The GUS Daily Digest Thursday, 15 June 1995 Volume 23 : Number 015 Today's Topics: Re: The GUS Daily Digest V23 #14 Re: The GUS Daily Digest V23 #14 Sound problem with Myst GUS VS. THE COMPETITION Re: Sound problem with Myst Descent settings, other stuff... Win95 drivers-Another $0.02 worth of opinion Re: Descent settings, other stuff... Re: Descent settings, other stuff... Re: Sound problem with Myst Re: Discworld, Win95, etc. GUS MAX as a four line disk recorder Gravis and NT: What does Mr Gates say? Re: The GUS Daily Digest V23 #14 Re: Gravis and NT: What does Mr Gates say? Gus max + win95 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: Sam Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 10:19:02 +0100 (BST) Subject: Re: The GUS Daily Digest V23 #14 [Discworld] > Anyone knows if there's a update patch available? Yes, there is. Should be in the normal places I guess. > Complete patch? ( I've also considered to buy a cheap SB thing but then > again: how can I disable the music on the SB and get it on the GUS? > (I don't want the music of the SB, it's simply horrible compared to the music > on GUS.) Please. Can anybody help me (us)? If it works, the way to "disable music on SB" is easy. Just use megaem to get the music, like you do at the moment, right? then, turn off megaem's SB emulation and it SHOULD work. Hopefully, someone with ACE or GUS and an SB can confirm this for you. > >Yes. As usual, though, Gravis (it seems they are the only ones... the > >list of currently supported drivers is phenomenal) refuses to write > >32-bit drivers for a beta OS. When it comes out, we'll see GUS 32-bit > >drivers, which ought to be nice. > > I wonder what drove Gravis to follow this policy. I remember when I think they just haven't got their act together yet. > You know what will piss people off more than the lack of Win95 driver > support now? The fact that when Win95 ships, there is a high chance that > Gravis won't have the driver ready or debugged. So people like me who Hey, this is probably what'll happen. But, you never know. Gravis might actually get it done in time, just for once. They DO have Interwave to do drivers for as well, so with a bit of luck they will be taking it pretty seriously. (and a lot of the code can be reused between the two drivers). > It would be nice if someone took the time to compile a list > of game companies (origin/sierra etc...) emails. They have, I think it is posted in c.s.i.p.games.announce every so often. Sam ------------------------------ From: lmfasa@lmf.eua.ericsson.se (Anssi Saari) Date: Wed, 14 Jun 95 14:30:21 +0300 Subject: Re: The GUS Daily Digest V23 #14 >BTW: Anyone played XCom-2 : Terror from the deep with GUS? > My gus (v3.4) gives out some noise each time the game > loads/enter the stratagy portion of the game. It plays a random part of GUS memory. Clearing the GUS memory reduces this to some pops. Just another bug created by Microprose... Anssi ------------------------------ From: e8925292@student.tuwien.ac.at (Gerd Reichinger) Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 13:47:51 +0200 (METDST) Subject: Sound problem with Myst Anyone remember Myst? Well I've got an annoying problem with this great game: When I move around, after almost every step the sound volume changes! Right now I'm using the mixer to restore the sound volume to the maximum level every time, but as you will understand it is getting on my nerves... Some facts that my be important: - - I've got the OEM version of Myst (V 1.0.1) - - I've got the 3.59 software and the very latest GUS Windows drivers - - I've got Quicktime 2.0x software (replacing the one supplied with Myst) Please help. Greetings, Gerd. - -- Gerd R. REALITY.SYS corrupted! Reboot universe? [Y/N] TU Vienna ------ Austria mail to: e8925292@student.tuwien.ac.at Europe WWW Homepage: http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e8925292/ ------------------------------ From: skvarenina@holyname.org (MICHAEL SKVARENINA) Date: 14 Jun 95 919 EDT Subject: GUS VS. THE COMPETITION I've had a GUS for three years now and I'm wondering while reading a few of these digests if it's really worth it. Seems like everyone is using patches and things for each different game just to get it to work. Is this all worth it? Also, GUS doesn't seem to work with Windows NT which is the OS I spend most of my time in these days. ------------------------------ From: Mark Woon Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 10:27:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Sound problem with Myst On Wed, 14 Jun 1995, Gerd Reichinger wrote: > Anyone remember Myst? And while everyone's thinking about Myst, can anyone tell me how to get music in this game? I've got sound fx, but no music! Suggestions more than welcome... *********************************************************************** Mark Woon * I have spoken! markwoon@princeton.edu * ASCII stupid question, get a WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~markwoon * stupid ANSI. *********************************************************************** ------------------------------ From: bbaskin@mail.utexas.edu (Bryan K. Baskin) Date: Mon, 12 Jun 95 23:47:51 EDT Subject: Descent settings, other stuff... Hey Craig, When i'm in DOS (not very much) i play Descent Full Version 1.0 wth a clean boot type setup: Config.sys: FILES=30 BUFFERS=30,0 DOS=HIGH DOS=UMB LASTDRIVE=D STACKS=0,0 DEVICEHIGH /L:1,12048 =C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE Autoexec.bat: PATH= your path statement... SET ULTRASND=240,5,5,12,11 SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4 SET ULTRADIR=D:\ULTRASND D:\ULTRASND\ULTRINIT.EXE -ej -o C:\DOS\MODE CON: RATE=30 DELAY=1 LH C:\DOS\DOSKEY LH D:\SSPRO\SSMODE MONITOR LH univbe SET SOUND=D:\SBPRO D:\SBPRO\SBP-SET /M:12 /VOC:12 /CD:0 /FM:0 You will notice the lack of himem.sys, emm386.eye, QEMM.shit or anything else of that ilk. Just the basics and this runs Descent and many other 32bit games the best. Provided it can load, this will not clog your computer with all of that memory mamagement crap... If you're gonna use a memory manager, make sure it gets you more than a few extra kB out of your RAM... like threads, etc. Oh, yeah. The fact that my GUS IRQ's are set high may also help as they have a higher priority than most of the lower ones. This comes from them being cascaded off of IRQ2 (i think). Priority: 0,1 ,2/9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. I dunno, but that might help some infinetesmal little bit. **************************************** I wrote GravisTech@aol.com and i got the following reply after asking about proper OS/2 and Win95 drivers: >I've been told that they are still working on them...They haven't told me a >release date. They are working on Win 95 drivers as well.. > >Bret. Ahem... **************************************** Oh, yeah. Can anyone confirm this (the programmer perhaps...), but i don't think an WinNT driver is gonna help Win95 users too much as Win95 is NOT WinNTLite, but a different architechure and a differing driver model. Correct me if i'm wrong, but i belive this is the case and if so, y'all are in Gravis' good hands. Good Luck. *************************************** And if anyone cares, the Cubic Player 1.0 can be patched with PModeW1.6 to work with all of the GUS IRQ's not just the low ones. Not a bad player, if a little large. Thanks, Baskin -) Write failed on device /dev/brain0: Filesystem full ------------------------------ From: "Terry Triplett" Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 10:33:31 -0500 Subject: Win95 drivers-Another $0.02 worth of opinion I've been reading the various opinions/comments on the Win95 drivers situation, and felt like throwing out my own thoughts on the matter. First: I installed Win95 (Preview) over my existing WFWG setup, and everything worked without a problem, including the GUS drivers. I can play windows-based games (Myst, SimCity 2000), do midi-stuff (PowerChords, Powertracks), and I can play DOOMII and Heretic in a DOS session (not a window) with no problem. So everything seems to be more or less ok with the existing drivers. (System: '486 DX266, 8 meg ram, Sony 2x CDROM drive, EtherlinkII network card, Stacker (but main drive unstacked) and GUS rev. 2.4) Second: Ever since the newer drivers started coming out over the last year or so, I have experienced the really annoying problems that have been posted here before. This was true when I was running WFWG, and has not gone away in Win95. Example: When playing Myst (or running any Quicktime video really) the sound volume constantly drops down to almost nothing for no apparent reason, then pops back up again later. I can counteract this somewhat by having the mixer running and tweaking the volume control as soon as I get a dropout, but what a royal pain! I just read in todays digest that setting the DMA buffer to 3072+ fixes this problem but have not tried it. I have reservations, though, because a high DMA buffer setting definitely affects video playback performance. I also have the same problem now with Video for Windows as implemented in Win95. I actually have to bring up the Win95 mixer applet, and highlight the volume slider to keep full volume; if I bring another window to the forefront, like the currently running video, the volume drops off again. REally irritating. Another problem that just popped up last night for no reason: Trying to use my midi controller keyboard (which used to work even in Win95) now locks up the system - hard. The only way out is the reset button. Go figure. These problems are extremely annoying, and need to be fixed. Thus ... Three: Win95 drivers. I have heard lots of impassioned cries to the tune of "For god's sakes, its BETA-we should not expect drivers until the *Final release*". I'm sorry, but what a load of BS. The fact is that a lot of people are now running Win95, so the magical *official* release date is just a formality. Win95 is here. It works (mostly) just fine. I just read a PC World (I think) article which reviews the Preview version, and they say that it works well enough to rate a 1.0 version number (ie. Win95 1.0), and I agree. It works fine, and there is no reason to wait with the drivers. Get them out now, because it's just a matter of time now until it hits the streets for real. At the very least, keep working on the Win3.1 drivers so that they work more reliably. Gravis, you have a large pool of (mostly) willing beta testers out here that would be glad to evaluate your drivers for you, so how about it? We've been doing so already anyway. At least that's how it feels with the constant updates to the drivers I've been seeing in the last year. What's the problem. Four: Gravis-where are you? One of the MAJOR reasons for buying my GUS in the first place was the communication between Gravis and us. Something seems to have changed, and I don't like the silence. Hellooooooo Gravis! Tell us what is going on. We are long overdue for a "Just to let you know". Thanks for listening ... - -- Terry L. Triplett Department of Biochemistry ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center terry@eatworms.swmed.edu 5323 Harry Hines Blvd. (214)648-2768 (work) Dallas, Tx 75235-9038 ------------------------------ From: "Henry Timmerman" Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 19:01:15 +0200 Subject: Re: Descent settings, other stuff... On 12 Jun 95 at 23:47, Bryan K. Baskin wrote: > DEVICEHIGH /L:1,12048 =C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE > > Autoexec.bat: > LH C:\DOS\DOSKEY > LH D:\SSPRO\SSMODE MONITOR > LH univbe > D:\SBPRO\SBP-SET /M:12 /VOC:12 /CD:0 /FM:0 > You will notice the lack of himem.sys, emm386.eye, QEMM.shit or nice. guy leaves out the himem, emm386 & qemm "shit" and still uses devicehigh & lh commands... > anything else of that ilk. Just the basics and this runs Descent and > many other 32bit games the best. Provided it can load, this will not > clog your computer with all of that memory mamagement crap... If > you're gonna use a memory manager, make sure it gets you more than a > few extra kB out of your RAM... like threads, etc. Oh, yeah. The well... should I... what the heck : eat mud, pal! "shit", "crap", "ilk"... go wash your mouth. best one to talk about memory "mamagers". probably a wannabe using win95 who thinks he doesn't need memory managers anymore... it's your own business if u can't handle them but leave this list clean. > fact that my GUS IRQ's are set high may also help as they have a > higher priority than most of the lower ones. This comes from them > being cascaded off of IRQ2 (i think). Priority: 0,1 ,2/9, 10, 11, > 12, 13, 14, 15, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. I dunno, but that might help some > infinetesmal little bit. r u sure about that stuff ? r u saying that u r using higher irq for better sound quality? so when u r using modem on com1 (irq4) and gus on irq11 then the gus is getting more attention from the system and you r hearing better sound ? sounds really lame to me... > Oh, yeah. Can anyone confirm this (the programmer perhaps...), but i > don't think an WinNT driver is gonna help Win95 users too much as > Win95 is NOT WinNTLite, but a different architechure and a differing > driver model. Correct me if i'm wrong, but i belive this is the case first time you're not wrong, but who cares. do you really think there is anyone who thought that u can use win95 drivers with winnt etc ? > Cubic Player 1.0 can be patched with PModeW1.6 to work with all of > the GUS IRQ's not just the low ones. Not a bad player, if a little > large. yeah, set it to the highest irq u can and enjoy... > Thanks, > > Baskin -) my pleasure > Write failed on device /dev/brain0: Filesystem full yeah, probably a long time ago ... ------------------------------ From: Chris Hillery Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 13:08:07 +0500 Subject: Re: Descent settings, other stuff... (Sorry to send this to the list, but I unfortunately no longer have Bryan's email address) > On 12 Jun 95 at 23:47, Bryan K. Baskin wrote: > > Autoexec.bat: > > LH C:\DOS\DOSKEY > > LH D:\SSPRO\SSMODE MONITOR etc, etc, and then Henry Timmerman flamed him repeatedly... Just wanted to tell Bryan that some of us at least do appreciate any useful info that comes in on the list, notwithstanding losers such as Mr. Timmerman. Please don't let his type stop you (or anyone else) from participating, or the list won't really serve much purpose.. - -- Ceej aka Chris Hillery cjh@ebt.com ------------------------------ From: Cuthalion / Sliced Bread Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 13:18:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Sound problem with Myst On Wed, 14 Jun 1995, Mark Woon wrote: > On Wed, 14 Jun 1995, Gerd Reichinger wrote: > > > Anyone remember Myst? > > And while everyone's thinking about Myst, can anyone tell me how to get > music in this game? I've got sound fx, but no music! Suggestions more > than welcome... > AFAIK, the "music" consists of an occasional etheral chord, stuck in with some wind and other stuff, that is just digital data dumped off the CD out the wave driver, and through your speakers. This is the impression I got from: The credits; The simultaneous PC/Mac design (Or was it Mac first? The Mac has little in the way of music synth hardware..); The lack of 'realism' by constantly playing backgroud music; The inapropriateness of constant backgroud music mixed in with the occasional etheral chord and other stuff that _DID_ get played back. /*************************************************************** *** Jesse Morris *** enrico@max.tiac.net *** jmorris@ace.com *** ***************** Cuthalion / Sliced Bread *******************/ ------------------------------ From: "Jason I. Goldovitz" Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 14:21:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Discworld, Win95, etc. And again, another batch of replies... ;) Re: Discworld Here goes, one more time. Discworld didn't work on any computer I tried it on... at least not with digital. That includes 25 different machines, all with different sound cards... So Psygnosis made a patch... with new drivers for every card. It is available by simply calling them and asking pretty please. Or, you can download it, probably from epas or orst. Re: Win95 Well, the 16 bit drivers work perfectly, except: a. No volume control, since they're not Win95 compliant. b. Even less support for auto-loading of patches... You've got to load by hand most every time. c. No ability to use the GUS in DOS boxes... must boot out to DOS. This is because the 16-bit drivers can't run in the simulated DOS environment like those for other sound cards (for example, my friend's AWE with 32-bit drivers allows him to run Doom2, heretic, or Descent in a DOS box, faster than in DOS...) So, that's a big list of excepts... so I wish Gravis would get their act together for once and get on the bandwagon. The _point_ of Win95 (one of them) is plug-n-play, and if Gravis doesn't send their 32-bit drivers to Microsoft, they're out in the cold... and you'll have to use the normal process... which crashes the machine several times, and requires lots of configuration, and leaves a control panel that doesn't do anything, etc. etc. :) - jason (odin@ccs.neu.edu) ------------------------------ From: "J. Hunter Heinlen" Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 14:16:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: GUS MAX as a four line disk recorder Greetings, all... A couple of quick questions... First, someone was trying to tell me that there was a GUS card above the MAX that was geared towards the prosumers/studio market. Is this true, or was this guy blowing smoke up my balmyarse??? Second, can the GUS MAX (or this fabled studio card) do digital disk audio recording of four simulateous tracks?? I'm trying to set up small studio (already have mics, drum machine, and mackie mixer :> for startup equip), and a four track would REALLY round out the set up... TIA! | Reality is so much a part of everything we |J. Hunter Heinlen | | do and experience that it becomes an |(AKA SCA Jacobus Jager Draake) | | indistinct and constant blur. Then, when |(Internet:STBLEZA@GROVE.IUP.EDU)| | something nudges it into view, it strikes | Founder: Holistic Reductionism | + us as a grotesque, mangled and maligned. +================================+ Religion in conflict with Science is mere Supersition. ------------------------------ From: dave@turbonet.com (David L Sargent) Date: Wed, 14 Jun 95 11:44:42 Pacific Daylight Time--100 Subject: Gravis and NT: What does Mr Gates say? For refferance, please see the Computer Reseller News June 12, 1995 Page 3 There's been allot of questions lately about the GUS support for new 32 bit OS's like Windows 95, Windows NT, and OS/2. There has especially been allot of negative press aobout Advanced Gravis's decision to not develop drivers for NT. Apparently AG has made the decision to not support Beta releases of Windows 95, and to not support Windws NT at all. And the question is why. Microsoft states that for a product to be considered W95 compatable, that it will have to be Windows NT compatable as well. So this brings us to our headline. "Gates predicts short life for Windows 95" This article was quite surprising to me and my fellow workers at Cactus Computer Inc. Gates prediciton "We will focus on NT as our main stream platform two to four years from now when 16 megabytes on the desktop is common." Bill's been in the buisness way to long for such a long term vision as this. As a computer store, we've been selling machines more and more frequently with 16 megs on board. At the moment it is limeted mainly to the cloan machines in the PC market since they seem to be the higher end of most systems sold. Most of the user market tends to buy low end $1,500 to $2,000 dollar GateWay 2000 and Packard Bell machines rather then higher end systems that will actually last some length of time. I believe that these are what Bill is trying to point at in his statement. However, these four meg machines are becoming less and less of the mainstream. An example of unexpected growth would be the CD-ROM. In the last nine months our store has seen an absolute explosion of both the CD-ROM and the Internet, both pushing the memory limet higher and higher. What I'm trying to say is that Bill's estimation of two to four years seems a bit long, one to two is a bit more realistic. So again, this brings us to the delima, 95 is dead before it comes out, and NT is where life is going. Myself and a few others in the surrounding community are already running NT, and others are heading that way. Bill has already shown 95's new interface on the NT platform, so the only thing that remains is the consumer. I guess the real question is, where is Advanced Gravis, and what are they doing? It seems like pure foolishness to me not to be pushing out 32 bit drivers for every OS on the face of the PC. Let's face it folks, sillyness like this should just not happen, they have zero excuse to not have drivers out there. It's a sad day indeed when a guy named Manley writes better drivers for OS/2 then the company that produced the card, and for that matter, that he had to at all. The only other thing I can say is, please Gravis, don't make me buy an AWE32! Sure they're driver hell, but at least they have drivers! David L Sargent Sales Cactus Computer Co. WWW.Turbonet.Com The remarks on this page, and the random neurons flying through my mind are not, and should not be construed as being the opinion of Cactus Computer Inc. ------------------------------ From: Jeff Angeles Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 12:35:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: The GUS Daily Digest V23 #14 On Wed, 14 Jun 1995, The GUS Daily Digest wrote: > > From: ralam@cs.vu.nl (Lam RA) > Date: Tue, 13 Jun 1995 11:49:15 +0200 (MET DST) > Subject: Discworld : I can't get any Sound Effects > > Hello out there, > > Has anyone succeeded in getting soundeffects out of discworld? > I've tried it with my GUS and my Soundblaster, and a friend > with his Sonic Sound and GUS ACE, but There's just no > soundeffects coming out of this game. Any suggestions? > Anyone knows if there's a update patch available? > > Thanks > > Remco Lam > > ralam@cs.vu.nl > The release version should work with choppy speech just as long as your IRQs are set no larger than 7. But there is a patch (ver 1.4) out in the Happy Puppy web page (don't bother looking there because I'll upload it at EPAS today). The patch updates several things, especially the sound drivers. It uses AIL 3.0 instead of DIGIPAK. This patch should solve this problems, as well as other problems. Hope this helps Jeff Angeles ------------------------------ From: Mark Woon Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 20:17:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Gravis and NT: What does Mr Gates say? Hi everybody... On Wed, 14 Jun 1995, David L Sargent wrote: > I guess the real question is, where is Advanced Gravis, and what are > they doing? It seems like pure foolishness to me not to be pushing out 32 > bit drivers for every OS on the face of the PC. Let's face it folks, > sillyness like this should just not happen, they have zero excuse to not > have drivers out there. It's a sad day indeed when a guy named Manley > writes better drivers for OS/2 then the company that produced the card, and > for that matter, that he had to at all. I definitely agree with David. Isn't there anything we can do about this? Say like a mail barrage at them? And are there any Gravis techies reading the digest? If so, how about a reply, guys? Even a little acknowledgement like "yeah, we know it sucks, but that's company policy" would be better than complete silence. > The only other thing I can say is, please Gravis, don't make me buy > an AWE32! Sure they're driver hell, but at least they have drivers! And it's certainly not giving Gravis a good reputation in the sound cards industry. No matter how good their next card is, Interwave or whatever, it's not going to sell if nobody can actually use it... *********************************************************************** Mark Woon * I have spoken! markwoon@princeton.edu * ASCII stupid question, get a WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~markwoon * stupid ANSI. *********************************************************************** ------------------------------ From: Ryan Andrew Schutt Date: Wed, 14 Jun 95 22:44:56 EDT Subject: Gus max + win95 I have been trying to get win95 to work with no success. I think it locking up because of my gus max drivers. When I disable the drivers in the system.ini, win95 will run ok (I think). I have the ultrasnd statements still in my autoexec though. I also still have the device=grvsultr.386 line in my [386Enh] section. Does anyone know where I should go from here in getting my gus max (1 meg) to work?? Zeus ------------------------------ End of The GUS Daily Digest V23 #15 *********************************** 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 Archives: http://gpu.srv.ualberta.ca/~itam/digest.html http://www.student.adelaide.edu.au/~godfathr/gus/gus.html MailServer For Archive Access: Email to 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.).