Kahenraz wrote on 2023-04-22, 20:26:

Fun fact. While the ESS Solo-1 is generally very compatible in older boards, I have experienced it failing to work in some modern (Socket 775) motherboards in both DOS and Windows.

This is getting offtopic: Yep, it needs PCI-DMA support from chipset, if you don't have it then it's problems. All VIA chipsets has it. One of my all-arounders is Asus A8V, Athlon 64 x2, Radeon 3850 AGP & Voodoo3 PCI and SB X-Fi & Solo-1. The thing is that I can play all (non-speed sensitive) DOS-games with sound and also Crysis with one PC.

I just tried to use the PC Speaker on my orpheus ii but the audio is super quiet. Here's what I know:

• I have software that definitely wants to beep (e.g. Wasteland, echo ^G)
• The speaker connector on my motherboard (abit bx6 2.0) is connected to the speaker input on my orpheus ii
• I set the speaker volume to a variety of values in the ini file (e.g. 0, 50, etc). When I run orphinit /vv it prints the volume level and "PC Speaker not muted" in its output

...but it’s so quiet that I thought it was disabled until just now!
Any advice?

(I get SB and GUS sound, so it's not as simple as "is the speaker turned on" 😀

ChrisTOTG wrote on 2023-04-23, 02:29:

I just tried to use the PC Speaker on my orpheus ii but the audio is super quiet. Here's what I know:
[...]

the speaker input is keyed, try to swap the cables around
also put speaker volume at 1 , it should work then

I have updated ULTRASND.ZIP on site to v3 thanks to some feedback from Madowax
only change is IW.INI : now using mode=legacy instead of mode=pnp

this will give 100% manual control over resources since now the irq/dma settings in INI won't be updated automatically to whatever a PnP BIOS wants to assign to them

ChrisTOTG wrote on 2023-04-23, 02:29:

I just tried to use the PC Speaker on my orpheus ii but the audio is super quiet. Here's what I know: […]
Show full quote

I just tried to use the PC Speaker on my orpheus ii but the audio is super quiet. Here's what I know:

• I have software that definitely wants to beep (e.g. Wasteland, echo ^G)
• The speaker connector on my motherboard (abit bx6 2.0) is connected to the speaker input on my orpheus ii
• I set the speaker volume to a variety of values in the ini file (e.g. 0, 50, etc). When I run orphinit /vv it prints the volume level and "PC Speaker not muted" in its output

...but it’s so quiet that I thought it was disabled until just now!
Any advice?

(I get SB and GUS sound, so it's not as simple as "is the speaker turned on" 😀

This wasn't detailed in the INI file, but the valid range for PC speaker volume is from 0 to 15, with 0 being maximum volume. As keropi mentioned, polarity is important, so it may help to reverse the connections at one end of the cable.

Since you were one of the first to mention trying this, it also made it clear that there was a small ORPHINIT bug affecting PC speaker output (thanks for the feedback!). In some cases, you may get PC speaker output out of the right speaker only, and, in other cases, (almost) nothing at all. This has already been corrected for the next release, but due to a minor injury (and other factors), development has slowed, and said release will be later than originally expected.

dj_pirtu wrote on 2023-04-22, 12:06:

My Abit KT7A system just doesn't like Orpheus2. PCM-sounds are missing in many games or in old demoscene productions (which don't support GUS yet). Lowering FSB, multiplier, disabling caches, nothing helps. ESS Solo-1 PCI didn't have those problems. Think it's the chipset/ISA-bus implementation which fails here. Ultrasound Classic works.

Got it working, my bad!

Forgot to free IRQs and DMAs in BIOS for ISA bus. After I set all needed resources to 'Legacy ISA' it works flawlessly. So some PCI devices were probably at the same IRQ as Crystal chip.

640K!enough wrote on 2023-04-24, 06:06:

ChrisTOTG wrote on 2023-04-23, 02:29:

stuff

This wasn't detailed in the INI file, but the valid range for PC speaker volume is from 0 to 15, with 0 being maximum volume. As keropi mentioned, polarity is important, so it may help to reverse the connections at one end of the cable.

Since you were one of the first to mention trying this, it also made it clear that there was a small ORPHINIT bug affecting PC speaker output (thanks for the feedback!). In some cases, you may get PC speaker output out of the right speaker only, and, in other cases, (almost) nothing at all. This has already been corrected for the next release, but due to a minor injury (and other factors), development has slowed, and said release will be later than originally expected.

Ah, thanks so much for that! Excited to hear my bleeps and bloops when you're ready to publish the next update 😀

I had back in the days only GF1 GUS. So Interwave world is new to me.
So out of all DOS trackers/players only Impulse Tracker 2.14 and XTC-Player 0.97c have stable IW support? OCP 2.x as well but its beta...

Also in order to avoid asking questions already answered elsewhere - is everything discussed in Argus project threads relevant to Orpheus II IW implementation as well?

Yes everything argus or original gravis pnp card applies to orpheus2 as well when it comes to how and with what interwave works

Is it possible to enable S/PDIF output in Windows 9x? I can get ORPHINIT to do it of course, but I think I must be missing a setting in Windows.

vutt wrote on 2023-04-24, 18:40:

I had back in the days only GF1 GUS. So Interwave world is new to me.
So out of all DOS trackers/players only Impulse Tracker 2.14 and XTC-Player 0.97c have stable IW support? OCP 2.x as well but its beta...

Also in order to avoid asking questions already answered elsewhere - is everything discussed in Argus project threads relevant to Orpheus II IW implementation as well?

Cubic Player definitely works, and still looks extra pretty in 1024x768 modes!

One other observation as I get this thing going.

On default initialization, I am getting a constant static noise. If I mute the Synth output on the Crystal chip, the static goes away. edit=SOLVED. Hardware problem. See below.

resources:
PCMIDI: 330h, IRQ 9
Crystal: 300h (MPU-401), 200h (Gameport), 388h (YMF289), 220h, IRQ 5, DMA 1, DMA 3
UltraSound: 240h, IRQ 7, DMA 6, DMA 7

hardware:
GA-586ATX, recapped
Pentium 233MMX
Diamond Monster Fusion PCI
Intel PRO/1000 PCI
Orpheus II with 16MB single-sided 5V FPM module, and Yucatan FX from Serdashop on the Wavetable header.

Jumpers set to defaults.

MIDI-wise, the only things that work are the Crystal FM, and the Yamaha OPL3.

Follow-up edit: This was (another?) power supply issue! I just bought a Corsair RM850e, which is in the series that I have been using for several years now for retro builds (due to generally stout modern-day 5v rails). The clue? In the BIOS, -12V was marked as "Fail" in addition to the (expected) -5V Fail. Swap in known good supply, all issues go away.

ChrisTOTG wrote on 2023-04-24, 17:33:

Ah, thanks so much for that! Excited to hear my bleeps and bloops when you're ready to publish the next update 😀

If you're willing to experiment, the attached tool will make the changes necessary to enable the PC speaker functionality, so that you don't have to wait for the next release. It was just a quick test, so doesn't include all of the logic that the final code will, but should be enough to let you try the feature. The only drawback, being a test I threw together quickly, is that it is hard-coded for WSSBase=534 and CtrlBase=538. If your ORPHEUS.INI meets those requirements, you can enjoy the ear-splitting PC speaker sounds now (even via S/PDIF!), just de-compress and run any time after ORPHINIT.

PC Speaker over S/PDIF is actually pretty hilarious.

keropi wrote on 2022-07-18, 19:07:

does a game like jazz jackrabbit work for you?

I just finished setting up the card in my machine but Jazz refuses to start when I configure the game for GUS. It asks me to run sound setup:

I used the preinstalled ULTRASND directory from the website.

IcySon55 wrote on 2023-04-25, 14:57:

I just finished setting up the card in my machine but Jazz refuses to start when I configure the game for GUS. It asks me to run sound setup:
[...]

some things to try as Jazz works fine under normal circumstances:

1. did you patch the game with PREPGAME? this is needed for the game to work with interwave
2. did you allocate in BIOS the irq/dmas needed for use with "legacy ISA" devices? (if you have a PnP bios)
3. use the updated IW.INI from the current ULTRASND.ZIP on the site (I see you use it, you got the v3 package right?)
4. there is some ram installed on the board, correct? if you run IWINIT /V it does it get detected?

there is nothing special needed otherwise, if irq/dma match, the game is patched and there is some ram on the board Jazz will just work

edit:
you don't need the SET BLASTER variable for orpheus, when you call ORPHEUS.BAT it will create the variable according to the settings specified in orpheus.ini

keropi wrote on 2023-04-25, 15:19:

you don't need the SET BLASTER variable for orpheus, when you call ORPHEUS.BAT it will create the variable according to the settings specified in orpheus.ini

Is that safe to do though? I recall Hocus Pocus disliking certain values being present in the variable.

Edit: Testing on your suggestions will be later today.

Edit 2: Got Jazz working with PREPGAME. I also had to patch it with TPPATCH because the CPU in the machine is fast enough to cause the game to crash on startup with a runtime error.

640K!enough wrote on 2023-04-25, 02:27:

If you're willing to experiment, the attached tool will make the changes necessary to enable the PC speaker functionality, so that you don't have to wait for the next release.

Confirming this works, thank you. I look forward to the next ORPHINIT release (though no need to rush, take care of yourself first!!).

PC Speaker on both the left and right channel, delivered over S/PDIF. What a world we live in.

After solving the lack of -12v on my system I am good to go. I grew up with Sound Blaster clones though so am far less familiar with the UltraSound portion. However, I was able to get Terminal Velocity working just fine simply by loading ULTRAMID.

@keropi
I will try Jazz Jackrabbit next since you were kind enough to type out specific instructions.

edit=Jazz works and has super crisp UltraSound audio. Extremely happy with this card. Congrats again guys.

Is there any way to raise the maximum volume of the cd input in dos? I set SB-CDVol=7 in the Orpheus.ini file, but still the sound is too quiet.
In Windows 95 the problem does not occur, at 60% the volume is higher than SB-CDVol=7 in dos.

maybe game has a volume control?
things have not changed hardware-wise for such functions from the original Orpheus design so this should not be an issue