Notices by Ian Scott :apple_inc: 🐙 (polpo@bitbang.social)

European folks: Serdashop now has #PicoGUS in stock! Ships from Belgium which should save you shipping cost, time, and import duty. He also lets you bundle one of his awesome wavetable synth modules that can plug right onto the connector on the PicoGUS. https://www.serdashop.com/PicoGUS

For the latest issue of Make Magazine, I wrote a feature article about #PicoGUS! The online version of the article is now up. Come read about my beginnings as a teenage #demoscene fan, how I was introduced to the GUS and how I decided to make an emulator for it so many years later. https://makezine.com/article/technology/computers-mobile/democratizing-the-demoscene-picogus-brings-the-90s-tracker-sound-to-the-masses/

Coming soon to #PicoGUS: Sound Blaster support. Massive thanks to yyzkevin for writing and contributing the SB DSP and mixing code! Now you'll be able to play Doom with FM synth + SB sound effects, or play earlier SB games that don't support the GUS.

Alright, who’s gonna dare me to install Windows 95 from 22 floppies?

TIL that the case badge on the IBM PC/AT 5170 can be rotated for when it’s sitting vertically!

When your sound card is bigger than your computer

@dosnostalgic @retrosponge I saw Die Hard for the first time a few days ago and I’m amazed that there’s a debate about it being a Christmas movie. I didn’t expect it to be so damned Christmas-y!

#PicoGUS 2.0 is officially released! It's an ISA card that can emulate Gravis Ultrasound, Adlib, CMS, Tandy 3-voice, MPU-401 w/ Intelligent Mode, and gameport joysticks!
This new version is 100% factory assembled and ready to just plug and play.
And it's open hardware: all design files are available under CERN OHL v2 Permissive license, so if you want to make (or improve) your own you can!
Available at my Tindie Store: https://www.tindie.com/products/polpo/picogus-sound-card-emulator-for-isa-retro-pcs/

100 #PicoGUS 2.0 PCB assemblies are now in production at JLCPCB. This is a big moment for me – there's a lot of money tied up in this, they better work... 🤞😬
I've already noticed one mistake: I forgot one person I wanted to thank in the silkscreen on the back. 😔
Here's the final PCB version, with added side rails needed for the PCBA process:

My video on the #PicoGUS #Hand386 edition is now complete! I dive in a bit more on the hardware side than in my previous videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWUtMPxmKD8

I have what might be the only IPS modded #Hand386 in the world right now… this screen is so much better than the stock one! (2nd photo is the stock screen)

And because it uses a laptop VGA controller that forces refresh to 60Hz, a lot of demos run slowly or not at all. All Future Crew demos are too slow, for example.

Testing out #PicoGUS on the #Hand386… it’s a mixed bag. The ISA reset line is noisy so it constantly resets the Pico unless I put Kapton tape over the pad on the connector, and several productions have DMA issues (surprise!!). Here it is playing the song that epitomized the trend of sine leads in mid-90s tracker music, Infinity by Khyron and Necros:

Thanks to some tips from yyzkevin on Discord, I learned you can poke at registers on the 65535 VGA controller on this thing to put it into CRT mode, allowing 70Hz VGA modes. Second Reality now plays music at full speed! https://www.yyzkevin.com/pc110/65535-2/

Modern retro computing problems: don't put floppy disks on the palm rests of your new MacBook Pro... they will get very much erased! I learned the hard way that there are some dang powerful magnets in there for the speakers! Thankfully the disk didn't have any unpreserved data.