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GUS Daily Digest Sat, 30 Oct 93 0:07 MDT Volume 7: Issue 29 Today's Topics: 16 bit DMA channel Coaster Dune 2 problems Dune and SBOS, ummm, and NHLPA ground loop eliminator GUS Compatibility GUS Daily Digest V7 #25 GUS Daily Digest V7 #27 GUS Game Support Petition [long] GUS MAX??? [ Watch Out!? ] Harry Lost files/NHL Hockey/OS2 Return to Zork: Divide error solution? Sealteam with SBOS Shadowcaster So I decided to buy a GUS.... subscribe Volume on GUS 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: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 16:04:13 -0300 (EDT) From: "K.S. Holly" <u8843389@muss.cis.mcmaster.ca> Subject: 16 bit DMA channel I hope this doesn't sound too foolish but what is the major NOTICEABLE difference in using a 16 bit DMA channel as opposed to an 8 bit channel. 16 bit channels are numbered 5-8 and above are they not? Kevin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 23:57:51 -0700 From: dross@ultrix4.csubak.edu (Dean Ross-Smith) Subject: Coaster Ok folks, let's give a big collective Raspberry to the people at Disney. I bought Coaster (build your own roller coaster then zip up'n down as fast as you want) last week and cant get any digital sound out of it. It supports the disney sound thingy and SB. I tried SBOS and got FM music. If I enable digital sound, the machine locks hard (reset button) half way thru running a track . Disney said that they never could get the GUS to work and that Coaster works with all other SB compatible cards. Can anyone help? This looks to be a fun program to play with. Oh yeah! Buy Silverball! It's great sounding w/native GUS support! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 02:16:16 EDT From: "gizzy" <gizzy@aol.com> Subject: Dune 2 problems I am having problems getting the Dune 2 AIL patch to work with the Miles drivers. More specifically, I can't get the digitized speech. The music works fine, but when the speaking parts come up, all I here is some clicking and light static. My GUS has 1 meg memory, and I all my drivers are loaded high so I have about 630k of lower memory free. Also, I am usuing Ultramid V1.02. Oh, and one more thing, one time, I actually got digitized speech (I don't know what I did RIGHT that time!), and the speech was very slow and drawn out, like playing a record at the wrong speed. Well, any help would be greatly appreciated! Jeff Ow ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 09:35:00 -0400 (EDT) From: "Two weeks left..." <JKS4675@ritvax.isc.rit.edu> Subject: Dune and SBOS, ummm, and NHLPA 1) Dune (I assume you mean Dune I) does not have any digital audio (unless the CD ROM does) so there's no way SBOS will get any. 2) Did anybody get NHLPA to work with any version of SBOS? Jeff ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 17:35:15 +1000 From: David Vu <ccdvu@cc.uq.oz.au> Subject: ground loop eliminator Hello GUSers, There was a mention of this Ground Loop Eliminator that you 'd use between a line out and an amp to eliminate ground noise. My local Tandy doesn't know what it is and I doubt if other electronics shops know about it. So what is the device, how does it work, and how to construct one - I've got my soldering iron ready :-) -David- ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 14:48:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Vincent Poy <hippo@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu> Subject: GUS Compatibility Has anyone here ran into any problem with a 486/386 System using a GUS with eithera BioStar or Forex Chipset? Like are there any types of compatibility problems with the GUS? Thanks! Cheers, Vince ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 08:08:00 +0000 From: gus-general@dsd.ES.COM Subject: GUS Daily Digest V7 #25 GUS Daily Digest Tue, 26 Oct 93 0:07 MDT Volume 7: Issue 25 Today's Topics: Dram, Mikes and Headphone control Dram Upgrade Ground loop isolator GUS, new Mitsumi drive and audio connection Gus/Dual Joy GUS / Windows / MS Arcade GUS Daily Digest V7 #22 GUS Daily Digest V7 #23 GUS Daily Digest V7 #24 (2 msgs) GUS Game Support Grading Matrix GUS Support Petition [very long...] help mono microphones OPTi question Problems with ultramid Registered User SBOS 3.60? SBOS version ? SF2 Silverball registration card!!!! Terminator Rampage Setup (How can I make it work) Which SCSI card to buy? Why not Ultramid? 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. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: headphone volume control... And in case you didn't catch it yesterday, you can apparently *buy* such a thing from Radio Shlack in the U.S. for five bucks. I would be a little reluctant to use this as a speaker control, as the (newer) GUS's are capable of 4W/ch. into 8 ohms, enough to toast your control. That's what L-PADs are for (balanced load). (I don't think it's avail. in the Canadian R.S. catalog...) I'm looking into a part number for a ground loop isolator. A good place to get one (mail order) is MCM electronics in Centerville, Ohio. They have a 1-800 #, decent prices, etc. I'll post some numbers when I find my catalog (damn, I know it's around here _somewhere_!) If any of you tekkies come up with a R.S. part number (Can., U.S., U.K., etc.) pleeze post it for those interested. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- I got my Ground Loop Isolator at radio shack, cat no. 270-054...I was suprised when I hooked it up, I didn't realize I had so much noise! About $12 can getcha one. Tim ----------------------------- From: Phat H Tran <ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca> Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V7 #24 > Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1993 07:26:25 -0600 (CST) > From: E33GLASSER@sask.usask.ca > Subject: new uploads > > I also uploaded a 3D sound demo from Europe called GUS3DEMO.ZIP. > This new 3D demo is better than the others that I've tried. Although I still have trouble locating the sources, running the demo in non-interactive mode using headphones did give me the impression of being swamped by an assortment of gear, and a bird. ----------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 Oct 93 7:16:04 PDT From: mikebat@netcom.com (Mike Batchelor) Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V7 #24 ----------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1993 16:22:00 -0700 (PDT) From: roberts@brahms.amd.com (Dave Roberts) Subject: GUS Support Petition [very long...] I am a very satisfied GUS owner who has been reading the digest since I got my GUS in February. During my time of reading, I have watched with interest as various email campaigns have been proposed to the game companies to voice support for the GUS. I know that often times all that happened was that a bunch of product support people working for the companies got ticked off. In the best cases, people got prewritten form letters back. Like you, I would like to see the GUS supported in more games. I think that voicing our support for the GUS is a very good idea, but we can't be as haphazard about it as we've been in the past. BACKGROUND: ----------- Although email is easy for us to write and just about every interesting company is connected to it via either the Internet, Compuserve, or some other online subscriber service, very rarely do the top executives/decision makers read the email that comes in through those publicly known addresses. If we're lucky, we're alarming the support people enough to make them bring it up at the next team meeting. From there it might get escalated to someone who cares. Rarely does it make it to a decision maker and may in fact be counter productive because we GUS owners end up being labeled as a "vocal minority," and nothing more. Being a semiconductor marketing person, I look at this situation as equivalent to getting a design win with a chip. Right now, Creative Labs owns the socket on the board and we want in too. This is a strategic decision for all of the game companies because they are going to have to expend perhaps considerable resources writing, testing, and supporting the GUS, should they choose to include it. They may have to possibly delay schedules of products already in the works. This is not a decision that a single software engineer or support person can make. This has to be driven from the top, down to the bottom. We have to change the minds of the decision makers and make them see that the GUS offers a very wonderful future for gaming products. WHAT WE NEED TO DO: ------------------- Okay, let's realize that Gravis and Forte are already working pretty hard on just this very problem. As consumers, what we need to do is create the pull. Of course, that's what we've already been trying to do, but it hasn't been coordinated. I propose that we write a petition to the executives of the various game companies that we are interested in. This petition will start off with a cover letter of why we think the GUS is a valuable soundcard to support. It will have attached the names of every GUS owner that can be found (see below). It should be sent on paper through the standard postal service. Second, we need to keep score. That is, we need to lay off the companies that have announced GUS support and reward them with our purchase money. We also need to know who is not performing up to our expectations so that we can stay away from their products if we feel so inclinded. To this end, we need to keep a list of game companies that we care about. We need to make public their responses to the petition sent to them and "score" them on their current progress. I can envision this list being posted to the GUS digest every two weeks or so as we update it. Finally, I don't think we should accept help from Gravis for this venture. I want Gravis to be able to look a game company executive in the face and say with a straight face that they neither organized this nor instigated it. This is from us users, not a simple ploy by a card manufacturer to get its hardware supported in future releases. THE COVER LETTER: ----------------- The following is the cover letter that I propose we send. Feel free to comment on it and suggest things. Note that it's pretty long right now, so I don't want to keep adding things that aren't really specific. Think before suggesting something randomly. Dear [xxx], On the following pages of this letter are the names of Advanced Gravis Ultrasound sound-board owners. We are writing to you to educate you about what the Gravis Ultrasound is, what it offers to the computer entertainment industry, and to encourage your support for this hardware in all your future titles. This letter was not written by Advanced Gravis, nor written at their request. First off, what is the Ultrasound? Simply put, the Ultrasound is the lowest cost, great sounding sound board on the market today. The price of the Ultrasound is lower than many older technology FM-based sound boards (the Creative Labs Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster 16, Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum, etc.), yet the Ultrasound's sound quality is much higher. The reason for the Ultrasound's great sound is that it uses newer wavetable synthesis technology rather than older FM technology. Wavetable synthesis uses samples of real instruments to recreate music, as opposed to FM's mimicking of instruments. What this means in simple terms is that an Ultrasound will play the sound of a real sampled piano while an FM-based card will play a Nintendo-sounding interpretation of a piano. The difference between the two, in terms of sound quality, is very great and all sound board manufacturers are now rushing to produce wavetable synthesis cards in order to keep up. Now, given that wavetable technology is far superior to FM technology in sound quality, what distinguishes the Ultrasound from the other wavetable-based cards coming to market? Two things: cost and RAM. In terms of cost, the Ultrasound is very inexpensive compared to the other cards it competes with. On the street, the Ultrasound sells for between $120 and $150 (US). In comparison, Creative Labs Wave Blaster (a wavetable synthesis daughter-board for the Sound Blaster 16) costs $240 and requires a Sound Blaster 16 to attach to (another $210), bringing the total to $450. Now, other wavetable-based cards are less expensive than the Creative Labs option but still more expensive than the Ultrasound (in the $180 range for a ViVa Maestro 16, Aria-based card). In spite of this, they still don't have the sound quality of the Ultrasound. The second distinguishing feature of the Ultrasound is the fact that it uses RAM to hold its samples. Many of the other wavetable-based cards store their samples in ROM. The Ultrasound stores the samples on disk and then uploads them to the card when they are needed. There are two advantages of this method over ROM-based cards. First, samples can be changed. For instance, if an owner of the card doesn't like the violin sample, she is free to replace it with another that someone else (perhaps even she) created. With ROM cards this is not possible. The second advantage to using RAM to store the samples is that only the samples actually used for a given application have to reside on the card when the application is being used. To keep costs down and yet store all the needed General MIDI instruments in a ROM, many other wavetable cards use lower quality 8 or 12-bit samples usually totalling one megabyte or less. The Ultrasound ships with over five megabytes of high quality, 16-bit instruments samples on disk. Now that I've explained what the Ultrasound is, I'd like to explain what it offers you, the entertainment industry. In past years, publishers have often included support for the high-end Roland SCC-1 or MT-32 sound boards in their games. Often, this was simply so the composers could hear what their music was supposed to sound like before they "derated" it to work on a Sound Blaster. Additionally, it gave the game an ideal "demo mode" which was often used at trade shows and retail stores to show off the game. In great proportion, however, most purchasers of the software went back home and actually used the software with a poor-sounding Sound Blaster. The Ultrasound allows the mass market to all have the sound quality of a high-end Roland sound board. The Ultrasound also offers software writers and composers two technical benefitts: hardware mixing and freedom from the General MIDI instrument set. The Ultrasound mixes samples in hardware. This allows multiple, overlapping sound effects to be played without having to devote possibly critical CPU time to mixing the samples in software. This allows a dramatic environment to be created for the consumer without slowing the software down to a crawl. Consumers are tiring of in-order, one-at-a-time sound effects, and the Ultrasound is the easiest and most dramatic route to an immersive aural environment consisting of many simultaneous sources of sound. Finally, because RAM is used to store instrument samples, if a composer wants to change the samples for whatever reason they are easily uploaded. This frees composers from the shackles of the General MIDI instrument set and allows many different styles of music to be incorporated in the software. The following list of people (representative of all Ultrasound owners) think that having inexpensive, high quality sound for their software is important. We urge you to consider the Advanced Gravis Ultrasound the vechicle to make this goal a reality. The Ultrasound is already shipping and no action is required other than you adding the support to your future releases. This is not a difficult process as the board is easy to program and software development kits are readily available from Gravis (for free). Gravis has even written John Mile's Audio Interface Library (AIL) drivers for the Ultrasound that can simply be included with your releases for instant Ultrasound support (if your sound system uses the Miles AIL system). Some companies are even releasing patches and drivers for their sound systems to support their older releases. Thank you for your time. We appreciate your support, we'll be watching, and we'll be voting with our pocket books. Many other companies such as Sierra On-Line, Strategic Simulations, Maxis, and Activision have announced their support of the Ultrasound. We hope that you'll join them. Sincerely, Dave Roberts Speaking for: [numerous GUS owners' names] ACTION ITEMS: ------------- I'll volunteer to do the leg work here. I'll accept help from other people who wish to help out. :-) Please let me know. Since this is a petition, what's required of you individually is relatively little if you just want to participate. All I need is a very short email message from you telling me some information. See below for all the details. Before you do anything, please read all of these and then respond. Since I could be getting at least hundreds of responses, I'll be using some sort of electronic processing to help me with this. Because of this, you'll need to respond in an appropriate format that I'll describe below. 1. I need a list of game companies that you care about. In fact, don't limit yourself to game companies. Any company that writes software that needs explicit GUS support should be targeted. Note, please limit yourself to the more major companies. We don't want to be sending petitions to every garage outfit everywhere. To start off, I have collected the following list. Please write me and send me more names. Note, some of these companies have already said that they will be supporting the GUS. I want to track these as well, so if there are others that I've left off, please send those to me. This list will be use to both track the progress of the various companies and form the basis of who gets sent the petition. Access Software, Inc. Accolade Activision Apogee Dynamix Electronic Arts Epic Megagames ID Software Interplay LucasArts Maxis MicroProse Mindcraft New World Computing Origin Systems Sierra On-Line Sir-Tech Spectrum HoloByte Strategic Simulations, Inc. Strategic Studies Group Three-Sixty Pacific Virgin 2. For each of the above companies, I need standard surface mail addresses of their headquarters. Additionally, I need names of either presidents, vice-presidents, or major decision makers. You'll have to go off your knowledge of this and I'll be relying on people who work either in this industry or live in the fringe to help with this. 3. I need you. I need names of GUS owners to put on this petition. To make the point that I/we didn't make this up, I'd also like paper-mail addresses and email-addresses for each person who responds. I'd like everyone who reads the GUS digest to add their name to the list. I know that this goes out to several hundred direct email addresses throughout the world and gets relayed onto many BBS's and FidoNet connections. I also know that many of you may know people who own GUSes but don't read the digest. Please ask them to respond as well. If they don't have email, please send it in for them. Ideally, I'd like to reproduce an exact copy of Gravis's registration list. :-) That's all! RESPONSE FORMAT: ---------------- Please make the subject line of your message contain [GUS petition]. Then, please use the following format for your response. Put this stuff first. NAME: Dave Roberts EMAIL: david.roberts@amd.com ADDRESS: 40802 Capa Dr. ADDRESS: Fremont, CA 95054 [use as many ADDRESS lines as you need] If you have additional information about various things, put this *FOLLOWING* your name and address. XTRA: Blah, blah... The system works as follows. First, I save all the incoming messages that have [GUS petition] in them into one big file. I then run a script on the file to search for all the NAME, EMAIL, and ADDRESS lines. As these are found, they are added to the name file. When the XTRA line is found, it causes the script to save that individual message into another file that I read by hand to get any sort of messages. If you don't have anything to say other that your name and address, don't include the XTRA keyword. That's it. Start sending those names and addresses in. Dave Roberts Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. I/O and Network Products Division david.roberts@amd.com ----------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 29 Oct 93 13:09:00 EST From: "VULCAN::WATTERS_C" <WATTERS_C%VULCAN.decnet@gate.hosp.ohio-state.edu> Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V7 #27 I just picked up _Return to Zork_, (this is not a please help post) CD version. I had a little question about my CD speed (I'm only getting 30k/sec on a drive rated at 150k/second), and posted it to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware. One of the design team from Infocom/Activision emailed me a response right away. In my reply I thanked Infocom/Activision for Supporting the GUS. Told them I only bought it because I heard it had GUS support. RTZ (I do have a sound problem, but it's not a GUS problem, it's my CDrom) uses the AIL drivers for digital music/sound, or a MIDI and digital sound. I'm running MIDI for the music, and it sounds just fine. Some of my digital sounds break up, but this is due to the CDrom. When it's not breaking up, the sounds are pretty nice. -Coyt ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 14:27:50 -0700 (PDT) From: roberts@brahms.amd.com (Dave Roberts) Subject: GUS Game Support Petition [long] This is being reposted for those that missed it the first time (and there seem to be many from the numbers of letters that I'm getting asking for it). I'm posting this to both the GUS General Digest and the GUS Music Digest. I apologize to those readers of the Music digest that are offended by this. I know that many of you have unsubscribed from the GUS General Digest to get away from all the questions related to games not working. Unless you use the GUS for ONLY music, you will probably still be interested in this. If not, thanks for your patience. Dave Roberts david.roberts@amd.com ================ I am a very satisfied GUS owner who has been reading the digest since I got my GUS in February. During my time of reading, I have watched with interest as various email campaigns have been proposed to the game companies to voice support for the GUS. I know that often times all that happened was that a bunch of product support people working for the companies got ticked off. In the best cases, people got prewritten form letters back. Like you, I would like to see the GUS supported in more games. I think that voicing our support for the GUS is a very good idea, but we can't be as haphazard about it as we've been in the past. BACKGROUND: =========== Although email is easy for us to write and just about every interesting company is connected to it via either the Internet, Compuserve, or some other online subscriber service, very rarely do the top executives/decision makers read the email that comes in through those publicly known addresses. If we're lucky, we're alarming the support people enough to make them bring it up at the next team meeting. From there it might get escalated to someone who cares. Rarely does it make it to a decision maker and may in fact be counter productive because we GUS owners end up being labeled as a "vocal minority," and nothing more. Being a semiconductor marketing person, I look at this situation as equivalent to getting a design win with a chip. Right now, Creative Labs owns the socket on the board and we want in too. This is a strategic decision for all of the game companies because they are going to have to expend perhaps considerable resources writing, testing, and supporting the GUS, should they choose to include it. They may have to possibly delay schedules of products already in the works. This is not a decision that a single software engineer or support person can make. This has to be driven from the top, down to the bottom. We have to change the minds of the decision makers and make them see that the GUS offers a very wonderful future for gaming products. WHAT WE NEED TO DO: =================== Okay, let's realize that Gravis and Forte are already working pretty hard on just this very problem. As consumers, what we need to do is create the pull. Of course, that's what we've already been trying to do, but it hasn't been coordinated. I propose that we write a petition to the executives of the various game companies that we are interested in. This petition will start off with a cover letter of why we think the GUS is a valuable soundcard to support. It will have attached the names of every GUS owner that can be found (see below). It should be sent on paper through the standard postal service. Second, we need to keep score. That is, we need to lay off the companies that have announced GUS support and reward them with our purchase money. We also need to know who is not performing up to our expectations so that we can stay away from their products if we feel so inclinded. To this end, we need to keep a list of game companies that we care about. We need to make public their responses to the petition sent to them and "score" them on their current progress. I can envision this list being posted to the GUS digest every two weeks or so as we update it. Finally, I don't think we should accept help from Gravis for this venture. I want Gravis to be able to look a game company executive in the face and say with a straight face that they neither organized this nor instigated it. This is from us users, not a simple ploy by a card manufacturer to get its hardware supported in future releases. THE COVER LETTER: ================= The following is the cover letter that I propose we send. Feel free to comment on it and suggest things. Note that it's pretty long right now, so I don't want to keep adding things that aren't really specific. Think before suggesting something randomly. Dear [xxx], The following pages of this letter list names of Advanced Gravis Ultrasound sound-board owners. We are writing to you to tell about the Gravis Ultrasound, what it offers to the computer entertainment industry, and to encourage your support for this hardware in all your future titles. This letter was not written by Advanced Gravis, nor written at their request. First, what is the Ultrasound? Simply put, the Ultrasound is the best sounding sound board under $200 on the market today. Older technology FM-based sound boards (the Creative Labs Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster 16, Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum, etc.) can cost much more than the superior sounding, 16-bit, stereo Ultrasound. The reason for the Ultrasound's great sound is that it uses newer wave table synthesis technology rather than older FM technology. Wave table synthesis uses samples of real instruments to recreate music, as opposed to FM's algorithmic approximation of instruments. What this means in simple terms is that an Ultrasound will play the sound of a real sampled piano while an FM-based card will play a poor Nintendo-sounding interpretation of a piano. The difference between the two, in terms of sound quality, is great. All sound board manufacturers are now rushing to produce wave table synthesis cards in order to keep up. Now, given that wave table technology is far superior to FM technology in sound quality, what distinguishes the Ultrasound from the other wave table-based cards coming to market? Two things: cost and RAM. In terms of cost, the Ultrasound is very inexpensive compared to the other cards it competes with. On the street, the Ultrasound sells for between $120 and $150 (US). In comparison, Creative Labs Wave Blaster (a wave table synthesis daughter-board for the Sound Blaster 16) costs $240 and requires a Sound Blaster 16 to attach to (another $210), bringing the total to $450. Although other wave table-based cards are less expensive than the Wave Blaster/Sound Blaster 16, they are still more expensive than the Ultrasound (in the $180 range for a ViVa Maestro 16, Aria-based card). In spite of this, they still don't have the sound quality of the Ultrasound. The second distinguishing feature of the Ultrasound is the fact that it uses RAM to hold its samples. Many of the other wave table-based cards store their samples in ROM. The Ultrasound stores the samples on disk and then uploads them to the card when they are needed. There are two advantages of this method over ROM-based cards. First, samples can be changed. For instance, if an owner of the card doesn't like the violin sample, she is free to replace it with another that someone else (perhaps even she) created. With ROM cards this is not possible. The second advantage to using RAM to store the samples is that only the samples actually used for a given application have to reside on the card when the application is being used. To keep costs down and yet store all the needed General MIDI instruments in a ROM, many other wave table cards use lower quality 8 or 12-bit samples usually totaling one megabyte or less. The Ultrasound ships with over five megabytes of high quality, 16-bit instruments samples on disk. Now that I've explained what the Ultrasound is, I'd like to explain what it offers you, the entertainment industry. In past years, publishers have often included support for the high-end Roland SCC-1 or MT-32 sound boards in their games. Often, this was simply so the composers could hear what their music was supposed to sound like before they "de-rated" it to work on a Sound Blaster. Additionally, it gave the game an ideal "demo mode" which was often used at trade shows and retail stores to show off the game. In great proportion, however, most purchasers of the software went back home and actually used the software with a poor-sounding Sound Blaster. The Ultrasound allows the mass market to inexpensively have the sound quality of a high-end Roland sound board. The Ultrasound also offers software writers and composers two technical benefits: hardware mixing and freedom from the General MIDI instrument set. The Ultrasound mixes samples in hardware. This allows multiple, overlapping sound effects (up to 32) to be played without having to devote possibly critical CPU time to mixing the samples in software. This allows a dramatic environment to be created for the consumer without slowing the software down to a crawl. Consumers are tiring of in-order, one-at-a-time sound effects, and the Ultrasound is the easiest and most dramatic route to an immersive aural environment consisting of many simultaneous sources of sound. Finally, because RAM is used to store instrument samples, if a composer wants to change the samples for whatever reason they are easily uploaded. This frees composers from the shackles of the General MIDI instrument set and allows many different styles of music to be incorporated in the software. The Ultrasound is already shipping and no action is required other than you adding the support to your future releases. This is not a difficult process as the board is easy to program and software development kits are readily available from Gravis (for free). Gravis has even written John Mile's Audio Interface Library (AIL) drivers for the Ultrasound that can simply be included with your releases for instant Ultrasound support (if your sound system uses the Miles AIL system). Some companies are releasing patches and drivers for their sound systems to support their older releases. Thank you for your time. We appreciate your support, we'll be watching, and we'll be voting with our pocket books. Many other leading computer entertainment companies such as Sierra On-Line, Strategic Simulations, Maxis, and Activision have announced their support of the Ultrasound. We hope that you'll join them. Sincerely, Dave Roberts The following list of people (representative of all Ultrasound owners) think that having inexpensive, high quality sound for their software is important. We urge you to consider the Advanced Gravis Ultrasound the vehicle to make this goal a reality. [numerous GUS owners' names] ACTION ITEMS: ============= I'll volunteer to do the leg work here. I'll accept help from other people who wish to help out. :-) Please let me know. Since this is a petition, what's required of you individually is relatively little if you just want to participate. All I need is a very short email message from you telling me some information. See below for all the details. Before you do anything, please read all of these and then respond. Since I could be getting at least hundreds of responses, I'll be using some sort of electronic processing to help me with this. Because of this, you'll need to respond in an appropriate format that I'll describe below. 1. I need a list of game companies that you care about. In fact, don't limit yourself to game companies. Any company that writes software that needs explicit GUS support should be targeted. Note, please limit yourself to the more major companies. We don't want to be sending petitions to every garage outfit everywhere. To start off, I have collected the following list. Please write me and send me more names. Note, some of these companies have already said that they will be supporting the GUS. I want to track these as well, so if there are others that I've left off, please send those to me. This list will be use to both track the progress of the various companies and form the basis of who gets sent the petition. Access Software, Inc. Accolade Activision Apogee Dynamix Electronic Arts Epic Megagames ID Software Interplay LucasArts Maxis MicroProse Mindcraft New World Computing Origin Systems Sierra On-Line Sir-Tech Spectrum HoloByte Strategic Simulations, Inc. Strategic Studies Group Three-Sixty Pacific Virgin 2. For each of the above companies, I need standard surface mail addresses of their headquarters. Additionally, I need names of either presidents, vice-presidents, or major decision makers. You'll have to go off your knowledge of this and I'll be relying on people who work either in this industry or live in the fringe to help with this. 3. I need you. I need names of GUS owners to put on this petition. To make the point that I/we didn't make this up, I'd also like paper-mail addresses and email-addresses for each person who responds. I'd like everyone who reads the GUS digest to add their name to the list. I know that this goes out to several hundred direct email addresses throughout the world and gets relayed onto many BBS's and FidoNet connections. I also know that many of you may know people who own GUSes but don't read the digest. Please ask them to respond as well. If they don't have email, please send it in for them. Ideally, I'd like to reproduce an exact copy of Gravis's registration list. :-) That's all! RESPONSE FORMAT: ================ Please make the subject line of your message contain [GUS petition]. Then, please use the following format for your response. Put this stuff first. NAME: Dave Roberts EMAIL: david.roberts@amd.com ADDRESS: 40802 Capa Dr. ADDRESS: Fremont, CA 95054 [use as many ADDRESS lines as you need] If you have additional information about various things, put this *FOLLOWING* your name and address. XTRA: Blah, blah... The system works as follows. First, I save all the incoming messages that have [GUS petition] in them into one big file. I then run a script on the file to search for all the NAME, EMAIL, and ADDRESS lines. As these are found, they are added to the name file. When the XTRA line is found, it causes the script to save that individual message into another file that I read by hand to get any sort of messages. If you don't have anything to say other that your name and address, don't include the XTRA keyword. That's it. Start sending those names and addresses in. Dave Roberts Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. I/O and Network Products Division david.roberts@amd.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Oct 93 11:04:01 EAT From: styx@aho.cis.nctu.edu.tw Subject: GUS MAX??? [ Watch Out!? ] Hello folks, Attached is a article posted by a guy in the BBS in Taiwan. Can Advanced Gravis (Matthew, John?) or anybody else (Phat?) confirm all the content for us? Or what we can do is just stop purchasing any GUS but wait for the GUS MAX release? PS. GUS costs about US$250 each piece here. :~~~ Styx ----- The article starts ----- Headline: To who want to buy UltraSound: WAIT!! Content: I am an engineer of the official distributor of GRAVIS, the maker of UltraSound. I know many of you don't like our price and are ready to mail order. I have NO opinion about your decision, because IT'S YOUR FREEDOM Besides the risk on mail-order, I have one heartly suggestion-- WAIT. The NEW UltraSound MAX is going to be out. In fact, I will get a beta test verion of MAX next week from GRAVIS. According to the information from GRAVIS, the MAX will have: -All characters of UltraSound -16 bit recording function (for the option on GUS, the price is $130,basing on the mail-ordering catalog) -SCSI II CD-ROM interface -Filter built-in -Mixer built-in -1024k DRAM on-board -Many other new software bundle in package (Voice-Rec,MIDI..) -Fixed bugs in UltraSound v3.4 Just provide some information -- from GRAVIS (not in INTERNET, but in the FAX from GRAVIS) Oh,the most important, List Price :US$299 ----- End ----- Shouldn't we stop purchasing GUS right now and wait for GUS MAX if above is true? Who does like the BUGS in UltraSound v3.4?? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 21:57:17 EST From: BGUZ000 <BGUZ@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA> Subject: Harry Although the help file in Halloween Harry says that it does not support the GUS, I have read in this digest that the older versions of SBOS work with the game. I tried using SBOS 1.2 and the music and sounds work fine. My problem occurs with the joystick. When I use SBOS 1.2, I am unable to move Harry to the right with the joystick. The character can still move left and up but not right. When I run the program without SBOS, the joystick control works fine. Does anyone have a solution to this problem (I have already tried calibrating the joystick). G. Segal BGUZ@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 15:57:29 -0300 (EDT) From: "K.S. Holly" <u8843389@muss.cis.mcmaster.ca> Subject: Lost files/NHL Hockey/OS2 What happened to GUS0009 - GUS0021 on epas? I'd like to try some older versions of SBOS again. I agree with what was said yesterday that some older versions work better with certain games than the newer ones. Unfortunately, I no longer have the old versions. Can someone help me out? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Hasn't anyone found out what's going on with NHL Hockey? Has anyone experienced slowdowns using SBOS before. It seems that is all that is happening here. Everything works but the digitized voice is painfully slow. HELP! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Has there been any news on OS/2 drivers? Anybody? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Kevin ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 10:23:06 MDT From: Stuart Yoshida <yoshida@elektra.fc.hp.com> Subject: Return to Zork: Divide error solution? I've run into the Return to Zork "divide error" while I'm playing the CD-ROM version. My setup: GW2K 66V 16MB Sony CD-ROM Stacker 3.1 (Disk compression) QEMM 7.01 (Memory management) Hyperdisk (Disk caching) I called Activison, and they suggested that I change the ultramid statement from ultramid -ddrivers to ultramid -cdrivers This supposedly prevents the music from being loaded everytime. Activision claims that the memory is being overflowed because of the constant loading of the music into memory. This change prevented the problem from occurring, but it also hung the game after playing for a little bit. I've also tried taking out the -F option for the CD-ROM driver, which means that I'm not using the project file, and this seemed to help. However, I was still able to get the "divide error" once in about five times. Any suggestions? adTHANXvance, -- Stuart Yoshida Internet: yoshida@elektra.fc.hp.com Voice: (303) 229-2324 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Oct 93 02:01:10 +0200 From: pate@clinet.fi (Pasi Haatanen) Subject: Sealteam with SBOS Can anyone tell me which SBOS settings are the best for Sealteam? I have tried many combinations, but cannot get as good a sound as my friend from his machine. My SBOS is version 2.08, which is getting rather old <grin>. Would upgrading to 2.0B9 or 2.0B10 clear the problem ? -- Pasi Haatanen email or netmail to: Voice (17-22, GMT+2): (90)878 4885 Emannankuja 4D15 ** pate@clinet.fi ** Data (24H, V.32B): +358-0-547-1935 SF-01670 VANTAA 2:220/610@fidonet.org ---------------------------------- FINLAND, EUROPE! 14:1500/610@sbcnt.org PREFER EMAIL. THAT'S ALL FOLKS 8-Q ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1993 13:56:08 +1000 (EST) From: Andrew See <asee@st.nepean.uws.edu.au> Subject: Shadowcaster Can anyone tell me if Origin's new game Shadowcaster, uses the miles drivers and can thus be used with the GUS. If not, !@#$%^&*( Origin. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 10:08:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Sinclar Shuit <sshuit@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca> Subject: So I decided to buy a GUS.... This summer (Approximately August) I purchased my GUS from a discount chain in Winnipeg (For the Bargain price of 200$ [with a gravis analog pro]) and I've been mucking with it ever since. I have a number of problems which I could go into at length... But I will save those for gravis support. My main concern is, now that I have FTP access, and a lot of free time to kill, I would like some input as to what utilities, drivers, misc stuff is really useful to have for someone who likes to play games / Mess with recording sounds and experiment in general. If possible I would like anyone who has any suggestions on programs I could FTP from the archive.epas.utoronto.ca site that would be "Must Haves" I have the FAQ and the 00INDEX, and there is just too much volume on utoronto to be downloading at random. Proud GUS owner Sinclair Shuit [sshuit@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 17:02:31 +0200 (EET) From: make@clinet.fi (Markku Lepist|) Subject: subscribe :) -- Markku Lepisto # ATK-instituutti KDT-3A # make@clinet.fi (or) Aleksiskivenkatu 48D96 # (Helsinki Business # lepistom@atki.helbp.fi 00510 Helsinki # Polytechnics, Computer # DATA: +358-0-148-1849/V32bis Finland, EUROPE # Science Department) # VOICE: +358-0-146-2230/CET+1! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1993 06:52:55 +1000 (AEST) From: andrewf@lsupoz.apana.org.au (Andrew Foster) Subject: Volume on GUS In GUS Daily Digest V7 #23 someone mentioned a way to make a volume control for the GUS. Since I bought mine I have been using the following : I connect my speakers to a small headphone volume control I bought from Tandy here in Australia. I then connect this to the GUS (using an adapter as the plug on the volume control is larger than the socket on the GUS. The volume control has a left and right speaker and seems to work. Thanks, Andrew (andrewf@lsupoz.apana.org.au) ------------------------------ End of GUS Daily Digest V7 #29 ****************************** To post to tomorrow's digest: <gus-general@dsd.es.com> To (un)subscribe or get help: <gus-general-request@dsd.es.com> To contact a human (last resort): <gus-general-owner@dsd.es.com> FTP sites: archive.epas.utoronto.ca pub/pc/ultrasound wuarchive.wustl.edu systems/msdos/ultrasound archive.orst.edu pub/packages/gravis FTP mail server: mail-server@nike.rz.uni-konstanz.de Hints: - Get the FAQ from the FTP sites or the request server. - Mail to <gus-general-request@dsd.es.com> for info about other GUS related mailing lists (programmers, musicians, etc.).