The Gravis UltraSound is a sound card that borders on legendary. Unfortunately, the market demand for "Sound Blaster support" pushed it into the background, but the demoscene universe didn't hesitate to embrace it. Today, anyone interested in an original Gravis UltraSound will have to pay at least $300-350 (with models that easily exceed $1,000), however, there is another path: hardware emulation with a PicoGUS board, which uses the brain of the Raspberry Pi Pico.
The Gravis UltraSound debuted in October 1992. 16 bits, 44.1 kHz, 32 voices, 256 kilobytes of integrated memory, AdLib and Sound Blaster compatibility… its specifications were quite good, but the reviews of the time put a lot of pressure on the limited native support in games, and the issues associated with its Sound Blaster emulation.
This family of cards (there were several versions) found a better place in the demoscene space, and became highly desired among retro hardware enthusiasts. However, acquiring an original UltraSound is not an easy task. Many boards stopped working ("courtesy" of time and exhausted capacitors), and those that work properly can be worth thousands of dollars. With that in mind, the community decided to follow another path: reproducing the virtues of the Gravis UltraSound through emulation. The result? PicoGUS.
(Ed. note: PhilsComputerLab published a solid review of the PicoGUS at the end of January.)
PicoGUS: Emulating a Gravis UltraSound with Raspberry Pi
Its creator Ian Scott, also known as Polpo on GitHub, shared all the details on his profile, so that anyone can build a PicoGUS on their own. The most impressive part is that Gravis emulation is just one of its functions. PicoGUS has the ability to emulate AdLib, MPU-401 in intelligent mode, the classic Tandy 3-Voice protocol, CMS/Game Blaster, and the gameport for joysticks with a USB port. As if that weren't enough, many PicoGUS designs include the header to connect waveblaster modules.
All of this is possible thanks to the RP2040 chip that comes in the Raspberry Pi Pico. The 1.x editions of the PicoGUS use the standard Pi Pico, but version 2.0 has greater integration and can be purchased from its official store ready to use, without needing to program or load firmware. Although there is currently no stock, its base price of $45 is certainly reasonable, and it is shaping up to be an excellent option for all kinds of old computers with ISA slots.
Finally, it's also worth mentioning the Snark Barker (Sound Blaster 1.0 clone), and the Covox Speech Thing that we can build with a handful of resistors.
