Thanks so much for the chat! I really enjoyed getting to talk about the project. That song you chose for the demo is not just a nice tune, it's a great stress test of the PicoGUS's emulation abilities. I haven't seen a song use that many effects at once in such rapid succession. I'm glad to see that the PicoGUS handled it well!
Was a great time and your PicoGUS handled that track like a CHAMP. Since then I've been loading up all my old tracks onto my pentium rig. Thanks again!
As an aside it’s frankly astonishing how important and influential PicoPI and NanoPI have been for retro projects. A lot of stuff that would have required custom chips and custom HW can now be done with the same or even better quality and often also quicker and easier with the help of a PI or a similar small embedded system on module.
Totally agree (And thanks for the sub!). It's incredibly approachable especially for those of us with a software background that are just getting into hardware. Even the ATTiny line of microcontrollers seem like magic.
Really good cheat with Ian, I'm sure I remember seeing some of his first tweets when he was originally messing about with Pis on the ISA bus, very cool project and as an aspiring 'maker' find a lot of overlap with what Ian says. Looking forward to the next one
I’ve been an embedded SW engineer for more than 20 years now and there’s still a lot of documentation out there by big companies like NXP, Freescale or Infineon which omits crucial information or which is just plain incorrect. With modern HW I usually have contacts at the manufacturer like field application engineers who can clear that up and help us along but quite often omissions and mistakes in official documentation and sample code never get fixed and the way the internet works those mistakes and omissions then get copied and reproduced and repeated by a lot of sites and people. A significant part of my work is still basically reverse engineering current HW and SW, made and distributed by the original manufacturer, by using oscilloscopes and logic analysers to pinpoint mistakes and wrong or missing information because otherwise one of our products integrating with chips made by multi-billion dollar corporations simply wouldn’t work.
Love the insight! I'm not sure why I was so surprised when I started digging into hardware that there were so many ommissions or inaccuracies when I know it happens all the time on the software side for various reasons... new versions that are released without the docs being refreshed, tolerances spelled out in the docs to appease regulators but are far greater in action... I'm sure many more :)
I still have my GUS as well. this is the kind of stuff that you wanted so badly that you knew instinctively that it would become something iconic in the future .
the retro community benefits from "anti-gatekeeping" like this. developing hardware emulators does not diminish from the original items, and enables sharing the joy and nostalgia. having software and CPUs fast enough to emulate hardware in real-time is pretty amazing, I only expect the opportunities for this to increase over time.
Dear Polymatt and Ian, I've made a suggestion over at Phil's Computer Lab re Gravid Ultrasound SFX subroutines in early 0.9 DOOM vs late builds - if you know anything about this rumour as a GUS developer I'd love to pick your brain. Rumour was 0.9 and a few other early builds had SFX called as samples by the game engine, saving CPU time. Harware GUS bug caused ID to pull hardware SFX GUS calls and replace with a dirty software DAC approach eg DOOM 1.666 which has dirty sounding GUS digital SFX. As a 386 enthusiast I'd love to trade some extra performance for stability by using GUS in early DOOM to remove software mixer cycles from engine overhead. Unfortunately I can't test right now
I have the same Sony 200ES too. I own and still use in my retro systems; GUS 1.0 1M populated, GUS pnP, GUS Max, GUS ACE in my Presario CDS520 along with MPU-401 + MT32+CM-500 may replace both these cards with the Picogus 2.0 when it arrives
That is quite the GUS collection! For my daily driver this thing is very cool to just be able to run a command and switch emulation mode rather than cracking open the case and swapping cards. Such a cool project.
Hi, I would like to buy the card and support the project, but may I know if it’s possible for this card to emulate opl 3 and Soundblaster 16 in the future?
You can pick up the card at picog.us. I don’t believe the current RP2040 chip has the ability to emulate an OPL3 or SB but I have heard that Ian may be working on one in a future card with the new pico chips coming out.
There is no comparison - they are two very different cards. Let me explain. The original GUS was created around Gravis GF1 chip in 1992. It had its limitations, like sample_rate x number_of_channels could not go beyond a certain point, so with too many channels, only slower sample rate was possible, and vice versa. Also, the maximum on-card memory was, I think, 1 MB. It was great for its time, and a peak of technology then, but 3 years later, the processing power had quadrupled and Gravis had to keep up. So they came with a completely new chip, this time in cooperation with AMD - the InterWave. This chip was of course much better in many aspects, added more features, pushed the limitations of GF1 to a totally different level, while keeping HW compatibility with GF1, so that GUS drivers would still work. The card made around this chip was the GUS PnP (and PnP Pro) in 1995. It had two SIMM slots for up to 8 MB RAM (the InterWave can handle max 16 MB). Of course the software side had to be re-done as well, so different SB emulators were used on the PnP. Now, PicoGUS emulates the original Gravis cards with GF1 chip, while the Swedish GUS clone is practically a re-creation of the original GUS PnP with AMD InterWave, and the maker uses original new old stock InterWave chips that are still available (that's the main reason for the price, I guess - the stocks are limited and once they run out, we are all screwed). So, you cannot really compare them, one is 1992 GF1 GUS, the other one is 1995 InterWave GUS PnP Pro. The only comparison is that PicoGUS emulates the sound processor in software (and very faithfully indeed), while the other one IS an original GUS (only a different, later one), with the original processor, no emulation here.
