EEPROM (there are 2 tools to do that ... one even changes the human readable identifier to "Gravis UltraSound Plug and Pray").
Fantastic, it even clones my struggles with the classic back in the day!
Flashback of clashing irq settings... Lovely content.
I've been listening to Doom for near 35 years now, and this version the notes from the guitar sweeps were very percussive, sounded very clean to this musician!
The issues in this video definitely bring back memories of the 90s. I remember troubleshooting new hardware was always part of the fun, especially with non-intel CPUs.
I remember dealing with those issues well. I don't remember considering them "part of the fun", though, LOL.
The GUS PnP NT4 drivers actually works in Windows XP SP3. They _might_ work in 32 bit Windows 10 but I haven't tested since I don't have an ISA-PC that can run W10.
My GUS PnP also had problems in DOS. Took me months to get it working. Worked OK in Windows 9x and worked very well in NT4.
Great project, it's unfortunate that it's not gonna be mass produced and even more so that it was not open-sourced. Although I imagine that, at long term, the increasing rarity of retro hardware will change this landscape and we'll see many new projects like this gaining traction and becoming more available.
I'm currently considering to release the Gerber files instead of producing them myself ... but then again, I can see people put on a $400 price tag on work someone else did for a $5-30 PCB.
There was some sort of FPGA-based sound card that was in early development that looked very intriguing. I haven't heard anything about it beyond a guy announcing he was starting work on it, and I can't remember what it was called. Not that it matters much right now with the chip shortages...
Something like that seems like it would be ideal for someone who would want to mess with otherwise prohibitively expensive cards like the ultrasound or adlib gold (assuming the card and the appropriate cores get made/developed of course).
EDIT: There's a video from 2019 entitled "The one sound card to rule them all" where he talks about it.
@@1337Shockwav3 yes, please do consider releasing them, I think a lot of people would very much appreciate it, I for one. The kind of scalping you mention is unfortunate indeed, but I guess there is nothing much that can be done about it and keeping a good opportunity away from a large group just because some people may take advantage of it also doesn't feel right, to me, at least
@@wich1 Yeah, I can see both sides there - yet don't want to accept the mindset of "there's nothing you can do" which has been one of the reasons for 3(?) years of the delay.
@@1337Shockwav3 Sorry to hear that. I guess maybe the only thing you could do is release it under a license that prohibits commercial sale, or limits a price point or something like that, but then you get to deal with legal hassles and having to try and enforce that license when someone does it anyway. For me, as an open source SW developer, I choose not to bother and release it anyway, if someone manages to exploit something I made I'm not going to worry about it, the value of releasing it is more than the cost of the damage in my view. But of course I cannot speak for you, it is a choice that you need to make and I will respect whatever choice that is, no matter whether I had hoped for another or not.
Cool video, I'm living vicariously through LGR because I never had access to this cool stuff let alone a budget or PC to actually use!
Knowing that all the old cards are eventually going to fail at some point, I love the fact that there are a few new options for upgrading older PC's.
Love that font on the back! Awesome when letters look like space ships!
Thanks for sharing this. As an Amiga fan, who was bitterly disappointed with PC sound when I eventually jumped over back in the day, I am now kicking myself that I did not know this was a thing. I mean....I of course recall seeing it as an option in game setup menus, but just dismissed it as "an alternative". OMG it really does have those Amiga tones to it. Man, the 90's would have sounded a whole lot better had I know. Great that this clone exists.
I've always thought red PCB boards were the coolest.
Elysium brings back memories. I haven't heard it since the 90s.
that card is gorgeous, especially the logo on the back
Agreed, that's one nice-looking shiny silkscreen!
Logo is by alien ... and yes, I'm really proud to have him design it.
Don’t forget my awesome skills for assembling it! Hi Shock__ :)
I used to have a GUS PnP I am glad to see that the clone is perfect. I had so many issues trying to get the original to work as it just didn't like any of the set-ups I had at the time. Although I do regret selling it. Oh well lol
So glad to see this thing. I'm still running my GUS Classic 2.1 and loving it. I'd like to have a MAX, or any version with PnP, but they are worth an absolute fortune. The fact that there is a hardware clone is good to know. GF1 chips weren't just in GUS cards. They were in Forte VFX1 helmet also, I believe. They were developed under the same project umbrella. I wouldn't be surprised, if there was a surplus inventory of those chips somewhere, just like with 3DFX. Gravis cards were so hard to sell, I remember them going for $35 at one point. If only I knew the future, I would've bought myself a hundred right there.
Damn! A Gravis ultrasound clone?! That's like a dream come true.
Closed source unobtanium with weird issues? Dreams shattered.
TBH I have no idea there the info comes from that this project is dead ... maybe I should watch the video.
Issues are the same one should expect with a GUS PnP which has some specific roadblocks and hassles ... but still is a very nice GUS which I actually prefer over the GF-1 models.
I wasn't listening then completely zoned in for the music at the end. Bangin
I can't even begin to tell you how many times I played that pinball game, thanks for the nostalgia hit 😀
Edit: That Elysium track on ScreamTracker was 🔥
Haha, thanks for the Surpr!se Productions Demo at the end! Rick Dangerous was my neighbour in the 90s 😀
Oh man that Screamtracker splash screen, what a time trip. So glad Clint's a trackery guy👍
Omg you have a Pioneer SX-1250. Thats sick!!
Cyrix 486 DX-2 80 MHz. Now that was my first PC’s CPU. Brings back loads of memories.
Holy hell that Blue Flame song is just making my brain feel GOOD. I need more.
Well at least you had an authentic Gus PnP experience... I saw similar problems when I upgraded from a classic to a PnP Pro back in the day...
I just had to smile at 12:00 because Elysium and other such MOD files were the sound of my teenage years.
I owned an AWE32 and a DOS machine, never had the privilege of a GUS sadly, though I always wanted to try one.
Awe32 with some extra memory and Cubic player is the way to go for modular music.
@@jilmarit I used a TSR called AweMP which could load a Mod file into the area where the Midi synth would sit, and then return to a prompt. You could also get the player to use the built-in reverb on the card.
It blew my actual mind back then, never heard Mod files sound so good, and that was without even adding extra RAM to the card.
I used to do my homework with AWEMP running and be in Word Perfect at the same time because I was a bad boy lol
Thanks for featuring this, one of my lasting regrets is letting my Gravis UltraSound go back in the 1990s and not anticipating how rare and collectable they'd become! I'm hoping some other group are inspired to make a clone that's available to purchase.
This sort of project makes me wonder if there's opportunity to create an ISA or PCI sound card with the common I/O with FPGA? The thought of being able to change the card type from AWE32 to GUS etc to suit the game(s) being played, with full compatibility rather than emulation would be awesome!
The PNP's were a beast to set up to work "flawlessly" in a DOS environment but worked fine in a PNP supported system/OS. Equally the classic GUS was a challenge to get to run under e.g. W95.
Wow, our first pc was a Compaq Presario that had some form of Soundblaster card in it and I had a "10,000 in 1" shareware game disc's that I spend so much time playing. When you booted up Jazz Jackrabbit I was blown away how good it sounded with a Gravis soundcard
I used to be the tech for the UK distributor of the GUS. I too have lost mine somewhere along the line. I loved the things but they were a total b*tch to get going sometimes. I remember spending days trying to get one to work on a major manufacturer's PC at their HQ. Had to give up, drove it back our offices and drop kicked it across the room, it knocked out a couple of ceiling tiles before landing on my bosses desk! I think I might still have a SCSI daughterboard for the GF1 card which we developed in-house. It allowed a SCSI CD-ROM to be attached. Might look for it. 🙂
You should! Then document it for us?
Was it the pnp version? Those never seemed as stable or easy to get going than the original, which I used across multiple generations of PCs way waaaay back.
@@GriotDNB Had brief look. can't see it. It used a Future Domain SCSI chip and attached to the daughterboard lines on the GF1 with a 50 pin SCSI cable to the drive. Before the other ones came out with IDE.
@@zybch GF1
Great video as always! ProPatches Lite 1.60 really makes the DOOM/DOOM2 GM soundtrack come to life. Especially with the Power Drum kit - I actually prefer it to the Ensoniq SoundScape Elite or Roland Sound Canvas options.
I can see why they might not want to make it a production run. If it is that problematic to get running that can be a support nightmare. But a project that is a labor of love for a closed audience I can see being done.
Someone who understands my struggle :) Logistics are also another thing I absolutely don't enjoy.
Apparently the guy behind it is posting all kinds of comments on this video. Apparently didn't want the attention and figures a bunch of comments on a UA-cam video about it is going to improve that? *shrug*
It's a cool card, but that the PnP uses a different chip that isn't exactly quite compatible and the fact the GUS was kind of niche anyway … support was a little spotty even back in the day. There's a reason everyone who knew better had Sound Blaster cards, and it wasn't because of that legendary Sound Blaster Quality (because they sounded like garbage compared to cards made by some of their competitors.)
If a random card didn't work, it was "your setup" that was broken. If a Sound Blaster didn't work, it was the developer's bug. Which is why I'd love to see someone find a way to produce an ultra-clean sounding ISA sound card that clones the SB16 completely. The folks who do these kinds of projects are honing their skills on simpler projects, so I'm sure it'll happen one of these days.
@@knghtbrd I'm not a guy and um ... I never wanted it to go _commercial_, yet added it to wikipedia myself, got it rolling on a major retro computing forum and posted YT videos about it - talk about attention. Also why should I leave accusations and incomplete/wrong info uncommented?
Playing the victim card on your end also doesn't improve things in any way. "Support was kind of spotty even back in the day" is a very legit point tho ... as this is basically a GUS PnP with support for 16MB RAM and potentially larger ROM.
@@1337Shockwav3 "Playing the victim card on my end"? Projection much? I said nothing about myself whatsoever, save maybe that I was there in the days of DOS compatibility with sound cards, when Sound Blaster was the standard because it worked with everything. Whatever the hell you read into that … is not my problem.
Every card that wasn't a SB had mixed compatibility back in the day, but the GUS was a cool card. Didn't have one myself. If it means dealing with, let alone ingratiating myself with you, I don't need one. Cool product spoiled by the internet-famous asshat behind it.
@@knghtbrd How is calling someone "internet-famous asshat" improving things for anyone? I've proven my point that it's not about popularity at least. But this is a prime example of a discussion not worth my time.
Nice. Cool to see new "old tech" on the market.
I remember playing that pong game for hours. I don't remember if I was any good but I enjoyed the tunes.
I really need to set up a 2nd computer with some left over components somehow.
I have the GUS Max v1.8 and it’s a wonderful sound card! The sound is clear and a little like my Amiga.
You can make Epic MegaGames stuff sound far better with a Sound Blaster than default. Turns out that it's the result of a bug in the sound driver, and someone on Vogons made a patch to fix that issue.
A SoundBlaster bug, Gravis bug, or Epic MegaGames bug?
@@absalomdraconis A bug in Epic MegaGames' Sound Blaster driver. Something with how it detects the DSP version was messed up.
Sadly, with inflation and rising prices of retro hardware in general, emulation on modern PC's have been the only way to go. The SC-55 soundfont is a complete lifesaver, but this video is still fun to watch!
If you're willing to pay (or search around the right places on the internet 😉) roland actually makes a vst plug in for the sc-55 and sc-88. With the programs vsthost and midi loop back (or whatever it's called) you can get authentic sound canvas sound in dosbox.
this took a loooong time to develop
Having been around since these were contemporary, I have a deep love for GUS cards. But, honestly, they were a product of their time. The big advantage to having a GUS was being able to offload resampling and mixing multiple audio streams, particularly for wavetable MIDI or trackers (which fundamentally work exactly the same way.) This was important when you had a 33MHz CPU, and handling more than 4 audio samples at once was a lot to ask. But, by the Pentium era, it was less important, and if you had an MMX 233MHz CPU, it just didn't matter anymore at all, and a plain old Sound Blaster 16 (or equivalent with better analog circuitry) was just as good.
In a way, it's a little sad. The specialness of some of these more exotic audio cards is tied to the market at the time, whether it was the first to offer 44kHz stereo 16-bit sampling, or was just cheaper than a Creative Labs product, so you felt like you were getting away with something. That doesn't translate to anything now, except nostalgia for those of us who had (for example) a Pro Audio Spectrum 16, and it was better (or at least a better value) there for a moment. But now there's no point even emulating one because.... it's just a sound card, and a Sound Blaster had better software support, so you may as well use / emulate / repro that instead.
Even with all the CPU power available now, audio gets the short end of the stick in game development. Just mixing pre-rendered samples in simple stereo, maybe with some simple echo effects. Nothing much more sophisticated than the days of the GUS (less, probably, given the absence of any kind of synthesis), just all done in software and with a tiny fraction of the processing budget that goes to graphics. We could easily do more sophisticated audio if we were just willing to spend a bit more CPU on it, or even better, use OpenCL kernels to offload some of it to the GPU. A lot of a game's sound work is reasonably friendly to parallel processing. If you've got 100 sound sources to apply effects to and mix, you could do the effects in parallel then mix in a single thread for output. Not to mention reviving synthesis. Yeah, sure you could do music with classic FM synthesis (and it would sound awesome), but you could go more sophisticated with procedural audio and making things more dynamic. Then there's surround sound. Most, if it's even supported at all, is basically extending the stereo form to 2D, but we can do better. There was the Aureal A3D tech that vanished after Creative bought them, and there's Ambisonics. A few developers do actually use it, but they're still a distinct minority. Positioning a sound source in 3D with Ambisonics is readily parallelisable, so it could be treated like generating a sequence of images on a GPU.
@@Roxor128 No lie there. Audio tech got pushed back decades when Creative screwed Aureal.
@@SpeedyGoneFroglegs I just recently got my first Aureal card, and it is indeed impressive. It actually does have a 3D effect to it, rather than just some pedestrian phase manipulation. Is it life-changing? Ehhh... no. Cool, though. By then, real-time Dolby Digital encoding was right around the corner anyway, so I don't know if I see it as a critical loss.
The real benefit to that stuff wouldn't be so much the ability to position an audio source within a 360 degree ring around you, but actually account for distance and objects in between. Aureal _started_ doing some of that, but it wasn't very sophisticated yet. Granted, it would've gotten better, but we're talking about the audio equivalent to ray-tracing before it would get _really_ convincing.
Creative did have EAX. While it wasn't anywhere close to as effective at simulating 3D space, it was really good at more traditional effects processing -- modulation like chorus and flanging, delays and reverbs, etc. I was more into the music side than gaming, and that stuff was GOLD, since it was still expensive to do in software. It would've been nice to have both, though.
I think we're finally at a place where you could realistically expect to have 3D positioning of audio sources with more than simple pan/phase + attenuation + EQ. Even a few years ago, if an actor was talking and walked five pixels off the side of the screen, they would be panned hard to the side -- as if that's how sound works IRL. It is disappointing, with how graphics have been iteratively improved over the years, that audio positioning was (and to a degree, still is) so primitive. I suspect we'll start to see better implementation once ray-tracing really takes off in anger. At that point, you're not relying on pre-baked hacks to build a convincing environment -- you're just defining the environment as you want it to be rendered. And that would translate directly to how the audio should be processed as well. I hope that gets used effectively.
@@nickwallette6201 Glad you got the chance! I suppose my view on it is somewhat biased, having been an early (and eager) adopter. I must steadfastly agree to disagree, at least regarding life-changing, it was wild to me in those days having such convincingly calculated audio in an interactive environment. While I did enjoy things like nForce and the Xbox pushing native gaming surround into the mainstream, it was still several generations until I'd hear something that really hit me like A3D. Although having taken different paths, it sounds like we're probably more in agreement than not, both somewhat frustrated with the comparatively limited attention afforded to the audio side of the equation.
My original post was terse, maybe detrimentally so. I wasn't always anti-Creative. In the DOS days I freely admit I was something of an Amiga snob, but what Commodore user wasn't? Great sound was just built in. I never owned one, but a buddy of mine wound up with an AWE32 and it was hard not to find interesting. I thought finally, hey, maybe these guys get it, seems like they're actually trying to make big strides. At the time, maybe they even were. I don't know the specific point at which that changed, but I do know when they lost me. Aureal prevailed against Creative's frivolous litigation, but emerged broken and bankrupt. Creative absorbed them and didn't even bother to use their spoils, just let them spoil, all they were interested in was escaping their own punishment from the very things they'd accused Aureal! Reprehensible, but if I'm being totally honest, I don't think I'd have minded so much if they'd actually made use of their ill-gotten tech. I'd looked at them sour ever since. At least a short time later when nVidia took 3DFX, they actually _wanted_ the assets they purchased. Sure it was kind of bittersweet losing a pioneer like 3DFX, but I have enjoyed several multi-GPU configurations since my Voodoo 2s.
Great to see this living on! I worked in the 90s for eTek Labs (Formerly a part of Forte Technologies) with the GUS PnP/Interwave cards for Gravis, Reveal, etc. Lots of great stuff! :D
OMG. I forgot about our graphical installer. I wrote many of the widgets used in it, and made them look more 3d-ish..... I know i wrote the code for the radio buttons. :D
It looks like you might have installed some non gravis PNP software there, i think. It's been a while since i did an install... i think it's basically just running in a GUS mode, rather than GUS PNP... and if iwinit isn't run, then interwave-specific stuff won't be initialized properly
Nevermind. i see your setup at 24:24. You may want to try soundblaster mode using iwsbos
I'm listed on the back as one of the contributors. Woot.
I really like the demoscene at the end
I've just spent ages banging my head against the wall with getting a PnP Vibra 16 working on a non PnP BIOS 486 with tons of issues. In the end gave up and spent the $$$ getting a SB Pro 2.0 that I could set the resources via jumpers on the card.
Unisound works great for my CT2940 on an old Vectra VL2/50. It's not technically a Vibra 16, but does have the Vibra Pro chipset.
Nice... I was looking with... argus eyes... at this project as well ;)
I just recently took my GUS PnP from the attic and was surprised how easy it just worked on my advanced Soyo 486 SIS based PnP board. Simply loaded up the drivers and it just works! That being said, and that's weird: I used my standard boot config that had the drivers for the standard (!) GUS that seemed to have initialized the PnP GUS (which got its settings from the PnP BIOS). So maybe that's an idea to try out on a PnP machine.
Our 486 back in the day would also just randomly crash after we installed a sound blaster 16. Always assumed later on that it was some sort of IRQ or DMA conflict. Maybe that’s what’s going on here? That PC was also kind of generic, low budget OEM thing.
I had a Gravis Ultrasound Pro back in the day. Good memories. So sad I lost that card over the years.
Reverse engineers a card that is hard to find and sought by many people and is no longer being produced, and then makes it closed source and stops producing it almost immediately. Brilliant.
Sucks to be you :) I make my own rules ... enjoy your overpriced shit, while I know what I've done :)
the seller is petty af, so that was kind of expected
@@Katerpillar I don't think I've ever met somebody over the age of ten say "I make my own rules" so yea I think I'll take your word on this one.
@@Katerpillar I'm the creator, not a seller ... if this were a commercial project I'd either give support or not give a ...
Since this is basically non-commercial/crowd&self financed, you might reconsider your comment, since you're not trying to be helpful anyways.
@@1337Shockwav3 You don't have to sell your product, but the least you could do is open source it so that others can recreate it themselves.
I love blerbs so much
I followed the devellopment of it for a long time, many years ago. It was great to read about all the Vogons user inputs back then. It has been many years in devellopment. I quickly gave up on ever having one of these. I would really want one, but yeah, never going to have one.
I love where is says "Magic Smoke Escape Hatches". LoL
I did chuckle at the "Magic Smoke Escape Hatches."
love the vids brother
If this is what it takes for LGR to get it working, I could reasonably expect there would be a 90% return rate. Which is probably why they're not looking at mass production! Wow, what a pain...
I'm not in the mood for the logistics ... if you're unwilling to invest some time into the stuff you're buying (or inform yourself before hand) that's not my problem. Put it on eBay. But yeah ... stuff like that. Do I have to mention I'm not exactly cool with LGR? Prominently mentioning issues with the GUS PnP that have workarounds since 20+ years ... hm.
He could have also contacted me any time before the video.
@@1337Shockwav3 lol what a jerk I’m speechless 😂.
« Why would you expect to buy something that just works? You need to go through half a week of pain, how dare you pretend otherwise mortal? If you disagree I’ll roast you and make a fool out of myself »
@@capybara5494 Point confirmed :) Interesting definition of pain tho.
As mentioned in the video, I'd wager that a number of the challenges I ran into can be attributed to the PC itself and its configuration. The card itself works very well once it's set up and configured properly with all the prerequisite software. It's just that achieving that specific combination of files and settings was more than I bargained for, considering I was only borrowing the card to make a video before returning it to its owner.
@@1337Shockwav3 You're known as Shock__ on Vogons, correct? I'm sorry to hear you have some problem with me! Unless I'm mistaken, we've never communicated at all, much less conversed about anything that might cause offense. So I'm not sure what to say except that's unfortunate, as I respect the work you did putting together the ARGUS and have no qualms with you one way or the other.
Probably a good thing it's not publicly available.
It's funny how prized the Ultrasound is today, when it got no love back in the day when I owned it. I loved it, but game support was spotty. Too bad I didn't hold onto mine.
It had a niche market - MIDI and MOD fans. For that group, it was invaluable. For everyone else, it was a turbocharged engine in stop-and-go traffic.
My dad and I threw his old NIB one away, along with another one caked in dust. It was a different time.
This might be because I never had the opportunity to play around with a GUS, but for my mod playing needs I was always happy enough with the Soundblaster. But my reason for wanting a GUS is the midi capabilites and the sounds therein...
I had that same Quantex computer in the 90's I asked my dad for a computer and he sent me that from Florida! I think it was from his job at the time when they were switching to pentium computers.
Funny I was looking at buying the clone Russia but couldn't even buy that when you could still buy stuff from the store. Cool to see this video anyways :D
I want one. Even a clone would do
awesome! dos for all!!!)
fred knows how to lay down a slapper. great tune
I'm just sitting here in awe of a band new ISA card in 2022...
My somewhat theory is that for some reason the GUS was potentially holding up the IRQ/DMA resource after every use as the issue seemed to disappear upon a reboot and you were able to run the program/game you wanted to run just fine. Very odd. I guess it might be some weird hoo ha to do with it being a non PNP motherboard or something but either way... Great video as usual. Sad these aren't being made publicly at all because I missed out on the entire GUS era really and was only a Sound Blaster kid. :( Thanks for providing these amazing videos Clint!
That's something special. Pretty amazing that stuff like this can even exist to be honest, it's a cool time for fan made hardware :)
That NEC monitor is so crispy and new looking.. 😲
It *is* new, or pretty close to it! ua-cam.com/video/iXlDMaEOlRM/v-deo.html
I used to have the GUS and GUS Ace. Even though I was a demoscene composer something about Epic's games sounded weird to me with the GUS - too clean somehow. It felt like the instruments weren't mixing together into a coherent song.
I love it! More!!!
I keep my original Gus PnP Pro with 2.5Megs bonded to me like a child...the first time I heard DOPE.MOD (a 28 channel mod) with pnp the result was incredbile...crystal creal and crisp sound when compared to standard GUS or even SB...the IW chip does not suffer of mixing quality loss over 18 channels!
Nice. I still have my GUS (with a full megabyte of RAM) stored away somewhere. For MIDI music, that extra RAM really made a huge difference. The standard patches were OK, but they were designed around the stock memory. The GUS really shines with custom patches.
The other thing that struck me about the UltraSound was how little line noise it created compared to most sound cards. One of the ways I knew that I was plugged in to a sound card was that telltale squeaky sound when the computer was working hard. The GUS never made that noise; it just sat quietly until I used it. It really was a first-class product.
I never had a GUS but I remember the computer magazines I gobbled up as a teen would all praise the silence of the GUS
Yes, that squeaky sound under CPU load! Sometimes I could even tell what program it was just by the pattern of the “beedly beedly beep”s!
I do sort of have nostalgia for that though. Not that I’d want it on my actual modern sound output devices… but when I hear it in the original Ghost in the Shell film in the cyborgs’ POV shots, or at the end of a Techmoan video, it always brings a smile to my face.
yeah the recording noise levels were nonexistent in my old gus max if you compare for instance awe32 or sb live which did induce a lot of noise. I’ve been able to make as clean recordings as with gus max only with external audio interfaces
GUS was a great sound card. I had one back in 1994.
Some of the issues you had with that card remind me of the SB clone card I had back in the 486 days. A year or two after I got the card I upgraded my machine from an Intel 486 DX2 66 mhz to an AMD 5x86 133 mhz. After I installed the AMD chip occasionally after playing a game, using a DOS based tracker program or running Windows 3.11 for a bit and exiting to DOS the card would stop working until I reset the computer. It was almost like whatever program/game I had been running would hang the card and only a off/on power cycle or reset would bring it back. A 3 finger salute, "warm boot," usually wouldn't fix the issue. When the issue would happen some programs could "see" I had a sound card installed but couldn't play any audio. For testing purposes I installed the Intel 486 CPU again and the problem went away. So it could be the Cyrix CPU in that machine causing the card or it's driver to act up.
Later on I built an AMD K5 75 mhz based PC which was later upgraded to a K6 233 mhz and had zero audio issues with the SB AWE32 card I had in that machine. But I did always want a GUS, especially when I had the 486 based machine.
If you remember I was really excited the first time you showed your quantex because I had never seen one on the internet before and I had one almost exactly like yours, even with the same upgrade and I'll tell you that nothing I ever installed hardware wise that was pnp ever worked right on that machine 🤷♂️ I upgraded the cdrom and the sound card and had a hell of a time getting them to run right and they never really did. Constantly had to tweak the settings or redo them to get it to work. I didn't mind so much back then because that's how computing was.
#0:29 stynx is me :-)
The Interwave is _not_ a GF1 clone but a sound DSP with a feature-set capable of emulating the GF1. It has no on chip emulation from the start but has to be setup to work as a GF1 compatible device. Plug&Play systems may be better suited for the card but I used it in a non-plug&play EISA-System without a problem. It is not 100% GF1 compatible, though.
Hah wow that IBM RAM assembled in Canada! Reminds me of the time my dad bought a 4MB upgrade for our IBM PS/2!
I had a gravis ultrasound in the first computer i ever built back in the mid 90’s. The sound card and the cpu were the only components that I actually bought; everything else was donated by friends. (The CPU, Cyrex DX2-66, actually ended up being stolen from the Cyrex Factory and resold to me by a shady Computer store in Phoenix, it was in the news but that’s another story) I remember going to the store one day and as I was ogling all the fancy brand-name Sound Blasters that were all like $100+ dollar, I noticed, down on the bottom shelf, there was a sound card I never heard of being sold for 49.99 on clearance. It was literally the last component I needed to finish my build, so I snatched it up. I remember going through a multi-day ordeal to get the card working with my hodge-podge of parts, but it was a triumph when I finally got it working. Seeing what these cards are going for these days, I wish I knew what happened to mine…
If this card were available, I would try to pair it up with my MediaVision Thunderboard. Argus for sound fx and the Thunderboard for music since the Thunderboard has a Yamaha YM3812 chip on it.
Pretty awesome accomplishment by the creator of this card.
I also respect their position on not wanting their work to be taken and leveraged as a profit-generating tool by random others. People should not be too quick to judge. It is not a commercial operation, just a normal person like you or me who has done something exceptional. Anyway, the project is still open for discussion, apparently. So I hope productive solutions can be worked towards for the benefit of the enthusiast community.
But regardless of availability, the technical accomplishment itself is excellent. To spread it to the world: that is an entirely different kind of work. If we are fortunate, perhaps it can happen at small scale, but obviously patience is going to be required in any event.
Wow, Jester of Sanity. Haven't heard tell of that name in ages!
I sure would love to see you do a blerb on your sound system there. For example, what's your tube amp? PC's are fun, but I've always been more of a stereo nerd.
I have one of these ARGUS cards, very early one with green PCB. I love it. It's a valued part of my Gravis Ultrasound collection. The GUS with my handle on it.
Scene Spirit: Give Credit where credit is due :)
So hot. I lost two GUS PnPs (same Interwave chip, which theoretically is more capable than the GF1) in a flood a while back and that really hurt. It's great to see there are some options again!
LOL oh wait, I just watched more of the video ... there aren't any. 🤣
Oh my god, memories! We had a Gravis UltraSound in the mid-90s, and for the most part - it was frustration because I just wanted to play games with sounds, and SoundBlaster emulation was bad and Windows drivers were bad as well.
But when game supported GUS... It was awesome! As well as demos that my father get to show card capabilities. And guess what: one of those demos was the one you've added at the end 😉
Pity these aren't being made for sale. I'd been looking at these cards thinking they might be a possible upgrade at some point. It being Interwave-based isn't ideal (from what I understand it's not completely GF1-compatible) but still cool...
I feel like I'm missing out on most of the sound card videos. I don't doubt that they're cool, but I'm like "meh, they all sound mostly the same." This one, though. This one sounds good! Something about it sounds better balanced and more clear than others. It's a shame there isn't more development or open sourcing for this card.
26:48 - Did I just hear a sample of comedian Sam Kinison screaming? LOL
So nice to hear Elysium again
The original cards were given for free about 15 years ago. I salvaged 5 of them back then: one classic, two maxes, one PnP (I thought it was absolutely worthless) and one extreme. Am using mostly the classic, it’s good for the demo scene.
"Blerb" that is almost as long as a regular LGR video.....COUNT ME IN! :-)
I think there is a guy somewhere in Russia that has put a Gus and a Soundblaster compatible on the same board. I should have taken more notice when a saw it
That demo always gave me an information society hack album vibe
I had GUS PNP as my first PC sound card. It went into electronics trash, and I've been kicking myself about that ever since I checked what they were going for on Ebay.
Hi Clint. With all the new built "retro" cards that are showing online, can you consider making a video building a full PC maxed out with new components ? I don't know, like a 486 with a modern/retro sound card, a modern 3D printed case, a modern storage like SD to IDE, a modern clone of an old graphics card if there is any...
Where would you source a new CPU from?
@@the_kombinator
The WeeCee I believe uses an emulated clone of the Pentium architecture that was produced for industrial machines. Asides from that, there are plenty of 486/Pentium based SBCs lying around which could be used as a starting point for such a project
@@paulgraves1392 I was thinking about this after I posted this and yeah, IIRC the 486 was made until like 2008 or something - If you could find an industrial chip (like a 386SL with all the I/O crammed into it) NIB that might be suitable.
@@the_kombinator
Its also worth noting here the efforts of the PiStorm project in the Classic Mac and Amiga scenes. Basically this project allows m68k CPUs to replaced with a Raspberry Pi Hat running a m68k core in FPGA and has been used to help build new Amiga 500s (as shown by RMC) or resurrect dead ones.
As far as I understand, the 486 already has been implemented in FPGA by the MiSTer project.
If there were a Raspberry Pi HAT that could run this core on a 486 motherboard, that would be a HUGE breakthrough for vintage DOS gaming.
We need a side by side comparison once the clone is finished, if anything just to hear the great tunes.
I've never tried one of the later AMD Interwave based GUSes. Always wanted one, never could afford it.
I very much regret selling my GUS Max all those years ago. Easily the favourite of the many, many sound cards I've had, with the Aureal SQ2500 in a distant second.
At least, we can appreciate how awesome is tracker music.
Cloneception is when your' clone gets cloned before cloning.
Heavy
!!!!!!!
Would love to see an Amiga 500/ 2000 Blerbs....