GUS Daily Digest Fri, 11 Mar 94 9:37 PST Volume 11: Issue 36 Today's Topics: feedback on the new gus daughter card GUS Daily Digest V11 #34 GUS Daily Digest V11 #34 (1 msg) GUS Daily Digest V11 #35 (3 msgs) GUS Install Program LMSI CDROM Info?? Out, ye foul GUS demons! People don't read the FAQ before they post here Problem Reply when purchased GUS supported product Stacker 4.0 and 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: Thu, 10 Mar 94 07:16:51 PST From: Rick Skalsky Subject: feedback on the new gus daughter card It seems surprising that the digests have had little if any comments on the new 16 bit daughter card. What gives? Have many of you bought it yet? What's the shipping time from Gravis? Is it worth it? Does it offer any other benefits besides 16 bit recording? Was it easy to install hardware wise? Does it come with any software or require any changes to current settings? Lots of questions I know. To reciprocate, I'll offer some tidbits of info from my recent experiences. I'm running Stacker 4.0 with no problems on 2 SCSI drives, although I still keep my GUS software on a non-stacked drive K:. Running Dos 6.2 with Netroom 3.0 memory manager, gus0040 installed directly on top of gus0038 with no problems. In fact, guss0040 fixed all the problems that gus0038 introduced to my system. Running a Toshiba 3401 internal, running the Gus output through a Sony receiver with large Sony speakers and it sounds great. Using a Radio Shack 33-1066 Stereo mic with an adaptor plug to plug the right & left mic inputs into the single Gus mic input. Sounds not too bad. That's about it for now. Looking forward to hearing some of your feedback on the new daughtercard. Cieu for now. Rich ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 08:36:04 -0500 (EST) From: Bryon Thur Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V11 #34 > From: "J.Waghorn" > > > > My records indicate that correct Internet addresses are > > "tech1@gravis.com" and "tech2@gravis.com". This would explain > > why your mail is being returned. > > Noooooooo > My mail is not being returned at all, I sent it & like almost everyone else > I know of have had no response from either sales@gravis.com or > tech@gravis.com. > I suspect it is all going to /dev/null at Gravis :) > > Jason Just in case you are remotely curious...I've sent mail to tech@gravis and had it returned 1 day later with a complete, and informative reply. I guess they liked my name better than yours ;) Bryon Thur ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 10:11:42 -0800 (PST) From: Eli Bingham Subject: GUS Daily Digest V11 #34 (1 msg) >Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 04:03:09 -0500 >From: fwang@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Frank Wang) >Subject: Here is the COMPLETE (?) list of Monkey Island II instruments > > Hmm. That's a fairly complete list. :-D ========================================================================== Eli Bingham ebingham@tcsgi.mhs.mendocino.k12.ca.us ebingha@ctp.org ========================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 15:39:21 -0500 From: Fok Leslie Li Sze Subject: GUS Daily Digest V11 #35 Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 17:08:21 -0700 (MST) From: shannon@physics.Arizona.EDU (Shannon Miller) Subject: Daughter Board for SB emulation That guy was a genius! Gravis, now listen carefully to me. Soundblaster IS the industry standard right now. Truly and really. Point two. SBOS is atrocious. Pathetic. Horrific. Sure, might not be too bad for Adlib, but for the specialized soundblaster effects now common in games, it just can't cut butter... Point three. You've included an easy expansion method for a daughter board. PLEASE think of a way to get a fully soundblaster quality emulation board going. I would pay quite a bit for that... especially for us low-slot computer users... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No!!! we don't want resource to be wasted on SB emulation. FM music done for SB is crap, period. What I REALLY would love to see is a DB that has 16-bit recording (just like the one available now) PLUS expandable memory to lots of megs. I wish they can somehow solve the problem of only 1 meg addressable RAM. I'd KILL to get my hands on such a card (well, I am seriously thinking of getting my paws on the DB already, if not just for hte DAC for better WAV in Windows. But it would be Ultra cool if i can use tonnes of on-board RAM). ______________________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 12:46:55 -0700 (MST) From: Gary Scott Kay Subject: gus0038.zip What ever happened to this file? It was on epas for a few days then vanished... is it superceded, or just MIA? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no need for GUS0038.zip when there is GUS0041.zip. GUS0041.zip contains all that gus0038.zip has and the bugfixes from gus0038,40.zip. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 09 Mar 94 16:26:00 EST From: Greg Subject: Hired Guns 3D For those interested in buying Hired Guns because of its 3D support, here is my verdict on the game. First of all, this is the only game I know that includes custom patches (*.pat) and some of the music sounds great. The game has a specific Gravis directory which includes the digital samples and 3d samples. There are around 15-20 digitized of which only four are Focal Point 3D. So beware, those expecting full 3d sound will be upset. However, the four 3d sounds are incredible most notable is the explosion sound. The game itself is fair, and the graphics are not very good, because the game supports 4 players in 4 different windows on screen. This leads to another problem. The 3d sounds are great with headphones, so if 4 people are playing, in order for all 4 to hear the music and sound speakers must be used. My 99$ speakers are not very good for listening to 3D samples. In general, if you want to buy the game for its sound and music go ahead, but if you want to actually enjoy the gameplay you may want to save the 50$. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ But what about the game in single player mode? What kind of game it is anyway? Info will be appreciated. Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 12:27:40 CST From: d7924115@sparc1.cc.ncku.edu.tw Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V11 #35 > > From: d7924115@sparc1.cc.ncku.edu.tw > > Subject: Stacker 4.0 and GUS > > > > Hello , all > > After I upgraded my Stacker from 3.1 to 4.0 , the mega-em seems to go wrong > > in games. When I play Xwing , the speech sounds strange. It just can't say > > the whole words. It often say the first word and keep slience later. Before > > I upgraded Stacker , GUS worked well with megaem in muisc and sound. So can > > anyone know what happened on my system and how to fixed it ? > What is the memory requirement of Stacker 4.0? It seems to me > that Stacker 4.0 may be a bit too big!!! Try running MEMMAKER or > whatever memory manager you use to optimize your memory. > Stacker 4.0 use new tech to reduce the memory need in umb. That is DPMS ( DOS PROTECTED MODE SERVICE ) . It use standard VPCI format. So it can use extended or expanded memory. On my computer Stacker only uses 16KB in UMB. So I think maybe the problem is confliction of mega-em and DPMS . After I unload DPMS , everything works well. But anyway , thank you for your reply. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 16:07:16 +0930 (CST) From: Gavin Scarman Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V11 #35 >From: shannon@physics.Arizona.EDU (Shannon Miller) >Subject: Daughter Board for SB emulation The market for it would be limited to say the least, unless they could do it a cheaper price than a SB -doubtful. Besides many GUS owners (like me) would rather no sound that SB sound. >From: Gary Scott Kay >Subject: gus0038.zip? Yes it was superseded (not superceded - I lost an arguement over the spelling of this too), by GUS0041 ------------------------------ Date: 10 Mar 94 08:04:25 PST From: ksoule@tatertot.com (KSoule) Subject: GUS Install Program >Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 18:07:46 -0800 (PST) >From: Slacker >Subject: AAARRRRGGGGHHH! Problems... >OK, I've just about had it. I accidentally erased my config.sys and >autoexec.bat a while back, and couldn't remember the proper GUS >settings. FWIW, I found that the GUS install program (2.06) put a number of extra spaces AFTER lines it added to CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. An example would be: "SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRASND " I have added the quotes to show the extra spaces. I never could see these in my editor, but DOS certainly does, and nothing worked. When I finally figured out what was going on, I went through each line of both files, and made sure that there were no spaces after the last character. I can't say that this solved ALL of my GUS problems, but at least it got me up and running. Kent TaterTot News & Mail * San Francisco,CA * VirtualNET @1415008 * ManicNet @2 415.255.8340 @tatertot.com * WWIVNet @4552 Link @14552 GAYnet @4500 * DM ON ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 23:59:46 -0500 (EST) From: Roger Frederi Clark Subject: LMSI CDROM Info?? I recently installed Linux on my system (go ahead, gasp!), and I want to get cdrom support. Does anybody have hardware info for the GUS daughter board and the LMSI CM205 drive, i.e. low-level hardware instructions, access instructions for the cdrom, etc. I'm trying(I hope) to write my own driver for it to work with Linux. Any help, ideas, suggestions(or C++ code for it!) would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks, Roger Clark P.S. Linux has native GUS support. I've only tried mods, but they sound great and only use 1.5% of my cpu power to play them in the background while I do something else! Linux recommends GUS!!!! | /\ helios@strauss.udel.edu |/^^\ o "I'd rather be biking." University of Delaware | \ J\. Chemistry (and others) | \__O_<_O_______________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 94 8:31:07 CST From: Jon Holt Subject: Out, ye foul GUS demons! >From: Slacker >Subject: AAARRRRGGGGHHH! Problems... > >OK, I've just about had it. I accidentally erased my config.sys and >autoexec.bat a while back, and couldn't remember the proper GUS >settings. I didn't worry about it for a while because I had to steal one >of the jumpers for my new HD anyway, so I figured as soon as I got >another jumper, I'd plug it back in and everything would be fiiiine. Which jumper did you steal off the GUS? (Perhaps you put it back on the wrong connector?) Post your jumper block settings & we can compare. >I've got my autoexec.bat and config.sys set up just like the manuals say >to do (except I left the "call C:\ULTRASND\sbos.bat" line out). I've got >the card set on the default settings and everything. It initializes fine >(i.e. doesn't say "no card found"). In fact, it initializes twice. >How? I only have the damn commands once. Anyway, gus0041's install >won't help, because the damn program: > 1) Says I don't have a GUS installed (even though ultrinit >recognized it > 2) Crashes right after the GUS/SB/Gameport options. Just a >friggin blinking cursor, and I have to reboot. No smoking gun, but I suggest you post the following: - AUTOEXEC.BAT & CONFIG.SYS - Your current DOS environment variables (esp. ULTRASND) >Try to run sbos - it says "invalid SBOS port address selection" (it's set >on 220, just like it should be) > >Try to run ultramid - it says "can't read ULTRASND environment variable" >(it's _EXACTLY_ the same as the one in the manual. Checked numerous time) Possible conflicts would be with IRQ, DMA, and/or base address assignment. Use a diagnostic tool (like MSD, which comes with MS-Windows) to verify that there are no conflicts with other peripherals. It may be that base address (port) 220 is being used by some other device on your system. Likewise with the IRQ and DMA. Just because they're the default settings doesn't mean much. Finally, try not running the gameport setup program (ultrajoy). There have been problems associated with this in the past, although I thought it had been fixed by 0040. (Yes, this is a shot in the dark.) >So, 1) can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong > 2) why is ultrinit loading twice? Is this the problem? Check your CONFIG.SYS for a device=ultrinit.sys sort of line. If it's there, comment it out. You can safely use the ULTRINIT.EXE instead, which lets you merrily switch your GUS settings around whenever the mood strikes you. Make certain the values passed in here are reflected correctly by the ULTRASND environment variable. > 3) could someone _please_ upload me a copy of their autoexec and >config (I'm using DOS 6.2 w/multiple configs, GUS at the default >settings, etc.) Sorry, no PC at work. It would be much more useful for you to post yours for the perusal of the old, salty GUS experts to diagnose. > 4) someone grab this hammer out of my hand before I don't have a >GUS to worry about anymore Try a chainsaw, they work wonders for exorcising GUS demons. -Jon ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 17:16:20 -0700 (MST) From: Dave DeBry Subject: People don't read the FAQ before they post here Don Eller spilled a Coke into a keyboard, producing this: > I'm assuming that people who post to gus-general must read it to see > if their questions are answered, but apparently quite a few don't > notice the hint. I think that if the hint about reading FAQ's was > moved to the top of the digest, and it included more specific > information about what FAQ stand's for, why they should read it first, > and for "real" neophytes, what is meant by getting the FAQ and reading > it would leave only repetitive questions from the lazy [...] [ I've edited Don's post a bit for brevity. ] Technically, the "hint" is at the top of the digest. The RFC for digest creation is pretty specific as to what can go at the top of a digest, and the hint is in the first available place. As to more specific information... I think the header and footer information are already pretty big in the digests. In fact, some issues of the Programmer's Digest have less message text than digest overhead text. I'm not sure increasing the overhead text will help, either. I, for one, get a digest and immediately skip to the messages, without reading the titles or anything like that. I'm betting other people do the same. I've actually been thinking about trimming down the overhead text, and putting together a weekly automated post that explains all of that stuff. But then, it's all in the FAQ... it's a catch-22 problem, in a way. > I think since the FAQ also gives details on methods to obtain files, > all that would be necessary in the digest header would be information > on how to get the FAQ by mail, since its so similar to subscribing to > the digest, it can be assumed that they're capable of requesting the > FAQ the same way. This is why I automatically mail the FAQ to all new subscribers. > I'd hate to see this happen to the general-digest, so that all the > experts are off in their own special "peer" digest, and wouldn't > participate in the general-digest as well. Most people contribute as > long as they see they are getting something in return, more experience > bandwidth to discuss their problems or discoveries, and when the > digest becomes too clogged with basic questions that are in the FAQ, > they begin to feel that their time could be better spent in other > digests. I agree. I'm just not sure of the best way to solve the problem. I don't want to have to mail the FAQ to everyone every time it's updated. Increasing the digest overhead text probably won't help; people will just page past it every time. > I found gusfaq.txt missing from info dir on epas, but I found it on > orst. It looks like it has not been updated since August. Enough has > changed I think everyone should particpate in updating it. If whoever > maintains this doesn't have the time, I would be will to add input > this time around. This is something I (or the other folks involved in keeping the digests, ftp sites, mail servers, FAQs, and so forth running smoothly) can fix. Thanks for alerting me. -- Dave ddebry@ debry@ \ DeBry dsd. peruvian. | "Your hands and feet are mangos, es. cs.utah. | You're gonna be a genius anyway." com edu / ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 94 15:11:00 From: jeff.vaughn@the-matrix.com (Jeff Vaughn) Subject: Problem Guys. I just bought a new computer and a game from BullFrog Software called "Syndicate" came with it. I can't get the darned thing to work. I have tried using SBOS to emulate the SoundBlaster, but no dice & Syndicate has only two sound choices (SoundBlaster or No Sound). I've played this game on the Commodore Amiga 600 and it kicks butt, i've got to get it working for my system. I have the following type system: IBM AT/Compatable -w- AMI Bios Speed 386/40 mhz 4 Megs of Memory A Gravis UltraSound Advanced Card (With v2.06 SoftWare) 117 Meg Drive Help me out here. I am sending everone that the docs to my card specified one of these letters so don't be pissed of you get more than one, okay? P.S. - When am i going to get an upgrade of the software? Geez, i've had this thing almost a year and no updates. The gentleman i bought it from said Gravis provided him with updated and i have already informed the company of the change of ownership Jeff Vaughn P.O. Box 261 Pamlerdale, Al 35123 --- QMPro 1.52 . Dogs come when you call. Cats have answering machines. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 13:26:06 -0800 (PST) From: "George A. Montemayor" Subject: Reply when purchased GUS supported product Hi, When we purchase a game that supports GUS natively esp. in 3D, such as HIRED GUNS, lets show our gratitude by e-mailing to the company, influencing them to make more GUS supported products. Got the idea ;) BTW, continue putting [X] Gravis Ultrasound on your registration cards... -George ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 13:51:12 +0000 From: Simon James Boothroyd Subject: Re: Stacker 4.0 and GUS >Hello , all >After I upgraded my Stacker from 3.1 to 4.0 , the mega-em seems to go wrong >in games. When I play Xwing , the speech sounds strange. It just can't say >the whole words. It often say the first word and keep slience later. I had this problem. I think it's the DPMI thing that comes with Stacker 4 which Megaem doesn't like. If you disable this (there's a line in config.sys) it seems to fix it. -- /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\ | Simon Boothroyd | Simon's incredibly bad joke of the week! | | Imperial College | | | | A man walked in to a butcher's shop. The | | sjb@doc.ic.ac.uk | butcher said 'I bet you can't reach those| | 24 Ongar Rd, Fulham, London | two bits of meat up there'. The man said | | SW6 1SJ (071) 381 4495 |'I'm not betting, the steaks are too high`| \~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 12:01 EST From: 155722937@UCIS.VILL.EDU (Jason Sandlin) Here is an intersting little note. I extracted this from the actual form and thought it should be seen by the list subscribers. The Internet Doom Players Survey Results Total People who responded to the survey: 128 _What sound card do you have?_ ATI FX : 1 * Aztech Pro : 1 * Gallant SC-5000 : 1 * Gravis Ultra Sound :16 **************** LAPC1 : 1 * Logitech Soundman : 1 * Pro Aaudio Spectrum16 :22 ********************** (and PA Studio) Quickshot Game Machine : 1 * Roland CM-32L : 1 * Roland MT-32 : 1 * Sound Blaster (8 bit) :16 **************** Sound Blaster Pro :36 ************************************ Sound Blaster Pro 16 : 1 * Sound Blaster 16 : 9 ********* Sound Blaster 16ASP : 6 ****** Sound Galaxy SG-NX Pro : 1 * Thunderboard : 1 * _Have you upgraded your system for DOOM?_ Yes = 25 (19%) What: Motherboard 7 ******* PAS16 1 * GUS 4 **** Video Card 4 **** Keyboard 1 * Ethernet cards 3 ** RAM 5 ***** Three Button Mouse 1 * SB 16 3 *** Speakers 1 * Joystick 1 * Micro$oft Mouse 1 * SB Pro 1 * Sound Card 1 * Modem 1 * Cyberman 1 * (These numbers do not add up, because I counted each RESPONDENT who answered 'yes', not each item the respondent upgraded.) Considering: 13 ************* Harald van der Kam ------------------------------ End of GUS Daily Digest V11 #36 *******************************