Ultrasound Daily Digest Wed, 23 Dec 92 Volume 1 : Issue 55 Today's Topics: Better MOD player comanche Diamond Stealth w/ GUS: UPDATE Gravis' Customer Support Gus .snd format.. GUS and Sherlock Holmes GUS and Windows 3.1 Hmmm..... MODS AND PLAYERS!! **READ** info/where to get them UNresolvable conflict with Diamond Stealth/VRAM video adapter Information about the UltraSound Daily Digest (such as mail addresses, request servers, ftp sites, etc., etc.) can be found at the end of the Digest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 12:12:13 EST From: timkwan@Athena.MIT.EDU Message-Id: <9212221712.AA15376@carbonara> Subject: Better MOD player To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Is there a really good MOD player around? WOWII is OK, but it defaults to mono. It sounds alright, but as I mentioned in a previous posting, the MAC makes every .MOD file sound way way way better than the GUS. I know you can do: wowii /pro filename.mod to force stereo, but this deteriorates the sound even further, causing it to have high-pitched distortion in the output. So, is there no MOD player that plays CLEARLY in STEREO and with ANTI-ALIASING built in? -Tim ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 19:58:45 +0700 (MST) From: Adam Cowen Message-Id: Subject: comanche To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Hi there... I have been trying to use comanche game with the sbos loaded etc... Umm I can only get it to play the music (which sounds great) but no digitised effects or voice. Yes I did use the software upgrade on archive.epas.utoronto.ca ! Before it was mixed sound and music, like it wasnt't distinguishing properly...but now all I get is music. I am kinda dissapointed because my friend with a PAS16 says the voice and effects are great :( but I have yet to hear them. If anyone has solved this problem then could you post it to the digest or mail me. kewl, and thanks :-) +-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+ | Adam Cowen | "The optimist proclaims that we live in the | | Co-op Computer Engineering | best of all possible worlds, and the | | University of Alberta | pessimist fears that this is true." | | email: cowen@ee.ualberta.ca | -James Branch Cabell | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 13:26:50 CST From: ibmpa!hartmann.austin.ibm.com!lance@ibminet.awdpa.ibm.com (Lance Hartmann) Message-Id: <9212221926.AA11330@hartmann.austin.ibm.com> Subject: Diamond Stealth w/ GUS: UPDATE To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I got through to Gravis this morning. This time I reached I reached a "senior" person by the name of Harry Skibbe. "Harry" seemed infinitely more knowledgable than the guy with whom I spoke yesterday and was, actually, quite entertaining. When I asked him about the memory map in the manual (version 1.1 by the way), he stated that it was WRONG particularly the range 2X2-3X2. "There's no way", he said that they use such a large range. Of course, this would tromp all over most of the COM ports. Harry said the correct addresses should be in the README file. Now, I have the 1.21 disks, but I don't recall seeing a memory map in the README -- I'll definitely check when I get home, BUT.... in the interim, if anyone out here happens to have this information handy, PLEASE send me a copy!!! Soooooo, it looks like I just might be able to avoid conflicts with the Diamond Stealth, afterall. We'll see. *smiling* In retrospect, it's kind of unfortunate -- it's always nice to get that "special excuse" to run out and buy the latest, greatest, ... :-) Harry also commented about the available base ports. On p. 16 describing the jumper settings, the manual infers that only base addresses 210, 220, 230, 240, 250, and 260 are available. However, on p. 69 describing the memory map, the manual infers that the 'X' can represent 0-F hexadecimal. Harry confirmed that, indeed, the card CAN be configured to all of those (200, 210, ..., 260, 270, ... , 2F0) though the ones shown on p. 16 are recommended as the others are much more likely to cause problems (conflicts?). Regards, Lance Hartmann (lance%hartmann.austin.ibm.com@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com) Yes, that IS a '%' (percent sign) in my network address. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All statements, comments, opinions, etc. herein reflect those of the author and shall NOT be miscontrued as those of IBM or anyone else for that matter. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 11:50:47 PST From: dedmunds@sfu.ca Message-Id: <9212221950.AA20069@selkirk.sfu.ca> Subject: Gravis' Customer Support To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Has anyone else called the Gravis BBS lately? I logged on yesterday and was mortified by the general tone of the messages. Why? Because the prevailing attitude was that of anger; something that worries me greatly since we need enthusiastic GUS owners if we hope to attract developer support (and right now, the GUS is being marketed mainly by word of mouth). Why were they angry? Essentially because they feel they've bought a product and then been deserted by the company. They can't get through to tech support and the BBS is a shambles. I even saw messages on the BBS saying "Gravis, are you really here?", i.e. they don't even have an obvious presence on their own BBS! The current response time to customer querries is simply unacceptable. As others have pointed out, it's not just a matter of having a great product, you must also market it effectively. I've met Alan and Harry from tech support and they ARE dedicated - just simply overwhelmed with correspondence. So much of the problem could be rectified with a properly configured BBS. (They even had offers on the board to set up a nice interface.) - cost it out and see if a North American 800 BBS number makes sense (right now they have paid tech support staff giving advice like "try sbos -o2") - make back copies of this digest available - put a comprehensive trouble shooting guide or diagnostic system on the board - list SBOS settings for different games - offline reader for long distance callers Running a good BBS is almost a full time job. For God's sake, bring in some semi-professional help to set it up right! We here with Internet access feel some sense of community. The typical GUS owner exists in a void. Comments? Darran Edmundson dedmunds@sfu.ca ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 23:11:46 -0800 (PST) From: I/We are Gaia Message-Id: Subject: Gus .snd format.. To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Is this a standard format that USS8 saves in?? What format is it, and can I get a player/convertor for dos or windows?? I would like to try to record in stereo, and at 44.1 and I know the windows driver right now only supports mono and a lower sampling rate.. Any info ?? Gaia ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Dec 92 1:49:12 AST From: F. Wallace Peers Message-Id: <9212230549.AA20701@orca.es.com> Subject: GUS and Sherlock Holmes To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Just started playing Sherlock Holmes game the other day. During the opening sequence an interesting thing occured. At the point where a song was supposed to begin, I got "emm386 error: DMA buffer too small". I assume the song was too big to fit the buffer because other sounds worked fine up until that point. Anyway, too fix the problem I simply disabled emm386 in my config.sys and rebooted. No problems. On another note, I tried it with Qemm v6.0 and it worked no problem as well. Merry Christmas all...... -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PEERSFW@NEWTON.CCS.TUNS.CA F. Wallace Peers "There is no law that vulgarity and literary excellence cannot coexist." - A. Trevor Hodge ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 18:04 CST From: C035MJH@UTARLG.UTA.EDU Message-Id: <01GSMIZ4QON4000DJ3@utarlg.uta.edu> Subject: GUS and Windows 3.1 To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I just bought a GUS at BIZMART Arlington Texas for $139.99+tax. The demo worked great, really enjoyed playing with GUS, but I do have some problems with Windows 3.1. I had the MS speaker driver to play the .wav files in windows. The problem I have is the start and shutdown system sounds. I've removed the spe aker driver and followed the GUS windows drivers setup . When windows starts the Tada.wav file was played but only 1/4 of the end. (sometimes on sound was played at all). Note: The Media Player and Sound Recorder works fine in Windows. No problem here . In the Gravis Talk, Questions and Answer somebody mentioned about a Ultrawin.cfg file in the /Ultrasnd directory. I've checked all related director y including Windows. I even checked all 6 GUS disks in the compress files. It was nowhere to be found. DOES THIS ultrawin.cfg FILE REALLY EXIST? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 00:33:18 -0800 From: "Gee watch out.. I'm 'bad'" Message-Id: <199212230833.AA22718@halcyon.com> Subject: Hmmm..... To: Ultrasound Daily Digest well the digest seems to have devolved to ppl either asking about getting the GUS to work with certain games, or whining about one thing or other... *sigh* also I would very much like to get the gus dev kit, but thus far everyone who has asked this has either had the question answered privately or they have all been dragged off and beaten with old adlib cards.. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ps. great card.. just wish I could load patches in windows without having to sacrifice small chickens... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: 21 Dec 92 00:19:43 GMT From: cjohnson@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Christopher Johnson) Message-Id: <1h32ivINNglu@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> Subject: MODS AND PLAYERS!! **READ** info/where to get them Summary: Where to find modplayers To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Hello world, For all those asking, here is where to get those mod players and mods. SNAKE.MCS.KENT.EDU is the best site for general stuff. look in /pub/SB-Adlib Simtel-20 or archie.au(simtel mirror) in for windows players ftp.cica.indiana.edu in pub/pc/win3/sound here is a short list of players mp or modplay BEST OVERALL mp219b.zip simtel and snake wowii best for vga/fast machines wowii12b.zip simtel and snake trakblaster best for compatability trak-something simtel and snake two versions, old one for slow machines ss cute display(hifi) have_sex.arj found on local BBS (western Australia White Ghost) superpro player generally good ssp.zip or similar found on night owl 7 CD player? cute display(hifi) player.zip or similar found on night owl 7 CD WINDOWS Winmod pro does protracker wmp????.zip cica winmod more stable winmod12.zip or similar cica Hope this helps, e-mail me if you find any more players and I will add them in for the next time mod player requests get a little out of hand. for mods ftp to wuarchive.wustl.edu and go to the amiga music directory (pub/amiga/music/ntsb ?????) that should do you for a while see you soon Chris. -- __________________________________________________________ When Something Christopher Johnson | this letter was written |can go wrong it cjohnson@tartarus.uwa.oz.au | using 100% recycled |Segmentaion fault johnson@swanee.ee.uwa.oz.au | electrons |Core dumped | I reserve the right to be totally wrong! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 9:07:11 CST From: ibmpa!hartmann.austin.ibm.com!lance@ibminet.awdpa.ibm.com (Lance Hartmann) Message-Id: <9212221507.AA07698@hartmann.austin.ibm.com> Subject: UNresolvable conflict with Diamond Stealth/VRAM video adapter To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Having just installed my GUS, I've discovered a hardware conflict with the Diamond Stealth/VRAM video adapter that I cannot resolve. Thought I'd pass this on to others here. On page 2:2 of the "Diamond Stealth VRAM User's Manual" is the following listing of addresses used by the card: I/O Address: 3B0-3DF, 42E8, 4AE8, 82E8, 86E8, 8AE8, 8EE8, 92E8, 96E8, 9AE8, 9EE8 Memory Address: A000-AFFF, B800-BFFF Video BIOS: C000-C7FF *!*!*!*! IMPORTANT NOTE !*!*!*! *!*!*!*! IMPORTANT NOTE !*!*!*! The "Diamond Stealth VRAM User's Manual", however, is INCOMPLETE. The writer(s) of the manual omitted another couple of I/O addresses used by the card -- 2E8 and 2E0. I learned about these from a Diamond tech when I found a conflict with my fax/modem (which fortunately I was able to resolve). Now, if I'm reading the UltraSound Memory Map correctly (p. 69), then the address range: 2X2-3X2 -- GF1 will conflict with the Stealth's addresses 2E8 and 2E0 NO MATTER WHAT BASE PORT I try to use for GUS. While I was able to successfully play the mid files using the GUS, I encountered a couple of strange problems (static bursts, low/no volume out of one speaker) running the "flidemo" and Starcon II which not so surprisingly are using a GRAPHICS mode. If I'm missing something, then I'd sure appreciate someone setting me back on the correct path, but otherwise I'd really like to hear recommendations from others for a NEW accelerated video adapter to use WITHOUT conflicts. Oh, my system is an ISA-based 486/50 (no local bus) using ETEQ chipset with AMI BIOS. Lance Hartmann (lance%hartmann.austin.ibm.com@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com) Yes, that IS a '%' (percent sign) in my network address. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All statements, comments, opinions, etc. herein reflect those of the author and shall NOT be miscontrued as those of IBM or anyone else for that matter. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 17:45 CST From: C035MJH@UTARLG.UTA.EDU Message-Id: <01GSMIBNSCU8000DJ3@utarlg.uta.edu> To: Ultrasound Daily Digest System configuration 386-33 MHz motherboard Intel CPU OPTi chipsset: (Write Back Cashe) OPTi 82c391 -System Controller. 4L50f2205 Japan 911EAI 386 WB 33 MHz OPTi 82c392 -Data Buffer Controler. 4L40F1206 Japan 9109EAI OPTi F82c206 -Integrated Peripheral Controller. 9116 Multi-IO board: MIO-400KF all in one Expension Board. Video Card: Diamond computer systems SpeedStar with TSENG Lab ET4000ax chip. *** Gravis UltraSound Rev 2.2 *** SoundCard. ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V1 #55 ******************************