Ultrasound Daily Digest     Sun, 4 Apr 1993      Volume 3 : Issue   4 

Today's Topics:
						 DOS 6 & GUS opinions
							 guitar midi
						  Sound File Support

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mail addresses, request servers, ftp sites, etc., etc.) can be found
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Date: Sat, 3 Apr 93 17:36:20 PST
From: nestlero@khan.usc.edu (Mikeee)
Subject: DOS 6 & GUS opinions
Message-ID: <9304040136.AA08023@khan.usc.edu>

First off, didn't get a Sat. Digest.... any problems?

OK, I bought DOS 6 on the 1st, and installed it last night... I was on the tail
end of an all-nighter, so I wasn't thinking too well, but I finally got things
working. Actually, when I went to bed Fri. pm I could've sworn I was still 
having problems, but this morning everything was fine?!?!?!

Installation of DOS is great, it does all the work...except changing floppies :)

DOS itself is kinda neat... freed up quite a bit of extra memory for me.... and
I haven't even run that mem manager thing yet!
I had just installed STUNTS, so I gave that a try.. works fine..
Tried wolfenstein (fine), and Comanche (fine)....so now the REAL test...
I wanted to see how much extra space I could get on my hard drive using that
doublespace compression, but I didn't want to risk my entire 210 Mb just yet, 
so I sacrificed the games partition (50 Mb total, with 20 Mb free at the time...
It also houses my ~8 Mb permanent swap file, which can't be compressed... as
noted in the new DOS manual) So I did a custom compression, telling DOS to
leave 15 Mb uncompressed (for the swap file and ultrasound stuff, in case
the compressed ultrasound stuff didn't work) Well, I figure that leaves 35 Mb 
for Doublespace to play with, of which ~13 Mb is totally empty.... I'm 
confusing this aren't I? 
 (Total = 50 Mb) = (8 Mb swap file) + (20 Mb Free ) + (22 Mb games and ultrasnd)

dblspace will create a new uncompressed drive = 15 Mb which will have
the 8 Mb swapfile + 7Mb free (to be used later... maybe) and it will compress 
whatever's left on the original...

Here's what I got... 

New partitioned drive... = 15 Mb (8 Mb swap + 7 Mb free)
Original drive : 30 Mb (free, compressed ) + 22 Mb (games/ultrasnd, compressed)

So, I was pretty happy with that... looking forward to doing the rest of the 
drive (and playing with an extra 100 Mb :)   )

Now the stuff that pertains to this group: for the next 3 hours, I couldn't 
get one damn thing to work! No games, no music, no demos (flidemo coughed, 
choked, and hung my computer), windows killed my computer 3 times, eventually
let me in, but choked on a midi and kicked me out. My mood at the time? ready
to kill anyone near, too bad my roommate's fiance didn't bring her dog over })

So I spent a LOT of time changing things in autoexec and config, with few
victories... (Note: I'm still using SBOS 1.4B3, et al..... don't have the 
free disks to d/load the new stuff... waiting for Gravis to send me mine...
think Christmas time is expecting too much? :) )
Eventually, I got windows up again, but nothing was recognizing the sound board.
Even had problems with setgus... It always had DMA(read) conflicts, and never
passed the tests... it passed the blaster tests, but no others.. and told
me I had dram problems... which I have NEVER had.. ( I have 1 Mb of 70 ns from
ElkCo (sp ?) ) Anyway, I don't think setgus EVER worked for me.. so I started
playing with the setups by hand...
When I finally got some sounds out of the board, they were WAY out of tune, 
overlapping each other, and would break into LOUD static every now and then...
Flidemo, and mididemo were the same.

Eventually, and don't ask me what I did (remember, I was on an all nighter, and
I honestly can't remember too much about the specifics) things started to work
decently. I thought I still had problems when I went to bed (there's that
memory thing again!) but when I got up this morning, windows works great, 
flidemo amd mididemo are fine, I played wavs and mids in windows, Wolfenstein
worked great, I even had one of the jukebox things running while I went to 
afterdark (WITH the crickets and wolf howls) and I played mahjong in a DOS 
window with the mids going! Granted, whenever two things access the drive at
the same time there's a slowdown (isn't there always?) but everything worked
pretty much flawlessly.

Have I tried Comanche, Zone66, Falcon, etc... ? Not yet. Actually, since this
thing is working, I've been afraid to reboot :) I tried Comanche early on, when
I was having all those problems... but I need a boot disk for that, which you
have to redo with the new DOS (it includes the dblspace stuff), and I never
got that to work... I know you can have multiple configs with the new DOS, 
but I wasn't ready to start fooling with that yet... maybe next weekend, schools
starting up again....

So that's all for now, I'm sure many others have had different experiences, so 
lets hear 'em! I'd be happy to test anything I have, if there are specific
concerns out there. Any suggestions? I'll do what I can, when I can...

My system is:
Comtrade 486/33 Local Bus
Non-Vesa LB Video (S3)
1Mb 70 ns GUS
4 Mb RAM
210Mb HD
Don't remember my GUS settings, I'm sure I changed them 20 times last night!
I'll post those when I can.

Mikeeeee
nestlero@spock.usc.edu



 


----- End Included Message -----

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Date: Sat,  3 Apr 1993 22:32:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Philip Andrew Nemec <blackdiamond+@cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: guitar midi
Message-ID: <sfjZOsS00iV1857Ipa@andrew.cmu.edu>

About converting incoming sound to MIDI - please post what kind of
responses from comp.dsp etc. about the amount of number crunching
needed...  It sounds like if the math is fast enough the program
wouldn't be too tough - you got me interested!

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Date: Sat, 3 Apr 93 22:00:50 PST
From: Vincent Poy <kingdom@CERF.NET>
Subject: Sound File Support
Message-ID: <9304040600.AA13415@nic.cerf.net>

   I was wondering if someone can point me out to some utilities for 
the GUS to play things (sound files) besides, MIDI, MOD, SND, WAV 
files since I know there are more than that which I've seen on BBS's
that have stuff like the CMF and ROL stuff but how would I be able to
play those? atleast what the SB/Adlib boards can play for Music files...
I would appreciate any help!     Thanks!

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End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V3 #4
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