GUS Daily Digest Thu, 29 Dec 94 9:37 PST Volume 17: Issue 28 Today's Topics: 3.57 REAL Aladdin and Warcraft Crystal CODEC chip Dark Forces and NO GUS support! Dark Forces GUS sound solution Descent LOCKS for me too Gravis OS/2 Drivers. Gravis turning their back on the GUS? Gus & DESCENT GUS Daily Digest V17 #27 GUS MAX and popping during MIDI playback GUS OS/2 drivers Hardball 4 HMI Drivers OS/2 Alpha driver Problems with AVI files SBOSMAX? Hmph... Several GUS and WC3 problems... please help UAKM Under a Killing Moon revisited What is ADPCM, u-law, etc.? How do I use them? 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, 29 Dec 1994 12:07:33 +0800 (GMT+0800) From: the FLAT^^TOP Subject: 3.57 REAL >Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 17:46:46 +0800 >From: "Christopher Bolin" >Subject: 3.57 update disks, files, ANYONE?? > >Is the disk set 3.57 on orst real or a fake?? If it is real, why >isn't it available from Gravis? the disks are real... i uploaded them myself... 8) they were sent to me by Gravis.... (i hear 3.59 is out.... anyone care to upload it ?) > >Is there a update file floating around? nope... > >Can someone give us the real story? 3.57 is REAL..... someone please upload 3.59 (if it exists !) -- /======\ | kohkhang@iscs.nus.sg, MsWFWG, GUSmax, Kelvin 64, & Supra v.Fc 28.8 user | \========/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 21:58:03 -0500 (EST) From: Adam Lloyd Subject: Aladdin and Warcraft Both of the following games don't have GUS support. I can use SBOS with Warcraft to get the crappie music but I would to get the sound effects working. Aladdin I can't play with any sound at all. SBOS doesn't work at all. If anyone here knows of a patch somewhere, it would be greatly appreciated. Adam. __\/__ . / ^ _ \ . |\| (o)(o) |/| +-------------.OOOo----oo----oOOO.----------------------------------+ | o o Internet E-Mail: adam.lloyd@ablelink.org (slowest) # # | | ^ + adaml@charm.gandalf.ca (valid until Dec. 94, fast) ^ | | O and lastly: aa789@toronto.freenet.on.ca (fastest) - | | =-=-=-=-= Echoing from: Toronto, Ontario, CANADA eh! =-=-=-=-= | +------------------------Oooo.--------------------------------------+ .oooO ( ) ( ) ) / \ ( (_/ \_) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 02:48:19 -0330 From: Aaron Cameron Subject: Crystal CODEC chip I thought there was no signiffigant hardware differences between the GUS and the GUSMAX. So what's the deal with the Crystal CODEC chip then? I own a MAX (for the CDROM interface, mainly) and it's amazing. So what's in the Crystal CODEC that the standard GUS ain't got? Just wondering. Cheers, AC /---------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | *** ***** WELCOME TO MY WORLD! | | ***** *********** ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | | ** ** ***** *** It's really not that bad... | | *** *** **** once you get used to it! | | *********** **** | | ************* ***** *** ---------> Aaron Cameron <--------- | | **** **** *********** Memorial University of Newfoundland | | ***** ***** ***** ---> acameron@europa.cs.mun.ca <--- | \---------------------------------------------------------------------------/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 16:24:49 +0800 From: "Christopher Bolin" Subject: Dark Forces and NO GUS support! The Dark Forces demo does *NOT* support the GUS Be sure to write LucasArts and tell them how much you would enjoy GUS Support Internet E-Mail: 75300.454@compuserve.com Or send e-mail to LucasArts3@AOL.com That said, you can get the digital/SFX to work with BossMAX, but the music support will lock it hard... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 11:34:10 -0500 From: am246@freenet.carleton.ca (Nam H. Pham) Subject: Dark Forces GUS sound solution Using SBOS v3.82, I found that if you load it with sbos -o4 Set digital sound to Sound Blaster and if you want music (abit scratchy), set music to 4-OP FM. -- __ __ __ ___ __ _____ __ __ __ ___ __ =========================== / \/ // \\ \/ \ / ___// /_/ // \\ \/ \ am246@freenet.carleton.ca /_/\__//_/\_\\__/\__\ /_/ /_/-/_//_/\_\\__/\__\ dv860@cleveland.freenet.edu \__\__\\_--_//_/_/__/ \_\---\_\-\_\\_--_//_/_/__/ =========================== ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 02:50:27 -0500 (EST) From: Daniel LeBlanc Subject: Descent LOCKS for me too > When I try to run Descent with my GUS, it locks up. It get's to the > LOADING... > line then just locks up, I've tried every setting and have run out of > ideas. The same appends with me. The game works fine with the -nosound parametre though. I have GUS with 768k in a 486/66 8M PLEASE HELP -Dan ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 18:58:43 -0800 (PST) From: James I Esteves Subject: Gravis OS/2 Drivers. I downloaded Gravis' Alpha OS/2 Drivers yesterday and they look O.K. MIDI & Wave playback is pretty good except for the occasional "skip" -- it's most noticible when it's loading the MIDI patches when you play a MIDI. Wave playback is excellent, no real problems there. All in all, it looks promising. Can't wait till the release is out. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 23:26:24 -0500 (EST) From: Buddy Subject: Gravis turning their back on the GUS? After all this talk about the new SBOSMAX and that it only works on the UltraMAX, I have to wonder if this is a sign of things to come. When the UltraMAX was released, I think a lot of us held our breath until we were assured that it was no different than the GUS from a functionality point of view. Then when the upgrade offer came about, I started to wonder again if Gravis was moving away from the original design and was trying to save some face by giving everyone the opportunity to get on board before it was too late. Now with the release of the new SBOS that only works with the UltraMAX, the threat of extinction for the support of the original GUS seems even closer to reality. I was going to upgrade but decided not to since there was not supposed to be any difference from a sound-quality point of view and I don't need to do any sampling. Now I'm wondering if I made the right decision. Am I the only one who's getting these bad vibes? Any comments Gravis? Kevin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 16:03:12 -0500 (EST) From: Pete Kilcullen Subject: Gus & DESCENT > When I try to run Descent with my GUS, it locks up. It get's to the > > LOADING... > > line then just locks up, I've tried every setting and have run out of ideas. DESCENT works fine with my 1 meg GUS. When I used the "autodetect soundcard", it set up the GUS for IRQ 11 even tho it's set for IRQ 7. This I don't understand; but everything works fine as now set. BTW, this is on the "demo" version of DESCENT. Pete ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 17:14:20 -0500 (EST) From: Taz Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V17 #27 Hmmm... I know that this is pretty silly, but this question has constantly been on my mind... How do I get both my GUS MAX and SB16 to work at the same time? I really dont care about SBOS, because if I can get the SB16 to work, I won't need it. If I set my GUS DMA to anything other than DMA channel 1, it will tell me something that the Soundblaster whoseewhatsit has failed when I test it... Should I ignore that since I don't want SBOS? A soundblaster16 has 2 DMA Channels, DMA 1 for 8-bit sound, and DMA 5 for 16 bit sound. Right now, I can't use both because DMA1 is being used on my GUS and my SB16... Help... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 16:26:27 +0800 From: "Christopher Bolin" Subject: GUS MAX and popping during MIDI playback I have a GUS MAX, rev 1.7. I can boot ENTIRELY clean. Meaning nothing but an MSDOS 6.22 disk SYS'd and the Max init from disk set 3.56 In everything I do I get popping and cracking when MIDI music is playing. I have tried everything I can. I set my bus speed to 8mhz, tried the card in different slots... nothing. I hear the popping in the following: DOOM2 1.7a Rise of the Triad Descent Heretic in short, *everything* I have that supports the GUS in native mode. Anyone had this problem?? Any solutions? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 12:53:18 -0700 (MST) From: Oscar M Fowler Subject: Re: GUS OS/2 drivers > Has anyone tried Advanced Gravis OS/2 Drivers? Were you able to get > sound from a Dos box? How is it compared to the Manley drivers? Any > comments on it at all? Yeah - I'm using them now. They seem to work fine, though I haven't done any extensive testing. They don't provide any sort of explicit DOS support. Your DOS apps can get through to the GUS without any problems (as they can without the driver) but if you use a DOS app, you'll have to reset the OS/2 driver. The only advantage this driver has over Manley's is that it has GUS MIDI support - in other words, it will play MIDI songs using GUS patches. The Manley drivers don't do this yet, they require you to have an external MIDI device. However, the Manley driver have DOS support (you don't have to do anything special when using DOS apps). Also, it will have SoundBlaster emulation for DOS apps built in - I don't know if any of this is planned for the Gravis drivers. Seeing as how DOS apps are critical still (OS/2 sound apps are few and far between), I think DOS support is still the most important consideration. I've been using Manley's drivers for months now without a problem. Unless Gravis comes out with something significantly better, I'll continue to support his efforts. Oscar ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 09:04:13 -0500 From: kjancef@tiac.net (Ken Jancef) Subject: Hardball 4 HMI Drivers I have a question regarding Hardball 4 and GUS Max: I can setup the game for digital sound using the GUS option, but when I setup MIDI using the GUS option, I get an error that a driver isn't loaded. The program loads patches, but I keep getting that error. What driver do I need to load????? Any help would be appreciated! Ken Jancef kjancef@tiac.net Remember, the light at the end of the tunnel may be you! Steven Tyler ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 23:07:23 -0600 From: lala@interaccess.com (Imre Olajos) Subject: OS/2 Alpha driver Hi, everybody! Just a few comments on the Alpha release of the OS/2 drivers. I have Warp installed on my machine (parallel with DOS/Windows). The Manley drivers were OK, but the still unofficial Gravis drivers are somewhat better than the shareware (!) Manley-drivers. My OS/2 can now play MIDI musics through the GUS sytnh while still playing the system sounds. A big drawback is that the GMIDI musics seem to have timing problems, plus they get stuck once a while, but then keep on playing after a sec. I didn't try it yet in a DOS box, but then I just installed Warp a few days ago (it was a christmas present for myself... :), so I hardly know OS/2 itself... All in all, I would recommend everybody to AT LEAST TRY the OS/2 drivers, available on epas, filename is OS2_031A.ZIP. The more people try it, the more people will see bugs in it, the better it can get as a final product! Imre OLAJOS, Jr. (LaLa of TranSByte) lala@interaccess.com ___ __o U.S.A. (Chicago suburbs) ___ _-\<,_ Tel/fax/modem: 1 (708) 595-7038 ___ (_)/ (_) _-~-_-~-_-~-_-~-_-~-_-~-_-~-_-~-_-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 13:50:39 -0500 From: jntyk@rs733.gsfc.nasa.gov (Young Koh) Subject: Problems with AVI files I've had almost no problems whatsoever with my GUS until a few days ago. Everything was fine, and then kaboom!!! Problem: When I play avi files in windows (3.11) I hear the speech/music for the first couple of seconds and then I hear a lot of clicking, hissing, static, etc and no speech/music. Once in a while during the playing of the avi file, the speech would pick back up for a second or two. All the other files work fine (midi, mod, wav, etc). I haven't had a chance to try Quicktime's mov files yet. Everthing was working fine until I tried a friend's Stealth 24 and selected 16.6M colors. Since then, I've gone back to my old Diamond SpeedStar, but the problem persists. My configuration: 486DX33 with 16Meg RAM GUS with 1 Meg Panasonic 2x CD GUS is set to 240,7,7,11,7 GUS disk is gus0043.zip (I think that's version 3.56) What I want to know is, is this a gus driver problem? I've re-installed 3.56 & 3.53 (from Ultrasound CD) I've re-installed Video for Windows (ver 1.1). What can I try? BTW, some avi files with little or no animation output speech o.k. all the way thru, but with some clicking and hissing. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 13:37:47 -0500 From: adu@freenet.vcu.edu (Andrew Du) Subject: SBOSMAX? Hmph... Has anyone has the problem of sound effects working, but not music? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 17:23:01 EST From: "Joseph R. Granto" Subject: Several GUS and WC3 problems... please help I got WC3 for Christmas, and run into a few snags. Problem 1 I will include simply because it was _solved_; maybe this will help someone else. The problem was sound and video skipping in SVGA mode. The problem is too slow a machine (I have a 486DX25 ISA). The solution was to run in VGA mode. Problem 2: Music card installation crashes the machine. Yes, I run wc3grav to install. No, I do not have any DMA or IRQ conflicts. I have owned my GUS for many years, it runs everything fine, except for WC3. It is a 1 MB GUS, by the way. Digital card installation and testing run perfectly (panning is cool). When I try to test the music card installation, the program freezes up for a few minutes. It then gives an error reading the CD-ROM drive. Any ideas? Problem 3: This has to do with the Behind the Scenes CD-ROM that came with the Premier Edition. It uses Video for Windows. I am running Windows for Workgroups v3.11. When I try to run the CD, everything initially looks fine. However, when I try to get the program to plpay anything, however, nothing happens. The play button depresses, the cursor turns into an hour glass for a second or two, and then nothing. It does not crash, it simply does not work. I am running the most recent Windows drivers (those included with the 3.57 disk set). All my other apps and games run and sound fine. Any ideas? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Granto GLOCK@chip.cba.ufl.edu "When the going gets tough, the tough get a GLOCK!" --Guns & Ammo "Don't clock'em, GLOCK'em!" --Miami Dade police officer --------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 12:02:10 -0500 (EST) From: Gunnar Swanson Subject: UAKM Dear Gussers, For those of you having a problem with UAKM and the GUS there is a patch available I beleive that it was done sometime in Nov. It is supposed to clear up some problems with the GUS and UAKM sound. If I had my shit together I could tell you the exact name of the file. It is available on AOL and the Gravis BBS and probably the wuarchive. Frankly I was excited about the game because I played the first two but after reading the reviews and seeing a demo and the fact it has som many problems playing GUS, darn those Access geeks, I am not overwhelmed. Get WCIII instead. Sincerely, Gunnar Swanson gunnar@gibbs.oit.unc.edu gunnars@aol.com end. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 16:46:45 -0600 From: riedl@cs.umn.edu (John Riedl) Subject: Under a Killing Moon revisited Well, thanks in part to suggestions from readers of the digest, I was able to get Under a Killing Moon working partially. Thanks! It's a very interesting game. However, I have a puzzling problem now. When I run the game with MIDI music enabled perfomance suffers. The config screen reports my CD-ROM is half its normal speed, and my video board is 1/4 its normal speed. Playability is lousy in this state. When I turn MIDI off, performance still suffers. It completely recovers, though, when I say there is no MIDI device. I cannot understand the cause of this problem. Any ideas? I have an older GUS. I'm using address 220, DMA channel 7, IRQ 11, and MIDI IRQ 5 in DOS. UaKM does not ask for a separate MIDI IRQ, so I don't know what it uses. Thanks! John ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 02:32:04 -0500 From: fta@wbb.com Subject: What is ADPCM, u-law, etc.? How do I use them? The box that my GUS Max came in says something about support for several compression schemes (ADPCM, u-law, and a-law, I think...). Anyone know what these things are and how they are used? Oh, and just so I don't have to post another message, I have a strange problem with certain games such as Syndicate and Star Control 2 where it seems like my GUS Max is playing all patches in memory continuously. My ULTRASND=220,1,1,7,5. Any ideas? Thanks, all! --------------------------------------- | Call me "FRED" | | | Toronto, Canada | | --------------------------------------- ------------------------------ End of GUS Daily Digest V17 #28 *******************************