Ultrasound Daily Digest Tue, 29 Dec 92 Volume 1 : Issue 61 Today's Topics: A few questions from a new owner... Cheap GUS price! Suggestions? Digest Admin: More Info on 16bit Daughtercard DMA Channels -- 1 or 2? GUS: is it Avail. in AUSTRALIA MIDI Files NEW drivers OS/2 attempts Player 669 for GUS. SBOS 1.23 -- I like it, despite first impressions. SBOS 1.23b SBOS and Windows Soon to be new user.... The Lost files of Sherlock Holmes 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: 29 Dec 1992 02:43:26 -0500 From: "Bryon Daly, ECE Dept, UMass, Amherst" Message-Id: <01GSVDSS2UHUDSXT7R@UMAECS> Subject: A few questions from a new owner... To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Well, I just got my GUS a few days back, finally, and I have a few questions for you guys...(Hopefully this will get posted, since my last letter to the digest never made it...) First, right now I am forced to play my GUS on a dinky pair of Sony speakers meant to be hooked into a walkman. They are connected directly to the amplified out and I have no external way to control the volume. This is a problem...The GUS has a way of producing incredibly loud sound from those tiny speakers, and I can't lower the volume! I almost need earmuffs to play Star Control II and even music from in Windows is way too loud. If I use SBOS, I can lower the volume for games that use SB emulation, but that doesn't help me in Windows or in Starcon2. The little sound app that is supposed to allow volume control in windows that comes with the card doesn't change the volume at all. (I can turn off all sound output with it, though). Am I missing something? Can someone please tell me how I can generically lower the output volume on the card...or at least in Starcon2 and Windows? Second, can someone take the time to explain the basics of midi (.mid) files? What exactly are they and how do they work? Can someone also explain how to get them to be played by my GUS...what steps to take, etc? Right now, playmidi will ONLY play the examples included with the card. I can't get any of the .mid files from epas to work. All the ones I've tried, such as magical.mid, demo0001.mid, and canyon.mid all give an error like "unable to load achbells - 7" or something like that. Under Windows, Media Player will load in a midi file, but it always gives the warning that "it may not play right under the current midi configuration", and it never sounds too good. I have the Ultrasound driver installed, and moved that file they wanted into the \windows\system dir. In the midi setup, I have "ultrasound" selected in both columns of that mysterious chart (What's that all about?). The manual is virtually worthless about this stuff...can someone tell me what I need to do? Thanks! Third, after playing Star Control II, I loaded up Windows, and the card flipped out! It played the opening tune and then continued to play random noise mixed in with snippets of Starcon2 (all at HIGH VOLUME) until I exited Windows. SBOS was NOT installed. Does starcon2 screw the card up for other apps? If it matters, I am using the card on a Gateway 486/25 (non-OPTI chipset), with DMA 7, MIDI IRQ 5 (which my old SB used OK), US IRQ 11, Port 220 (also used previously by my SB). Thanks for any help/answers you can provide. -Bryon ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 18:27:47 EST From: Hard On The Beaver Message-Id: <00965C66.3C362780.11613@UALR.EDU> Subject: Cheap GUS price! Suggestions? To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Can someone please point me to the place to buy a GUS for the lowest price in the US? The cheapest I've seen is $139 at BIZMART in Texas. Thanks! Jacque Bussey U of Arkansas Little Rock jabussey@ualr.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 2:47:17 MST From: ddebry@ren.dsd.ES.COM (Dave DeBry) Message-Id: <9212290947.AA11898@ren> Subject: Digest Admin: More Info on 16bit Daughtercard To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I just got this information about the 16 bit daughtercard for the Gus, and Gravis in general. It's the shareholder report for 3rd quarter 1992. I've removed a lot of specific money amounts, and tried to just include useful information. ------------ New Product Development [Gravis] continues to invest further in research and development and tooling for new products. Major efforts were made for the completion and manufacturing of the UltraSound PC sound card which commenced shipping October 2nd, 1992. These engineering efforts will continue as [Gravis] plans on maintaining its edge in the sound card market. [Gravis] recently announced a low cost 16 bit recording daughterboard for UltraSound. In addition to 16-bit, 32 voice stereo playback, UltraSound can now record in 16-bit CD quality stereo. The add on board features sampling rates to 48kHz, on board filtering, compression, and extended input mixing capabilities. The product should be available early 1993. Outlook for Fourth Quarter Strong continued growth over the prior [sp?] year is expected as a result of new customers and new product offerings. Initial sales and customer response to Ultrasound are encouraging [ed: yay!]. Sales of UltraSound have exceeded $1,000,000 [ed: Canadian dollars] for the month of November. These initial results may reflect that UltraSound is a new product in its introductory period. And, while future sales may not be maintained at this rate, [Gravis] is hopeful that the UltraSound product line will be a strong basis for growth. - Grant Russell, President ------------ In other words, the sales for November were great, but there is concern that sales may slump off. Which means we need to keep hounding those software companies to make native Gus games. So keep emailing! -- Dave ddebry@ debry@ \ "It's not like I'm using. It's like my body DeBry dsd. peruvian. | has developed this massive drug deficiency." es. cs.utah. | com edu / - Case ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 1:45:54 MST From: ddebry@itchy (Dave DeBry) Message-Id: <9212290845.AA19385@itchy> Subject: DMA Channels -- 1 or 2? To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I don't have the manual with me, but I distinctly remember it saying that the Gus is capable of using DMA channels at once: one for reading (from cpu memory to the Gus), and one for writing. In the ULTRASND variable: ULTRASND=220,*,*,11,5 ...the DMA channels are the asterisks, so it is possible to set them to be two different channels, right? Then how come the Windows stuff only allows for one? What are the advantages of two? Can the CPU and Gus both make use of the channels, and write when they feel like it, concurrently (as far as the bus will allow)? Pondering... ...can be VERY bad this early in the morning. =^) -- Dave ddebry@ debry@ \ "Damn right, I got in a fight. Someone left DeBry dsd. peruvian. | the seat up. I hate that." es. cs.utah. | com edu / - David Addison ------------------------------ Date: 28 Dec 1992 01:29:48 GMT From: esther@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Pe-Mei Esther LIM) Message-Id: <1hllacINNkbu@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> Subject: GUS: is it Avail. in AUSTRALIA To: Ultrasound Daily Digest egg@dstos3.dsto.gov.au writes: >Does anyone know where one can buy a GUS in australia ? >I have read a bit on the GUS in this group but I cant get a good feel >for what its really like. Some tech info would be appreciated if someone >has it handy. Contact RAETRONICS, in Perth, they sell them for $280... phone (09) 310 7726 or (09) 275 3162... esther@tartarus.uwa.edu.au ------------------------------ Date: 28 Dec 92 16:03:42 EST (Mon) From: orbit@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us (Adam Traidman) Message-Id: <9212281603.AA24368@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us> Subject: MIDI Files To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I have been having some trouble playing certain MIDI files which get a "Corrupt MIDI file" error message from PLAYMIDI, but work find in Windows. I just today upgraded to 1 MEG of RAM which didn't help the situation much. (My compliments to the author of DRAM, it came in handy.) If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Also, has anyone found a solution yet to the "repeating" of certain sounds by the UltraSound while in Windows? It is usually accompanied by a loud hiss.. Any information would be appreciated. Thanks, Adam Traidman (orbit) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Dec 92 06:11:52 PST From: brian@ccnext.ucsf.edu (Brian Huddleston) Message-Id: <9212281411.AA15470@ ccnext.ucsf.edu > Subject: NEW drivers To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I just want to ask about something I heard once, is it true that ultrasound is creating a driver to make the UltraSound emulate the Roland MT-32 or something? I'm not sure if this is just one of those wish list suggestions, or does it have any base. Brian H. brian@ccnext.ucsf.edu ------------------------------ Date: 28 Dec 92 11:27:43 From: monkey!blackdiamond@apple.com (Philip Andrew Nemec) Message-Id: <9212281127.AA2659.V1.4@monkey.UUCP> Subject: OS/2 attempts To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I tried (using the beta version) a bit of ultrasound stuff... I quickly tried the WIN 3.1 stuff, but to no avail. Here is what I tried... Using the entire setup (reinstalling from floppy) for the GUS stuff. The stuff from GRAVIS worked fine - like I recall it talked like it was supposed to. Then I go to set it up in Windows (3.1 again), and gives me errors on restart that it can't initialize or some such. I believe this was from not getting the environment variables, so I went and stuck those in. Then on restart I get a patch not found on ever single patch... So I copy all the patches into the WINOS31 or whatever directory... Then it just didn't like it and I gave up (like I took it off my hard disk, at least for the time being). I'll probably reinstall it if there are some signs of light! ------------------------------ Date: 29 Dec 92 05:30:04 GMT From: ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca (Phat H Tran) Message-Id: Subject: Player 669 for GUS. To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Martin was having trouble uploading to Epas, so he sent me Player 669 for the GUS and a 669 file, both of which I've uploaded to Epas. The player is called p669gu0.arj, and the 669 files is crystals.zip. If Martin's reading this, can you please send me a few more 669 files? I'll upload them to Epas as well. Crystals.669 sounded really good for 8-bit audio. Phat. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Dec 92 05:25:45 GMT From: ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca (Phat H Tran) Message-Id: Subject: SBOS 1.23 -- I like it, despite first impressions. To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I have come to the conclusion that SBOS 1.23 is a definite improvement over 1.22, despite being less than impressed with it at the start. I think I posted two complaints about the new SBOS, which later turned out to be somewhat false. First, I think I said that the Inca demo ran worse with 1.23 than with SBOS 1.22. Slap me silly, but my problems with the demo was due to me not disabling EMM386. Running the Inca demo with EMM386 installed resulted in fouled speech with SBOS 1.22 as well as 1.23. Second... Ummm... I can't remember what my second hasty complaint was. Well, anyway, I think the reason why I didn't like SBOS 1.23 at first was that it didn't say "SBOS installed". I'd never thought that I'd miss that overly-nasal greeting, but I guess I did, because once I got it saying "SBOS installed" again, everything seemed to work better. To get your copy of SBOS 1.23 talking again, delete the third line in SBOS.CFG or change the sample name to one that can actually be found in your \ultrasnd\sbos directory. The older SBOSes said "SBOS installed" if they couldn't find the sample specified in the config file, but the new one just shuts up. With 1.23, the digitized sounds are much softer and smoother than with earlier versions. As I'm using the more-or-less constantly-at-max-volume amplified out, my ears are much relieved at this. The speech in Chuck Yeager's Air Combat (the old one) worked much more consistently with 1.23 than they did with 1.22. WOWII works for me with 1.23. In fact, I can increase the frequency to 22kHz now, whereas with 1.22, I had to settle for 16kHz. I also use /b:9000. The animation in the intro of Falcon 3.0 is much more in sync with the digitized sounds than they were with 1.22. The FM music also seems improved over 1.22. There isn't that loud noise when I enter the War Room, for example. In all, everything I've tried with SBOS 1.23 worked better than it did with SBOS 1.22. To those of you who have gone back to 1.22, perhaps you should give 1.23 a second look. Phat. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 07:48:45 -0500 (EST) From: Morgan Stair Message-Id: Subject: SBOS 1.23b To: Ultrasound Daily Digest On 27 Dec 1992, Thomas Wong wrote: > For all those having problems with the new SBOS 1.23, please contact > Gravis and let them know what your problems are. Remember to be detailed > about what you are doing and what the problem is. > > The email address for Alan, the tech guy, is 71333.350@compuserve.com. Ultima Underworld works Moderately well for me with SBOSv1.22b (1.23b is unusable), but the following problems are: 1) VERY loud, high speed screaches and static which don't stop until I choose to view the introduction. As soon as it says "At last you are asleep" something resets in the Ultrasound card and things work find (except for #2 below). It sounds as if the screaching might be a maximum speed and volume playback loop of "At last you are asleep" but I can't tell. 2) 2-4 ticks per second (very annoying) during any digitized output all the time (in Underworld only). I have tried both QEMM6.02 and DOS5\EMM386 with a variety of switches (even things like "1024 AUTO M9 X=C000-CFFF RAMF" and the problem wasn't solved. This is pretty bad, but I can live with it since the game doesn't use digitized sound very much, but when I tried SBOSv1.23 (hoping this was fixed :-) I found that all the old problems remained (I think the "ticks" were softer). It started with screaches and static (somewhat drowned out by a louder music score). Worse then, the first time I ran the introduction all it did was STOP digitized sound, and SUBSEQUENT times running the introduction, I found the music score was so much louder, that I could barely hear the digitized speach. The ticking however seemed a little softer. Needless to say, I put 1.22 back in place, and archived 1.23 for my own personal posterity... One more thing, Alan. Could you tell whoever writes the installation instructions that new copies of any executables (like sbosdrv.exe loadsbos.exe) HAVE TO GO IN THE ULTRASND DIRECTORY (vs ULTRASND\SBOS)! Okay, it's a Beta release, and you can expect a level of competence on our parts, so consider this feedback. The installation / update instructions have been wrong for 1.22 and 1.23. By the way, I am running on a 486/33 ISA machine with 8M RAM, AMI Bios, and the BIOTEQ Chipset. By default I use QEMM as my memory manager, and my GUS is successfully configured for DMA Channel 7, MIDI Irq 7, and Ultrasound Irq 11. I changed memory managers (and parameters) several times, and I changed my GUS configuration (including using 8 bit DMA channels) several times to try and fix the problem with no success. -Morgan ************************************************************************* * W. Morgan Stair Phone: (617) 552-8783 * * Boston College FAX: (617) 552-8778 * * Institute for Space Research Email: morgan@dl5000.bc.edu * * 4 Alfred Circle * * Bedford MA 01730 * ************************************************************************* ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Dec 92 14:05:13 -0500 From: U-L59339-Bob Phillips Message-Id: <9212281904.AA04161@crdgw1.ge.com> Subject: SBOS and Windows To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I recently purchased an Ultrasound card and with some playing around with settings and options have it running reasonably well. The only problem that I have found is that I can not launch DOS programs from Windows 3.1 using the batch files created by UBAT. In fact, I can not even start the SBOS TSR from an MSDOS virtual machine. It simply hangs. I have tried playing around with various interupt sequences to see if that helped but without much success. I am running on a GW2000 486/33. Does anyone have any suggestions?? I saw a similar posting on the soundcards news but no answers yet. I have also submitted to Gravis through compuserve so if I get a response through that channel I will post it. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Dec 92 05:38:18 PST From: brian@ccnext.ucsf.edu (Brian Huddleston) Message-Id: <9212281338.AA15434@ ccnext.ucsf.edu > Subject: Soon to be new user.... To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Greetings all, I just wanted to ask a few questions before I jump over to one of our local stores and buy this outstanding card. Has anyone had any experience with the Ultrasound with the game DUNE2???? I have a 386sx 16mhz and alot of programs that use mods slow down my computer, such as Starcon ][, does the ultrasound help with this? (BTW: right now I have the old SoundBlaster). I know the UltraS wasn't made as a gaming card directely, but right now that's mostly what I'm going to be using it for. I do work with MIDI, but only on a low level , I'm still learning about music. I've got a price quote from a local store for about $130. Is it worth it? (I know the price is good, but I mean...my situation and all...) Brian H. brian@ccnext.ucsf.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Dec 92 14:53:22 PST From: richard@resumix.portal.com (Richard Davis) Message-Id: <9212282253.AA24288@mjollnir.resumix> Subject: The Lost files of Sherlock Holmes To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Has anyone had any luck in getting the sound effects to work with the game called "The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes"? I'm using SBOS 1.22, and I've tried all the -o and -x options with no success. I finally managed to get sound effects with Kings Quest VI using -x2, but that doesn't work here. My autoexec sets ULTRASND=220,7,7,11,5. I really like the GUS, but the software compatibility problems have had be tearing my hair out. I guess that's half the fun (yeah, right!). While I'm at it, has anyone out there managed to get "KidPix" to work with the GUS? Cheers, Richard ============================================================================= Richard Davis Resumix, Incorporated Senior Software Engineer 2953 Bunker Hill Lane (408) 764-9213 Santa Clara, CA 95054 ============================================================================= ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V1 #61 ******************************