Beavis Ultrasound PnP ISA Sound Card Replica(github.com)
github.com
Beavis Ultrasound PnP ISA Sound Card Replica
https://github.com/schlae/BeavisUltrasound
31 comments
I was a Gravis Ultrasound Max owner just for Second Reality. That was Art.
Yeah, it infused my software engineering career and interest in optimisation and 3-D rendering.
P.S. When we invent the time machine, we should go back to load up on actual GUS _and_ spread the word for people to never install it horisontally :-)
P.S. When we invent the time machine, we should go back to load up on actual GUS _and_ spread the word for people to never install it horisontally :-)
For what it's worth, if you don't have the chip that powers this card, there's also the PicoGUS which is a multi-function, software-defined ISA card that includes the ability to emulate the Gravis Ultrasound among other sound cards: https://picogus.com/
I have a PicoGUS and have had a lot of fun futzing around with Claude and porting Cave Story to DOS [1] the last couple of months after SDL announced DOS support.
Originally I was just using it as a Soundblaster, but in the last few weeks added Waveblaster, Adlib, and Gravis Ultrasound support. It's been a lot of fun learning how the GUS works and hearing how distinctively different it is from other sound hardware of that era.
1. https://github.com/ecliptik/doskutsu
Originally I was just using it as a Soundblaster, but in the last few weeks added Waveblaster, Adlib, and Gravis Ultrasound support. It's been a lot of fun learning how the GUS works and hearing how distinctively different it is from other sound hardware of that era.
1. https://github.com/ecliptik/doskutsu
Seems like the chip is available here: https://www.utsource.net/itm/p/762821.html?srsltid=AfmBOoraT...
The GUS was such a fantastic card. I didn't have much money as a kid, but found a very heavily discounted GUS Classic around 94 (probably because a newer model was out). I harvested RAM from an old videocard and bumped the RAM up to 1MB that way. Being able to load up your own samples and using them in your games, etc. was a lot of fun.
The card fried at some point because it was so heavy that it bent and hit the bottom of the PC's chassis.
Later I got a GUS Extreme, which had 1MB of RAM on the board already and an ESS AudioDrive chip. Though I experimented far less with this card.
We also had their gamepad at some point.
The card fried at some point because it was so heavy that it bent and hit the bottom of the PC's chassis.
Later I got a GUS Extreme, which had 1MB of RAM on the board already and an ESS AudioDrive chip. Though I experimented far less with this card.
We also had their gamepad at some point.
Former FastTracker II [1] user reporting in.
The Gravis Ultrasound had an incredible price to performance ratio back in the day and made high quality wavetable synthesis at "CD quality" available to the masses.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastTracker_2
Edit: The fact that quite a few games supported the GUS out of the box or received patches to do so was also a well received boon on my side.
The Gravis Ultrasound had an incredible price to performance ratio back in the day and made high quality wavetable synthesis at "CD quality" available to the masses.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastTracker_2
Edit: The fact that quite a few games supported the GUS out of the box or received patches to do so was also a well received boon on my side.
As someone who couldn't afford it, I always felt excluded when developers have not implemented any alternative, like if someone had plain sound blaster clone.
For those that weren't around (or didn't do programming back in those days).
The GUS soundcard just filled a niche perfectly at point in time with a reasonable pricepoint.
It came out at the same time as the Sound Blaster 16, but while the SB16 required "expensive" software mixing for anything but prerecorded audio the GUS handled that in hardware meaning that users either traded for CPU performance or audio quality in games.
In the 486 era it was really a differentiator and also caught on in the demoscene, by the time Pentium processors rolled in the software mixing cost became far less pronounced.
Finally when Windows became the go-to for games (and CPU's got even faster, esp when MMX processors came into play) the API's made cheap hardware equally good since most developers just targetted the plain streaming API's (with software mixing) for broader compatibility.
The final holdout for GUS cards afaik was the demoscene, since the card had a built in mixer with frequency control it could play modules (.MOD, .XM,etc) with simple players that just uploaded the samples to ram and then just changed registers realtime (kinda like an Amiga but more powerful) instead of including a mixer, in the end however it was more about code-size than cpu performance, doing a 64kb intro you could shave off something like 3-10kb's compared to supporting a SoundBlaster card (depending on other tools) and those extra KB's was well suited for effects/art.
In the end though, people realized that the dosextender+GUS combo was as heavy in terms of code as just a mixer on Windows (since you didn't need a dosextender) and when better compressors arrived for Windows even the demoscene moved on.
The GUS soundcard just filled a niche perfectly at point in time with a reasonable pricepoint.
It came out at the same time as the Sound Blaster 16, but while the SB16 required "expensive" software mixing for anything but prerecorded audio the GUS handled that in hardware meaning that users either traded for CPU performance or audio quality in games.
In the 486 era it was really a differentiator and also caught on in the demoscene, by the time Pentium processors rolled in the software mixing cost became far less pronounced.
Finally when Windows became the go-to for games (and CPU's got even faster, esp when MMX processors came into play) the API's made cheap hardware equally good since most developers just targetted the plain streaming API's (with software mixing) for broader compatibility.
The final holdout for GUS cards afaik was the demoscene, since the card had a built in mixer with frequency control it could play modules (.MOD, .XM,etc) with simple players that just uploaded the samples to ram and then just changed registers realtime (kinda like an Amiga but more powerful) instead of including a mixer, in the end however it was more about code-size than cpu performance, doing a 64kb intro you could shave off something like 3-10kb's compared to supporting a SoundBlaster card (depending on other tools) and those extra KB's was well suited for effects/art.
In the end though, people realized that the dosextender+GUS combo was as heavy in terms of code as just a mixer on Windows (since you didn't need a dosextender) and when better compressors arrived for Windows even the demoscene moved on.
Hey! I'm pretty sure I stayed at your apartment around 2003 with shock and ript when we were travelling around Europe going to demo parties!
Man, throwing away a GUS Classic 20 years ago alongside a bunch of other obsolete PC hardware was something I still regret to this day.
Cool, I saw this one pop up on tindie a few months ago, sold out instantly... https://www.tindie.com/products/kdehl/gravis-ultrasound-gus-...
For reference, this card has been cloned at least 3 times now by hobbyists, but all the prior ones refused to release the source.
Oh wow thanks, I had completely forgotten about the Ultrasound even though I loved mine back in the days.
I think the main problem will be sourcing one of the AMD InterWave chips. Those are (to my knowledge) not produced anymore and the only source would be another GUS card
this card was just the most gigantic pain in the butt.
> If you want to build this board, first make sure you have an AMD InterWave chip, the AM78C201. The design of the card is quite simple since essentially all sound card functionality is built into the AMD chip.
...it's a breakout board for an OOP chip that's impossible to find?
...it's a breakout board for an OOP chip that's impossible to find?
It was used on other sound cards as well, you don't have to get one from a broken gus.
” Note: I have not generated the fab package since I have not actually fabricated the board and tested it for functionality. Build this board at your own risk.”
You mean: ”I just asked Fable to one shot this and have no idea if it actually works”?
You mean: ”I just asked Fable to one shot this and have no idea if it actually works”?
Eric is a very well-known reverse engineering hobbyist. He's RE'd several boards over the past several years, all are on his github. He also has built several novel designs from scratch (Such as the Graphics Gremlin - a FPGA-based MDA/CGA card that outputs to a VGA monitor).
Cool.
Still doesn't change the fact that this is an untested board design that relies on a difficult-to-source obsolete chip.
If some pins are swapped by mistake e.g. power and ground you are screwed.
Caveat emptor — unfortunately this was buried in the description.
Still doesn't change the fact that this is an untested board design that relies on a difficult-to-source obsolete chip.
If some pins are swapped by mistake e.g. power and ground you are screwed.
Caveat emptor — unfortunately this was buried in the description.
That’s a fairly unreasonable take. We are talking about a hobbyist Github account reverse engineering decades old hardware. The warning is in italics clearly after the introduction. This is stuff for the experts. What more do you want?
This is open-source hardware, caveat emptor is implied.
At this stage in a project like this, I’d expect the people who were getting boards fabbed to also have the skills to sanity check the schematics and layout before they sent the gerbers off to China.
At this stage in a project like this, I’d expect the people who were getting boards fabbed to also have the skills to sanity check the schematics and layout before they sent the gerbers off to China.
For me, one of the saddest side-effects of modern generative AI is this apparent rise in an attitude of “I don’t know how to do this, therefore anyone who does this must have just one-shotted it with AI”.
Even if we assume this _could_ be one-shotted, projects like this from respected members of the retro hardware community would be what made that one-shot even possible.
Even if we assume this _could_ be one-shotted, projects like this from respected members of the retro hardware community would be what made that one-shot even possible.
As far as I can tell the person you are replying to has never posted anything of value or substance, maybe they should start using AI more
He did a live stream of some of the reverse-engineering work https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2814615896
Anyway, good memories, even in the tragedy. I can relate to people who resurrect GUS.
Since others mention similar failings of their card, I remember I too had it installed horisontally in a (Chinese/Taiwanese) mini-tower, it definitely wasn't a desktop chassis, much less an IBM PC. I guess gravity strained it to a breaking point.