Welcome to the Orpheus 2 LT Sound Card homepage.
Orpheus 2LT is a PC ISA 16bit soundcard , aimed for DOS usage.
Click on images for larger versions
Previous Rev2 board using YMF289
The Orpheus 2 LT is an upgraded OrpheusI souncard and as such the main features are the same:
video review by vswitchzero |
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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 |
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MIDI Signal Routing Control (to allow
a dual-mpu setup) If PCMIDI is installed and you also activate CS4237 MPU device 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. Why there are fewer golden audio capacitors on the new
LT 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.
2. 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.
3. I have the LIMITED EDTION BLACK Orpheus2 LT board, where
is it's homepage now?
The homepage is located HERE
just for archival reasons- updated drivers/info are located in
this page you are looking at. :)
4. 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.
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. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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".
Driver
downloads:
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Orpheus II LT DOS drivers |
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.
Revised Crystal
WSS driver for Impulse Tracker
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.
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OrpheusII LT Windows 9x drivers
consists of 2 parts: a. OrpheusII Win9x driver for the CS4237/YMF289 parts b. PCMIDI driver |
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OrpheusII LT Windows 3x drivers
consists of 2 parts: a. OrpheusII Win3x driver for the CS4237 part b. PCMIDI driver |
Windows 3x:
PCMIDI driver
PCMIDI related files/drivers are located
HERE
.
it is recommended to just use the
built-in MPU-401 driver that Windows 3x offer
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:
17 Aug 2024: Orpheus2 LT is now sold
out!
Contact information
Need to contact us? Need help to setup/troubleshoot things or
extra info?
Please use our contact form!
Contact Form
Or you can join our Facebook group MPU-401
PC-MIDI Card Group
and make a post, we will answer ASAP!
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