The GUS Daily Digest Thursday, 18 May 1995 Volume 22 : Number 016 Today's Topics: midi sound produces ticks and other strange things. Re: I'm depressed USS TICONDEROGA MICROCOSM problems RE:I tried installing ProPats 3.0... Re: ProPats 3.0 Re: SCSI-2 Soundblaster and GUS? Syndicate and GUS: solution X-COM 2 Problems Record .mid -> .wav at 44kHz? Re: X-COM 2 Problems Re: The GUS Daily Digest V22 #14 Re: MAX memory chips Brain Dead Midisoft Re: The GUS Daily Digest V22 #15 Gravis on AOL U.S.S ticoderoga By mindscape New GUS WWW Page Standard Info: - Meta-info about the GUS can be found at the end of the Digest. - Before you ask a question, please READ THE FAQ. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Piet.Bonte@euler.kulak.ac.be (Piet Bonte) Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 09:59:16 +0000 Subject: midi sound produces ticks and other strange things. When playing a midi file the beginning is perfect. Then ticks are beginning to play. It's like another drum-instrument is playing the same notes. Second strange thing : In powerchords an instrument sometimes is playing, sometimes it does not. Is someone recognizing this problem ? Is it a hardware problem ? PC = Pentium 60 Mhz IDE 540 MB HD 16 Mb intern GUS max 512k Thanks! - -------------------------------------------------------------- PIET BONTE | Tel +32 (0)56 246213 KULAK | Fax +32 (0)56 246999 Universitaire Campus | Internet : Piet.Bonte@kulak.ac.be B-8500 KORTRIJK | - -------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: Sam Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 11:09:05 +0100 (BST) Subject: Re: I'm depressed > supported by the programs on the market. I am a proud owner of one the > origional Ultrasounds and it looks like Gravis themselves are not fully > supporting my GUS. . . . . . Talk about being depressed!!!!! The way original GUS doesn't work with protected mode MegaEm is not Gravis's fault. The original boards were not designed to emulate General MIDI. The newer boards have hardware assistance for GM, so there is no possible way to make older boards work with protected mode games. Gravis cannot do it, whether they want to or not. If I were you, I wouldn't get too depressed. It's probably about time for a new soundcard pretty soon, so when/if Gravis release their board using interwave (I think someone said they were claiming autumn), you can upgrade. After all, would you really prefer a SoundBlaster? At the time we got our original GUS, SB16 was *more expensive* than the GUS. If we'd got that, our sound would have been significantly worse and we'd have *had* to upgrade to something wavetable by now. (we wouldn't have had the compatibility problems though, I suppose). Sam [] http://www.dur.ac.uk/~d405ua <[ Web pagE ]> *NEW* Sysex Manager ! [] [] For Software Forge program information and downloads [] Including [] [] NETRIS 1.1 best Tetris game <[ For Win 3.1 ]> Sysex Manager 1.0S [] ------------------------------ From: amfg@cic.teleco.ulpgc.es (Angel Fern'andez Gonz'alez) Date: Wed, 17 May 95 11:23:11-010 Subject: USS TICONDEROGA You can have native GUS Support with usail30.zip. 16bit cached patches at last. It worked for me in the demo. IMHO the perfect ultrasound drivres. ------------------------------ From: "Cristobal Mezquita" Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 10:59:51 +0000 Subject: MICROCOSM problems I bought Microcosm CD a few days ago and I haven't been able to play with it yet. I install it following the instructions in my 486-66 (GUS max- 1MB), but when I try to run setup or the game I get a memory protection fault, wich means I don't have enough XMS memory, acording to the instructions. Since the game only needs 2.5 Mb and I have 4Mb left this can't be the explanation. I installed it in another 486-66 computer with 7 Mb free XMS and a SB and there was no problem: it worked OK Then I tried with a Pentium with plenty of XMS and a GUS Max 1Mb too and the game worked fine but there was no way to get any sound at all (SBOS, Ultramid...). The instructions say that there's GUS suport, and GUS owners must run a program named gravis.bat before set up. The problem is that it is impossible to run the program (either from the 486 or the Pentium): file not found error. And if you try to read it through any editor you get nothing. The file is 50 bytes long, though. On the other hand, a few weeks ago I played a Microcosm demo (a slide show) with no problem at all (using SBOS). Any clues? The memory problem seems easy to avoid if you really have a lot free, but the sound problem is crazy, since the game says to suport GUS. Has anybody solved it? Has anybody anywhere played Microcosm through a GUS? Please help! BTW: please answer as quickly as you can, I'm in a hurry! ------------------------------ From: Bryan Maher Date: Wed, 17 May 95 09:04:49 EDT Subject: RE:I tried installing ProPats 3.0... >From: chartang@uclink2.berkeley.edu (Char Tang) >Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 10:28:11 -0700 >Subject: ProPats 3.0 > > I tried installing ProPats 3.0 and having it replace all the >recommended patch files. The only problem is, after I get them replaced, I >can't play the ENTERTNR.MID file that comes with the GUS software. Most of >it is okay but it sounds like one of the instruments just disappeared and >there is no sound in place of it. It played perfectly fine with the >original GUS patches that came with the software. Anyone have any idea as >to what's wrong and how to fix it? Thanks. Most of the piano patches that come with ProPats are extremely large. Even the ones labeled as small patches are larger than the original Gravis patches. Likely you are running out of memory and simply can not load all of the patches necessary to play the song. Try using 8-bit mode, or use Patch Manager to see how much memory is being used. Other problems I encountered with propats: 1) After unzipping the files, many of the pathces seemed to be corrupted and would not play. It took me several download attempts on all 19 files to finally get a set pieced together that works. (Probably line trouble at my end but FTP and TCP/IP are supposed to do enough error checking to prevent this from happening...) I used Patch Manager to check out individual patches to make sure they were working. 2) The Drums sound great but the mapping makes them difficult to use. It appears that all the Bass Drums are mapped to one midi note and not spread over the range assigned to bass drums. ie can't have two propat bass drums in one mapping without altering the patch... This seems to hold true for snares and other instruments as well. Perhaps the Propat drums are pre-arranged in kits and must be loaded as such... All I know is that when my personal arrangements stopped working and I couldn't see an easy solution, I reverted to the Gravis patches and put propats (drums) on the back burner. I still recommend ProPats and thank the authors for taking the time to create such a quality set of sounds for the GUS. I get the most use out of the bass sounds and they have really livened up my compositions. Bryan S. Maher bsm@sei.cmu.edu ------------------------------ From: Clarke Brunt Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 15:20:13 BST Subject: Re: ProPats 3.0 > I tried installing ProPats 3.0 and having it replace all the >recommended patch files. The only problem is, after I get them replaced, I >can't play the ENTERTNR.MID file that comes with the GUS software. Most of >it is okay but it sounds like one of the instruments just disappeared and >there is no sound in place of it. It played perfectly fine with the >original GUS patches that came with the software. Aren't the ProPats huge, so you won't be able to fit many of them in GUS memory at once? You could try loading the patches as 8-bit to get more in, but I assumed that the ProPats were intended for use as single instruments, rather than trying to load lots of them at once. I'd get your other patches back - perhaps the ProPats can be installed as a different bank?? ------------------------------ From: teemu@krk.fi (Teemu Hakala) Date: Tue, 16 May 95 00:46:03 +0300 Subject: Re: SCSI-2 Soundblaster and GUS? >>>>> "Gunnar" = Gunnar Swanson writes: Gunnar> I recently got a Toshiba 3601B SCSI-2 CD-ROM and a SCSI-2 sound blaster Gunnar> 16. I am having trouble getting the SCSI CD-ROM and the gus to coexist. Gunnar> I can install the gus but when the SCSI driver loads it gives me a Gunnar> failure. If I remove the card the SCSI works. I would really rather not Gunnar> give up the GUS. If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it. Gunnar> My theory seems to be that it is some sort of port or IRQ conflict but I Gunnar> changed the port on the card to 250 which none of the other devices seem Gunnar> to conflict with. I think the sound card SCSI buses usually use some Adaptec chipset as their basis, so their hardware address would he 0x330, which also happens to be the default MPU-401 address (MegaEm, real MPU, ...). The recent GUS drivers get by this problem with a neat kludge. Everything that is loaded BEFORE ultrinit and uses 0x330, gets to use the real 0x330 (Adaptec or other ASPI SCSI chip), and every program loaded after ultrinit sees the MegaEm on 0x330. So, I suggest you load the scsi drivers (all of them) before running ultrinit. I have solved my problems with running the ultrinit as the last program in my /autoexec.bat. Of course it would be nice touch from Gravis not to routinely put the ultrinit as the first lines in /autoexec.bat. ------------------------------ From: rezaei@tristan.TN.CORNELL.EDU (Mohammad Ali Rezaei) Date: Wed, 17 May 95 12:24:24 EDT Subject: Syndicate and GUS: solution You need the files in gail32*.zip. unzip that file in your synd directory, you will find two .dll files in that zip. then copy the .dll files to the appropriate files, which if memory serves me right, are gamefm.dll and gamedg.dll (there are only two files with .dll extension in syndicate; these maybe in the data sub-dir). Make sure to copy the gus midi dll over the fm dll and the gus digital dll over the other. now run loadpats and then synd. you must always run loadpats before synd. Hope this helps. -Mohammad ------------------------------ From: mark.bakke@ipalace.com (Mark Bakke) Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 17:49:00 GMT Subject: X-COM 2 Problems Is anybody else having problems with X-COM: Terror From The Deep locking up on them? I've tried four different memory managers with the same results, so that's not the problem. The first indication of a potential problem is a series of short, high-pitched, squeaky squeals that precede game start-up and the beginning of each combat scenario. The game plays along just fine and sounds *great* on my Gus Max for a seemingly random amount of time until the sound/music just go nuts and the whole computer locks up. My GUS MAX is on IRQ 7 and every other setting is the standard default. I'm running a 486DX2/66 with 8MB, Stacker 4.0, Cirrus Logic VESA video card, Microsoft v8.2 mouse driver, I have over 610K of conventional memory available and have tried it both with and without a disk cache. I haven't seen any patches on Microprose's BBS yet. Internet: mark.bakke@ipalace.com * CMPQwk 1.42-R2 1878 * [ God's okay, it's some of his fan clubs that worry me. ] ------------------------------ From: Mika Sorsa Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 00:11:55 +0300 (EET DST) Subject: Record .mid -> .wav at 44kHz? Hi, I wonder what would do a job to transform a MIDI file to playeable .WAV file? I tried to use SoundStation that comes with MAX Windows bonus softs, but it only could record at 22 kHZ, meaning playing the midi and recording at the same time to WAV. The 44 kHz recording was someting undecent scramble, I suspect there's something wrong wit SS cause the "record VU's" showed noise all the time, independent to playing or pause or stop the midi or to the level settings of the midi or midi sources (funny that the master volume had an effect, thoug manuals said it sshouldn't). BTW, I mean 16b stereo wav at 44 kHz sample rate. Ok, is there a software that preferrably can mix the midi to WAW using given patches? Any points appreciated... ------------------------------ From: Cuthalion / Sliced Bread Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 17:27:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: X-COM 2 Problems On Tue, 16 May 1995, Mark Bakke wrote: > > Is anybody else having problems with X-COM: Terror From The Deep > locking up on them? I've tried four different memory managers with > the same results, so that's not the problem. The first indication of > a potential problem is a series of short, high-pitched, squeaky > squeals that precede game start-up and the beginning of each combat > scenario. The game plays along just fine and sounds *great* on my Gus > Max for a seemingly random amount of time until the sound/music just > go nuts and the whole computer locks up. > I do get the sqeaks and squawks, (and if I play the right mod first, they don't sound half bad.. :) but I only very rarely get a segfault in the combat, which just exits out to the non-combat thing. (Damn thing seems to be two separate executables, combat exe called from the other!) But I don't think that's got anything to do with my GUS. (It's only happened twice.) > My GUS MAX is on IRQ 7 and every other setting is the standard > default. I'm running a 486DX2/66 with 8MB, Stacker 4.0, Cirrus Logic > VESA video card, Microsoft v8.2 mouse driver, I have over 610K of > conventional memory available and have tried it both with and without > adisk cache. I haven't seen any patches on Microprose's BBS yet. I've got stacker 3.1 and use QEMM 7.5. My GUS (rev 2.2) is on 220,3,1,5,7. /*************************************************************** *** Jesse Morris *** enrico@max.tiac.net *** jmorris@ace.com *** ***************** Cuthalion / Sliced Bread *******************/ ------------------------------ From: "Aric Cyr" Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 18:41:28 +0000 Subject: Re: The GUS Daily Digest V22 #14 To the guy who said: > To speed up rebel assault use a Sound Blaster!!, and Sod the GUS!! > I recently bought a Sound Blaster 2.0 Value edition, and since then everything has worked like a dream! Rebel assault runs at top pace. I use the GUS for General Midi and The sound Blaster for Fx. U > ing this I can get Theme Park, Magic Carpet, Bioforge etc.. to run with sound, and I find that Xwing, and Tie Fighter run a lot faster.. Get real! Sure every game works with the damned Sound Bastard but who the heck wants one? And on top of it I'm sure that every other GUSer on this digest doesn't want to here an advertisment for the SB! We as GUS users have evolved to a new level of audio appeciation, nothing that a Creative Labs sound card (include AWE32) could hope to obtain! I had an SB... sold it. To tell you the truth .I kinda get kicks outta trying different ways to get a game working with the GUS, and usually works excellent too. oing out and buying an SB won't help your problems or ours. It only contributes. 'Why support any other sound cards the SB seems to be selling good at the moment! And hell we can use the same code from our last twenty games... ' - I can just here the programmers chatting. GUS rules... SB sucks... That's my opinion but I have a feeling I'm not the only one. Aric Cyr - acyr@you.wincom.net Windsor, Ontario, Canada - --==(UDIC)==-- Septor Dragon ------------------------------ From: Wee-Keong LIM Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 10:23:36 +1000 (EST) Subject: Re: MAX memory chips I'm also searching the stores for GUS MAX memory upgrades. >From the manuals that came with my MAX, the chips used are called uP42S4260LE-80 (256K x 16 bit), surface-mounted DRAM. Chips faster than 80ns are also acceptable. If anyone (in Australia in particular) knows of good pricing, please let me know. Thanks, Keong - -- Wee-Keong Lim University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia keong@ecr.mu.oz.au Engineering Computing Resources keong@ee.mu.oz.au Electrical Engineering ------------------------------ From: bja@cis.ufl.edu Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 20:52:19 -0400 Subject: Brain Dead Okay, first of all... I understand I'm playing the "Brain Dead 13" *demo*, so lets not get back into the thread on "You can't expect a demo to fully support sound correctly". The fact of the matter is, on the cover it says "Supports: Ultrasound". So I eagerly jumped all over the playable demo hoping my $4.99 would buy me some of the much hyped "fully orchestrated digital sound and breathtaking animation so interactive, it'll blow your mind!". Well (as is all too common) Nada. I tried the old Megaem/Emuset and got a rather nasty error message to contact Gravis with a serious bug with the S/W. I tried the new Megaem and got no sound, but the game seemed to work (not that I'm about to sit through another game without sound aka Noctropolis). I tries a couple of SBOS -o options and got lock ups. Oh yeah, I naturally (optimistically) tried nothing first thinking "Supports Ultrasound" meant native support. Anyone got any suggestions? - -)----- Besjon PS I'm using the Gravis drivers that came on the Ultrasound Experience CD-ROM (which is pretty cool). ------------------------------ From: adu@ix.netcom.com (Andrew Du) Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 17:51:36 -0700 Subject: Midisoft Midisoft? Nah... Are there any shareware or demo programs out there that can print out music notation from a midi? ------------------------------ From: "Jurassic Mark" Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 22:10:01 -0300 Subject: Re: The GUS Daily Digest V22 #15 >From: Tom Soerensen <34tbs@but.auc.dk> >Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 10:26:38 -0900 (PDT) >Subject: V4.11 drivers > >Hi... > >Could anyone tell me where I can find the new v4.11 drivers. > >Just e-mail me directly at 34tbs@but.auc.dk or post it at the digest, as >you see fit :) > >Tom I just upload the whole package on epas yesterday night. Enjoy! Jurassic Mark (Marc Y. Paulin) Mail: markus@nbnet.nb.ca - IRC: J-Mark WARPing and GUSsing!!! ------------------------------ From: Greg Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 23:08:48 EDT Subject: Gravis on AOL Does anyone know the advanced Gravis E-Mail adress on AOL ------------------------------ From: Roderick Nasir DAVID Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 12:28:59 +0800 (WST) Subject: U.S.S ticoderoga By mindscape All you have to do is to get the AIL3.0 files and copy the gus.dig or whatver its called over the the sb16.dig file in the tico directory. And thats it. It sounds great! ------------------------------ From: c2a_vesn@aelmg.adelaide.edu.au (Adrian Vesnaver) Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 14:42:38 +1000 Subject: New GUS WWW Page I have just recently finished setting up a WWW page which contains all known copies of the GUS General Daily Digest. It also contains some important GUS files. These are GUS411.zip (v4.11 software), MEGA303B.zip (Pmode megaem), GUS0045.zip (dos mixer & ultrinit v2.31) and GUS202.FAQ (The GUS FAQ v2.02). The URL is: http://www.student.adelaide.edu.au/~godfathr/gus/gus.html This page is still under construction so you may find that somethings may not work. Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond my control, the net access of my provider has been serverly restricted and thus the page may not be accessable for another week or so, but try it out anyway. Adrian - -- ,-_|\ Adrian Vesnaver MAIL: godfathr@student.adelaide.edu.au / \ Adelaide, SA c2a_vesn@aelmg.adelaide.edu.au \_,-*_/ Australia PGP Key: finger me or see my home page v Check out my home page at http://www.student.adelaide.edu.au/~godfathr ------------------------------ End of The GUS Daily Digest V22 #16 *********************************** To post to tomorrow's digest: To (un)subscribe or get help: To contact a human (last resort): FTP Sites Archive Directories --------- ------------------- Main N.American Site: ftp.orst.edu pub/packages/gravis wuarchive.wustl.edu systems/ibmpc/ultrasound Main Asian Site: nctuccca.edu.tw PC/ultrasound Main European Site: src.doc.ic.ac.uk packages/ultrasound Main Australian Site: ftp.mpx.com.au /ultrasound/general /ultrasound/submit South African Site: ftp.sun.ac.za /pub/packages/ultrasound Submissions: archive.epas.utoronto.ca pub/pc/ultrasound/submit Newly Validated Files: archive.epas.utoronto.ca pub/pc/ultrasound Mirrors: garbo.uwasa.fi mirror/ultrasound ftp.st.nepean.uws.edu.au pc/ultrasound ftp.luth.se pub/msdos/ultrasound Gopher Sites Menu directory ------------ -------------- Main Site: src.doc.ic.ac.uk packages/ultrasound WWW Pages --------- Main Site: http://www.xmission.com/~grue/gus.html Main European Site: http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/ultrasound/ Main Australian Site: http://ftp.mpx.com.au/archive/ultrasound/general/ http://ftp.mpx.com.au/archive/ultrasound/submit/ http://ftp.mpx.com.au/gravis.html Mirrors: http://www.st.nepean.uws.edu.au/pub/pc/ultrasound/ GUS digest: http://gpu.srv.ualberta.ca/~itam/digest.html MailServer For Archive Access: Email to Email to New Submit Files Mailing List: Email to with content "subscribe epas-list " Hints: - Get the FAQ from the FTP sites or the request server. - Mail to for info about other GUS related mailing lists (programmers, musicians, etc.).