Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd. HEAD OFFICE: US DISTRIBUTION CENTER: 3750 North Fraser Way, #101 Suite H, 3140 Mercer Ave. Burnaby, BC, Canada Bellingham, WA, USA V5J 5E9 98225 Tel (604) 431-5020 Fax (604) 431-5155 BBS (604) 431-5927 V32bis CompuServe: GO PCVENB Area #14 FTP: ftp.gravis.com WWW: http://www.gravis.com Email: pnpv2@gravis.com _______________________________________________________________________ README for the UltraSound Plug & Play Windows 95 Driver / Software Installation Public BETA 1.0 of the Version 2.0 software (Version 2.0.2b) - October 21, l996 - _______________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents ================= Introduction Installation / Setup Changes / Features Bug Reporting Known bugs / issues Credits Introduction ------------ Gravis would like to thank ALL of its UltraSound Plug & Play customers in their patience and understanding awaiting these new drivers. We are confident that you will be very satisfied with these drivers and their installation. Although we are confident on the functionality of these drivers, they are still BETA, and therefore may contain remaining bugs / problems. We must remind you that they are provided *AS IS* and are NOT supported by our TECH SUPPORT Department. Installation / Setup -------------------- Below are the steps to follow for PROPERLY installing and setting up the Windows 95 drivers / Software. 1. Unzip PB1DISK1.ZIP onto a floppy disk and label that disk "Public BETA 1.0 Win 95 Disk". 2. Unzip PB1DISK3.ZIP onto a floppy disk and label that disk "Public BETA 1.0 Preparation Disk". 3. If you also want to have a DOS/Win 3.x setup disk, unzip PBDISK2.ZIP onto a floppy disk and label that disk "Public Beta 1.0 DOS/Win 3.x Disk". 4. Insert the floppy disk labeled 'Public BETA 1.0 Win 95 Disk'. 5. Run CLEAN.EXE from the 'Public BETA 1.0 Win 95 Disk'. (Start -> Run -> A:\CLEAN.EXE). Make sure you read steps 5,6 and 7 before completing this step. 6. After step 5, the machine will reboot. ** If you have other Plug & Play devices in your machine, we recommend you ** ** turn off your machine and remove them now. After you remove the cards, ** ** reboot machine once again and continue below. ** ** If your Plug & Play system is working correctly (e.g. there are no IRQ ** ** or DMA conflicts with other devices) you may not wish to upgrade the ** ** ROM on your UltraSound. If so, skip to step 13. ** When you see the text 'Starting Windows 95.', hit the F8 key. 7. Choose the option 'Command Prompt Only' from the boot menu options. 8. At the Command Prompt, insert the 'Public BETA Preparation Disk'. 9. Type A: to go to your A drive. 10. Type PNPMAP /f GRAVIS.ROM 11. When prompted, hit Y to confirm re-writing your EEPROM on the UltraSound Plug & Play Card. 12. When there is a message stating that the writing of the eeprom is complete, remove the floppy disk and reboot your machine. 13. When your Windows 95 boots up, it will re-detect the UltraSound Plug & Play card. When it asks you for a disk, insert the floppy disk labeled 'Public BETA 1.0 Win 95 Disk' and type in A:\ in the dialog box. (Do NOT remove this floppy at this time). 14. Windows 95 will autodetect the other remaining devices. If you are prompted to RESTART computer, ALWAYS choose NO. 15. After all the devices are detected and configured, the UltraSound Plug & Play SETUP program will automatically run. If this does not happen for you, simply run SETUP.EXE from the floppy disk (Start -> Run -> A:\SETUP.EXE). 16. Follow the on-screen instructions to finish the setting up of the drivers and supporting software. Once the SETUP program is done, hit OK to restart computer and remove the floppy disk. 17. When Windows 95 starts up after the reboot, due to a current software problem, you must run SETULTRA.EXE once from a DOS Prompt (Start -> Programs -> DOS Prompt). This only has to be done once and will be fixed in future BETA versions. Changes / Features ------------------ There have been many minor changes but I will list as many as I can ;) 1. Windows 95 Plug and Play installation is now achieved. 2. Windows 95 DOS BOX works fully now. You can play games as an UltraSound or Native Interwave or Sound Blaster / GM (via IWSBOS). 3. The SYSEX crashing has been fixed. 4. Resources can now be DYNAMICALLY changed without restarting Windows. 5. New UltraSound Plug & Play Properties Page / Control Panel Applet now shows you all the resource settings as well as allowing you to DYNAMICALLY load any patch sets on the fly. It also allows multiple mixer settings to be saved and various other values to be set and recorded in the IW.INI file. 6. A newer UltraSound PnP MIXER (MIXER from the CD does NOT work with these drivers) so users don't have to use Volume Control if they don't want to. 7. Windows 95 drivers have been re-written and boast vast performance improvements. 8. You can now have 4 WAVE Clients set so that a background wave file (i.e. MAIL NOTIFICATION) interrupt your current game sounds. 9. PLAY.EXE now support MOD files and wildcards. 10. IWINIT now checks for the VXD being in memory and updates the IW.INI accordingly. 11. and many more. Bug Reporting ------------- We have setup a special email account to handle ALL comments, questions, and bugs regarding the PUBLIC BETA 1.0 Version 2.0 drivers. Please email everything to pnpv2@gravis.com. Due to the anticipated 'swamp', please be patient for a response and check our web site often for updates and info regarding the PUBLIC BETA. We thank you in advance for all you assistance and support. Known Bugs / Issues ------------------- We have tried to make this BETA release as stable as possible but we know of only a few minor bug still to be fixed. 1. To minimize 'false' bugs, please follow the 'Installation' instructions above COMPLETELY. 2. SETULTRA.EXE must be run once from a DOS BOX (as noted above under 'Installation'). 3. If you have a sequencer program setup for using the MIDI IN PORT and you have NOTHING plugged in, they will crash. If you are experiencing this problem, just plug in a joystick / gamepad / MIDI keyboard and the problem will go away. We recommend NOT configuring the program to use the MIDI IN PORT unless you have one plugged in. 4. IWSBOS can't be unloaded in a DOS BOX. To unload it, simply CLOSE (exit) the DOS BOX. 5. We have had a few testers having problems with motherboards with the 'MR.BIOS' brand BIOS installed. We are investigating this but have no solution at this time. Credits ------- Jean-Paul Mikkers for the Public Domain MOD player source code in which our PLAY.EXE and ETEKMOD.DRV are based upon. David Van Dromme for his relentless BETA testing and support. Brian Swango for his non-stop support for us and our products. Many others... You know who your are.. Without them, this PUBLIC BETA would not exist. As a closing note, we would like to express our thanks once again to ALL of our customers for their patience and we hope to serve you better in the future. Thanx, The ENTIRE UltraSound Plug & Play Development Team [End of File]