Ultrasound Daily Digest Fri, 26 Mar 93 Volume 2 : Issue 81 Today's Topics: Boycott NON-GUS games? FPS Football echoing on the GUS GUS/Dashboard/Faxability Problems jmprotr.arj More GMOS More on Windows drivers problems My GUS problems Proposed GMOS emulator SB and Hardware Noise SBOS 2.04: Much better; still mild problems stereo in windows Using GUS as a normal midi synth 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. *** HEY!!! *** Before you ask a question, *** READ THE FAQ ***. It's available on the request server and the ftp sites, or check the newsgroup archives. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1993 16:39:12 -0800 From: Eric N. Liao Message-Id: <199303260039.AA14748@aerospace.aero.org> Subject: Boycott NON-GUS games? To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Someone mentioned the idea of boycotting companies that don't support GUS. I can't handle it! I MUST have Strike Commander when it comes out next month, with or without GUS support. As for the "GMOS" driver some users are thinking about, rather than making your life so complicated with patch loading/unloading (in realtime), why not make a "special" GMOS MIDI patch that is 1mb long. In this large GMOS MIDI patch, will be all 192 instruments. Yeah,yeah, this will be kind of cheasy, but it would still be a lot better than SBOS. Without the dynamic patch loading/unloading, I think the job of making GMOS would be made less difficult. Oh, one last thing. Someone posted that he could not get GUSWIN.EXE to work. I think I figured out the problem. If you run it YOURSELF from program manager, you will get these "script error line#x" Correct? GUSWIN only works when it is executed from the GUS install program. You have to put WINDOWS in your path (or SET WINDOWS=C:\WINDOWS), and then INSTALL will recognize windows and run it from there. I'm not sure if this was the exact problem, but it worked for me. The only thing GUSWIN does is install the drivers automatically for you. If you install the drivers by yourself, make the patch manager icon, mixer icon, then you haven't missed anything (except the GUS HELP icon, which you can access through MIXER.EXE) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Mar 93 07:56:42 EST From: "Ted Wright" Message-Id: <28603.wright@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov> Subject: FPS Football echoing on the GUS To: Ultrasound Daily Digest In Message Thu, 25 Mar 93 00:07:17 MST, Ultrasound Digest Owner writes: >Date: Tue, 23 Mar 93 13:44:31 >From: john.smith@gravis.com >11) FPS: Football - Because of the way Dynamix handled digital speech > you will always get a constant echo effect. For example: > "First, down, down, down". There is currently no way for us to > fix this. Sierra's update to FPS Football version 1.02 instructs GUS owners to select Adlib sound. Be serious! Not only does it sound as bad as an Adlib board, but it also cause the screen to jerk when digitized sounds are played. My solution to this problem (which is not exactly optimal) is to push F1 to get to the game settings screen and turn off sound effects. Part two of the solution is to avoid Sierra games. Ted Wright (wright@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov) PGP public key available ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Mar 93 7:12:51 PST From: Lee Bollard Message-Id: <9303251512.AA15756@hpspkma.spk.hp.com> Subject: GUS/Dashboard/Faxability Problems To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Regarding my Dashboard, GUS Card, problem... Faxability is part of the problem. Setup: 486/66ST w/430mb SCSI HD Gravis Ultrasound Card Intel Satisfaxtion/400 Faxmodem, Intel Faxability Windows Fax Software. It seems that Faxability is interfering with the Windows-based sound card drivers. I get error messages when trying to use a patch manager utility designed for the sound card (it's Windows-based program). The patch manager thinks some other program is USING the sound card. The weird part is this: 1. Using Program Manager as the shell - no problems whatsoever. 2. Using Dashboard as the shell - no problems UNLESS Faxability is in the startup group or load= line of WIN.INI. Then I see all the patch manager errors. Loading up Faxability after the fact causes no errors. REPEATABLE. The problem ONLY occurs when Faxability is loaded automatically, AND Dashboard is the shell! I've double checked the system configuration and setgus configurations, tried different DMA's and IRQ's. Same problem. Ideas? Lee Bollard bollard@spk.hp.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Mar 93 19:06:34 PST From: gabrielj@sfu.ca Message-Id: <9303260306.AA02161@fraser.sfu.ca> Subject: jmprotr.arj To: Ultrasound Daily Digest This is really directed at Jerry but I couldn't remember his address. Anyways, I downloaded UltraForce's player with great enthusiasm but was really disappointed because I don't get any sound! It looks as though it is playing but not the slightest bit of music or any sound for that matter is produced. I've got GUS set to port 220, DMA channel 7, MIDI IRQ2, and GF1 IRQ11. It auto detects fine but no music. I don't know what to do. ------------------------------ Date: 26 Mar 1993 01:25:35 +0800 From: TC Message-Id: <01GW8VH2TAQQAC43JC@NTUVAX.NTU.AC.SG> Subject: More GMOS To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > Now that there's talk about someone (if not Gravis, then someone) > writing a GM driver (possibly), here's a potential (?) problem. I > ALREADY have an MPU-401 type MIDI card in my system. You'd think if > there was a driver making the GUS emulate another MPU-401, games (or > whatever is trying to utilize the MIDI) would become confused as to > which port to dump to, unless IRQs and what nots are explicitly defined. If you already have an MPU401, you have an external synth right? Why would you need to run the GM emulator? In the event you don't have a external synth, can't you remove the MPU card? Alternatively, the hardware combo I suggested (ie routing the MIDI-out to serial-in) will WORK, regardless of whether you already have an MPU or not. This type of driver will not care a hoot where the MIDI-in comes from, it simply interprets the midi messages and plays them on the GUS. :) .tc ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Mar 93 12:58:15 -0500 From: "It's your hand, Buckaroo" Message-Id: <9303251758.AA20301@magick.tay2.dec.com> Subject: More on Windows drivers problems To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > I think the driver file may be damaged. The reason is because wingus.exe also > doesn't work! I get 8 successive errors about the first 8 lines of the program, > and then it doesn't seem to do anything. (I've also installed everything "by > hand" with no success). Wingus also failed miserably for me. Windows started up, Wingus came up and immediately popped up an error box saying, "Too many lines in file" or words to that effect and exited. I also manually installed the drivers (not a big deal) but everything's been working for me. The new Windows driver is different than the old one (it seems that WidMOD Pro skips notes on some MOD files). I also don't think the new MIDI patches are better than the old ones. The pipe organ on tocatta.mid just doesn't sound as impressive as it did before... DDA ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Mar 93 11:06:56 EST From: phong%triples@Triples.Math.McGill.CA (Phong Co) Message-Id: <9303251606.AA06787@triples.math.mcgill.ca> Subject: My GUS problems To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I just got my GUS a few days ago, with the extra chips to go to the full 1MB, and installed them myself. I got a lot of static running moddemo and mididemo, which I thought I fixed by making sure the memory chips were on snugly. However, the problems persist. It seems that the output is clearer when the cover is off the computer, can it be causing interference? One of the memory chips is upside-down relative to the others, should this matter? I only have the 2.02 distribution diskettes to play with, so I don't have a lot of things to test out. My main yardstick for now is moddemo. For the first sequence, the first few seconds are pretty good, then static starts to creep in. For the second sequence, one of the channels (the one which starts off first) is somewhat garbled, but the others seem to be OK. The sound is the same whether I'm using speakers or headphones. I'm thinking of taking off the memory chips and testing out the bare GUS, but this is a pain, and if the sound is sloppy because of interference from the cover then that's even worse. Any insight greatly appreciated. -- Phong Co (phong@math.mcgill.ca) McGill University, Montreal, CANADA ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Mar 93 11:15 EST From: "Matthew E. Bernold" Message-Id: <9303251615.AA14787@orca.es.com> Subject: Proposed GMOS emulator To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I've heard many suggestions on this project. I've heard ideas on how to do it, arguments for/against dynamic patch loading, suggestions for .cfg files for each game, suggestions for a GM patchset that loads in 1Meg, and lots of others. The thing that strikes me as strange is that NOONE has mentioned one crucial fact: In order for this thing to be TRULY useful, it has to work WITH SBOS!! GM is good for background music, but there are NO digital sound effects. If a program can make digital effects on the GUS without SBOS, then it doesn't need a GMOS in the first place, so In order for this thing to actually work, we're going to have to take care of the following things: 1) The GMOS (for lack of a better word) should either replace SBOS entirely, or it should work with the existing SBOS. 2) If GMOS works with the existing SBOS, realize that the ammount of free memory on the card is actually the real memory size minus the size of the SBOS patches. I think that GMOS should be able to handle both GM music, and SB digital sound. In this way, we don't have to worry about the SBOS FM patches, and we get digital effects, and decent sounding music no matter what method of patch selection we wind up using. I would be happy to coordinate efforts on this project if noone else is doing so already. If you are interested in helping with this project (as a programmer) or if you just have some ideas on how you'd like to see this thing work, send me some mail about it. I'll collect the replies, and post a summary. Maybe Dave Debry will even make a GMOS mailing list... :-) Matthew E. Bernold MEB117@PSUVM.PSU.EDU <> meb@haydn.psu.edu ------------------------------ Date: 25 Mar 1993 08:26:20 -0500 (EST) From: DEATH BEFORE DISCO Message-Id: <01GW7VGPRVOM8Y4XH9@ritvax.isc.rit.edu> Subject: SB and Hardware Noise To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I just noticed the posting about the noise on the SB and or SB Pro. Here's my story: 1) Got talked into picking up a PAS-16. Put it in....lo and behold, there was a TON of noise. The wallys at MediaVision (or whatever it's called) said to turn down the volume (A SWITCH ON THE CARD, for crying out loud) and turn up the amp. Yeah, right. Their card sucks. 2) Returned the card. Bought an SB Pro. The noise was worse. The reason is because the designers of those "sound" cards have their heads firmly jammed up their asses. The noise is on the Mother@#$%^$%board and needs FILTERING. The design gurus at Forte are aware of this. This is why the GUS has no noise. The other neat thing that was posted referred to how the Zone66 crowd got GUS support, but Sierra doesn't. In answer to your rhetoric, nope. Sierra doesn't have the talent to figure out the card. In fact, they (almost all of them) lack the talent to write good programs. Why does Sierra INSIST on using 639.99999999K of my lower memory? Why does Sierra's sound effects suck? Why does anybody even bother? Their inept programs aren't worth it. Disclaimer: The people that wrote Aces and Incredible Machine are excepted. Even though the sounds in Aces are worse than silence. On the other hand, wny is the patch for Aces 1.2 STILL, after about five (5) months, NOT AVAILABLE THROUGH FTP? Instead, they have generously decided to offer it through their speedy 2400 baud BBS...I guess $250 is too much to spend on their customers (for a 14400). Never mind that the call is long distance for about 99% of the US. Evidently, they want your money and forget you. Keep this in mind. If you boycott Sierra, not only are you protesting their lack of GUS support, you're probably saving youself a major software dissappointment. Jeff ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Mar 93 10:28:56 EST From: "Burns Fisher, VMS Engineering 25-Mar-1993 1028" Message-Id: <9303251527.AA25292@us2rmc.bb.dec.com> Subject: SBOS 2.04: Much better; still mild problems To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Greetings, I'd really like to send this feedback direct to Gravis, but my mail is still being bounced. Anway, I finally got to download SBOS 2.04. It fixes the KQ5 problem that was in 2.02 (namely that Kings Quest 5 complained that it could not init the sound card and promptly died in EMM386). The music in the town sounds pretty good. The lightning sounds when the castle is stolen sound pretty good. However there are still two problems: 1) The bell sounds when the Sierra logo sparkles at the beginning are out of tune (they should be a perfect 5th apart; they sound like the second tone is about a 1/2-step off or so). 2) More important: The music played during the beginning scenes when the king is cavorting around smelling flowers sounds kind of intermittant (some parts seem to cut in and out at inappropriate times) and some parts are a bit out of phase with the rest. I think maybe these are the same parts that cut in and out. Maybe they are coming in late? I'm not sure) These are the same problems that were in 1.4b2 and 1.4b3, and also in the old versions. They were fixed in 1.37b, but then they reappeared. They are, of course, relatively minor. I've deleted all my old SBOS versions, and I'm running with 2.04 installed by default. It sure means a lot of 4DOS aliases I can delete (that run SBOS, run the game, remove sbos). Thanks, guys, and keep up the good work! Burns ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Mar 93 10:27:10 CST From: John Riedl Message-Id: <9303251627.AA03401@hannibal.cs.umn.edu> Subject: stereo in windows To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I installed the stuff that came on disks 17-21 (including SBOS 2.02), but Petzold's "device capabilities" program still reports the Windows device driver as *not* supporting stereo. Is that correct, or did I make a mistake in the installation? The driver calls itself version 1.1, if I'm reading it correctly. Thanks, John ------------------------------ Date: 26 Mar 1993 15:19:28 +1000 From: PHTH1@cc.newcastle.edu.au Message-Id: <01GW9OK1NG8I9LY4SF@cc.newcastle.edu.au> Subject: Using GUS as a normal midi synth To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Is there an easy way to route the midi-in port so that the GUS listens to it? ie, can I plug my cheap midi keyboard into the GUS and play, using the GUS for output rather than the keyboard? Tony ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #81 ******************************