Whiskey wrote on 2020-08-27, 14:56:

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Doing postage pricing now, will send out PM's to those who have shown interest over the weekend.

They fit perfectly in my test machine and there is sufficient wiggle room on the bracket for minor alignment differences with each card.

EDIT2: 4 brackets left

EDIT: sorry to hear about your employment shock_ hope you find some thing you enjoy that's secure soon.

wooohoo! I forgot I had expressed interest!

Hi fellas, late to the party, are the gerbers and BOM going to be released at some point or already are so i could build one on my own? Thanks.

No. Please refer to the large, bold & underlined text in the very first post of this thread.
You could always buy a GUSAR tho.

All the brackets are packaged up just need to label them all. Sorry for not sending out the PMs with the details yet, it was a bank holiday weekend in the UK which meant extra chores for me so didn't have time to do it. Expect them soon!

shock__ wrote on 2020-09-01, 09:37:

No. Please refer to the large, bold & underlined text in the very first post of this thread.
You could always buy a GUSAR tho.

that bold text has nothing to do with my question.

shiozaki wrote on 2020-09-07, 18:45:

shock__ wrote on 2020-09-01, 09:37:

No. Please refer to the large, bold & underlined text in the very first post of this thread.
You could always buy a GUSAR tho.

that bold text has nothing to do with my question.

To put it simply, there are no plans to release the production files. Once again, bare boards with InterWave IC (not soldered) will be made available to those who donated at the outset, or made technical contributions to the project. If there are InterWave ICs left after that production run, boards may be made generally available.

The BOM for the various prototype revisions are available for download on the relevant pages of this thread.

To everyone who's payment has been received, your bracket parcel is on the way. Those who requested tracking check your PMs for the details.

Thanks for helping this happen guys! They complete the card IMO.
I've just given my bracket a once over with the polishing bit on the old dremel and it shines up real nice.

EDIT:
Thought I'd update the files in case anyone else wants to get some more made, also updated original post.

Final DXF file that went to production

Final PDF spec sheet

Thanks a lot Whiskey - this really increases the value of this project.

On the other hand - I found a potential issue that might be worth investigating.
Does anyone of you have an ARGUS or GUS PnP in a system with a Pentium Overdrive?
I just recieved my PODP5V83 and installed it in my 486 system with my ARGUS - while most software works fine, all Apogee Software has extremely fucked up music and slightly scratched up sounds. The only workaround I found so far is to deactivate L1 Cache. Would be interesting to know if this can be reproduced on other systems.

shock__ wrote on 2020-09-08, 19:36:

On the other hand - I found a potential issue that might be worth investigating.
Does anyone of you have an ARGUS or GUS PnP in a system with a Pentium Overdrive?
I just recieved my PODP5V83 and installed it in my 486 system with my ARGUS - while most software works fine, all Apogee Software has extremely fucked up music and slightly scratched up sounds. The only workaround I found so far is to deactivate L1 Cache. Would be interesting to know if this can be reproduced on other systems.

I do have a PODP5V83 CPU in a PC with a Gigabyte GA-486AM/S motherboard. So far I only tried the ARGUS RC1 in regular Pentium systems, but I can give it a go on the Overdrive, most likely during the weekend.

Do you want me to try any specific Apogee games or just whatever I can find?

So far I've tried ROTT and Duke3D (even tho I guess that qualifies as 3D Realms)

My Whiskey brackets arrived today and I'm really happy with them, they look great!

@Whiskey, you reminded me I had some Autosol lying around so I hit one of my brackets with the Dremel too and it finishes them off really nicely:

(right card is unpolished)

Thanks again and great job! 😀

shock__ wrote on 2020-09-08, 19:36:

Thanks a lot Whiskey - this really increases the value of this project. […]
Show full quote

Thanks a lot Whiskey - this really increases the value of this project.

On the other hand - I found a potential issue that might be worth investigating.
Does anyone of you have an ARGUS or GUS PnP in a system with a Pentium Overdrive?
I just recieved my PODP5V83 and installed it in my 486 system with my ARGUS - while most software works fine, all Apogee Software has extremely fucked up music and slightly scratched up sounds. The only workaround I found so far is to deactivate L1 Cache. Would be interesting to know if this can be reproduced on other systems.

if it works with deactivated cache you may have a problem with WB / WT Setting.
Does it work if you set your CPU to use WT ?
I also had various Problems with some Motherboards using the POD, specially early ones.

d0pefish wrote on 2020-09-10, 19:33:

My Whiskey brackets arrived today and I'm really happy with them, they look great! […]
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My Whiskey brackets arrived today and I'm really happy with them, they look great!

@Whiskey, you reminded me I had some Autosol lying around so I hit one of my brackets with the Dremel too and it finishes them off really nicely:

(right card is unpolished)

Thanks again and great job! 😀

Glad they arrived OK, they look really nice with a little buff.
Can you report how well it fits in your system btw, any room for improvement?

W.

Brackets arrived today for me too ! Sorry, no pics, but everything fits perfectly. I whish I had some polish. I'll do this on the final board I guess.

Sound issues with ROTT & Duke3D on my POD system also are present when using a GUS Classic (Max 1.8)

shock__ wrote on 2020-09-12, 11:37:

Sound issues with ROTT & Duke3D on my POD system also are present when using a GUS Classic (Max 1.😎

Alright, I tested ROTT and Duke3D on the ARGUS using the following configuration:

• CPU: Pentium Overdrive @ 83MHz with L1 cache set to WB
• Motherboard: GA-486AM/S with 256KB L2 WB cache
• RAM: 16MB FPM 60ns
• Video: S3 Trio64 PCI 2MB
• Sound: ARGUS with 16MB 70ns FPM SIMM

Both games sound fine to me, there are a few rough digital sounds in ROTT, but those doesn't seem to be different on a SB16 so I assume poor quality samples. Music sounds good, but I'm not a GUS expert so I may be missing something obvious. I am attaching some recordings I made of the games so you can judge by yourself.

Also: I can only get the POD to work properly on this motherboard and another newer one from 1996. I have issues with everything < 1995, in some cases it locks up on boot, in others I get poor performance and so on, none of my VLB boards seem to like this CPU even when setting L1 to WT. I suspect Intel may have changed the specs close to release which caused many existing boards not to support this CPU properly.

The Fact is a Intel did change specs so many boards would not run a POD proper.
It should work however on most PCI Boards.
If you Board is older then 1995, the chance it will not work properly is big.

Thanks for the recordings. They sound absolutely alright.
This indicates that the mainboard probably is the source of the issue. It's an Asus VL/I-486SV2GX4. I've already tried to adapt the jumper settings from DX2/DX2SL to P24T (which the POD is identified as) sadly the machine hangs after post then. Changing BIOS versions didn't help at all. Currently the only workaround remains turning off L1 cache. With my CT1740 SB16 some sounds get slightly distorted, but nowhere near as bad as with the ARGUS/GUS Max 1.8. Crap.
I'll try changing RAM sticks as a last resort, as cachechk reports some very slow RAM @ the space from 4-16MB.

I've also tried 2 more Apogee games, issues as following:
ROTT - Midi fucked
Duke3D - Midi fucked, sounds slightly distorted
Stargunner - works nicely
Raptor - Sounds fucked, Midi ok.

shock__ wrote on 2020-09-13, 13:01:

This indicates that the mainboard probably is the source of the issue. It's an Asus VL/I-486SV2GX4. I've already tried to adapt the jumper settings from DX2/DX2SL to P24T (which the POD is identified as) sadly the machine hangs after post then. Changing BIOS versions didn't help at all. Currently the only workaround remains turning off L1 cache.

What revision of the board do you have? I believe there are more chances of using that CPU successfully with revisions 2.x, but even then you may be limited to using the L1 WT setting. Also, the latest official BIOS (from 1997) is a must for newer CPUs.

I have rev 1.8 and wasn't able to get the POD working properly, though it was mostly a trial and error process since there was no official documentation for these old revisions out there. However, I did some research on the different config jumpers some time after that and even got scans of the manual for the older revisions from another vogoner, but never tried that CPU again. I might attempt one of these days if I have the time.

Apparently mine is a Version 1.7 (with the smaller JP16-20 block compared to the 2.x versions).
BIOS is 04.02 Beta, also tried the official 04.02, 04.01 and the original version the board came with (unknown revision, but this one only supports 1 IDE channel - dated 04/26/94).

I've found your post on here: ASUS VL/I-486SV2G(X4) REV. 1.8 conversion and jumpers guide
Sadly setting the jumpers according to your findings didn't help either.