ORPHEUS II SOUND CARD

*WIP* HOMEPAGE


Page under construction!


Order info at bottom of page!

 

Welcome to the Orpheus II Sound Card homepage.

Orpheus II is a PC ISA 16bit soundcard , aimed for DOS usage.


click on image for larger version , red rev1.1 shown
click for green REV 1.1 photo
click for green REV 1.0 photo

Orpheus II *last batch* pre-order information

27-SEP-24: Boards are currently on queue for the SMD assembly line - all legacy chips that are added manually by us later have already been bought and arrived , things were a little delayed on factory but everything is moving without any other issues :)

15-AUG-24: Final RED PCB batch pre-order of Orpheus II is now closed!
Thank you for the support and overwhelming amount of preorders! We will work on factory/chips orders - updates will be posted here!

Hello friends and supporters of our projects!
We have decided to retire the OrpheusII line of cards since we have been making them for quite some time now and their production became more and more hard/expensive - not only from the old chips availability perspective but also the phasing-out of 5v parts that are currently in production. This only means that production of new cards will stop - as always support and help will be provided to everyone that might need it!

In the last couple of weeks we sold what we thought to be the "last batch" of OrpheusII cards, production was arranged and made according to the queue we had from people that filled the order form. But since then things exploded again and the "last batch" was only a small fraction of the cards needed to satisfy the demand. For this reason we decided to arrange yet another production run - this time it will be the "really final one".

In order to be able to make the needed number of OrpheusII cards without having a bunch or spare boards in the end or even worse we make too few cards we have decided for the first time ever to use a "preorder" system. So everyone in the queue in the next couple of days will receive an email with payment instructions for a 50% deposit (and the rest 50% before shipping for a total of 340eur per board shipped) - thus pre-ordering the card(s) someone needs and securing their production. Pre-orders will be accepted until Wednesdey the 14th of August , at this point the form will close and we will start arranging production of the batch of cards.
Because August is pretty much a vacations month we estimate that we will be able to start sending cards sometime mid-October , following the queue in a "first come first served" basis. Of course because this a pre-order it means that everyone will get their order.
The pre-order form is HERE , anyone can join the pre-order if they wish to. Wavetable daughterboard bundles will also be available as usual, there is no need to preorder them and for the sake of simplicity are omitted in this 1st stage of the pre-order.
We hope all this make sense to you.

Thank you all for your ongoing support that make all this possible and catch you on the next project(s) ! - after all we need to fill the active projects list with something! :D - Ed & Leo


The Orpheus II is a greatly upgraded Orpheus I souncard:

More info and development log can be found on VOGONS forum, in the Orpheus II thread.
Please also check the Orpheus I homepage for more info as both cards use the same CS-4237 audio controller.




Jumper Settings:




 PCMIDI Resources Control

P - jumper closed = port 330 , open = port 300
3,5,7,2 = select *one* IRQ for use
defaults shown: port 330 and IRQ2 selected
with R1.1 boards you can also select three additional IRQs: 10, 11 and 12

 
 MIDI Signal Routing Control (to allow a dual-mpu setup)

With this jumper block you can select which MPU device controls each port. Move jumper to position 1+2 (for PCMIDI) or 2+3 (for CS4237) to select MPU.
J2 = Wavetable Connector
J3 = Joystick Connector
J4 = MIDI Out Connector
defaults shown: all ports controlled by PCMIDI MPU


PCMIDI MPU interface info:

If you want to find out more about the PCMIDI MPU part then please visit the PCMIDI Homepage





FAQ

1. My NEC XR-385 wavetable daughterboard is too loud and I cannot create good mixer settings for use with it.

The NEC XR-385 wavetable daughterboard is created for use with a Japanese line of computers from NEC and as such it
uses difffent specifications for it's output - it is almost 3x louder than what a normal pc soundcard expects.
OrpheusII is finetuned to be used with proper PC wavetable boards and as such adjusting the XR-385 volume to be
balanced with the rest of audio sources is not possible.
Simply put because of it's volume output the XR-385 is not supported for use with the OrpheusII.

Tiido over at VOGONS forum offers a service to convert a XR-385 to a proper PC wavetable board - the converted board
works perfectly with OrpheusII or any other soundcard out there.
Alternatively you can use a CHiLL interface from Serdashop to convert the XR385 to an external midi device, the interface has
hardware volume attenuation jumpers for loud wavetable boards.

2. I have troubles allocating resources for my OrpheusII card, it seems selected IRQ or DMA do not work.

This might happen if your system has a PnP BIOS. What helps is allocating the needed resources for use with "LEGACY ISA"
option, this is typically found in the "PNP/PCI CONFIGURATION" page of your system BIOS. Notice in the shot below how
we have set the needed IRQ and DMA options for "LEGACY ISA" usage - they are basically what the OrpheusII needs:
IRQ2/9 for PCMIDI MPU
IRQ5 and DMA1 for the Crystal chip to provide SB/SBPRO/WSS
IRQ7 and DMA7 for the InterWave chip to provide GUS



Changing these settings should help reserve the needed resources for the OrpheusII. In rare cases you might also need to remove all
extra cards from your system, boot it once and verify that resources are good to go and then add any extra cards you had installed as
this will force BIOS to re-configure itself.


3. I have an ASUS P5A motherboard and win9x CS4237 drivers do not work, I get a message about CWDAUDIO.DRV on boot

The solution to this problem is to DISABLE the "PCI DELAY TRANSACTION" option in BIOS, then Crystal windows drivers will load fine.
It is unsure what causes this conflict on this motherboard (and possible other motherboards) , could be the installed hardware combo, BIOS
revision or some other voodoo - but if you face a similar issue give the option a try.


4. DOOM II has some weird instruments in music playback when Gravis UltraSound is used

This is a known bug for UltraSound cards, basically the game driver bugs out when 1mb or more ram is installed (yes even on GUS Classic 1MB
cards this happens) and loads the wrong samples. Explanation is located here , solutions to this issue can be downloaded HERE and HERE .


5. Impulse Tracker does not work with the WSS mode of CS4237 based cards

640kenough! released a revised Crystal WSS driver for the popular Impulse tracker - this will allow the Orpheus boards to use WSS mode with IT ,
you can read more info and download in the VOGONS release thread. Local mirror HERE.

6. Why there are fewer golden audio capacitors on the new REV 1.1 board?

Due to component shortages the smaller 4.7uf Nichcon "gold" audio capacitors have been replaced with their SMD counterparts
from the UUQ audio capacitor series. Sadly these SMD capacitors do not have a special look and use the standard metalic silver
color for their body. It was a nescessary change in order to produce more cards at this time.


7. With REV 1.1 board if I use IRQ 10/11/12 for PCMIDI then MQDIAG reports that no interface is found even though things work fine

The newst version of MQDIAG is needed for IRQ10/11/12 support , you can download the updated PCMIDI Software package HERE .
PCMIDI does not require any kind of driver to work under DOS, the package is provided for completion/troubleshooting reasons.


8. I have an ASUS PVI-486SP3 motherboard and Oprhinit reports an “Unable to reset Sound Blaster DSP.” error , sound is working OK though

Make sure you have reserved the needed IRQ/DMA in the "PNP/PCI Configuraration" page of the system BIOS as shown above.
When you initialize the OrpheusII use ULTRASND.BAT first to intialize the GUS PnP portion and then ORPHEUS.BAT to initialize the CS4237 portion of the card.
With this order there will not be any errors/warnings - it is a specific motherboard PNP BIOS quirk and initialization order matters.


9. Line-IN does not work with DOS programs under Win9x but works fine in Win9x environment

This happens because of the default values the win9x Crystal driver enforces - in SB mode Line-IN is set to 0 (mute).
You can easily fix this by running CWDMIX before launching your DOS program/game that needs Line-IN input.
Open a Command Prompt, run CWDMIX to set the desired volume values and from the same Command Prompt window launch the DOS application.
This needs to be done each time a new Command Prompt window is opened since the windows driver will assume control again and write it's default values.
Download CWDMIX HERE .

tip from user CHA0SHACKER :
I found a way to permanently unmute the Crystal line-in in Windows DOS-Boxes. You can put the CWDMIX.EXE into the windows9x AUTOEXEC.BAT w
ith a couple paramenters. Then it's active for all DOS windows that get started. I use "CWDMIX /M=9,9 /W=9,9 /L=15,15 /X=1 /F=9,9 /C=1,1 /I=L".


10. After installing the Gravis UltraSound drivers win9x tray mixer launches the UltraSound mixer , how do I get back the tray Crystal CS4237 volume control?

This change is made automatically by the Gravis software installation. To revert back to the Crystal CS4237 mixer open "UltraSound Properties"
(located in START MENU -> Gravis -> UltraSound Properties ) , uncheck the "Use UltraSound Mixer instead of Windows Volume Control" and press APPLY, the change will be instantaneous.




11. Under win9x I cannot allocate the resources I want for GUS PnP and/or CS4237 even though I reserved resources in BIOS

This could happen on an ACPI system and all you could manually allocate are resources that are less than ideal for ISA soundcards.
The solution to the issue is to disable the "Get IRQ table using ACPI BIOS" option. Instructions to find the option follow:
- Open "Device Manager" navigate to "System Components" and select "PCI-Bus".
- In properties of the PCI-Bus deactivate option "Get IRQ table using ACPI BIOS" (untick the box).
- Click "OK" and restart your computer - hopefuly on next reboot you will be able to allocate the desired resources.







Driver downloads:

 
 Orpheus II DOS drivers consists of 2 parts for now:
a. Orphinit that will initialize the CS4237 part
b. official Gravis UltraSound PnP or UniSound drivers that will initialize the GUS part

 
 For best results remember to MUTE all InterWave inputs on the InterWave mixer application (MIC, Line-IN, CD-IN etc are not used at all on the InterWave portion of the card and muting these sources can lead to better output quality) .


DOS: Orphinit 0.58ß version released, download HERE .

0.58b Changelog
PC Speaker output bug fixed

Please test this new version and give feedback / bug reports either directly to Edro or Leo
or more preferably post directly in the official ORPHINIT thread over at VOGONS forum. Thanks!


Old versions:
DOS: Orphinit 0.57ß version released, download HERE .
Changelog
Several bug fixes and improvements
Added support for the Orpheus II (LT) boards
Temporary 0.57b fix for enabling PC Speaker output , download HERE .
More info on VOGONS thread , next version of Orphinit will also include this fix but for now it's a standalone program.



DOS/win3x: Gravis UltraSound PnP driver download HERE .

 DOS: Gravis UltraSound PnP PREINSTALLED driver v.4 download HERE .
This package is meant to be used under a pure DOS environment (and not for DOS-under-win9x) and includes the following pre-installed items :
latest Gravis UltraSound PnP DOS drivers
UltraSound Classic compatible patch set
UltraSound PnP 4MB patch set
Gravis sample midi files
UltraMID driver
Please read the ORPHEUS2.TXT in the archive for more info.
Extract in root directory of C:\ and re-create the directories inside the ZIP file, for example the DOS PKUNZIP command is: pkunzip ultrasnd.zip c:\ -d

(v2 update info: muted unused inputs on InterWave in mixer app, changes saved to IW.INI and applied on initialization)
(v3 update info: changed PNP mode to LEGACY in IW.INI so IRQ/DMA settings are respected)
(v4 update info: UltraMID now really included and ULTRAMID.INI also present in \MIDI directory to fix music in some Apogee games)


 DOS/win3x/win9x/winNT: Gravis UltraSound PnP driver floppy images download HERE .

 Gravis UltraSound PnP CD image download HERE (VOGONSdrivers mirror HERE ) .


 DOS: UltraMID v1.12, download HERE .




 
 OrpheusII Windows9x drivers consists of 3 parts:
a. OrpheusII Win9x driver for the CS4237/YMF289 parts
b. official Gravis UltraSound PnP for the GUS part
c. PCMIDI driver


 
 For best results remember to MUTE all InterWave inputs on the InterWave mixer application (MIC, Line-IN, CD-IN etc are not used at all on the InterWave portion of the card and muting these sources can lead to better output quality) .


 
 OrpheusII Windows 3.1x CS4237 drivers can be found on the original Orpheus page HERE . Please read the installation and limitations notes - the win3x driver cannot be customized further and we have to use whatever defaults Crystal decided upon.
Keep in mind that the win3x drivers are poorly optimized and/or bugged and with many systems they cause delays in audio playback. There is no workaround for that and there is no other win3x driver version available.



Windows 9x: Orpheus II driver (CS-4237/OPL3), download HERE.



Driver is based on the last Crystal CS4237 driver version PV2860.
Just extract archive to a directory and when asked about CS4237B drivers point Windows to said directory.


Windows 9x: Gravis UltraSound PnP driver v2.2 (latest) download HERE .


 Windows 9x: PCMIDI driver
PCMIDI related files/drivers are located HERE .

it is recommended to just use the built-in MPU-401 driver that Windows 3x/9x offer

(alternatively you can install one of the drivers found in the PCMIDI website linked above if you want their
extra functionality like multiport mpu but keep in mind these are mainly for windows-only usage with midi sequencers
so no guarantee how they will behave running DOS applications under windows for example).

Updated PCMIDI driver/diagnostics package for REV 1.1 boards, when testing/detecting IRQ 10/11/12



Download HERE .

note: PCMIDI does not require any kind of driver to work under DOS, the package above is provided for completion/troubleshooting reasons
when PCMIDI is jumpered to use IRQs 10, 11 or 12.

Remember that the onboard PCMIDI MPU-401 interface is not a PnP device and needs to be added manually
to the system if you are not making a fresh install from scratch.

 



Gravis game patches & info links:

Official AMD InterWave game patch information webpage 04/02/1997 mirror

How to use Gravis UltraSound with Tomb Raider

The Gravis UltraSound Archives

http://dk.toastednet.org/GUS/

https://gona.mactar.hu/GRAVIS/

more to come...





Known issues:

Duke Nukem II : CS4237 chip does not support all ADPCM sample compression modes the game uses. Please use
AdLib sound effects for the game OR the ADPCM FIX from K1n9_Duk3 posted on VOGONS forum HERE.

Tyrian and Tyrian 2000 : On most systems the game only works with WSS and DMA0 selected. You can easily change
resources on the fly by modifying the BLASTER variable and running UniSound to re-init the card or use ORPHINIT with an
INI file that specifies DMA0 to be used. This just seems to be the game's sound driver incompatibility with the CS4237.

Sierra games with 32bit engines like Police Quest IV, Quest for Glory IV, Gabriel Knight, etc that have WSS as an option
in their setup will have to be played with Sound Blaster option since the Sierra WSS driver is incompatible with the CS-4237 chip.
There are WSS driver updates for 16bit game engine HERE and 32bit game engine HERE but they are hardcoded to IRQ7/DMA1
and have the potential/ability to mess with mixer settings and s/pdif output registers.
 There are now some fixed 16bit and 32bit Sierra WSS drivers HERE and HERE thanks to 640k!enough , this is still a WIP
but they have the advantage of adding WSS support in Sierra games that never supported tha standard initially. Please refer to the
discussion in the thread for further info. These drivers will help all 423x cards not just Orpheus.





How to order it:

 Before ordering the Orpheus II please keep in mind that this is a piece of hardware for advanced users.

It requires knowledge about how to effectively use the Gravis UltraSound PnP soundcard, some effort and games patching to make Classic GUS software compatible with it and on top you will have to juggle a 3in1 card: PCMIDI + CS4237 Soundcard + GUS PnP so good IRQ/DMA resource management is expected.
This is not a warning to deter people from ordering but a warning of what to expect: you will face the same situations as with having an original GUS PnP card + a main soundcard + a MPU-401 interface installed togethere in a system.


15-AUG-24: Final RED PCB batch pre-order of Orpheus II is now closed!
 20-JUL-24: Final RED PCB batch pre-order of Orpheus II is now open!
 29-JUL-24: Batch #6 of Orpheus II has been sold out!
25-JUN-24: Batch #5 of Orpheus II is in the works. This final batch will feature are red pcb color.
 17-MAR-24: Batch #4 of Orpheus II has been sold out! Thank you for your support!
 18-OCT-23: Batch #3 of Orpheus II has been sold out!
01-SEP-23: New batch of OrpheusII boards is available and shipping according to interest queue. Boards are now
revision 1.1 with some changes, please look at the top of the page for changelog.
 09-JUN-23: Batch #2 of Orpheus II has been sold out!
02-APR-23: Batch #2 of Orpheus II has been received and cards are being made , so we are contacting interested
people according to the queue - please be patient as the queue is considerable... thanks!



Be advised that these are the only email addresses that will contact you about a purchase (either Edro or Leo depending on availability) :





Problems?

Just contact us! We'll be happy to help and resolve any issue you might have!


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