These projects are the best aspect of our communities preservation efforts. It really gives me a great feeling, knowing the GUS will continue to exist even after the originals all die or get lost.
Great review and props to the creator of these 2 cards. A few years back I had a original GUS offered to me for $50 and I passed on it as I didnt really want one. If I knew how expensive they would become I probably have done it different.
Complex by Dope is famous for the song which just keeps on adding more and more voices as the Demo continues. At the start it is well within the capacity of Sound Blaster. But by the end, when 16 voices are used, a Sound Blaster could not possibly play it decently. In 1995. Maybe by 1998.
I picked up the Sound Blaster 1.5 from David. I just love it in my Juko ST 12MHz XT system. My first sound card was a CMS GameBlaster, so having that as well brings back a lot of memories. What a great alternative to trying to obtain the original hardware at crazy prices and already 30 plus years old!
I respect the amount of work and effort put into these products and I sure hope that these products find their user. But personally for me a YMF719 is a perfect bang for 5 bucks.
If all you want is Sound Blaster/AdLib in your XT but you haven't got the cash: Many cheap 16 bit PnP sound blaster clones work perfectly fine in an 8 bit slot. UNISOUND can initialize them on an 8088/8086.
The channel bits and bytes had blue memory. He got them from PCB way and put the chips on the boards. You could get red memory that way. It probably wouldn't even cost that much if you already have the ram chips.
You know when I was first introduced to the Dope demo I immediately downloaded it, fired it up, and was met my the fact that it requires a GUS. So the first thing I did was to sign up for an Orpheus 2. Also when I heard about the SB 1.5 clone, I immediately considered getting one but I had already bought the TexElec SAAYM card. I might still get this clone as ressources in old PCs are so annoying to deal with. But I am still very happy for the effort David has put into these cards. So whether or not I am actually going to buy one of his cards, he has my respect. I think I will get the SB clone and use the Orpheus for GUS compatibility. I guess my only critique and it's so minor that it's probably not worth bringing up but here we are anyway, is a PC-speaker input. But as I say, it's a small thing, and even without it, having these cards is always a good thing. Great review of these cards.
I have the GUS clone myself and it is very good. Installed the drivers, plugged in the RAM and it runs without any problems. It has the original chips and is therefore a very good clone!
I still say that _by far_ the most criminally overlooked and underrated ISA era sound card is the Pro Audio Spectrum 16. Sound Blaster compatible, great sound, 50-pin SCSI controller for CD-ROMs, and really solid build quality a notch or two above the normal consumer level ISA cards... they are imo absolutely THE sound card to get ahold of for old ISA systems if you can find one at a decent price. But these reproduction projects are pretty exciting too. I never had a real GUS back in the day, so it might be fun to get a repro version and finally put one through the paces.
Agreed! The PAS16 is one of my favorite sound cards. I have one in my 486 gaming system that I did a build series on a while back. They are getting a bit pricy now, but still way more affordable than cards like the GUS and classic sound blaster models.
I agree that the PAS16 doesn't get the attention it deserves. The sound quality is night and day above the typical SB16 clone. However, MPU401 is the achilles heel. Hanging notes are worse than any SB ever was. But pair it with an intelligent midi card and you have a 1-2 knockout punch that's hard to beat.
Very cool. I never really gave much attention to the GUS. Back in the 90s I went with an Ensoniq Soundscape S-2000 instead which offered complete SoundBlaster support as well as a really solid General Midi wavetable.
I appreciate the effort, but the special chips are getting rare. I advise looking into more future proof solutions like the picoGUS. Despite the name it recreates more than just the Gus. And the parts are cheap and easily available.
@@vswitchzero the complexity of FPGA is just not worth it. Audio is easy to do in software and Isa is very slow. The pico is cheap and available. Something FPGA based would be expensive and there would be little to nothing to gain from it. Maybe a cpld for some assistance like the ttl2rgb thing does for video.
Glad to see at least some effective clones for sound cards. But makes me wonder why no efforts on gpu's? At least per my observation, it's like none are even willing to try other than the s3 _decelerator_ for virtual machines and fpga boxes. As it is, only ever even new of an x86 cpu clone from that one portable that a good third of youtubers snatched up before it came out that it used a pirated bios.
Thanks for your comment. I've seen a few clones of 3dfx VSA100 based cards out there including the V5 5500 and the unreleased V5 6000, but I agree - it would be really neat to see more clone graphics cards out there!
@@1NIGHTMAREGAMER like a voodoo 5 5500 that i put on a crappy pc and sold it almost free.. yes it hurts... ( or trade it for an ati 9200, cant remember right..) i also remember i had one of those IBM keyboards of the 80's, like new, I loved it, but I have no idea or remember what I did with it..
@@vswitchzeroHi again I am so sorry, I missed that part of the video... I made one for myself and it is fantastic, sure, some tweaks to the firmware are needed but it will not cost you a leg to build one.... it is a poor man solution and very good, I can't see me paying+150 euros for a clone
I want a Sound Blaster 16 clone with proper Pro backwards compatibility (no stereo bug), I don't think such a card exists? Sound Blaster 16 is ideal for Fast Tracker 2 in my opinion.
I noticed that too when I was watching it. It only looks like that on the top side. All of the solder joints on the back of the card for the OPL2 chip are solid 👍
Thanks for your comment! Yes, that's awesome. I came across the thread recently on Vogons with the files. Would love to try to build an Argus one of these days :)
Agreed! I tried it on my real SB 1.5 and it behaves the same way. I'm definitely going to explore a few more games that have CMS support. It's a really interesting sound that's for sure.
@@vswitchzeroI really enjoyed that game. Mind you I also really liked "Tongue of The Fatman" (aka "Mondu's Fight Palace") so my standards were pretty low back then. :D
