Ultrasound Daily Digest Tue, 27 Apr 1993 Volume 3 : Issue 27 Today's Topics: Dram Probs & Cakewalk Demo FPS Football and GUS GUS 3D INFORMATION have registered user's got the new disks yet? How many voices does a GUS really have? Minor comments about the GUS Origin games with GUS & SB Software for registered users Ultrasound Daily Digest V3 ?24 - Reply Ultrasound FTP Sites - New files validated - April 25, 93 Upgrade Disks?? Zone66 and SCSI hard drive problem 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: Mon, 26 Apr 93 9:46:56 CDT From: Joe Cheng Subject: Dram Probs & Cakewalk Demo Message-ID: <9304261446.AA27210@post.its.mcw.edu> This is in response to two previous posts before : 1) Cakewalk : There is a demo for this Windows Midi program with all the feature of the real program except the save option. You can find it on wuarchive.wustl.edu in the systems\msdos\win3\demo subdirectory. There are also a lot of other nice Midi programs like Musicator and Candenza for Windows. 2) DRAM Problems : I was having some problems before when I upgraded my GUS to 1 Meg on board with 70ns DRAMS. Using GUSDRAM, DRAM, GUSMEM, etc. to check the system, it would give really wierd errors like some times reporting all the memory good, sometimes telling me that one bank was out, or that I only had 768K. It turns out that one chip in bank two was loose and giving me all those headaches. Apparently the repeated cycle of heating and cooling from the computer loosened that chip and made it pop out a bit (this is after I really pushed all the chips in to make sure they were seated). The 80ns drams should be ok as I couldn't find any real data on discrepancies between standard 256x4's. Using 70ns drams, I was told to replace bank one also with 70ns otherwise the board still run's at 80ns because the data will bottle neck with the slowest denominator. Personally, I can't tell the difference between 70ns and 80ns, I guess my brain just can't move quick enough to pick up that extra 10ns. Anybody notice it different? After one heck of a long message.... -Joe- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 07:34:54 CDT From: ldawes@cs.uah.edu (Lisa Dawes) Subject: FPS Football and GUS Message-ID: <9304261234.AA00345@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> Hello, Does anyone no a workaround to the echo problem with FPS Football? The GUS FAQ says the digital sounds may echo (and they most certainly do). I can play the game without it, but they do add a nice effect. Thanks ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Apr 93 11:32:01 From: john.smith@gravis.com Subject: GUS 3D INFORMATION Message-ID: <9304151132.A9825wk@gravis.com> The following is a copy of a Comdex Technical Brief that was being handed out to people as information on the GUS 3D. I know everyone is curious about 3D sound so hopefully this will answer some of your questions, or, raise more. This was written in January so some things may change by the time GUS 3D hits the shelves. ======================== TORONTO: AED Advanced Gravis VANCOUVER: AED OTC BBS: GRVSF ADVANCED GRAVIS LEADS SOUND TECHNOLOGY WITH 3D AUDIO January 1993 Advanced Gravis introduces the next dimension in PC audio with 3D sound for developers. Gravis and their audio designers and development support team, Forte, can easily assist software developers into integrating UltraSound 3D(tm) into their applications. Utilizing the UltraSound(tm) Board and 3D drivers, developers initiate a few function calls written into their software routines and quickly enter the virtual 3D audio world. Advanced Gravis and the UltraSound Card provides you with unprecedented capabilities in the audio world and now adds 3D audio development capability. UltraSound 3D Features: - User Programmable - 360 degrees in X,Y,Z coordinates - "Fly" audio in Stereo or Mono mode - 16 bit, CD quality - Binaural Localization Processing - Requires only 2 speakers systems or headphones - Real-time audio positioning processing The Focal Point(tm) technology uses a mathematical process called convolution to separate binaural outputs into distinct channels for the left and right ears. Directional information is then added and transmitted to your ears telling you where the sound is coming from. This gives the effect of the sound moving from distinct location traveling through programmed points in a spatial environment. This process allows you to program, real time, in the horizontal, vertical and distance dimensions of audio and then "flies" them in real life fashion. The easy steps to integrate UltraSound 3D are as follows: 1) Create or load a mono audio file 2) Process Mono sound file to create a 3D track 3) Call 3D sound routines - Load buffers - Position sound - Play 3D sound - Stop playing file Sample Interface functions for playing buffers are: 1) Load_3DSND_Buffs(Buf,Size,N) 2) Position_3DSND_Buffs(SND,x,y,z) 3) Play_3DSND_Buffs(SND,N) 4) Stop_3DSND_Buffs(SND) Sample interface functions for playing files are: *1) Play_3DSND_Files(FName,N) 2) Position_3DSND_Files(FSND,x,y,x) 3) Stop_3DSND_Files(FSND) *Read buffer call is designed to keep buffers primed for continuous audio play and users must allow time to do so. This system adds the final realism to audio. You can enhance stereo sounds, bring realism to games, improve audio presentations, bring multimedia applications to life or add sound effects to any video or audio show. Advanced Gravis, a Burnaby, BC based company, is the manufacturer of the technologically advance UltraSound card. This card is a Wave table based, 32 voice, 16 bit audio card which is Sound Blaster(tm) and Adlib(r) compatible. It supports Windows 3.1 Multimedia Extensions and has been shipping since October 1992. The UltraSound 3D will be available to developers during the first half of 1993. ======================== We are putting the final touches on our new public SDK which will include the 3D audio routines. Once it is ready I'll be sure to let you all know what it will include and where you can get it. C'ya John cc: brian.simpson@t8000.cuca.ab.ca --- ~ QMPro 1.01 05-8925 ~ He does the work of 3 Men...Moe, Larry & Curly ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 08:22:46 EDT From: nemo@vnet.IBM.COM Subject: have registered user's got the new disks yet? Message-ID: <9304261231.AA29116@orca.es.com> Hello everyone, The subject matter pretty much says it all. I'm a registered user of the GUS board and have mailed in my registration card, but still no new disks! Has anyone received the new disks yet? I believe it been about a month since the new 2.X disks have been advertised at FTP sites, but I don't want to download for a week with my old 2400 baud modem. If someone has received the new stuff, what documentation has come with it? BTW, I still haven't gotten a response as to an FTP site that carries the Alone in the Dark demo. Could somebody tell me this if you got a second or 2, as well as the directory and filename. Thanks loads! Bye for now! Nemo De Furia. ------------------------------ Date: 26 Apr 1993 11:19:30 PST From: chrisw Subject: How many voices does a GUS really have? Message-ID: <9304261821.AA19702@leland.Stanford.EDU> ------------ Asked in yesterday's digest about why you can choose the number of voices in the Windows driver. I've been experimenting a bit and it seems that this might influence to what extent the card does oversampling. There does seem to be much more distortion on very high notes with 32 voices selected than with 16 voices selected. Does anyone know the precise tradeoff involved here? What sort of specs does the thing have with the 'quoted on the packet' 32 voices? Chris. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 15:57:44 CDT From: ddebry@itchy (Dave DeBry) Subject: Minor comments about the GUS Message-ID: <9304262157.AA29894@itchy> I finally weaseled myself some Free Time (tm), and got to install the new disks for my GUS. I went out and bought SCII as well, as I'd played the demo and really enjoyed it. (I feel kind of guilty about this; I'm a devout non-video-game person, still mourning the death of Infocom. :-/ ) First and foremost: Whoever wrote the UNIX-like 'mv' command for MS-DOS should be shot. It causes horrible problems like corrupting files, giving files the same ID number as other files, etc., etc. I did a lot of 'mv'ing the other day, and it made me have to re-install Windows and the GUS disks... not a pleasurable experience, mind you. Feh. Next: The problem with SCII and a 1meg GUS is that the memory hasn't been cleared on the GUS correctly, right? So, I run GUSCLEAR before starting SCII. No dice; everytime I move up or down in a menu I get the associated 'up-or-down-in-a-menu' sound effect, and then a lot of noise and junk. So it's back to the 669 player solution. Any comments on this? To all of you folks who have been writing GUS demos/games/utils, nice job!! Zone66 made me go out and buy a joystick (another guilt trip on myself), tzjungly was hilarious, gusmod sounds wonderful... all the stuff I've seen has been great. It's good to see the *ware scene accepting the GUS so quickly and well. I hope that Gravis, Forte, and Logitech realize how much you folks have done. (Of course, you are all making me spend money and feel horribly guilty... it's a tradeoff... :-] ) What else... um... John Smith: think you could start posting the stock quotes for Gravis? I for one would like to know how the company is doing. Boy, is that line-out line loud. More things as I see them... (of course, this is all old hat to most of you) -- Dave ddebry@ debry@ \ DeBry dsd. peruvian. | "I have a plan so cunning you could put a es. cs.utah. | tail on it and call it a weasel." com edu / ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 15:04:54 +0300 (EDT) From: Kaj Laaksonen Subject: Origin games with GUS & SB Message-ID: <199304261204.AA13842@mdata.fi> Howdy fellow GUSsers! Looks like most GUS owners have GUS and SB working well together. Until now everything worked OK with my setup too but with new Origin games, Serpent Isle & Strike Commander, I've run into problems. Installation goes smoothly but when I try to start game it just hangs up and returns to DOS with big blocky prompt. I have GUS and my SB-clone setup to different addresses and IRQ & DMA and all the other games work fine. If I remove GUS both games start properly... My SB-clone is a Taiwanese Golden Sound Card, works just fine otherwise. I include my GUS related config.sys and autoexec.bat lines: AUTOEXEC.BAT SET ULTRASND=240,7,7,11,5 C:\ULTRASND\ULTRINIT.EXE SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRASND SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T1 CONFIG.SYS DEVICE=C:\ULTRASND\ULTRINIT.SYS ULTRASND=240,7,7,11,5 No QEMM as I use EMM386 from MS-DOS 6 and I don't use doublespace or other disk compression software. I removed SBOS lines from autoexec.bat and don't use it otherwise either, is it needed? Hope some kind soul could provide some help as it's really annoying to remove GUS from my machine to play these games. Thanks in advance! Kaizu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 09:09:19 EDT From: timkwan@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: Software for registered users Message-ID: <9304261309.AA00849@carbonara> I thought there was some talk a while back that Gravis was gonna send to all registered owners of the card the latest version of the install disks plus two (?) software packages for writing music (Midisoft? PowerChords?) WHEN will this happen????? -Tim ------------------------------ Date: 26 Apr 1993 07:40:03 -0400 From: Andre.Simard@MPS.x400.emr.ca Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V3 ?24 - Reply Message-ID: <2BDBCA13.6A501*/PN=Andre.Simard/UA-ID=000000001/ADMD=TELECOM.CANADA/C=CA/@x400.emr.ca> Anybody knows about a good MOD player (Windows if possible) that works with the GUS AND has volume control? Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: 26 Apr 1993 04:11:11 GMT From: twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong) Subject: Ultrasound FTP Sites - New files validated - April 25, 93 Message-ID: <1rfncvINNl6d@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> ReprintFrom: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard GRAVIS ULTRASOUND FTP SITES NEWS ========================================================================== Ftp Site: archive.epas.utoronto.ca Directory: pub/pc/ultrasound wuarchive.wustl.edu systems/msdos/ultrasound ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi all. Here are the files I just validated for April 25, 93 for both Ultrasound FTP archives: Subdirectory: ..../sound/patch/files accrdeon.arj - new version Subdirectory: ..../sound/patch/util ped.arj - Patch Editor 0.001 for Ultrasound Subdirectory: ..../util/dos boot110.arj - DOS config changer & rebooter 1.10 gusclear.arj - GUSClear clears GUS memory fast gustest.zip - New version of GUS Tester 1.21 Subdirectory: ..../sound/midi/files brokfolk.zip, erasure.zip, nightbal.zip Subdirectory: ..../sound/midi/util gusorg.exe - GUSorgan midi keyboard DOS program for Ultrasound spltmidid.zip - midi utils for Windows Subdirectory: ..../sound/mod/util ripper10.zip - Ripper 1.0 MOD composer util for Ultrasound Subdirectory: ..../sound/wav/files swirlb4.wav - 16 bit test file swirl sampled at B4 Subdirectory: ..../sound/wav/util wazwav.arj - 16 bit wav file compresser (Windows) Subdirectory: ..../gravis/patch pmidi405.zip - Playmidi 4.05 Subdirectory: ..../util/windows vbrun200.zip - VBRUN200.DLL needed for several Windows programs Well, that's it folks. That's it for this validation period. Several things to note though.... Anthony who posted MIDPAC.ZIP, seeing as we can't get it to work and there has been complaints that it doesn't work. I can't validated it till it's fixed. Disk 2.05 isn't an official release from Gravis (not on the BBS) and therefore, doesn't have file names gus00*.zip hence I'll leave it in the submit directory should anyone wants it, but I did validated Playmidi 4.05. This is supposedly the only bugfix in this set of disk. Happy GUSing! Thomas. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1993 11:27:50 -0400 From: robert douglas Subject: Upgrade Disks?? Message-ID: <9304261527.AA05012@hydro.mps.ohio-state.edu> What ever happened to the upgrades that Gravis was supposed to send to registered users? I've had my GUS since Sept 92, I did send in my registration card, and I havn't heard anything since. I heard the rumors that Gravis was done with the SBOS fixes etc and that they would be shipping some day. Did I miss something? I have downloaded the files from epas, but wasn't there supposed to be some additional software? Any info would be appreciated. Bob. douglas@hydro.mps.ohio-state.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 09:33:39 PDT From: tri.tran@chinalake.navy.mil (Tri Tran) Subject: Zone66 and SCSI hard drive problem Message-ID: <9304261633.AA02361@f18sunc.f18sun> I heard of this before but didn't take notice of it until it happen to me. I was playing Zone66 with my GUS when suddendly, the system hang. I rebooted and nothing happen. My controller card (Ultra 14f) couldn't recognize my HD (Maxtor 7213S). I lost. Please help. These are brand new parts and I would like to find out which one is broken and why so that I can return it. Thanks in advance. Tri Tran ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V3 #27 *************************************