digistorm wrote on 2024-01-27, 14:51:

@polpo:
I am still experiencing issues with Crystal Dream II in combination with my 486 mainboard (SiS 85C471 Socket 3). Would you want me to include it in a compatibility report or do you have ideas to investigate further? It seems that only software from demo group Triton suffers from an incompatibility on that system.

It's been a long time since you posted this but... Thanks to florian3 here I have a motherboard with the 85C471 chipset to test. I can reproduce the Crystal Dream II random audio freeze issue on both a PicoGUS and a real Gravis Ultrasound when plugged into an 8-bit slot. Since it also happens on a real GUS I don't think there is a way to fix the issue. I'll make sure to add this chipset to the compatibility list (which really needs an update)!

I have a MS-4134G with a SiS 85C471 chipset that I have tested my PicoGUS 2.0 on.
Most of the problems I had with the PicoGUS causing system hangs were due to the buggy BIOS this board has. This BIOS would ignore some setting changes. Changes could be made and saved, but settings other than default had no effect. ISA bus speed was one such setting. The ISA bus was stuck at 7.159MHz synchronous. After upgrading the BIOS to a modded version of A75B, the system hangs went away. I could now set the ISA bus clock to 1/4 BUSCLK, which set my ISA bus to 8.33MHz.

I have since switched to a modded Award BIOS for the ASUS VL/I-486SV2G. This BIOS is far superior to the AMI Color BIOS the motherboard originally came with.

Re: Evolution of a Socket3 System to a POD @100MHz
MS-4132G, a nice 486 motherboard crippled by an awful BIOS... and a solution!

I played with picogus a bit.
For some reason, Cubic player makes weird noise for a second when I ran it for a first time after reset (gus and sb mode).
Is there a way to make lauder? Without amp on speakers it is so quiet.
Would be nice to have mt32 emulation mode. 😀

Niezgodka wrote on 2024-08-13, 16:39:

I played with picogus a bit. For some reason, Cubic player makes weird noise for a second when I ran it for a first time after r […]
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I played with picogus a bit.
For some reason, Cubic player makes weird noise for a second when I ran it for a first time after reset (gus and sb mode).
Is there a way to make lauder? Without amp on speakers it is so quiet.
Would be nice to have mt32 emulation mode. 😀

MT-32 emulation is not trivial from a hardware standpoint, I believe you need at least a full blood Pi3a+ (used in the Sercado MT-32L) or CM4 lite (as in the WP32 Cake) to do the job so it would likely be beyond the capabilities of the PicoGUS hardware as it exists and/or require a separate wavetable add-on board, which Serdaco already offers if you are looking for a solution right now (https://www.serdashop.com/WP32-McCake).

I concur with MN_Moody : MT-32 isn't likely to be an inbuilt PicoGUS feature in the near future. And the good news is that an mt32-pi addon can be done endless different ways, from DIY builds (barebones starts at around $20, in the form of a Zero 2 and a DAC module - plus the MIDI-to-USB cable itself will cost the same again, unless you build-your-own one of those too!) up to premium fully built devices like the McCake and the high-end self builds some people are doing.

Question to polpo:
I noticed that the Sound Blaster mode has quite some lag, and that it is more / different than the lag of the Adlib component of the Sound Blaster mode. I noticed this while playing Scream Tracker 3 modules with both Adlib and sample instruments. If you listen any song of the Amnesia demo you clearly hear the sampled instruments lag behind. I also made a small test file if you need to confirm this for yourself.
My question is: is the lag / delay by design and unavoidable for performance reasons? I suppose it matters less in games (but there is still a delay between action and sound). Could it be fixed or at least equalised with the Adlib code, so they have the same latency?

I was testing this on that 486 board by the way.

digistorm wrote on 2024-08-20, 02:26:

Question to polpo: I noticed that the Sound Blaster mode has quite some lag, and that it is more / different than the lag of the […]
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Question to polpo:
I noticed that the Sound Blaster mode has quite some lag, and that it is more / different than the lag of the Adlib component of the Sound Blaster mode. I noticed this while playing Scream Tracker 3 modules with both Adlib and sample instruments. If you listen any song of the Amnesia demo you clearly hear the sampled instruments lag behind. I also made a small test file if you need to confirm this for yourself.
My question is: is the lag / delay by design and unavoidable for performance reasons? I suppose it matters less in games (but there is still a delay between action and sound). Could it be fixed or at least equalised with the Adlib code, so they have the same latency?

I was testing this on that 486 board by the way.

When a byte comes off of the ISA bus via DMA for the Sound Blaster DSP, it gets mixed in immediately with no buffer or any other kind of delay. There's nothing that can be done to reduce its latency, as I mix audio from the SB DSP and OPL2 with no buffering of either source. I can't think of anything that can be done to make things more equal, unless I were to intentionally increase the latency of the OPL2. I'll investigate and compare with a real Sound Blaster. Can you share your test?

After some sleep 😉 and pulling some more hairs, I finally managed to get the Amnesia demo running again. Aaaaaand… there was no latency on the sampled instruments. Soooo, this is a Scream Tracker thing. It seems there are more problems with Future Crew software. Second Reality crashes when you want to start the demo if you select Sound Blaster. Panic does work though.

Unrelated, I maybe found a bug or difference in the GUS mode when using Open Cubic Player (latest version, 2.6.0pre6).
When I play a song of my own (happens to be the first in the directory) it starts at least some instruments "late" or it fades them in. I notice this because they are very short, and now they sound too short and wierd.
I can't replicate this with my GUS pnp, also not in Dosbox Staging or 86Box.
The same song works fine in Impulse Tracker using GUS for playback.
One special thing is that the short sounding instruments have panning envelopes or random pan on each note. My suspicion is that Open Cubic Player uses some form of "anti-click" that the PicoGUS firmware doesn't like. I understand that changing the panning can cause clicks, but at the same time, Impulse Tracker does a good job playing the same song but does not start the note "late" or with some kind of volume ramp that is too obvious. I have no idea what the firmware does, but it sound similar to that.
If you need the song I can PM it (it contains private information).

polpo wrote on 2023-02-13, 21:50:

Good point about emulating PC Speaker – I'd have to snoop on the programming of channel 2 of the PIT to handle it but I think it'd be possible. This emulation would operate in parallel to the PC's actual speaker output – the current hardware design wouldn't allow you to connect the speaker and mix it like your board does.

PC speaker emulation with the PicoGUS would be super useful! Any chance that this might be implemented in the future?

I really hope, that in the future, we can utilize USB, as a pendrive reader for data transfer.
Something to read it pendrive as a next free drive letter, with some reasonable reading speed.

Hoping to get a little feedback on this one. I have yet to get my v1.1 or v1.2 boards to work with anything USB and I am unsure what I am doing wrong at this point. My next step is to try a different OTG adapter, but only because I am not sure what else to try. If anyone has gotten this to work, mind sharing what your configuration looks like?

I have tried a couple of different x-input gamepads, made sure all other game ports were completely disabled, pgusinit has /joy 1 enabled and /save. Joystick is never recognized by anything. I have tried with the OTG adapter powered by self PC USB, external USB power, and not actively powered.

With the newest firmware update I decided to give the USB mouse a try. I disabled all COM ports, set the picogus to IRQ 4, and initialized mouse with pgusinit but nothing seems to register this way.

One thing that I noticed is when using my wireless mouse it doesn't seem to initialize with the USB dongle. So I am suspecting that in both cases the Pi Pico is not recognizing the mouse or x-input gamepad at all. I am pretty sure I have tested a different OTG adapter with similar results, but I haven't tested this recently. I have tested this somewhat with three different boards so I am pretty sure it is not a particular card. If anyone has found a chain that works it might help me figure out what is wrong in my setup.

Delphius wrote on 2024-08-21, 18:31:

Hoping to get a little feedback on this one. I have yet to get my v1.1 or v1.2 boards to work with anything USB and I am unsure […]
Show full quote

Hoping to get a little feedback on this one. I have yet to get my v1.1 or v1.2 boards to work with anything USB and I am unsure what I am doing wrong at this point. My next step is to try a different OTG adapter, but only because I am not sure what else to try. If anyone has gotten this to work, mind sharing what your configuration looks like?

I have tried a couple of different x-input gamepads, made sure all other game ports were completely disabled, pgusinit has /joy 1 enabled and /save. Joystick is never recognized by anything. I have tried with the OTG adapter powered by self PC USB, external USB power, and not actively powered.

With the newest firmware update I decided to give the USB mouse a try. I disabled all COM ports, set the picogus to IRQ 4, and initialized mouse with pgusinit but nothing seems to register this way.

One thing that I noticed is when using my wireless mouse it doesn't seem to initialize with the USB dongle. So I am suspecting that in both cases the Pi Pico is not recognizing the mouse or x-input gamepad at all. I am pretty sure I have tested a different OTG adapter with similar results, but I haven't tested this recently. I have tested this somewhat with three different boards so I am pretty sure it is not a particular card. If anyone has found a chain that works it might help me figure out what is wrong in my setup.

I briefly tested the USB function of a v1.2 card.

Joystick: No result yet. Gamepads are getting power, but I haven't figured out the right config to get any input to DOS software, yet. Or the pads I tried may not be compatible. It may be a good topic for somebody to cover with a Youtube video.

Mouse: Great test result, using -

• PicoGUS hardware jumpers: IRQ4, DMA 1/1, USB Power 'On'
• Microsoft Intellimouse Optical USB -> OTG Adapter -> Pico
• PGUSINIT /mode usb /mousecom 1
• CTMOUSE /s14
• Tested successfully in Monkey Island 2

Shreddoc wrote on 2024-08-25, 03:46:

I briefly tested the USB function of a v1.2 card. […]
Show full quote

Delphius wrote on 2024-08-21, 18:31:

Hoping to get a little feedback on this one. I have yet to get my v1.1 or v1.2 boards to work with anything USB and I am unsure […]
Show full quote

Hoping to get a little feedback on this one. I have yet to get my v1.1 or v1.2 boards to work with anything USB and I am unsure what I am doing wrong at this point. My next step is to try a different OTG adapter, but only because I am not sure what else to try. If anyone has gotten this to work, mind sharing what your configuration looks like?

I have tried a couple of different x-input gamepads, made sure all other game ports were completely disabled, pgusinit has /joy 1 enabled and /save. Joystick is never recognized by anything. I have tried with the OTG adapter powered by self PC USB, external USB power, and not actively powered.

With the newest firmware update I decided to give the USB mouse a try. I disabled all COM ports, set the picogus to IRQ 4, and initialized mouse with pgusinit but nothing seems to register this way.

One thing that I noticed is when using my wireless mouse it doesn't seem to initialize with the USB dongle. So I am suspecting that in both cases the Pi Pico is not recognizing the mouse or x-input gamepad at all. I am pretty sure I have tested a different OTG adapter with similar results, but I haven't tested this recently. I have tested this somewhat with three different boards so I am pretty sure it is not a particular card. If anyone has found a chain that works it might help me figure out what is wrong in my setup.

I briefly tested the USB function of a v1.2 card.

Joystick: No result yet. Gamepads are getting power, but I haven't figured out the right config to get any input to DOS software, yet. Or the pads I tried may not be compatible. It may be a good topic for somebody to cover with a Youtube video.

Mouse: Great test result, using -

• PicoGUS hardware jumpers: IRQ4, DMA 1/1, USB Power 'On'
• Microsoft Intellimouse Optical USB -> OTG Adapter -> Pico
• PGUSINIT /mode usb /mousecom 1
• CTMOUSE /s14
• Tested successfully in Monkey Island 2

Thanks for some feedback, and good to know that you were able to get the mouse working with that configuration. I will try to give it another go with the mouse once I have a moment and try out a similar configuration.

Delphius wrote on 2024-08-25, 18:30:

Shreddoc wrote on 2024-08-25, 03:46:

I briefly tested the USB function of a v1.2 card. […]
Show full quote

Delphius wrote on 2024-08-21, 18:31:

Hoping to get a little feedback on this one. I have yet to get my v1.1 or v1.2 boards to work with anything USB and I am unsure […]
Show full quote

Hoping to get a little feedback on this one. I have yet to get my v1.1 or v1.2 boards to work with anything USB and I am unsure what I am doing wrong at this point. My next step is to try a different OTG adapter, but only because I am not sure what else to try. If anyone has gotten this to work, mind sharing what your configuration looks like?

I have tried a couple of different x-input gamepads, made sure all other game ports were completely disabled, pgusinit has /joy 1 enabled and /save. Joystick is never recognized by anything. I have tried with the OTG adapter powered by self PC USB, external USB power, and not actively powered.

With the newest firmware update I decided to give the USB mouse a try. I disabled all COM ports, set the picogus to IRQ 4, and initialized mouse with pgusinit but nothing seems to register this way.

One thing that I noticed is when using my wireless mouse it doesn't seem to initialize with the USB dongle. So I am suspecting that in both cases the Pi Pico is not recognizing the mouse or x-input gamepad at all. I am pretty sure I have tested a different OTG adapter with similar results, but I haven't tested this recently. I have tested this somewhat with three different boards so I am pretty sure it is not a particular card. If anyone has found a chain that works it might help me figure out what is wrong in my setup.

I briefly tested the USB function of a v1.2 card.

Joystick: No result yet. Gamepads are getting power, but I haven't figured out the right config to get any input to DOS software, yet. Or the pads I tried may not be compatible. It may be a good topic for somebody to cover with a Youtube video.

Mouse: Great test result, using -

• PicoGUS hardware jumpers: IRQ4, DMA 1/1, USB Power 'On'
• Microsoft Intellimouse Optical USB -> OTG Adapter -> Pico
• PGUSINIT /mode usb /mousecom 1
• CTMOUSE /s14
• Tested successfully in Monkey Island 2

Thanks for some feedback, and good to know that you were able to get the mouse working with that configuration. I will try to give it another go with the mouse once I have a moment and try out a similar configuration.

Good luck, let us know how you get on. You can change the COM port and IRQ parameters if wanted.

Shreddoc wrote on 2024-08-25, 21:35:

Delphius wrote on 2024-08-25, 18:30:

Shreddoc wrote on 2024-08-25, 03:46:

I briefly tested the USB function of a v1.2 card. […]
Show full quote

I briefly tested the USB function of a v1.2 card.

Joystick: No result yet. Gamepads are getting power, but I haven't figured out the right config to get any input to DOS software, yet. Or the pads I tried may not be compatible. It may be a good topic for somebody to cover with a Youtube video.

Mouse: Great test result, using -

• PicoGUS hardware jumpers: IRQ4, DMA 1/1, USB Power 'On'
• Microsoft Intellimouse Optical USB -> OTG Adapter -> Pico
• PGUSINIT /mode usb /mousecom 1
• CTMOUSE /s14
• Tested successfully in Monkey Island 2

Thanks for some feedback, and good to know that you were able to get the mouse working with that configuration. I will try to give it another go with the mouse once I have a moment and try out a similar configuration.

Good luck, let us know how you get on. You can change the COM port and IRQ parameters if wanted.

The attachment pgmouse.jpg is no longer available

I had a moment to give this another go tonight. At first I tried everything you suggested with high hopes it was going to work. I was thinking one thing for sure that I missed before was setting CTMOUSE /S14 instead of /R2. I was still struggling to get it working and was about to give up, then I decided to try the mouse plugged into my modern PC (Logitech G502). To my surprise it worked right away!

The mouse I was originally trying to use was a wireless mouse with a 2.4ghz USB dongle. I didn't think it would have any issues with this because I have used this wireless mouse for other micro computers with no issues. But it seems PicoGUS / Pi Pico does not support it. Overall this is fine and it is good to know that the issue is not with the PicGUS or OTG cable. I am going to try out /joy and some gamepads again to see if I can also get something to stick there.

Thanks for the help and encouragement!

I did some testing again with the joystick / gamepad and so far having no luck. This time I even went as far as to pull my Orpheus out even though it's game port was disabled via jumper. No other game ports should be enabled besides the PicoGUS. I have tried an x-input converted SNES controller, a RetroFlag SNES controller, and a wireless 2.4ghz / dongle Afterglow gamepad which is normally compatible as an XBox controller.

A couple of things I am noticing. First is that even with PicoGUS configured with the /joy option, when running Keen 4 the startup screen always shows the Joy #1 and #2 as greyed out or not available. I think normally these options are only activated on screen if a working analog joystick is plugged in and working. So does PicoGUS initialize the joystick port only if the USB gamepad has been initialized and detected by the Pico? Or should it basically be ghost initialized with only pgusinit activated, even with no USB gamepad detected?

The other thing is when I am using the wireless Afterglow gamepad with a compatible device like a modern PC, Raspberry Pi, MiSTer there is usually a visual initialization as the gamepad is connecting to the dongle. This doesn't seem to be happening with the PicoGUS however. When the game pad turns on the lights blink like it is attempting to connect, but the dongle doesn't seem to be found or initializing. This is less surprising to me considering the wireless mouse did not work as well, but it is the only clear indication I have so far that the PicoGUS is not initializing something.

My assumption at this point is that none of these gamepads are compatible. I think I have a logitech gamepad in storage I can try as well, but it seems that I may have already given this a try before. Is the PicoGUS just this picky when it comes to the type of gamepad being used? Or has anyone had better luck with more generic gamepads like the ones I have tried?

As you can clearly read on source code, supported gamepad devices are:

Usb HID:
( (vid == 0x054c && (pid == 0x09cc || pid == 0x05c4)) // Sony DualShock4
(vid == 0x0f0d && pid == 0x005e) // Hori FC4
(vid == 0x0f0d && pid == 0x00ee) // Hori PS4 Mini (PS4-099U)
(vid == 0x1f4f && pid == 0x1002) // ASW GG xrd controller

Usb XInput: (all through wire only)
XBOX360_WIRELESS
XBOX360_WIRED
XBOXONE
XBOXOG

^^handy list. It's also been discussed that expanded support is planned for the future.

Not PicoGUS related, but Bret Johnson's old USB utilities are another way t0 use USB gamepads in DOS. They seem to work quite well, provided your system has a certain type of USB host controller (details in the link).

I have some trouble with PicoGUS (v2.0, firmware: latest 2.1.0) and serial mice emulation.
My setup: socket7 motherboard, P200MMX, Win98SE, S3 Virge video, SB32PNP (CT3600) and PicoGUS with Dreamblaster X2 attached.
With the SB32+PicoGUS I aim to get the "ultimate" sound setup. The SB for SB and AWE sound, PicoGUS for everything else.
I have moved the SB32's MPU401 to address 0x300 to leave 0x330 for the PicoGUS' MPU401 which is what I will be using by default.
The sound setup works great, SB sounds and AWE synth through the SB32, and Adlib/wavetable synth through the PicoGUS set in Adlib mode.
The motherboard however does not have a usable PS/2 mouse port and I've been using a serial mouse attached to the on-board COM1. I'd rather use a USB mouse instead.
So I've made a little batch file to set the PicoGUS to initialize an emulated COM3 port and use cutemouse to enable that.

1pgusinit /mode adlib
2pgusinit /mousecom 3
3ctmouse.exe /S34

The last line is to get cutemouse to specifically use the mouse attached to COM3 with IRQ4 (and yes, I set the jumpers on the PicoGUS accordingly: IRQ4 and no DMA).

Pgusinit works fine and reports that it has set a serial mouse on COM3.
However, ctmouse does not find a mouse on COM3. "error: device not found"

If I continue booting to Win98 and have it scan for new hardware, it does find the new MPU401 (and it's usable), the new COM3 and a serial mouse attached to it. However, the mouse on COM3 does not work in Windows. And if I reboot to DOS mode, it is not usable under DOS either. If I detach the serial mouse from COM 1 and remove it from device manager, then I have no more mouse in Windows (or DOS) even after rebooting.

FWIW, the mouse I'm using attached to the PicoGUS' USB port is a Logitech M720. It works fine everywhere else. I don't have another USB mouse to test with unfortunately.
Am I making a glaring mistake, or is this sort of wireless USB mouse just not supported?