GUS Daily Digest Fri, 3 Dec 93 007 Volume 9: Issue 3 Today's Topics: ADAPTEC ROM ON FTP ????? Does anyone have Ultima7 GUS specific .ADV files? Dvorak & GUS thoughts European Registration Fate of atlantis and Ultrasnd.ini GUS and OS/1 GUS Daily Digest V9 #2 How to obtain 1wolf.zip via ftpmail? I hope the GUS MAX will come with Text to Speech Leisure Suit Larry 6 More on X-Wing and QEMM More problems with Sam 'n' Max Mortal Kombat PC NHL Hockey uuencoding Word Of Warning! 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, 2 Dec 93 23:47:14 +0200 From: tjakobs@mswe.dnet.ms.philips.nl (THEO_JAKOBS TEL.62667) Subject: ADAPTEC ROM ON FTP ????? hi.. I noticed a few days ago a message about a adaptec bios for the 1542b.. Could somebodyhelp me with getting the BIOS, so i can put it in an eprom.. I have FTP acces, I have email and a uuencode-program, but i can't download it direct of the adaptec BBS..... Please help me..... Andre Jakobs MicroBrain Technologies Inc. The Netherlands ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1993 21:43:07 -0500 (EST) From: Mark Firoozfar Subject: Does anyone have Ultima7 GUS specific .ADV files? The subject basically says it all. I need the .ADV files to use with ULTRAMID. I did find U7GUS.ZIP in epas but they were fixes to prevent sbos from locking up. So, I would appreciate it if anyone who has successfully used ULTRAMID with ULTIMA7(Black Gate) can send me their ADV files. All help is appreciated. Thanks. Mark. mfirooz@wam.umd.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1993 15:38:46 -0600 (CST) From: Raeann Kneefe Subject: Dvorak & GUS thoughts Wow. It happened. I still am not sure if I believe it. If you will grab your trusty Dec 21, 1993 issue (the one you got in the mail yesterday) of PC Magazine, and turn to John Dvorak's column on page 95 you can follow along. "Advanced Gravis's $199 Ultrasound ... uses a RAM-based system. .. And the board, which is MIDI-compatible as well, sounds great." Then later on says: "Over time, you'll discover that FM synthesis belongs only in Nintendo boxes. It's only by a fluke of marketing that we're tolerating this cheesy sound on the PC. I RECOMMEND, the UltraSound for starters. It's sold for as little as $140, and except for an awkward installation program, the board is outstanding. It omes with plenty of interesting bundled software and works beautifully with Microsoft Windows." Well, I guess it's started. Now comes the race to see if other wavetable boards can catch up and ultimately pass the GUS. This will not be that easy. There are probably a dozen or so differnet boards based on the Aria chipset already. We'll have to wait and see if people want to jump from FM to ROM based wavetable, or directly to RAM based wavetable. Oh, by the way, Orchid is supposedly coming out with a GameWave version of it's wavetable card... That will sell for the same if not lower price than the GUS. I think the GUS will have some stiff competion if it can't come out with an "Advanced" version soon. Namely, more than 1 meg memory. Either going to SIMMs (where you only have to add one at a time) or going for 1meg x 4 DIPs seems the most reasonable right now. (It can't be that* hard can it? Unless the Forte chip has a 1 meg address space for some reason this shouldn't be too hard. Anyone know? 16 bit sampling will probably mostly be a marketing gimick in the months ahead. Really, how many of you out there want to sample at 16 bits at 44.1K for anything but just "playing around on your own"? I certainly wouldn't. (Although it would* have been nice) So what do I think SOMEONE will come out with soon? o Up to 8 meg DRAM based Wavetable Synthesis using 1 meg SIMS or 1meg x 4 DIPs. At least 1 meg standard. o Includes Roland GS and MT32 support in HARDWARE. (Hopefully 100% compatible.) o Have it as affordable as the GUS. There are already lots of 2 out of 3s out there. What do I hope* someone does on the GUS? o Get extremely good patches. If professionals say, "Wow, that little card sounds just as good as my Roland JV-80, if not better.", no one can lose. For example the JV-80 uses about 8 megs of patches. (4 megs in ROM that are compressed.) Size wise, the patches aren't that far off now. They just have to be more "professionally" sampled. This will ultimately make others stand back and say, jeez, just what is* the difference between this $200 card and that $800 Roland module I can add on. Sure, the people in the know will not be persuaded totally because the Ultrasound isn't exacly a match for the Turtle Beach products on sheer power. But it is a step in the right direction. o A better approach to user-defined samples. An extension of the Roland GS extensions to GMIDI isn't a bad place to start with it's sort of "bank switching" of different families of instruments. I still cringe to think that inherently I'm "loosing" all the GMIDI instruments when I use my own patch list. (Ok, I know, just leave the normal instruments in your custom file, but this seems like such an awful workaround.) Perhaps, in the mean time, it would be nice to have the GUS default back to the origonal GMIDI .cfg file if a instrument isn't defined in your custom file. I expect the people at Gravis have been pouring over this "problem" themselves debating the alternatives. o License MegaEm and include it in the package with every GUS. Or you could just develop your own Roland/SB emulator that uses the 386 instead of the hardware port for it's emulation. Enough of my blathering. I hope* that some of you got something out of this. The GUS is good, but far from perfect. Let's hope the major software companies start reacting and start shying away from just SB support. Any thoughs? I'm sure others would be interested too. -Raeann@vax1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 93 10:24:40 GMT From: Mark Bullen Subject: European Registration Hi all, I finally got around to buying a PC for my GUS ;-) I've been torturing myself for a couple of months by playing on a friends PC+GUS whilst I saved up the money for a GUS and a PC to plug it into -- you've got to get your priorities right! The registration card that came with the GUS (rev 3.4 + 2.06 install disks with PowerChords + MidiSoft) has 3 (three) addresses to return the registration card to: Address on cover of registration card: Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd, 1790 Midway Lane Bellingham, WA 98226 U.S.A Address for Canadian & Int'l Customers: Advanced Gravis Computer Technology, 101-3750 North Fraser Way, Bumaby, B.C. V5J 5B6, CANADA European Customers: Logitech SA, CH-1122 Romanel/Morges, Switzerland Being a `European Customer' I guess that I should send my card to Logitech in Switzerland, but I'm not sure that I'll get put on Gravis' distribution list for update disks :-( Are there any other Euro-gussers out there who've been receiving update disks from Gravis? Will Logitech pass on my registration details to Gravis? Do Logitech distribute the update disks in Europe on behalf of Gravis? I don't wish to cast any aspersions on Logitech's good name, but I do want to make sure that I get put on Gravis' registration database. I realise that this doesn't necessarily imply that I WILL get any update disks from Gravis ;-) My friend's GUS didn't have a registration card in the box, he telephoned the mail order company that he bought it from and they took his details and said that they'd register him. He hasn't received any update disks since he bought his gus in May '93 -- I had to ftp'd the 2.06L disks for him. I got a copy of the latest GUS FAQ (rev 1.31 [93/08/29]) to see if that had any words of wisdom on registration and update disks, but alas not. Mark.Bullen@src.bae.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1993 22:22:38 +0200 From: PWRJAM01@Uctvax.UCT.AC.ZA Subject: Fate of atlantis and Ultrasnd.ini Has anyone got a good version of the ultrasnd.ini file for the Fate of atlantis ( this is with megaem ) that piano sounds awefull I changed the patch 1 to strings is sounded a bit better but still to me SBOS sound better ( instrument wise - not sound quality ) James ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1993 09:53:46 -0500 (EST) From: msciriol@eos.ncsu.edu Subject: GUS and OS/1 Does any one know if the GUS windows drivers will work with the recently released OS/2 for Windows? I was thinking about installing this, but was curious if I would lose windows gus support when I did. I haven't had a chance to look at the manuals for Win/OS2 yet, so if this is an obvious question please excuse me. Thanks! - Mike Cirioli ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1993 15:58:55 -0500 From: TOMMYLEE@uhura.trinity.toronto.edu Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V9 #2 >Date: 30 Nov 93 08:09:00 PST >From: EBULALACAO@CSUPomona.Edu >Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V8 #29 > >Hmmm...you got Hardball III to work with thenew MEGAEM? How? I can >only get the Roland music working, but not the Sound Blaster >digitized sound... anyy special instructions? I had no problems getting it to work. I have nothing special installed on my system, other than the "D=256" command added to my "EMM386" line of config.sys. Oh, I also have the player's disk installed (which alters the Hardball.exe file), and a patch I use to bypass the annoying doc check. >------------------------------ >Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 11:42:20 -0400 (EDT) >From: "K.S. Holly" >Subject: NHLPA and MEGAEM > >Has anyone found any solutions to the locking problem with NHLPA when >used with MEGAEM? > >I have managed to get it to play a full game if I don't ask for >replays or anything but it still crashes at the end of the 3 stars >announcement. Also I have this annoying background static during the >game. > >I have tried booting all different configs, with and without drivers >i.e. mouse, smartdrv, etc and none really made a difference except >that it SEEMED to be a little more stable without the mouse but that >is a pain. >I've alos tried loading megaem with /sbi5 and no difference. That background "static" you hear, is the "buzz" of the crowd. It's supposed to be there as stadium noise. The effect just doesn't seem to work well, because you don't get the music mixed in between faceoffs. I had similar problems getting the program to work. What worked for me was, first, increasing the Dma buffer to 128 or 256k (by adding "D=256" to either the EMM386 or QEMM386 line of your config.sys). Then, when the game still crashed on me at the very end (before, it crashed at the beginning), I switched over to Qemm 6 (still using the D=256 command), and bingo, no problem... >p.s. What's Jayeson's address again? I believe it's jayeson@gravis.com Tommy... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 93 12:35:40 CST From: ibmpa!hartmann.austin.ibm.com!lance@ibminet.awdpa.ibm.com (Lance Hartmann) Subject: How to obtain 1wolf.zip via ftpmail? Lacking direct ftp access, can anyone please give me an ftpmail host/id (along with associated commands) for retrieving Wolfenstein v1.0 (I understand it's at princeton.edu:pub/apogee/1wolf.zip)? The GUS ftpmail server hasn't been very useful. I noted that 1wolf.zip does not exist on the GUS ftpmail server. When I obtained the "mailserver.doc" file there was no info about accessing OTHER hosts from nike.rz.uni-konstanz.de like I've seen in other mail servers. I did try "ftp open/close" commands, but they were rejected. Thanks to all in advance, -- Lance Hartmann (lance%hartmann.austin.ibm.com@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com) Yes, that IS a '%' (percent sign) in my network address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- All statements, comments, opinions, etc. herein reflect those of the author and shall NOT be misconstrued as those of IBM or anyone else for that matter. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1993 18:07:14 MST From: "Dean C. Johnson" Subject: I hope the GUS MAX will come with Text to Speech I read a while back what Gravis and others posted about the next GUS (GUS MAX). They mentioned voice recognition software coming with it. I think thats great! Along with the software that already comes with the GUS the thing that would really make it a superb software bundle is Text to Speech software. I currently use a Covox Sound Master II (not Sound Blaster) card but will definately buy a GUS MAX when it comes out. I enjoy using the Speech Thing text to speech software that I have for the Sound Master. It is written by First Byte software company. I think this is the same company that makes Monologue for Windows, which is the Text to Speech software that comes with several other sound cards. I have not see this product in any store or magazine on sale. I assume that a text to speech program would be less expensive to licence from a company than a Voice Recognition program. I think it is worth a small increase in price to get text to speech with a sound card. Or mabey Gravis could arrange a special offer of such a program to registered GUS users. Could Someone from Gravis comment on this? Does anyone else have an opinion? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 93 02:28:17 -0800 From: mbarboni@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Real Athletes Throw! ) Subject: Leisure Suit Larry 6 Yesterday's Digest mentioned how LSL6 by Sierra was running fine... how? I agree, Sierra did but a heck of a lot of info on how to install GUS drivers in a text file (complete with step by step instructions and everything), but when all was said and done, I got the music part (i.e. theme music, birds chirping, etc..) but when I opened or closed a door (as well as a few other things), I got an unbearable screech at high volume! Anyone else had this problem? Seems that the music is fine, but the digitized sounds are playing the wrong patches or something... -Mike barboni@ucsd.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 93 9:31:26 MST From: Stuart Yoshida Subject: Re: More on X-Wing and QEMM >From: "Michael Patricios" >Subject: Re: Megaem and X-wing fix > >Stuart Yoshida said: >> >> I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of people who finally got >> X-Wing and Mega-Em to work completely together. >> >> PROBLEM: The MIDI music in X-Wing would cut out soon after a mission >> is started. >> >> SOLUTION: Turn off the Stealth Mode option in QEMM (the ST:M switch) >> >Nope, I am running QEMM 7.0 with stealth _OFF_ but the music still >cuts out for me ;-( > >Ah well..... Any other thoughts?? Hmmm. Have you upgraded your version of QEMM to 7.02? You need to get the 7.00 to 7.01 AND the 7.01 to 7.02 patches. I got mine from the QEMM bulletin board. That's the only other thing I can think of... Let us posted if you find a solution! > >Mike -- Stuart Yoshida Internet: yoshida@elektra.fc.hp.com Voice: (303) 229-2324 ------------------------------ Date: 02 Dec 93 17:19:01 PST From: pil!puppet@PacBell.COM (puppet) Subject: More problems with Sam 'n' Max I'd like to thank those who responded to my request for help setting up Sam 'n' max to work with the GUS and Megaem. However, I have tried the '-F22' switch with Emuset before, and to no avail. Here's what I have done. Loaded up megaem (defaults). Loaded up Emuset (-F22 or without), configured the sound to work with General Midi and SB (using all the defaults of course). The music and sound test out wonderfully, but when I start up the game, I only get music. No speach, no sound! Help. I'm running it on a 386-DX-33 with 4megs of RAM, a 256k GUS, Dos 6.2, Qemm 7.01. I've also tried using a boot disk. Using just DOS's memmaker. But I still get no sound. What's up? -Sam Oh, BTW, please reply directly to the digest (my mail address, as listed above causes some problems) thanx! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Public Image Limited VBBS (510) 831-3634 [ASV] Guest Account open Home of VUUCP/2 USENet Interface! [VSP] VBBS 6.10 [Primary Dist. Site] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1993 11:45:57 -0800 (PST) From: "George A. Montemayor" Subject: Mortal Kombat PC Anyone know if the new MegaEm will work with Mortal Kombat using the Roland+SB DAC option? I heard it loads DOSX or something like that to access memory above the 1 meg range. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 93 03:46:32 EST From: ddr@math.ufl.edu Subject: NHL Hockey The only time I was able to get NHL hockey to lock up was when I used the /ROOFF switch (SB Digital only, no Roland) Perhaps if you just load Megaem and Emuset with no switches it will work for you also. Dan. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 93 16:05:11 -0300 From: "Scott Giberson" Subject: uuencoding Hello. Is there any program for PC's that removes uuencoding, that is on the mail server? I have uuexe521.zip, which seems to be encoded, and I am unable to FTP files at this time. Any help would be greatly appreciated. THANKS Scott Giberson Florenceville, New Brunswick, Canada (506) 392-6969 INTERNET: gibersn@mailserv.nbnet.nb.ca ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Dec 93 06:20:00 BST From: b.williams44@genie.geis.com Subject: Word Of Warning! Hello all, I have a Word of Warning for all GUS owners thinking about buying Sierra's new game Gabriel Knight "Sins of the Fathers". DON'T!!!!!!!! I did and Came to find out that almost 2 Months after Sierra released their version of the GUSAIL Drivers for their games, that they have changed the sound Drivers for this game from SCI-16 to SCI-32. So MEGA-EM, SBOS, GUSAIL, none of them now work with this new game!:( They have also used a Protected Mode, so Mega-em refuses to work with it. This has gotten my Goat for the Last and Final time! I have had it with companies that feed you with one hand, then slap you with the other! I call on all Loyal GUS owners! Turn your nose up at this game! Do not buy it! Unless they make new GUSAIL SCI-32 Drivers! Whoever came up with this dumb idea to change the Drivers IMHO, deserves to be blamed for chopping GUS owners sales of this product! A dullard with a AXE chops his own foot, as they say! P.S. This game is also Windows compatible, but not with the GUS in General MIDI format. I only got a couple of sounds out of it, NO music and it ran so sluggish, I removed it after 5 min. of play. I am returning it to the store and will not even glance at it again until I see some working GUS support again! ***StarHawk*** SEZ! " I Will Buy No Game, Before It's GUS Time! " From Now On! ------------------------------ End of GUS Daily Digest V9 #3 ******************************