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: