Ultrasound Daily Digest Sun, 14 Feb 93 Volume 2 : Issue 42 Today's Topics: Cannibalizing VGA Cards Comanche, DRAM, etc..... Fix for sbos/midi crashes GUS and SBTALKER GUS parity error using MIDI output port M-321??? Opti chipset problems (solved?) Sorry. I posted an now defunct email address Star Control II MODs Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #41 Where is Star Control II???? 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: 13 Feb 1993 16:37:00 -0600 From: neudo417@skdad.usask.ca Message-Id: <9302132237.AA10590@pasqua.USask.ca> Subject: Cannibalizing VGA Cards To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I have successfully taken 512K from my Trident card. This works very well, but there are some pitfalls. 1. Remove TVGACRTC.SYS (or the windows driver won't work. 2. Change the windows driver to the 512k, 800x600x256 (or other low memory mode) before you make the change. 3. For some strange reason, U1 U2, U3 U4 etc are not the pairs used by trident. U1 pairs with U5, U2 pairs with U6. Remove U3 U4 U7 U8 from the trident for use in the ultrasound. But this does make a great improvement in sound. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 16:11:48 PST From: nestlero@chekov.usc.edu (Mikeeee) Message-Id: <9302140011.AA03004@chekov.usc.edu> Subject: Comanche, DRAM, etc..... To: Ultrasound Daily Digest First off, I loaded Comanche last night. After fiddling with the sound setup, everything works great. (There go my grades :) ) I forgot to write down the settings I used, I'll post those later, but I've got a 486 33 w/ 4Mb, the Opti chipset( no 16 bit DMA ;( ), and I'm using sbos v 1.20 with no switches. Music, effects, and speech all work great...in fact, the lady that lives downstairs paid me a visit last night at 2 AM (she's the manager!) BIG GRIN!!!! :) She thought a minor war was taking place in my room. Anyway, I'll check the setings tonight and post them later. Also, I loaded TZJungly last night....poor Donald. I only have 256k on my GUS (see next question) so I expected the last part to sound funny (as the readme suggested), but it sounded ok?!? Maybe I should get 1Mb and try it then to see the difference? O.K, so now I want to upgrade to 1Meg.... Rod Wittmier posted about Elkco Corp. and his hassle-free upgrade. Question: How do I reach Elkco ? I need a phone#, or mailing address, PLEASE!!!! Next question: I had to sell my drumset a few years back to help pay for school, so I'm a REALLY frustrated musician (no instrument to play on!). I'd LOVE to be able to use the GUS as a drum machine, just to fart around with...nothing too serious. Is there any program out there, even a simple "place the notes on the staff" program would do, as long as I can assign different instruments to each note, and play up to, say, 4 notes at a time. It'd be great if there was a shareware code out there, but if I need to pay big bucks, I guess I could scrape something together. Any ideas? Finally, to James Lendino, who is worried about his Opti chipset and GUS conflicts... I have the bad chipset too, and haven't had any serious problems. I can't use the 16 bit DMA's, but for what I wanted from the GUS, that wasn't a big deal. (I mainly play games, and tunes .....haven't actually tried recording anything yet...need more cables for that.) If you need the GUS for more serious purposes, maybe someone else needs to answer...I wouldn't know what other problems might be caused by the 8 bit limitations. BTW, there is supposedly a software fix for the bad Opti chipsets...I haven't tried it yet, but others have had problems with it..... anyone out there get it to work? That's all...the rest will save for another day. Thanks for any help offered. Mikeeeeeeee nestlero@spock.usc.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 17:27:09 WET From: dp@hydra.carleton.CA (Dave Perry VE3IFB) Message-Id: <9302132227.AA12483@hydra.carleton.CA> Subject: Fix for sbos/midi crashes To: Ultrasound Daily Digest SBOS will crash whenever a signal appears at the midi in connector. Apparently this generates an interrupt which SBOS can't handle. I have uploaded a patched version of loadsbos.exe, version 1.22, which disables the interrupt. It's on archive.epas.utoronto.ca, pub/pc/ultrasound/submit/midisbos.zip. Dave ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 15:50:12 -0500 From: Roger Frederi Clark Message-Id: <199302132050.AA05845@bach.udel.edu> Subject: GUS and SBTALKER To: Ultrasound Daily Digest In the February 13 issue, someone asked how to get SBTALKER to work using SBOS. Here's how I did it. Load SBOS v1.10 with no switches, then load SBTALKER using BLASTER.DRV as the driver for it. This seems to work for me without any problems. For some reason, though, wth the new version of SBOS that I just received (v 1.20), it won't work at all, with any combination of the switches for SBOS. This is working on a 486-50DX from Centrix. Hope that helps. Roger Clark ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 12:52:28 -0800 From: rcrane@wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu (useradd) Message-Id: <9302132052.AA195754@wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu> Subject: GUS parity error using MIDI output port To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I have my GUS hooked up to my Yamaha PSR-500 synth. via a homemade MIDI cable connecter. When I am using winjammer to play song to my keyboard, eventually my system will hang and report that an "Off board parity error has occurred. (0000:0002)" It tried switching the MIDI interrupt to 12 (instead of 5) but that did not seem to help. I think I have had this parity error crop up a couple of times when playing the MIDI demos supplied by gravis a long time ago without my synth. being hooked up, but now the only place that it surfaces is when it is hooked up and I use winjammer. Could an improperly wired MIDI connecter cause this? Sometimes when the error crops up I notice that winjammer is slow to respond to the mouse. Please help! In general, I have not had any other problems with my GUS except for this occasional hang. Also, the parity error does not seem to occur when I use the Ultrasound alone in winjammer. Thanks. ---------- -bob crane (rcrane@yoda.eecs.wsu.edu) "Ah Limbo!" ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 3:02:52 EST From: "The Wombat" Message-Id: <9302130757.AA10623@scott.skidmore.edu> Subject: M-321??? To: Ultrasound Daily Digest OK, I know that for OPTi's there are certain stock numbers of chips that will not work with the GUS, I have an M-321 Motherboard, are there any numbers to look for on my chipsets or should I just toss it out the window. AMD 386dx-40 AMI Bios M-321 PC Chips MB 64k Cache I'm a poor poor college student who needs to know! Anyone wanna buy a motherboard???? Thank You Kindly... -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-This message was brought to you by Matthew Frazer-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- I tell you they have not died, their hands clasp, yours and mine -Windom Earle Finger mfrazer@scott.skidmore.edu for more --------------------------------=Be Seeing You=-------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 10:35 GMT From: Stephen Poston Message-Id: Subject: Opti chipset problems (solved?) To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Hi there again! (new gravis owner), I seem to have got it going now. The trick is to press escape straight away after running the SETUP.EXE program (don't try and change anything), and then save the settings. It created the following in my autoexec.bat file: SET ULTRASND=220,1,1,11,7 E:\ULTRASND\ULTRINIT SET ULTRADIR=E:\ULTRASND SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T1 NB: I changed the 7 from a 5 because my mouse is on int5 So, now it seems that the problem may be with the SETUP.EXE program? Steve ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 12:58:15 -0800 From: rcrane@wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu (useradd) Message-Id: <9302132058.AA195800@wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu> Subject: Sorry. I posted an now defunct email address To: Ultrasound Daily Digest My correct email adress is rcrane@wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu not rcrane@yoda.eecs.wsu.edu. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 15:05:24 EST From: pccmoddan@aol.com Message-Id: <9302131505.tn04214@aol.com> Subject: Star Control II MODs To: Ultrasound Daily Digest The following MODs are the *only* MODs from Star Control II that have been released for public "consumption" as freely distributable works. These four are the only pieces from the game, as of this time, that should be on electronic networks, BBSes, etc. They are: battle.mod - SC II Battle Theme (The Melee theme) starbase.mod - SC II Starbase Theme (The Starbase menu theme) orbital.mod - SC II Orbital Theme (The planet orbitting theme) umgah.mod - SC II Umgah Theme (The Umgah alien theme) While we appreciate the enthusiasm for the music we must protect our rights. If you really >need< to have some way of hearing other songs without playing the game send email to this account and we'll see what can be done. In other news, look for several more great games in '93 to have our soundtracks. If you are working on a project, big or small, and need high-quality music and sound, contact us. Furthermore, if you are a MOD composer, we'd like to hear from you. - Dan Nicholson, pccmoddan@aol.com, moddan@bowker.com PCkS Associates 553 Thoreau Terr. Union, NJ 07083 (908)964-8066 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 23:47:54 EST From: Phat H Tran Message-Id: <9302140447.AA19829@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca> Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #41 To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > Date: Fri, 12 Feb 93 22:07:28 CST > From: Albert Foo > Message-Id: <9302130408.AA05225@orca.es.com> > Subject: Help! Grollier CD with GUS. > To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > > My Grollier Encyclopedia CD won't play sound thru my GUS card > using SBOS. Maybe I got my SBOS settings wrong. > My current ULTRASOUND settings: > > SET ULTRASND = 210,3,3,11,5 > SET BLASTER = A210 I5 D1 T1 > > How can I make use of "sbosdrv.sys" with the correct settings > in the config.sys file? > [...] > Any comments? > Even with device=sbosdrv.sys in your config.sys, you must remember to activate SBOS by running loadsbos (plus -o and -x options, if required) before running your SB program. Loadsbos.exe will pass on the correct parameters in the ULTRASND environment variable to sbosdrv.sys. > Date: Fri, 12 Feb 93 10:01:51 EST > From: nemo@vnet.ibm.com > Message-Id: <9302121510.AA23311@orca.es.com> > Subject: UltraSound Mixer and a bus mouse > To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > > I was wondering if someone could offer me advice about how to get the volume > control to work in this GUS Mixer applet for Windoze. I've tried, I believe, > [...] The volume control on the old mixer applet only affected the volume of .wavs. Gravis have released a new mixer applet (with their new Windows drivers) that has a MIDI volume control in addition to the .wav slider. > Secondly, I've had enormous troubles with my GUS and I think the root of my > anguish seems to be a bus mouse as opposed to a serial mouse. My mouse is > [...] I assume that your Windows problem is the occasional time on startup that the opening .wav sound is followed by loud noise. The new Windows drivers, which can be found as gus0012.zip (I think) on Epas, will fix this bug. Phat. ------------------------------ Date: 13 Feb 1993 09:35:49 -0400 (EDT) From: CheebA Message-Id: <01GUO2K07QXE8ZEQO8@ritvax.isc.rit.edu> Subject: Where is Star Control II???? To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Ive heard a lot of talk about this Star Control II game, but have yet to see any type of demo of it anywhere... Does anybody know where (a BBS or ftp site) where I can find this game and try it on my GUS?? Also did I hear of a new Windows Mixer for GUS. I have the one that came with 1.21 release. Is there a better one??? Thanx... Dave (DMC5483@ritvax.isc.rit.edu) ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #42 ******************************