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: Mon, 25 Oct 1993 18:25:07 GMT+0200
From: PEKKASOI@sara.cc.utu.fi
Subject: help
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1993 14:46:51 +0930 (CST)
From: Gavin <SCARMAN@hfrd.dsto.gov.au>
Subject: Re: mono microphones
>dionf@ERE.UMontreal.CA writes ....
>Doesn't matter. By using a mono mic on the GUS you simply put to ground one
>input which will not damage the GUS.
I have a dynamic mic with a 6.5mm plug, so I bought a 6.5->3.5mm adapter with
the stereo rings thinking that this'll solve the problem with only one channel
when using a mono mic. However the GUS throws a wobbly. I guess I'm creating a
hum loop or something but I can't see how. Does anyone know what the input
circuit to the GUS's mic port look like?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 93 11:08:30 +0100
From: v92jl@november (johan linder)
Subject: OPTi question
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I am planning to buy a GUS for my pc. My computer has a mothercard called
OPTi-391 wb ver 1.0 The DMA chip has the number F82C206 which could be faulty according to gus0013.zip file. However my DMA chip has not the name OPTi on the frontside ( several of the other chips has ). My DMA chip looks like this.
-----------------
CHIPS
F282c206 H
6058-F
9047 EANE
JAPAN
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Does anyone know if this is the chip that could be faulty?. If it is, should i
