AmiGUS sound card on my Amiga 3000

Welcome to 2026! It is good to be back. 

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and New Year.

My holiday to Japan over this period didn't go exactly to plan - having urgent surgery on my foot in a Nagasaki hospital after one week of my holiday was not on my itinerary. 

Neither was complications from it that left me in considerable pain the rest of the trip, and requiring further surgery in Australia on my return. 

Now, after another surgery here in Adelaide, I am stuck at home recovering, unable to drive or travel. Since I can work from home I get to work though - yay for me!

Before all the issues though, I did get to have some fun in Japan. Forgive the small diversion, the Amiga AmiGUS build follows after I promise! 

Like a lot of people, I use Duolingo app on my phone to learn Japanese and Czech language when I have a free moment. 

BTW, before people pipe up unhappy about the whole AI replacing people thing for Duolingo that happened last year, note that sadly this is happening everywhere, especially in software development. 

Commonwealth Bank in Australia replaced a bunch of their call centre staff with a trained AI chatbot too. 

As an example to you all of how scarily easy it is with these tools, I was amazed how easy it is to use the Claude AI tool to generate a fully functional game in Amiga AMOS....I tried it out just before Christmas last year:

I tweaked it many times via prompts to add more levels and more detailed features sounds, animations and more features...

Here is the resultant code from Claude AI loaded on AMOS Professional on my Amiga 3000...

I went online to find royalty free iff converted samples to use for the game - easily found. I used my own music mod files I created in Protracker for the music, but I could have used royalty free mod files also. 

I didn't personally write a single line of code, and yet after 1.5 hours of prompts and tweaking, I have a functional game on my Amiga. To learn AMOS and do it from scratch would take me months or maybe years. I don't know about you, but for me, this is just SCARY how easy it is.

That said, you learn nothing coding this way. I have no intention of doing game development like this, just wanted to show how it is changing the face of software development generally, especially for companies.

I am sure you also use AI tools for various purposes at work, and this adoption is much faster in some companies than others. It is a sad thing for sure, as people are going to use their brains less and rely too much on technology, but this is not a commentary about AI tools. 

Let's move back to DuoLingo!

In Tokyo, the company that owns DuoLingo opened a Japanese convenience store style shop themed to DuoLingo, with some merch available in the shop! It was called DuoMart, and open for two weeks only in Shibuya (Tokyo) from December 18 - 30, 2025. Here is the ad on Instagram I saw in my feed.

I was in Tokyo at the time, so I booked a 20 minute time slot (you needed to book a time slot, you couldn't just walk in as it was very popular). At the correct time I turned up and it was a lot of fun.

The shop was filled with various merchandise from Duolingo, include plushies, notepads, keychains and more. The floor had the Duolingo learning steps to follow the path around the store!

Some of the themed stuff was just for display like the photocopier, magazines and other common Japanese convenience store features in the store, and sadly a number of things like t-shirts and umbrellas were already sold out. 

I thought the streak freeze character in the drinks fridge in the shop was a cool idea (oops, terrible pun I just realised):

If you have used Duolingo, you will know that there are a number of character used in the App for various types of learning. 

My favourite character is Lily, as she has a "Do your lesson, or don't. Whatever." attitude which as a reminder resonates with me to keep at it. My streak of continuous daily learning is over half a year and counting.

I bought the Lily plushy and a DuoMart notepad while in DuoMart.

Luckily for me Lily was one of the two real life characters you could get your photo taken with when you bought something!

I also rode a lot of cool trains in Japan and saw a lot of other things, but I plan to cover that in a seperate blog post to avoid derailing this one any further! One sneak peek photo of the inside of the amazing Two Stars 4047 train in Kyushu that I rode.

Right, back to Amiga things!

On the positive side, having to recover at home gave me some more time on the last weekend to muck around with my Amiga systems. This was very timely given the arrival of the AMIGus sound card for my Amiga! I bought mine from Alinea Computer and it cost EUR399. It is still in stock here as I write this blog post. 

The AmiGUS is designed and engineered by Oliver Achten.

Here is a close up of the AmiGUS sound card, once I took it out of the box.

When I first heard the AmiGUS name, I immediately thought of the famous Gravis UltraSound sound card for PC's in the 1990's, which were commonly used by MS-DOS demos of the period due to it's superior sound output and wavetable support compared to the simpler SoundBlaster Pro/16 competing sound card. 

Gravis UltraSound was shortened to "GUS" by everyone in the scene at the time (including me), so that is what I thought of first when I heard the name AmiGUS. "Great Unbelievable Sound" is the actual name of the GUS part of AmiGUS...I'll call it AmiGUS, thanks.

So I suppose the obvious question is, "Why do I need a sound card for the Amiga when it already has Paula?".

The simple answer is being able to playback MP3 music files at full quality with little to no CPU overhead thanks for the hardware decoding on the card.

It support RCA port output and also Digital audio output using a TOSLink connector! :-)

The AmiGUS also supports mixing multiple sound inputs with software under AmigaOS, mixing CD Audio, Paula audio, it's own output and also external audio input via phono jack.

The full feature list is here, taken from the Alinea Computer website:

AmiGUS Feature List

• Zorro II card for Amiga 2000 / 3000 /4000 computers, or compatible bus boards.
• Standard RCA stereo output, 192kHz @24-bit.
• TOSLINK optical output, supporting 48kHz, 96kHz & 192kHz @24-bit.
• 3x analogue audio inputs (PAULA, CD-ROM, EXTERNAL), sampled at 192kHz @24-bit.
• High-quality digital mixer which operates at full 192kHz @24-bit resolution.
• AHI buffered stream interface, supporting 8-/16- & 24-bit modes for playback and recording.
• MP3/OGG/FLAC/WMA hardware decoder (VLSI VS1063), enhanced by a powerful DMA stream buffer.
• 32 channel wavetable engine - featuring per voice:
• 8-/16-bit sample support, 192kHz @24-bit mixing rate.
• Sample start, stop and loop pointer for effective one-shot or continuous playback modes.
• 32-bit sample phase accumulators for extra fine grained pitch definition.
• Optional per-voice sample interpolation for smooth sounds.
• Channel independent left / right stereo panning.
• Hardware ADSR evelope generator.
• 32 MB on-board sample memory - ready to be used for Multichannel Sample Tracking or MIDI.
• Flash-based mixer settings which are automatically loaded on start-up.
• Upgradable FPGA Core via JTAG, or Amiga-based flash tool.
• Open Hardware - Software, PCB Gerbers and FPGA Bitstream freely available.

Supported Drivers

• AHI
• MHI
• CAMD (future)

Minimum Amiga Configuration

• Amiga 2000
• 68000 @7.09MHz
• 1 MB Chip / 4 MB Fast
• OS 1.3

Recommended Amiga Configuration

• Amiga 2000 / 3000 / 4000
• 68030 @25Mhz
• 2 MB Chip / 16 MB Fast
• OS 3.9 or 3.2.2

The biggest surprise for me is the Workbench 1.3 operating system compatibility. I am so used to these cards needing OS 3.x to run! The MHI support is the main reason for this I think, since I know it works with the 1.3 compatible version of Hippoplayer. Playing MP3's on my 1.3 setup is so appealing!

Although I plan to focus on getting it working under AmigaOS 3.x today so I can use the full feature set with network access to my QNAP NAS on my network for the large MP3 files, using this card on the Amiga 3000 means I can later try it out on Workbench 1.3! 

This is thanks to the Superkickstart dual boot AmigaOS 1.3/3.1.4 setup I have on my Amiga 3000! You can read the full build of this Amiga 3000 in the three part blog post here: Part 1   Part 2    Part 3

The Paula pass through solution for the AmiGUS is a bit more elegant that it is on previous mp3 hardware like the parallel port MAS Player I covered in previous blog posts. It uses a small expansion card that plugs into the inline video slot on the Zorro bus to extract the audio signal to feed into the AmiGUS internally. No messy RCA cables outside.

Here is some photos of the AmiGUS board. It is great to have a MP3 playback solution for big box Amigas in 2025! It works on Amiga 2000/3000/4000 so it is a Zorro 2 board.

It is a full width board, but not full height, meaning it is easier to install and allows for more ventilation in the very cramped Amiga 3000 desktop case it will be installed into.

The included manual is very handy, and explains all the various ports and the installation instructions are also excellent.

Not including the driver software with the board and having to download it from the internet from a separate website was not so great. Given the cost of this board, including the drivers on floppy disks (or USB at worst) would be expected in my view, especially since they have the ADF files in the download website.

The first step was removing the case lid on my Amiga 3000 so I can begin the setup work to install the new AmiGUS card.

I knew this would be challenging as the Amiga 3000 is very cramped internally, and so it proved.

First problem after removing the Amiga 3000 case is that the DKB memory card (64MB populated) covers the inline video slot connector.

I need this slot for the Paula audio pass through. Hmm...

So, I removed the DKB memory card.

I used to use Picasso IV in this Amiga 3000, but I had lots of issues with video and crashing of the system. It took me a while to work out the issues, but it was related to Zorro 3 cards. Once I put all Zorro 2 cards in the system, it has been rock solid reliable ever since. This is why I used a Picasso II card instead, as shown below:

I connect a Indivision ECS card over the ECS video chip slot to scan double the native video output using a VGA output that passes through to the VGA input on the Picasso II. This means both the native and RTG output come out the Picasso II card to the screen. No input switching is needed to switch between them!

This setup is actually a good thing for this build, because if I used the Picasso IV, it would use the inline video slot, making it unusable by the AmiGUS for Paula audio pass through!

The negative thing about this setup though is the Indivision VGA output uses one of the precious 4 expansion bay outputs. The bottom bay Zorro slot is not being used at the moment, but the VGA output blocks that slot from being used by a card that has ports on the back, or is a full length card..

The other zorro port is being used by the X-Surf 100 card with USB expansion on it. This is an ultra thin card, so it is hard to see.

Sadly, it is not possible to connect the AmiGUS and it's Paula pas through in the same slot as the inline video slot. This is a frustrating thing, as it makes the setup much more difficult. 

I think they should have done like the Picasso IV card did and used some of the spare space on the card to relocate the bits near the video inline slot so that the paula pass through could be connected at the same time (or not). I am not an electrical engineer though, so I don't know if that is possible or not.

So, more thought needed for me.

Next, I decided to put in the Paula pass through card part first, so I could see what I can install around it.

My hope was that the Indivision ECS VGA output could be relocated to the same slot as the Paula pass through and not get in it's way.

Following the instructions, I connected the audio cable (included) to connect the Paula pass through card to the main AmiGUS card - the pins were needed to bend up a bit to fit the connector due to the plastic guides in the underneath of the plug. 

According to the manual, if you have a ZZ9000 RTG graphics board apparently you can get the paula output from that and avoid the need for the Pass through card, but in my case I also have the Audio ZZ9000AX add-on for the ZZ9000 which provides a number of similar features, so I don't need the AmiGUS at all on the two systems I use the ZZ9000 card on. You can read more about the ZZ9000 card in my build blog post here.

 

I think for the AmiGUS pass through cable they should have used connector plugs that were flat to make this easier. I was worried the pins would snap off...

I then connected the cable to the AmiGUS board. Same comment about the pins being bent up in order to connect it...personally I think this cable is for connecting CD audio rather than the Paula pass through (evidenced by the extra smaller Digital audio CD Audio connector), but only this one cable was supplied so I used it.

I had also unscrewed the back plate holding the VGA port for the Indivision ECS video output. 

The cable on it is long enough to reach the top slot, so I moved it there and was glad to see it fitted no problem with the Paula pass through card installed.

This of course means the AmiGUS has to use the lowest Zorro card slot. I still needed a solution for the RAM card, but I have one in mind so let's move on...

I set to work to install the AmiGUS card into the lowest Zorro slot. I had to remove the Indivision ECS backplate again in order to install it, and then connect it again afterwards:

Here is the AmiGUS card now installed, with the Paula pass through connected, and the Indivision ECS backplate installed again:

As mentioned, I am glad the AmiGUS board is not full height, as it gives some breathing room around the cramped case motherboard for heat. It is the same reason the full height/width DKB card was placed on top and not at the bottom of the Zorro slots.

Next step is to solve the memory card issue. It is clear I can't install the DKB card back into the Amiga 3000 now, so I need a much smaller Zorro memory card. Fortunately for me, I have one, in my Amiga 4000D. So I pulled the case off to get access to that card.

The ram card in question is a very small Individual Computers BigRAM Zorro card I bought a number of years ago and installed in the Amiga 4000D as it had more use for the extra 256MB memory.

But I have to move it, as I need the smaller footprint of this card in the Amiga 3000 now.

The Amiga 4000D has the Picasso IV card I used to have in the Amiga 3000D. It works perfectly in it.

After removing the BigRAM card above, I put it in the Amiga 3000 in the top Zorro slot. 

Fits perfectly, no issues with the Paula pass through or the Indivision ECS backplate since the BigRAM card doesn't have one.

So now I have a workable solution for the AmiGUS setup on the Amiga 3000D - excellent!

Lastly for the A4000D, I put the former Amiga 3000 DKB RAM card into the Amiga 4000D and sealed it back up again. It would have much less memory now, but to be honest an Amiga doesn't need 256MB memory unless you run a PowerPC accelerator in it! 

Actually, this Amiga 4000D does have a Cyberstorm 060/PowerPC board in it, but the PowerPC CPU no longer works - not sure when it happened, but it did sadly. The 060 works fine though, so I use it for AmigaOS pre-4.0 versions.

So next I powered on the Amiga 3000 with the case to make sure everything is working ok with all the changes.

It boots up straight away with no errors, so that is a great start!

I can see the extra memory is detected and being used. 270MB free fast memory. Heh.

Next I downloaded the software archives for the drivers and tools from the Github website using my Mac, and copied to the Amiga 3000 using the QNAP network (but I could have used  a USB stick too). There are three adf files, with the manual disk, OS1.3 drivers, and Tools disk. I used the full archive on top which has the OS3.x drivers and tools in it.

I extracted the lha to RAM and then kicked off the installer:

During the installation, it prompts a few important things - you can select which tools are installed - I chose them all:

It also asks the CPU version of the AHI and MHI driver to use - I have an 030 CPU in the Amiga 3000, so I select the 020 since 030 is not available - only 68000/020/040/060.

I didn't install the debug features (which is recommended not to by the installer):

With the installation completed, I now have a new drawer containing the AmiGUS tools.

There are command line tools to play MP3, WAV files and MIDI files, but most likely you would use the MHI or AHI driver with a music player like Hippoplayer, AmigaAmp, etc. 

A full manual in AmigaGuide format is also included:

There is also a AmiGUS Flash tool to view and upgrade the firmware on the card:

The most important tool here is the Mixer. This allows to turn on/off each input, and adjust the audio output of each one, with left/right balance adjustment also possible. 

You can save the Mixer settings so it remembers it next time it is launched.

It is also important to run the Mixer first, as the AmiGUS sound card doesn't output anything until you do. I quickly added it to the WBStartup drawer so it would launch every time.

This is an important point to note, as the sound card doesn't appear to pass through Paula audio until it is initialised by the mixer application within AmigaOS. 

This means games and demos that are launched from bootable floppy disk without AmigaOS being run first would not be heard at all via the AmiGUS sound card unless you feed the native Paula output RCA jacks to your speakers as well.

I had problems with AHI, as the prefs program wouldn't launch due to some missing dependency under AmigaOS 3.1.4. 

I will look into this later, but for now, I set to work adding the MHI driver to Hippoplayer first, so I could test the MP3 playback of the AmiGUS card. I selected the MHIAmiGUS.library in SYS:Libs/MHI in the Hippoplayer Prefs-2 tab:

I adjusted the MPEGA quality to high and maximum kHz in the settings, as the defaults are designed for Amiga CPU's that can't playback full quality MP3 streams. With hardware decoding of MP3, this restrictions are removed with the AmiGUS.

I tried out a few 320kbps MP3 files from my QNAP network drive, and they play back perfectly on the Amiga 3000.

I can work in other applications, browse the internet with iBrowse, Telnet to our local Australian Amiga BBS and play my favourite Door Game BBS Crash and no issues with the playback. Very happy indeed!

It also plays back Paula audio just fine (once the mixer has been launched once). The mixer tool works well to allow me to match the volume of the different inputs so that the audio level is similar regardless of the input being used at the time.

I also tried a variety of MP3 encoding types at varying bitrates, which worked fine. 

I couldn't playback M4a or FLAC files though. I assume I need additional software for that - I will need to play with it more to see what is possible there, but the features list does mention FLAC so maybe?

I will try out AmiGUS under Workbench 1.3 later on as I mentioned, and I'll see if I can sort out the AHI prefs issue so I can configure the card to use with AmigaAMP, Octamed sound studio and other applications.

I can't test CDROM audio input as the CDROM is outside the case on the Amiga 3000. I could output the RCA audio from the CDROM drive to the external input though, and I will probably do that soon so I don't need to switch the audio source as I do now.

For now though, I am quite happy with the AmiGUS sound card. It plays back MP3 files very well on my Amiga 3000, and that is exactly what I bought it for. :-)