SuperHack/SuperHack CD.bin/CODING/SOUND/GUS-701.ZIP/GUS-716.TXT

Text File | 1993-10-20 | 24.1 KB | 639 lines

Ultrasound Daily Digest     Sun, 17 Oct 93  0:07 MDT     Volume 7: Issue  16

Today's Topics:
             [Ultrasnd] vs. [GeneralMidi] in groovie.ini
                            Dividing list
           Downgrading to 386 fixes GUS distortion under CW
                            drum sequencer
                          Happy with my GUS
                     NHL Hockey & Flight Sim 5.0
                                PAS16
                         Recent SBOS failures
                      Sending email to companies
                       splitting the conference
                    Splitting the digest (2 msgs)
                          splitting the list
                    Ultrasound Daily Digest V7 #15
                             unsubscribe
                        Vote NO on the split!

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, 16 Oct 93 10:23:02 PDT
From: [e-mail] (Mike Batchelor)
Subject: Re: [Ultrasnd] vs. [GeneralMidi] in groovie.ini

Not the Ultrasound Server once wrote...
$
$  ------------------------------
$
$  Date: Fri, 15 Oct 93 12:28:14 EST
$  From: pscs![e-mail] (Perry B. Walker)
$  Subject: Re: 7th guest and gus
$
$  Mike Batchelor, in regards to your post to the Ultrasound Daily Digest
$  > [problem discription deleted]
$  > $
$  > $      Name=Ultrasound & Ultramid (General Midi)
$  > $      Groovie_name=GeneralMidi
$  > $      Pcm_adv_name=gf1digi.adv
$  > $      Midi_adv_name=gf1midi.adv
$  > $      ---
$  >
$  > Nice try, but this all has nothing to do with the lockups.  I get lockups
$  > on exit also, and nothing makes them go away.  I never have seen the
$  > keyboard lockup you described, though.  Just understand that nothing you
$  > did with groovie.ini or audio.dat really had any effect on this.  It's
$  > coincidence that the lockups went away after making those changes.
$
$  I can't agree with you on this.  While it is true that the Name field has
$  nothing to do with it, it is only used as the text displayed in the install
$  program, the Groovie_name does make a difference.  The Groovie_name becomes
$  the section header in the groovie.ini file like this:
$
$      [Ultrasound]
$      irq=default
$      port=default
$      xmi=gf1midi.adv
$      pcm=gf1digi.adv
$      dma=default
$
$  or
$
$      [GeneralMidi]
$      ...

Well, I get to eat crow on this one.  You are 100% right, Perry.  And I
knew it, too!  I recall back a few months ago when I manually created the
groovie.ini entry, and I did set it to GeneralMidi at that time, and never
got a lockup on exit.  Between switching version of UltraMID, new QEMM,
and discovering Audio.dat, I had set the groovie_name to Ultrasound after
putting the GUS entry into audio.dat.  Now it all makes sense, and I
realize that the lockups on exit started occuring around that time.

Everybody all together:  Gimme a big Homer Simpson "DOH!!!"


$  ------------------------------
$
$  Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 14:45:08 -0600 (CDT)
$  From: [e-mail] (Dave DeBry)
$  Subject: DIGEST ADMIN: SPLITTING THE LIST?
$
$  [e-mail] wrote:
$  > Before I launch into boring background and lose anyone who might have a
$  > comment, let me cut to the chase...what are the chances/logistics/other?
$  > involved in splitting the GUS group into music and games?
$
$      Before I answer, let me say that there were 5 people in
$  yesterday's digest alone who liked the idea absolutely, 1 who liked it
$  but came up with an alternate idea, and a big fat Zero people who
$  disagreed.
$
$      My point is that if you disagree, say so NOW.
$
$      Chances: If it needs to be done, I'll do it.
$
$      Logistics: Setting the lists up is not the problem; it's
$  moving the users around. How do I know who should be on which list?
$  Should I just copy the user list from this list to the spinoff list,
$  and let people unsubscribe as they please?  Or should I nuke the user
$  list and start from scratch?  (From my point of view, I can see 3 VERY
$  good reason for starting from scratch, and only 1 good reason against.)

I think the easiest way to do it from an admin standpoint is to create a
new list for the music with a blank subscriber list, announce the address,
and let us all sort it out with subscribe and unsubscribe commands.  I
would be interested in joining both lists, but I can bet there are plenty
who have no interest in the music group, and would not appreciate getting
a list they did not subscribe to.  Plus, there's the work involved for the
list admin to copy the old names into the new list, which starting the new
list from scratch would alleviate.

$  ------------------------------
$
$  Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1993 13:38:35 +1000 (EST)
$  From: Andrew See <[e-mail]>
$  Subject: GUS marketing idea.
$
$  Ok, I've got a good idea to stimulate both sales, and developer
$  support for the GUS.
$
$  Get a Simple logo like a big fancy "G" or something.
$
$  Make little stickers with this logo.
$
$  Send heaps of these stickers to game developers who are supporting
$  the GUS (Sierra, Activision etc)
$
$  Put the little stickers on the front of their boxes.
$
$  "This game works with the GUS"

There already is such a sticker, but the only game box I ever saw it stuck
upon was Star Control II.  It's about an inch long, 1/4 inch high, and
gets wider to the right, like a crescendo.  Tiny text along the top says
"This product Supports" and in big letters below that, which also
"crescendo" to the right, say "ULTRA S O U N D".

$  ------------------------------
$
$  Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 09:52:27 +0800 (PST)
$  From: Francis Li <[e-mail]>
$  Subject: QEMM and UltraMID?
$
$  I know that when using DOS 5.0/6.0's own LH command to load UltraMID high,
$  it will fragment UltraMID to fit into whatever space possible. But how do
$  you get it to work with QEMM 7.02? When I try to LOADHI UltraMID with
$  QEMM, it will report, "Not enough high memory. Loading low". This bugs me
$  because I have 40k high memory and I would like to put most of UltraMid
$  into it. Anyone know how?

My solution for all the different game drivers and QEMM, is to create a
separate DOS 6 configuration block for games.  In it, I put UltraMID,
since it is the largest of all of them, and run Optimize, to load it high.
When Optimize is done, I remark out the call to loadhi UltraMID.  Now
when I boot into the games configuration, I have a memory configuration
that has plenty of high RAM reserved for whichever sound driver I want to
loadhi.

I have not observed the self-high-load feature of UltraMID, and I know
why, too.  I do not have DOS=UMB in my config.sys.  Surely, UltraMID will
take advantage of the DOS UMB interface to load itself high, so you should
try adding that to your config.sys.  Without DOS=UMB, UltraMID takes
approx. 60K to initialize, and leaves 52K resident when loaded.  You have
but 40K, which is not enough.  To let UltraMID take whatever advantage it
can of that 40K you do have left, you should load it with loadhi.com like
this:

loadhi /lo /l ultramid <plus switches>.

This tells loadhi to load UltraMID low, but allow it to see the largest
region available, and no others.  It will then be able to self-high-load
what it can into that region.  Alternatively, you can give a region
number, if you know the region number of that 40K space.  Type 'loadhi'
with no parameters to get a list of region numbers and what they contain.

If you allow Optimize to load it high with or without DOS=UMB, you will
probably get better results, though.  Then just comment out UltraMID and
loadhi from the command line whichever driver you want to use.



--
Mike Batchelor      |
[e-mail]  |                  This space for rent
[e-mail]   |

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

Date: Fri, 15 Oct 93 20:49:00 PDT
From: n4zfd![e-mail] ("James M. Blakely")
Subject: Dividing list

I'm with the folks that want to split the list.

We would be willing to sponsor a "GUS Professional" list -- one for
professional uses of the GUS -- music, presentations, multimedia -- the
nuances of the MIDI mapper, etc.

I invite those who are interested in the GUS for other than games to drop me
a note at: [e-mail] -- if there's enough interest (more
than 5 people), I'll start up a "GUS Professional Digest".

It *would* probably be a good idea to get it going at this point in time,
before Xmas time, and the influx of the next generation of gamesters hits
the GUS Internet.

 -- Jim Blakely

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1993 23:17:38 +0200 (GMT+0200)
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Downgrading to 386 fixes GUS distortion under CW

Note, people who ask "How fast should my machine be?":


I have Cakewalk 2.0 and a Gravis Ultrasound installed on a 486 33MHz.

I use masses of samples and .WAVs, and recently noticed GUS playback
from CW sometimes produces distortion.

The problem dissappeared when I told CW that I have a 386, via
CW's virtual downgrading feature in Settings/MIDI devices,
in "timing precision" window.



Ido Amin (3rd World Fox)                               [e-mail]
-----------  "Have fun, get paid, get laid, wooo!" - Madonna.  ------------

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1993 08:09:49 -0500
From: John Riedl <[e-mail]>
Subject: drum sequencer

Does anyone know about going the other way with drum sequencing:
buying a MIDI drum pad and using it along with a keyboard to make
music?  I've seen two levels of MIDI drum pads: my music store wants
$1000++ for one, and one of the computer mags (Tiger, I think) has one
for ~$200.  Has anyone tried cheaper ones?  What features are there to
look for?

Thanks,
John

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

Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1993 15:42:22 -0100
From: [e-mail] (Emanuele Pucciarelli)
Subject: Happy with my GUS

Hi Lancer!

No, I don't think yours is a rare experience.
Mine is just like yours: I've never got any problem, I can use my soundcard
with every game and program (there is some program that works with SBOS and
does not work with real SoundBlasters instead) and I'm waiting ansiously for
MegaEm MT32+DAC version too.
Maybe, many people finds that it's all OK if everything works, and starts to
protest if something begins to go wrong.
But it wouldn't be enjoying, if all went right... :-))

Bye!
Emanuele

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

Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1993 01:59:18 -0300 (EDT)
From: "K.S. Holly" <[e-mail]>
Subject: NHL Hockey & Flight Sim 5.0

I'll keep this short and sweet.

Has ANYONE gotten SBOS to work properly with NHL Hockey and Flight Sim 5.0 ?

Any and all replies appreciated, either here or to
[e-mail]

Thanks,

Kevin

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

Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1993 15:38:32 -0100
From: [e-mail] (Emanuele Pucciarelli)
Subject: PAS16

Hi Paul!

You said that the PAS16 soundboard has more native support than Gravis
Ultrasound. Is there even a game with Pro Audio Spectrum native support?
I've never seen one.

Bye!
Emanuele ==> p60.f511.n333.z2.fidonet.sublink.org

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 93 10:12:16 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Stephen A. Corritore)
Subject: Recent SBOS failures

I've generally had good success with SBOS until three new games.  Using
version 2.09B, I get no sound at all out of Halloween Harry (which Apogee
acknowledges in a help file and blames SBOS for), and no digital sounds
in NHL Hockey and FPS Football Pro.

Strangely, if I use SBOS 1.22 (the only old version I happened to keep),
I do get digital sounds in FPS FBPRO.  They exhibit the old echo effect
familiar from the original FPS Football, but they are not as bad as the
original and I consider it playable.

Also, SBOS 1.22 produces digital sounds in NHL Hockey and Halloween Harry
but they are basically scratchy junk noises and aren't playable.  Still,
something digital is being played.

Any ideas?

Steve Corritore

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 93 20:46:00 PDT
From: n4zfd![e-mail] ("James M. Blakely")
Subject: Sending email to companies

I hope everyone reading this that's participating in that "annoy game
companies with email" project noted what one of the companies said about
"Postage Due" email.

When you send Internet mail to anyone on CompuServe, they get charged a
quarter for every mail they select to read. Most companies that provide
*technical support* on Compuserve do not read email for precisely that
reason.

Also, your email bombardment does not get to the people in most companies
that need to hear your wishes -- you're bombarding technical support people,
many of whom, as you may have noticed, have GUS's themselves -- but who
also, are not in a position to have *any* influence on their companie's
development and business decisions.

The best way to communicate your desires is in a properly written,
preferably hand-written, letter that is mailed via your country's postal
system, to the President, and to the Manager of Software Development at the
company. And then, when they respond to you, a follow-up letter thanking
them for responding.

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, as they say.

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1993 22:18:54 -0500 (CDT)
From: Antonio Guia <[e-mail]>
Subject: splitting the conference

i personally don't see the need to split up the conference, although i do
get bored of all the games stuffings in it...   i just skim across all
those games things as well as the music things looking for what's new, if
it's split up i'll just end up subscribing to both anyways, and it's just
one more message to clutter up my e-mail list

as far as what to do with the splitting up of the names, is it possible to
have three addresses?  one for games, one for music and this one be kept
for an overall?  the games and music could both cross-post back to this
one, and just make the users choose one or the other to post to instead of
posting to this one..

but if you get that specific about the conference, where do users post
messages that are sound-related but non-games and non-music?  (such as
voice-recognition, sound-effects in utilities/work-related programs, etc)

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 93 10:30:20 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Andrian Pervazov)
Subject: Splitting the digest

I support the idea to split the digest into music/games sections.
--
|===============================================|
|    Andrian Pervazov                     |
|    University of Pennsylvania              |
|    Music Department                        |
|    Internet: [e-mail]   |
|    Phone: [phone]                     |
|===============================================|

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1993 12:37:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: Ren Hoek <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Splitting the digest

Rather than splitting the digest up into games and music sections, why don't
we just create comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.gus, and possibly have
comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.gus.music and comp.sys....soundcard.gus.games
Etc..  I believe we have enough supporters of the GUS to get enough votes
in to create our own newsgroup.  I believe it will be much more effective
than creating two digests and trying to keep up with them both.  If we
just have one .gus newsgroup, we can use the great feature of TRN and use
the + key to select which messages you want to read by just looking at the
subjects.  We could all use [MUSIC] <subject>  or [GAMES] <subject> in
the subject headers..

I know this has been discussed before, but I missed the final reasoning
behind the decision to axe the idea.
--
[e-mail]

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 93 17:10:33 EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: splitting the list

Personally I would not be opposed to splitting the list.   However, I
would personally prefer to have everyone automatically subscribed to both
lists and then have those who wish to receive only one or the other
unsubscribe as appropriate.

Another consideration...  How do you keep people from posting to the wrong
list when someone subscribes to both?

You'd have the classic "STOP POSTING TEXT IN THE BINARIES GROUP YOU IDIOT
AND NEVERMIND THE FACT THAT THIS IS TEXT!!" situation.

--Michael-- << [e-mail] >>

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1993 12:41:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Phat H Tran <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V7 #15

> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 16:49:50 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Phil Johnson <[e-mail]>
> Subject: GUS & SB16
>
> me out with windows or OS/2...
>   In Windows, I'm not getting ANY sound whatsoever, and in OS/2, I'm
> getting most sound, but it gets clipped or doesn't play at all.
>   Help??
>   My setup is as follows:
>
> SB16 : IRQ5 DMA1 16BitDMA5
> GUS : Default
>   Is it because my SB16&GUS share the DMA channel?  I lost my docs, so I

I think you've answered your own question.  The cards cannot reliably
share DMA channels.  The default MIDI IRQ for the GUS is also 5, which
is what you have the SB16's IRQ at.  For the two cards to coexist,
make sure that they have no address ports, DMA channels, or IRQs in
common.

> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 09:37:45 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "Where's that $%#@*() ripcord?!?!" <[e-mail]>
> Subject: Let's lose the e-mail idea
>
> As far as sending letters to companies asking for support, since it is
> SO easy to wipe e-mail, perhaps it would be better so send snail mail AND
> smootch the collective behinds.
>

Snail mail letters would be better _if_ people actually took the time to
write them.  The impact of email is much less than snail, but the sheer
quantity of it is formidable.  Also, emailing the game companies over a
prolonged period of time is more effective that swamping them all at
once, IMO.  So those of you who haven't participated in the "assault"
yet, please take a few minutes out of your time over the next month or
so to drop the game companies a letter nicely asking them to support
the GUS (or thanking those who already are).

> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 11:42:48 -0300 (EDT)
> From: kevin harrigan f <[e-mail]>
> Subject: Playing at variable speed under Windows
>
[...]
> I isse the toolbook MCI command "Set waveaudio samplespersec 14333"
> and it gives an error saying "Action not available on this device".
>
> So I called Ultrasound support and they said it is not possible
> to change the frequency through Windows apps. Is this true???
>

I've been able to play a WAV at variable rates using GoldWave under
Windows, without resampling the WAV.

> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 93 12:51:52 -0400
> From: [e-mail] (Mark E. Gall)
> Subject: Prince of Persia II - system lock
>
> Rhichards writes:
>
> I have this strange problem with POPII. When I start the game, I can
> hear the sound and the one-liner of speech at the beginning.
> Now, when I play the game, I hear the window crash sound but when I
> hit one of the 'bad' guys, the system hangs when you should hear a
> scream (I now that because it DID work a few weeks ago, at that time I
>

One of the newer SBOSes (2.10, I believe) was programmed to accommodate
PoP2.  It works for some, but not others (eg. me).

> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 22:15:41 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "(O) (O) c ?" <[e-mail]>
> Subject: Sampling Board
>
>        I'd like to know the price of the daughter board and what on it
> will make it better than an entire 16 bit audio board like the SoundMan 16
> from Logitech.  Computability sells it for 105$.
>        I thought I heard $150 for the daughtercard. I couldn't see paying more
> for the daughter board than an entire sound board.... unless, again, it had
> some special features.
>

The daughtercard lists for $150, so, on the streets, it should sell for
about $100.  It was designed to perform as well as the recording/playback
capabilities of the TB Multisound, so its special feature should be the
sheer quality of its recording and playback.

> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 12:21:00 GMT
> From: [e-mail] (Thomas van Kuipers)
> Subject: SBOS 3.0 (!) and joystick-problems
>
> I heard that SBOS 3.0 was coming with perhaps support of SB pro, but the
> main importance was that NOTHING is remaining in memory, only in the GUS
> MEMORY. Also i heard that sb emu was ALREADY in hardware GUS 'somewhere'

Where do you hear these things?  Such an SBOS cannot possibly exist
without major enhancements to the GUS hardware.

> A friend of mine who doesn't own a email adress asked for me to post a
> problem he is having with GUS & joystick. He is playing a lot of

Make sure that only one game port is enabled.  If he's using the port on
the GUS, make sure that he calibrated it properly.

Phat.

PS I'd also like to see the digest split into music/games.

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 93 23:58:06 EDT
From: <[e-mail]>
Subject: unsubscribe



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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1993 12:46:40 +0501 (EDT)
From: Gunnar Swanson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Vote NO on the split!

Hi there fellow GUSers,

    I am writing to vote NO on the digest split.  I am mainly
interested in games but I do find the music entries to be of interest too.
As regards the growth of the digest I believe that this is a
momentary fluctuation.  If I may remind people that a few weeks ago we had
digests that only 9000+ bytes and that the usual length seems only to be
between 22,000-28,0000 bytes.  Not too bad to read.



        Voting No!

        Gunnar Swanson

[e-mail]

end.

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

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 93 17:35:22 -0500
From: [e-mail] (James Macfarlane)

>From wimsey.com!gravis.com!POSTMASTER  Sat Oct 16 05:18:59 1993
>Received: from vanbc.wimsey.com by .....
>From: [e-mail]
>Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
>Organization: Advanced Gravis, Burnaby BC Canada, [phone]
>X-Mailer: TBBS/PIMP v2.42
>Date: Sat, 16 Oct 93 03:21:53
>Subject:
>To: jam
>Reply-To: [e-mail]
>Status: RO
>
>
>unsubscribe  [e-mail]
>remove  [e-mail]
>delete  [e-mail]
>
>RETURNED MESSAGE ADVISORY - NO USER BY THIS NAME REGISTERED AT THIS SITE
>============================================================================
>
a what??? I sent a message to [e-mail], and this is the response I got.
Anyone have any ideas on what it means?
Thanx...
James


James A. MacFarlane    |  Some of God's greatest   | 611 S. 20th St.   #4
[e-mail]        |   gifts are unanswered    | Lincoln, NE    68510
University of Nebraska |   prayers. - G. Brooks    | voice: [phone]

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

End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V7 #16
*************************************

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