Sound Blaster 1.5 and Gravis Ultrasound PnP Clone Review!

Рет қаралды 9,707

Күн бұрын

With the prices of classic sound cards reaching all-time highs, modern clones and reproductions are becoming attractive alternatives. Today I’ll be reviewing two clones created by David E Larsson. The first is a clone of the Sound Blaster 1.5 and the second, the Gravis Ultrasound Plug and Play. Both are 100% compatible with the originals and feature all the same features, bugs and limitations too. David also includes some minor enhancements without sacrificing anything in the way of compatibility.
David’s Website:
electronics.dose.se/
David’s Tindie Store:
www.tindie.com/stores/kdehl/
David’s eBay Store:
www.ebay.ca/usr/davidel28
Presentation on the Snark Barker reverse engineering by Eric Schlaepfer aka "Tube Time"
• Cloning A Sound Card |...
Ian Scott's PicoGUS Project:
github.com/polpo/picogus
Gravis Ultrasound PnP Floppy and CD Images:
vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?ca...
**
My Blog: vswitchzero.com/
Follow me on X/Twitter: x.com/vswitchzero
Mastodon: bitbang.social/@vswitchzero
If you enjoy my channel, please consider supporting me on Patreon:
/ vswitchzero
**
00:00 Introduction
01:19 A Bit of Sound Blaster History
02:48 A Modern Day Sound Blaster Clone
04:12 Important Sound Blaster ICs
05:27 Extra Enhancements
06:15 A Bit of Gravis Ultrasound History
08:10 A Modern-Day GUS Clone
09:22 A Closer Look at the GUS PNP Clone
10:41 Test Setup and Software
12:07 Sound Blaster Clone Tests
16:17 Gravis Ultrasound Clone Tests
20:12 Pricing and Options
21:40 Conclusion

Пікірлер: 93

@bzanzaFN 9 ай бұрын

bro? why is this goated youtuber only at 11.6k subs

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

Thanks so much 😄👍

@bzuidgeest 9 ай бұрын

Because there are thousands of channels like it. Nice video, but not that special bro

@bzanzaFN 9 ай бұрын

bringus, CRT Guy, theres so many more but i dont see audio content much so it stood out to me in particular.@@bzuidgeest

@spladam3845 9 ай бұрын

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.

@FriedEgg101 9 ай бұрын

Wow the lemmings music was a wave of nostalgia. Followed by the apogee splash screen. Emotional.

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

The Apogee splash screen and jingle is permanently burnt into my memory. Love it :-)

@gremfive4246 9 ай бұрын

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.

@micv2 9 ай бұрын

I bought two GUS replicas from David. David also helped me with questions after the purchase. Simply great! Thanks 👍

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

Thanks for the comment! Awesome! Did you buy two different revisions or both the same?

@Smakificator 9 ай бұрын

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.

@Retrojuju 5 ай бұрын

28 channels are used!

@wasd____ 9 ай бұрын

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.

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

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.

@mikebeutler84 3 ай бұрын

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.

@josephalbrecht3735 9 ай бұрын

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!

@techdistractions 9 ай бұрын

I’ll always have a soft spot for the good ol’ adlib :-)

@BrassicGamer 9 ай бұрын

I love how oldskool the PCB for the Sound Blaster looks!

@DOSStorm 9 ай бұрын

Both these cards are awesome. David is also really cool about giving support if you need help.

@klausschmidt982 9 ай бұрын

I got the SB 1.5 clone from David. I just love the old-fashioned sounds of adlib and cms. I might get GUS later too

@ianpolpo 9 ай бұрын

I really like the Monkey Island theme in CMS!

@JimLeonard 9 ай бұрын

Once again, fantastic product review and demonstration. I wish the SB 1.5 clone had speaker input, but otherwise very nice and fair price.

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

Thanks so much! :-)

@krzbrew 9 ай бұрын

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.

@mikebeutler84 3 ай бұрын

All well and good until you play Duke Nukem 2. The one pesky game that used ADPCM.

@weepingscorpion8739 9 ай бұрын

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.

@davidelarsson 9 ай бұрын

I haven’t tried myself, but couldn’t you use the CD-ROM connectors as input from the PC speaker?

@weepingscorpion8739 9 ай бұрын

@@davidelarsson No. Has to be a special speaker-in from what I know. Philscomputerlab did a video about this a while back.

@mjmonjure 9 ай бұрын

Excellent video! I purchased both of these from David. That was months ago and I am still working up the gumption to install the GUS.

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

Thanks so much!

@W3DRK 7 ай бұрын

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.

@vswitchzero 7 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing! The Soundscape S-2000 is a legendary card, that's for sure :)

@Shmbler 9 ай бұрын

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.

@awilliams1701 9 ай бұрын

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.

@briangoldberg4439 9 ай бұрын

awesome video! love seeing what's going on in the retro PC community. see you around

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

Thanks very much! :-)

@Freddie_R 9 ай бұрын

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!

@JohnSmith-iu8cj 8 ай бұрын

Great video! Love everything about it!

@EsaKarjalainen 7 ай бұрын

Gus PnP had some early driver issues, but it was pretty dang good after a few updates. I can't believe I SER'd mine. :(

@fft2020 9 ай бұрын

awesome video !

@SobieRobie 9 ай бұрын

Don't Blast your sound! GUS forever!

@Vanessaira-Retro 9 ай бұрын

Great video VS0. Thank you.

@nethoncho 9 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing your videos

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

Thanks so much for the contribution and support! I really appreciate it! 😄👍

@ahabwolf7580 9 ай бұрын

Awesome video, thank you!

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

Glad you liked it! Thanks! :-)

@IBM_Museum 9 ай бұрын

The original Sound Blasters sometimes didn't have the PCB edges at the bus connection beveled down - really sloppy...

@Ale.K7 9 ай бұрын

Nice!

@Smakificator 9 ай бұрын

Love this. ALL OF IT!!! ! ! ! !1

@sergiobisonte 9 ай бұрын

I remember back in the early 2000's puting 'boxes' of old isa sound blasters and other cards in the garbage

@nalinux 9 ай бұрын

And I used vintage computer metal case sheets to fix old cars bodies with a Mig welder :)

@1NIGHTMAREGAMER 9 ай бұрын

Ouf bet that memory hurts

@sergiobisonte 9 ай бұрын

@@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..

@ZeroHourProductions407 9 ай бұрын

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.

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

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!

@Cinncinnatus 6 ай бұрын

I owned a GUS I loved it.

@bzuidgeest 9 ай бұрын

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 9 ай бұрын

Agreed. The picoGUS is a great project! I'm planning to build one soon. I'm also interested to see what FPGA technology can do in this area too.

@bzuidgeest 9 ай бұрын

@@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.

@JorgeCarvalho_web_dev 9 ай бұрын

Hi Sir! You missed the PicoGus, card that uses an Raspberry Pico for Gus emulation and others (very affordable card)

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

It got a mention at 8:54 actually :-) .. I'm looking forward to building and trying out a PicoGUS one of these days. Fantastic project!

@JorgeCarvalho_web_dev 9 ай бұрын

@@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

@NielsHeusinkveld 9 ай бұрын

hoho the LGR connector!

@bitdevice 9 ай бұрын

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.

@Arivia1 9 ай бұрын

Jazz Jackrabbit saying "yum" sounds like one of those girls on TikTok these days.

@1337Shockwav3 7 ай бұрын

Nice you've mentioned the ARGUS. Just out of interest, are you aware that the gerber files are public so you can have your own PCBs produced?

@vswitchzero 7 ай бұрын

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 :)

@KaldekBoch 9 ай бұрын

Holy crap was that fighting game at 7:50 "One Must Fall"?

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

It was indeed! 👍

@KaldekBoch 9 ай бұрын

@@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

@francistheodorecatte 9 ай бұрын

looks like there's a dry joint or two on the SB1.5 clone's OPL chip

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

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 👍

@ruxandy 9 ай бұрын

13:32: You pronounced "ID" as "Eye - dee". John Carmack wants to have a word with you. 😁

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

Haha yeah, I've been saying it incorrectly for decades.. It's going to be a tough habit to break I think 😅

@ruxandy 9 ай бұрын

@@vswitchzero, I know, me too! 😀

@ErrantMasa 9 ай бұрын

@@vswitchzerowe all made that same mistake back in the day!

@SianaGearz 9 ай бұрын

Haha i was like "play dope play dope PLAY DOPE" and then you just did! :D

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

Haha awesome 😄 .. I never got into the demo scene back in the day, so I'm only now starting to discover and experience many of these 👍

@SianaGearz 9 ай бұрын

@@vswitchzero My lesser known favourites may be Untitled by DUST and Heartquake by Iguana.

@SianaGearz 9 ай бұрын

@@vswitchzero The whole reason i learned of the Demoscene was the demo compilation disc that came with the Ultrasound ACE.

@NightSprinter 6 ай бұрын

"Quirky"? XD Pfft, try me literally dealing with the setup freezing my AST. I can't even get the card installed for WfW3.11 as a result.

@awilliams1701 9 ай бұрын

CMS on monkey sounds like some of the notes are being cut off.

@vswitchzero 9 ай бұрын

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.