SuperHack/SuperHack CD.bin/CODING/SOUND/GUS-701.ZIP/GUS-703.TXT

Text File | 1993-10-05 | 17.9 KB | 416 lines

Ultrasound Daily Digest     Sun, 3 Oct 93   055 MDT      Volume 7: Issue   3

Today's Topics:
              "Computer Game World" gives GUS bad wrap!
                      7th Guest Fix(t7gfix3.zip)
                        CD Audio on Ultrasound
                        DRAM, SDK, apps, etc.
                         Gravis Tech Support
                              NHL Hockey
                            OS2 2.1 Digest
                   Star Control the straight dope.
                           trapping SB DAC
                    Ultrasound Daily Dige (2 msgs)
                         Zone 66 Demo Lockup

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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1993 16:00:55 +0501 (EDT)
From: Gunnar Swanson <[e-mail]>
Subject: "Computer Game World" gives GUS bad wrap!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Well I just picked up my copy of computer game world this Friday and they
did not like the GUS very much.

Here is the reprint from CGW Oct 1993 #111

    "We tried two versions of the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) card.  The
first one had old software and 256K of RAM (into which one must load MIDI
patches).  It worked great under Windows, but we found it to be less
desirable under DOS.  We also tested a new version of the card with a 1MB
RAM upgrade and new software drivers.  For games that support the card, we
found the wave table synthesis and digital audio to be quite acceptable.
However , in Sound Blaster emulation, we had less luck.  The card uses FM
synthesis emulation to provide FM u\music in a game---a less than optimal
solution, as explainded the introduction [of this article].
    Due to the need for many TSRs , lack of vendor support (less than
Adlib Gold at press time) and poor Sound Blaster emulation, it is hard to
to anyone other than a Windows MIDI musician.  Wee are not saying for a
given game that the GUS won't work, it's just that for the casual gamer
wanting Sound Blaster compatability, we found that it is not worth the
configuration headaches.  The 32-voice wave table synthesis is based on an
older Ensoniq technology and sounds very good, though not as good as some
of the other products surveyed."


    None to flattering eh?!  I must say though thatonce again the reviewers
were unfair in their evaluation.  For instance they did not explain the
difference and the advantages between RAM and ROM patches.  Also they have
just been bought be that evil mega corp Ziff-Davis Publishing specializing
in the purveying of pablam.  The reviews in CGW are usually pretty good
pick up a copy and read for yourself what they said.  They did not like
the Sound Blaster 16 ASP very much either.  Go figure?!


        Happy GUSing
        Gunnar Swanson
        [e-mail]
end.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1993 23:17:38 -0500 (CDT)
From: [e-mail] (Anthony C. Toppins)
Subject: 7th Guest Fix(t7gfix3.zip)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

I downloaded the newest 7th Guest Fix(non-corrupted ascii) but the
installation program still does not list the GUS. Is this because I have
done something wrong or did Virgin only add the ultramid and ail drivers
which I've already been using. If the later choice is the case, I am greatly
disappointed that the GUS is still lacking the respect of software
developers to the extent that it cannot be added to the installation menu.
Thanks in advance for any explanations. By the way, I had 7th Guest working
great with the Miles drivers before, but thought this upgrade would quench
my desire to see the GUS in the installation list.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1993 03:08:06 -0400
From: Evan Champion <[e-mail]>
Subject: CD Audio on Ultrasound
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

I have a Texel 3024 and a Gravis Ultrasound...  At great expense I went and
got a CD Audio cable to hook them up and everything seemed to go fine...
Then I noticed that it was only playing on the left speaker (and very, very
quietly on the right).  This doesn't happen with anything else so it is not
the stereo or the Ultrasound->stereo connection, but the fact that I can get
some of the right speaker sound (though very quietly) leads me to believe
that it isn't the Texel->Ultrasound connection.  The only thing I can think
of is that for some reason the right channel is set to a very low volume.
Is there a mixer for the GUS so that I can change the left/right volumes
etc? (or does anyone else have any other ideas)

You can respond here or at my mail address.

Evan

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 3 Oct 93 0:55:45 MDT
From: Stephen N Larson <[e-mail]>
Subject: DRAM, SDK, apps, etc.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Hi folks. It's been interesting reading the digest these past
few weeks, observing everyone's GUSgripes, even educational.
But alas, I'll jump on the bandwagon...

First, some back-patting is in order.
I've been the proud owner of a GUS since February. Many of you will
remember how much of a *pain* they were to assimilate into your
computer in the "beta" days. However, improvements in SBOS, windoze
drivers and the installation facilty as well as bundling a few good apps
made it a contender. For a company of Gravis' size, the software engineering
really deserves a hand. Bravo, Gravis! ;^)

Nonetheless, old faithful (my GUS) has gone awry. Around June, it got 6 extra
drams to expand it to the full 1Mb. It failed the GUSDRAM and DRAM tests.
The original 2 chips were TI-80ns and the new ones were Goldstar-70ns. Well,
I was 600 miles from the place I got the Goldstars by this time, so just
buying two more was out of the question. So I tried shuffling them in
different orders, and testing the arrangement with differing results until...
BINGO! The ram passed both tests.  And so it went along fine for another
three months until recently, some of the drum patches in PatchMan started
to "click". I ran the dram tests and to my surprise, TWO banks were bad.
The dram mismatch had come back to haunt me :^O !
So, I got in touch with the Goldstar vendor and acquired two more drams,
(yes, they were from the same batch). I was astonished to find that the dram
failed! Not quite giving up, the chips were swapped in a considerable number
of permutations (INCLUDING the TI chips) but BANK 4 just kept coming up bad.
So for the time being, it uses 768K quite satisfactorily.
(Aside==> if you are hearing "clicks" in certain sounds or patches, CHECK
YOUR DRAM before you replace the patches.)

Now the questions.
(alpha) I want to contact [e-mail] about a possibly toasted board,
but Internet informs me it can't open "gravis.com". Any ideers?

(beta) How do you set a track to use drum patches in Midisoft Session?
(I can open load1024.mid to get drum patches, but it's messy: you have to
let the file play, then delete all the notes manually.)

(gamma) How can you set the playback volume in Power Chords? It is very low
compared to Windoze event sounds and Session's output level.

(delta) Can ANYONE get a *free* SDK from Gravis (or reasonably priced one)?
Does it include precompiled .obj's? Do the macros and resource code
support Borland C++? I am considering writing a windoze-based .pat
recorder for 8-bit ADC's (possibly a 16-bit version when the daughter-
card becomes available) so one can manipulate existing patches, create
from scratch or record from audio-in using a simple oscilloscope-type
interface; (unless someone already did that :-)

Kudos to all GUSsers and Gravoids!!!

>CE Stevie<
[e-mail] (Ce, Ee)    [e-mail] (CAD)
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "You seem to be suffering from acute schizophrenic paranoia. Tell
     me about your mother,"   - Sigmund Freud
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 2 Oct 93 14:13:11 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Dave Jiang)
Subject: Gravis Tech Support
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Anyone know how I can contact Advance Gravis over internet. In the manual it
said send email to [e-mail], but my email got bounced. Thanks!

                                                    David Jiang
  ------------------------------------------------------------------
  email : [e-mail]        phone:  [phone]
  usmail: 207 Carters Grove Rd.               FAX  :  [phone]
          Centerville, OH 45459
          U.S.A.
  ------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1993 16:07:16 -0400
From: Christine H Venart <[e-mail]>
Subject: NHL Hockey

I have no clue what has been going on in the "good old" computer
world over the last 6 months because I have not been on internet,
so if my question is out-dated, please bear with me.

I recently bought NHL Hockey and the sound for the Sound Blaster
really sucks. (the sounds are scratchy and the announcer talks very
very slow)  The adlib sounds fine, but now much better than a PC
speaker.

I am currently using SBOS 2.04. (what is the newest anyway?)
I've heard that DOS 6 and doublespace could be a problem.  Any
comments?  What about caches like smartdrv or norton's cache?

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks in Advance!
Michael C. Irvin

------------------------------

Date: 2 Oct 93 16:24 -0600
From: Shawn Smith <[e-mail]>
Subject: OS2 2.1 Digest
Message-ID: <19*[e-mail]>

Did this digest disappear?  I sent a message to the digest server for help
and it does not seem to know anything about it?
_________________________________________________________________
\         .      .              .                               /
 \   .       \      / | .  |  ____    . [e-mail] /
  \     .   . \ .  /  |    | |                      .      .  /
   \           \  /ANCOUVER|BC .  OMPUTERSCIENCE   .    .    /
    \  .   .    \/    |____| |____    .                .    /
     \   .     .   .        .      .OS 2.1 486dx2-66 GUS   /
      \___________________________________________________/


------------------------------

Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1993 15:51:18 +0501 (EDT)
From: Gunnar Swanson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Star Control the straight dope.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

    Ok this is to all of you folks having Star Control II problems.  I
got the game a long time ago because it was one of the first to work with
the GUS with out SBOS.
    The problem is this, originally Gravis sent Accolade a
flawed SDK |-> so the game has the flaws that you already mentioned.  Now
there are three solutions that I know of, one is you can run "gusdram -z"
some claim that this is the best solution.  Another is to play a 669 file,
finally there is removing all of the memory from the card (caveat, I never
did this) because supposedly this was the problem with the SDK it had
trouble with memory management.  Anyways I hope that you can get it to
work because it is a really great game.


        Good Luck GUSing
        Gunnar Swanson
[e-mail]


end.

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 2 Oct 93 8:13:12 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Cornel H. Huth)
Subject: trapping SB DAC
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

 > Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see doing digital audio
 > playback to be all that difficult.

Try it sometime. What Mega-em needs to do, to emulate the SB DAC, is to
trap not only the SB commands issued by a program, but trap the DMA
coding (not easy, I'm sure), too. This, briefly, would mean moving data
from PC memory (that which would have been DMA'ed to the SB) into GRAM, and
then played. To work reliably (in only this portion of the problem) it
has to cover all the bases, such as double-buffered playing, extended memory
use, VDS-coverage, heck, the list goes on & on.

 > Seems like all you're doing is ripping data through a
 > DMA channel into a given i/o address, with a little buffering along

May seem like but that's not correct at all.

 > to smooth things out.  To me it looks more straightforward than emulatin
 > an FM card, or handling MIDI commands, what with the almost infinite

Actually, Mega-em doesn't emulate the AdLib as does SBOS (SBOS is actually
the more complex program -- Mega-em just gives better results [for
what it's able to emulate]). Mega-em is sort of a post-processor thrust
in the middle (if you can picture that) of a MIDI stream. The uniqueness
of Mega-em is that it uses the VCPI workings to trap access to certain
I/O ports (to get at the MIDI data). Once that's done, the rest is
standard MIDI process & GUS-type support code (no small feat, sure).

Mega-em has its work cut out for it to get SB DAC emulation in, probably
for several more reasons than I've listed. Perhaps the author would care
to elaborate since he's in the best position to know.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1993 07:05:00 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Jason Friedlander)
Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Dige
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

 Ul> Playing Star Control 2 with either native GUS, or SBOS, a lot of the
 Ul> sounds are really screwed up.  Playing melee in GUS mode gives a
 Ul> really raucus metal screeching noise when moving on the menu.  That
 Ul> goes away with SBOS, but other parts of the main game sound out of
 Ul> tune, or sometimes even backwards, like the sound data was signed
 Ul> wrong, maybe?

  I am too playing star con ][ and No..  there is no FIX that is avail..

    But it Inspired a Util for the GUS that some fancy Coder could whip up..
    A tsr that will flush the ram on the GUS and remove these problems..

      -=Jason  I'll try


... New Mail not found.  Start whine-pout sequence? (Y/N)
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1993 16:53:00 -0400
From: [e-mail] (Jason Friedlander)
Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Dige
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

 Ul> Date: Thu, 30 Sep 93 20:46:24 EDT
 Ul> From: BGUZ000 <[e-mail]>
 Ul> Subject: ZORK AND HOCKEY
 Ul> Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

 Ul> I went to buy Return To Zork today (Thursday Oct. 1) and the
 Ul> box label did not include the GUS as a supported sound board. I
 Ul> realized during installation that the drivers (*.adv and *.com)
 Ul> were included so the box must have been printed before the decision
 Ul> was made to support GUS.
 Ul> I am also having trouble with EA NHL HOCKEY and SBOS. I
 Ul> suspect that the two are not compatible. I am using SBOS 2.08 and
 Ul> the speech comes out very slowly and the sound fx do not work
 Ul> properly. Does any one have a solution for me?
 Ul> I also noticed that PRIVATEER has arrived in the stores. Does
 Ul> anyone know if the MILES drivers will work with this game?

  Origin use Modified miles drivers..  so in oyjrt words.. no.
  jason


... Catch the Blue Wave!
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 28 Sep 93 9:03:53 CDT
From: [e-mail] (Tom Heng)
Subject: Zone 66 Demo Lockup
Message-ID: <m0ohfej-0lPuBvC@tom>

I know I'm a little behind the times, but I'm just now trying out the Zone
66 demo and I did the start from a clean system as they recommended. Now
when I start the game it played a few screens with some neat music (I used
the /u startup parameter for the GUS) and then it locked on a music loop
and did nothing.  Am I missing something (can Phat or anyone clear this
up for me, it seems like a neat demo).  Please email me directly, for some
reason I haven't been getting the digest for the last couple of days.  We
just got full Internet access and I think that it is a small problem with
addresses.
--
-----------------------
Thomas Heng
Nuclear Design Engineer
Email at [e-mail]
-----------------------

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 2 Oct 93 14:08:33 PST
From: [e-mail] (Dnichol)
Message-ID: <9310021408.0.UUL1.3#[e-mail]>

Cakewalk Pro 2.0


A couple of days ago, someone was asking about Cakewalk pro and problems
with the Ultrasound, i.e. messages indicating patch load failure when
there was plenty of memory still available on the board.  This person
was wondering if the commercial version had the same problem as they
were using a demo.  Unfortunately, the answer is yes, it does.  Two of
the ".WRK" files that come with it exhibit this problem.  Both use SYSEX
commands for SouncCanvas, so it may be related to that.  May also be a
GUS driver problem.  Anyway... if anybody learns anything about this,
please post it!  I'll do the same.
---
 ~ SLMR 2.0 ~ I'm in shape ... round's a shape isn't it?

------------------------------

End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V7 #3
************************************

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