The PicoGUS: An ingenious multifunction ISA sound card

If you are into retro PCs, you probably know that the Gravis Ultrasound is one of the most expensive soundcards out there. It was used extensively in the early to mid-90s PC demo scene, and if you want to hear those demos as they were intended and on a real physical computer, you will need to splash out big cash for a Gravis Ultrasound card. This is where the PicoGUS comes in -- it’s a Gravis Ultrasound running inside a Raspberry Pi Pico2040 in an ISA card. No tricks here -- this really is emulating the Gravis Ultrasound on a $5 microcontroller! (It also can emulate several other cards too.) The creator of the project sent me this card to play with, so let’s dig into it and hear it running one of the best PC demos of all time. -- Links PicoGUS: Hand386: Apple II VGA card: PicoMEM: Second Reality: (Demo itself) -- Music 2nd Reality by Skaven Surfing on a sine wave by FearofDark 3D Galax by Beldoroon Inner Strength by LASERLORE Ice Frontier by Skaven Eternity by 4MAT -- Tools Deoxit D5: O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards) Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe: Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron: Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope: Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier: TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro) TS100 Soldering Iron: EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter: DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer: Magnetic Screw Holder: Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine) RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI) Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five) Heat Sinks: Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too) --- Links My GitHub repository: Commodore Computer Club / Vancouver, WA – Portland, OR – PDX Commodore Users Group --- Instructional videos My video on damage-free chip removal: --- Music Intro music and other tracks by: Nathan Divino @itsnathandivino