GUS Daily Digest            Mon, 18 Apr 94  9:37 PST     Volume 12: Issue  18 

Today's Topics:
					  16bit Wavetable Soundcards
						 Alone in the Dark 2
			 A  solution for Rebel Assault sound problems
							  AWEful 32
			CD play in Win, CD crash, Netware crash, etc.
				   CGW sound card review part deux
						   Falcon 3.0 & GUS
					 Frequency Generator for GUS
					 Frequency Generator for GUS?
							ftpMial sight
					   GUS Daily Digest V12 #16
				  GUS Daily Digest V12 #17 (4 msgs)
					  GUS Daily Digest V12 #17[D
				  GUS Unix AU player for dos/windows
				  Hey, I *LIKED* the WiRed article!
			  Need help with Tornado and Field of Glory
								raptor
		 ringwhstl, DOOM 1.2, block devices, and other stuff
		   SONY SRS-D4K vs AR Powered Partners 570 Speakers
								Stuff
						Ultrinit.sys problems
						Wired article (2 msgs)

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: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 17:27:13 GMT+1
From: "F. Viktor" <VIKTOR@evt.bme.hu>
Subject: 16bit Wavetable Soundcards

Here are the Wavablaster Cards shown on the IFABO fair in 
Budapest last week:

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 16:51:18 GMT+1
From: "F. Viktor" <VIKTOR@evt.bme.hu>
Subject: Re: Alone in the Dark 2

There was a question about Alone 2 in a previous digest:

It's working with SBOS 3.81. Start it before the game, start
drv_sb.com and then aitd2.exe. (drv_sb.com comes with alone 2)
This help was from my brother, not from me. I'll suppose to use
a bat-file to run the game. And don't forget: for some reason (?)
the default setting is sound OFF!
Hope I (my brother) could help
 
			Viktor
			

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 94 07:21:42 CDT
From: wyman@marble.rtsg.mot.com (Mark S. Wyman)
Subject: A  solution for Rebel Assault sound problems

I saw another request for Rebel Assault sound problems so I thought I 
would mention how I was told to get it to work.  

Change the frame rate to something greater than what the setup program
allows.  You will need to modify the /f command line param in the .bat
file.  I changed it to /f19.  If you tried to modify the frame rate with
the (helpful?) rebel setup program you would have been limited to a max
of 15 frames.

This worked for me.  I have a 486 DX 33 with VLB and 8 megs of memory.

Hope this helps,
Mark

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 09:46:07 -0500 (CDT)
From: Christopher Allen Kalin <ckalin@cae.uwm.edu>
Subject: Re: AWEful 32

DODSON@ac.dal.ca wrote:
> 
> Not that I have any interest whatever in the SB AWE32 or any other CL
> product, but I am curious about one thing:  everyone is ranting and raving 
> about this "upgradable to 28 megs" - but nobody has ever mentioned whether 
> that is 28 megabytes, or megabits.  Of course megabytes is assumed, but 
> remember, they called their 500k of memory "4 megabits".  
> 
> But hey, I could be wrong.  <-- standard disclaimer

Believe it or not, the box actually says 28 megaBYTES.  I'm sure
that's a typo--either that, or CL is just clueless.

Chris Kalin
-- 
				 Chris Kalin-----> ckalin@watt.cae.uwm.edu
System Administration Grunt         President and co-founder of
for the College of Engineering at            Eon Designs, Ltd.   
the Univ. of Wisconsin - Milwaukee           "The Universe is Our Playground"
			   Your friendly neighborhood Babbage's employee.
				  Oh yeah, I'm a CompSci student as well.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 18:06:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: mikebat@netcom.com (Mike Batchelor)
Subject: Re: CD play in Win, CD crash, Netware crash, etc.

Not the GUS Server once wrote...
$  
$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Sat, 16 Apr 1994 07:47:45 +0800 (WST)
$  From: Roderick Nasir DAVID <ruffus@tartarus.uwa.edu.au>
$  Subject: CD-ROM in windows?
$  
$  Greets lads,
$  
$  I've got a Panasonic CD-ROM drive, thats been driven by a dedicated
$  controller card and the audio is being piped through the GUS. In DOS,
$  I can get the cd-audio to work, but in windows (through media player)
$  I cant get the cd-rom to work??
$  
$  Any suggestions?? Thanx heaps in advance.

Surprise!  Media Player is not a CD ROM player, so it will never play
music CDs, with any sound card.  You want to get a separate program for
that.
$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 14:50:57 CDT
$  From: Joe G. Thompson <jgt1@ERC.MsState.Edu>
$  Subject: Gateway Pentium SBOS problem solved
$  
$  For those of you experiencing trouble with SBOS on Gateway Pentium systems:
$  
$  The problem appears to be caused by a flaw in the implementation of the PS/2
$  mouse port, which seems to grab the NMI even after SBOS redirects it.  The
$  solution is to switch to using a serial mouse.  I have tested this myself with
$  a couple of different games and it seems to work consistantly.
$  
$  I spoke with Gateway technical support about the problem and their "solution"
$  was to replace my PS/2 mouse with a serial mouse for a 15% restocking fee.
$  Advanced Gravis is kindly working with Gateway to find a real solution
$  to the problem.  It is possible that a flash BIOS upgrade may be all that is
$  necessary to fix the NMI problem.

Very interesting.  Did this happen with ALL versions of the Microsoft
Mouse driver?  The new Mouse.exe (not .com) v9.00 re-grabs its hardware
interrupt also at inappropriate times.  This unconventional behavior has
caused problems for QEMM's Stealth feature, and also for DESQview's mouse
driver.  Quarterdeck suggests using mouse.COM (shipped with some clone MS
mice) v9.00, or any mouse driver version 7.00 to 8.20, none of which
exhibit this rude and unneccesary behavior.  To redirect an interrupt away
from programs that have hooked it beneath yours is guaranteed to cause
problems, regardless of any imagined benefits from this "procedure".

$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 17:09:36 -0700 (PDT)
$  From: "Peter C. Chien Jr." <pchienjr@ocf.Berkeley.EDU>
$  Subject: Mega-em with a CD drive
$  
$  Somehow I can't get mega-em to work with my CD rom drive.  Here is what 
$  happens...  I load megaem (without switches) and then emuset (w/o 
$  switches).  I type g: (my CD drive letter).  I type "dir" and the system 
$  freezes, then 5 seconds, then the message "Internal stack overflow.  
$  System halted."  I'm using a Toshiba 3401 internal drive connected to a 
$  future domain TMC-871.  I'm using MSCDEX that came with dos 6.2.  I tried 
$  increasing STACKS= 64,512 (the maximum) in config.sys but same problem.  

Try stacks=0,0 instead.  No stacks, no stack overflow.  Really!  You may
get a different kind of crash that could be more informative, but it could
also eliminate the problem altogether.  I saw in the previous (following
this one) digest, that disabling Smartdrv solved the problem.  Perhaps you
need only disable CD ROM caching (which Smartdrv now does by default). 
Add E- (where E is your CD drive letter) to the Smartdrv command line.

$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 03:29:00 -0600
$  From: ddrolet@traider.ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Dean Drolet)
$  Subject: Novell 3.12 Network Drivers and GUS
$  
$  I don't know how many of you this will apply to but here goes...A while
$  back I posted a message about how to get the GUS working with my network
$  drivers.  After getting some mail that helped me about as much as a
$  stick in the face, I decided to experiment.  It seemed that the only way
$  that I could load my Netware 3.12 and 4.0 VLMs (virtual loadable
$  modules) to log in to my server was to load either SBOS or Megaem.  This
$  just pissed me off as for the most part, I run my games and other
$  applications in native mode.  All megaem would do was to create another
$  EMS handle that could never be recovered even when it was unloaded.  I
$  needed a better solution.  I was playing around with the DMA channels on
$  the gus since I have one of the dreaded OPTi chipsets.  Mine seems to
$  work just great.  My previous configuration was 220,1,1,11,7 and my
$  computer would lock solid when trying to load my network drivers without
$  the said emulators.  I changed it to 220,7,7,11,7 and did not notice
$  anything until I forgot to load the emulator and the network still came
$  up.  I was a little taken by suprise, so I put the original config back
$  into play and WHAMMO!  Locked solid.  It seems that the network drivers
$  require DMA channel 1 for the initial load.  One call to one of the
$  network gurus that I know and he confirmed it.  It is an undocumented
$  "feature" of the software.  Anyways if anyone else was or is to have a
$  GUS in a computer that is on a network, I hope that you can use this
$  info to save some grief that I had to go through.  Just remember don't use
$  DMA channel 1.

If this is true, then anyone who has a Sound Blaster installed should also
crash when loading the VLM, since it can ONLY use DMA channel one.  For
what it's worth, I have no trouble loading the LSL, NE2000, IPXODI and
EMSNETX with a GUS installed and set for DMA channels 1 and 3.  I might
suggest that you delay running Ultrinit until after the VLMs load.  You do
not have to load ultrinit.sys to intialize the GUS.  You can use
Ultrinit.exe instead, but *after* you have already loaded the VLM.  Let us
(or me via e-mail) know how that works out.


-- 
Mike Batchelor      | UseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinux
mikebat@netcom.com  | xuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesU
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plug 'N' Play:  A specification invented by Microsoft and Intel which
enables a computer and its operating system to create hardware conflicts
without user intervention.

No more jumpers to misplace!  The computer will misplace them for you.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 14:57:23 -0400
From: Martin H Rogers <mrogers@afit.af.mil>
Subject: CGW sound card review part deux

Don't know if I just missed a digest or what, but the following message
that I tried to post late Thursday night hasn't shown up as of Sunday
at 3pm EDT. My apologies if this is a repeat. 

My original attempted post follows:
 -----------------------------------------
Just got my latest Computer Gaming World (May '94) today (Apr 14).
The second part of their latest sound card review by Donald Griffin
is on page 60. (My apologies if there is another posting of this
information -- I know there are other CGW readers out there.)

The cards were "blind" tested on General MIDI music and OPL-2 emulation.
Griffin recorded samples to cassette tape and got "gaming community" 
people and CGW staff to compare music and decide an order of quality.

The GUS was ranked 5th out of 11, with a two-place tie for second 
(I presume on GMIDI results); and 6th out of 8 (that provided such), 
with a two-place tie for third, on OPL-2 sound. The GUS was also given 
an average rank of 6.0, where the top rated Sound Canvas was ranked 1.1, 
and the bottom ranked OPL-3 was ranked 10.1. The GUS rank was only enough 
for an overall 6th place out of 11. The GUS came in right behind the
Aria 1 Meg, and just in front of the Ensoniq.

The other rated cards (chip sets) were:  Kurzwell MASS, Wave Blaster,
Yamaha OPL-4, Aria 512K, and Orchid GameWave 32 with and without the 
Invision ROM upgrade. Overall finish order:  Sound Canvas, MASS, WB,
OPL-4, Aria 1M, GUS, Ensoniq, Aria 512K, Orchid with, Orchid without,
and OPL-3.

Specifics on the GUS:

Griffin made a potentially very misleading statement: the GUS "doesn't
have an actual OPL-2 or OPL-3 chip on the board, so it is not
compatible with older games." I guess that's technically true, and he
next goes on to talk about SBOS emulation. He then mentioned Megaem,
but said it only works in DOS and not with 32-bit software. All true,
but misleading, since he never discussed the Windows drivers or the
32-bit AIL drivers that (I'm pretty sure) were already out by the time 
he wrote this.

He did make a nice point that "The Ultrasound is really a one MB
sampling synthesizer which sells at a tiny fraction of the price of the
equivalent stand alone model (usually retailing for ca. $2000-$4000)."
And he spoke of the upcoming Ultrasound CD^3 and Max, as well as the
Advanced Gravis deal with Advanced Micro Devices. He concluded the GUS
section with "...it looks like the Ultrasound will continue to be with
us for some time."

MSRP was also listed for most of the cards. The GUS doesn't look too
bad considering the price: it's the best thing under $349 MSRP, at $199.
But the article didn't give the glowing review that I'd hoped for.
(I remember seeing Griffin on Prodigy asking questions about the GUS. I
thought the GUSites there had given him some good info.) But (not knowing
any flaws in the "blind" test (not that they gave any real details)) it's
hard to gripe too much given the blind testing they did. Oh well, I still
like my GUS.

And now I'll just step back and watch the hornets fly.  B->

-Martin

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Apr 94 21:46:15 -0700
From: jpoet@einet.com
Subject: Falcon 3.0 & GUS

I figuared out why I wasn't getting any digital sounds out of Falcon
with either SBOS or MEGA-EM -- I was using QEMM 7.00.  I downloaded
the patch to bring QEMM 7.00 to 7.03 and now the digital works fine.

The only problem is that MEGA-EM slows the game down so much that the
sound happens seconds before the video gets there.  In the intro
screen I get the "Good kill, good kill" about the time that the missle
is launched.

John

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 16:44:54 -0500 (CDT)
From: Antonio Guia <guia@cc.umanitoba.ca>
Subject: Frequency Generator for GUS

On Sat, 16 Apr 1994, rgn7128@tamuts.tamu.edu (Robert George Nederhorst)
promissed to us that Frequency Generator for GUS? referred to:
| I am looking for a frequency generator for the GUS.  I just want a plain
| jane program that when I say 100 it will generate a 100hz tone.  Something
| like that Is this available, if so, where?

I've seen a feature just like what you've mentioned in a windows program
called COOLEDit

-tg

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Apr 94 21:07:31 +0100
From: nguyen@eerie.fr (NGUYEN Francois                   )
Subject: Re: Frequency Generator for GUS?

>I am looking for a frequency generator for the GUS.  I just want a plain jane
>program that when I say 100 it will generate a 100hz tone.  Something like  that
>Is this available, if so, where?

There was a column in PC Mag usa a couple of years ago about how to set the 
windows sound capabilities. Charles Petzold gave the listing for a short
programme about how to generate a sine wave. 
I think these columns are available from any univerisity library
but they may also be in petzold book about windows sound.

AS the programme does not rely much on windows, you could easily
modify it to use your gus as a LF generator.

							 \|/
							(o o)
		   _____________oOO__(_)__OOo_______________
				Francois Nguyen: nguyen@eerie.fr

 

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 16 Apr 94 20:59:10 GMT
From: Simon@geordie.demon.co.uk (Simon Crute)
Subject: ftpMial sight

OK, I've tried mailing the FTP sight given at the end of the digests, 
and I can't seem to get through to it. The address comes back as unknown
from my internet providers. Can anyone else get through to it before I 
ask them if it's a problem with their name server or something else.

The name I'm using BTW is.
  mail-server@nike.rz.uni-konstanz.de
  
Thanks

-- 
Geordie               simon@geordie.demon.co.uk
  Sorry, The spell checkers on holliday. <g>

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 14:25:59 GMT+1
From: "F. Viktor" <VIKTOR@evt.bme.hu>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #16

> Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 18:23:56 -0300
> From: DODSON@ac.dal.ca
> Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #15
> 
> Not that I have any interest whatever in the SB AWE32 or any other 
> CL product, but I am curious about one thing:  everyone is ranting 
> and raving about this "upgradable to 28 megs" - but nobody has ever 
> mentioned whether that is 28 megabytes, or megabits.  Of course 
> megabytes is assumed, but remember, they called their 500k of 
> memory "4 megabits".  It seems more likely to me that 28 megs 
> means 28 megabits in this case, i.e. 3.5 megabytes.  I mean, my 
> hard drive is only 150 megabytes, and my computer has only 4.  28 
> megabytes seems outrageous, except for professional musicians (and 
> no musician in his right mind would buy that piece of crap anyway.
>
> But hey, I could be wrong.  <-- standard disclaimer
> 
> Bruce Dodson

You are wrong. It is upgradable to 28 MegaBytes with 2x16MegaByte
SIMM moduls (thanX for your letter Yossi!) which means you will
loose 4 (or better 4.5) megs of ram. I bought my GUS for a price
of 4 megs of RAM! 
This is CREATIVE LABS as you see... :-)

Viktor

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 13:37:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: adamsr@turing.uncg.edu (Robert J. Adams)
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #17

> From: Shane Conder <saconder@olympus.net>
> Subject: gus
> 
> I'm having trouble getting sound out of sc2000.  I read the readme and did
> what it said (sbos, no memory managers) but that didn't work.  SB sound
> would be ok, but SC2000 has support for roland cards, which would be
> better for music.  Anyone know of a way to get sound out of this game?  
> 
	I dont have the game, but from all the posts i have read this is the 
solution,  if i am wrong, dont flame me just correct me, so when i get the
game, i will get it right as well:

	You need the the ail drivers, get them from klingon.epas.utoronto.ca.
just copy them over, say, the roland drivers and then set the game up to use 
the roland.  it will use the gus natively sort of.

Robert

/***************************************************************************
* Robert Adams             *    University of North Carolina at Greensboro *
* adamsr@hamlet.uncg.edu   *                                 Undergraduate * 
* adamsr@turing.uncg.edu   *                      Computer Science / Music *
***************************************************************************/

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 94 08:17:55 +0300
From: Yossi Oren <LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.weizmann.ac.il>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #17

>Well, here's another happy GUS user.  I just got mine yesterday (1meg).  I
>had a PAS16 (good card) but like the GUS a lot better because of greater
>compatability and the wavetable (far superior than fm).
Soul brother!  I did the same on December (although my reason was DOOM).

>I'm having trouble getting sound out of sc2000.  I read the readme and did
>what it said (sbos, no memory managers) but that didn't work.  SB sound
>would be ok, but SC2000 has support for roland cards, which would be
>better for music.  Anyone know of a way to get sound out of this game?
Ignore the readme.  Get gail3214.zip from a GUS site (or maybe you got gusmid32
and gusdig32.dll on your install disks?), read THEIR readme.
I've installed the 32-bit Miles Design drivers and the sound's quite good.
Problem is it just picks a sound file and plays it, whether you're in a
disaster or just got a parade in your honor.

>What are some good, stereo, midi's?
You want stereo?  Get Please Don't Go (ow, ow, yuck, barf).  It has this
annoying beep, right?  Well, in the sequenced version in pans from left to
right, real nice.  It's a starport file, look for a sequence of 3 numbers,
then "-plea.mid".  You might catch it on WUSTL.
If you can't get that single file, get the "Best Of Starport" archive
(best_of.zip) and enjoy.
Some of the better MIDI files I have come out of gsfiles1.zip and scdemos.zip,
both are floating around the net.
Yossi.

+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
| = | E |_|/|               Signature 1.31                      | V | ^ |
+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
|Yossi Oren, Al-Daf Techno-Mercenaries, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel. Help    |
|TInternet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL     TT The people are T|
||Bitnet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN                      || with the Golan ||
||Drag yer damn objects around.  I've got work to do.|| Heights!       ||
+====================================================++================++

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 94 08:26:19 +0300
From: Yossi Oren <LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.weizmann.ac.il>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #17

>Another question: Is the SBOS Adlib emulation meant to be sh***y ? the
Shitty.  Don't be shy.

>digital sounds are fine (I used to have a SB) but the adlib sounds anre
>definitely not they are meant to be. Engine sounds, some explosions,
>percussion effects in music sound very off. Any way to improve (I got SBOS
>3.71).
Well, SBOS has 2 emulation modes, and I've found some games do sound better
with the other.  Just run SBOS -x.
HTH,
Yossi.

+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
| = | E |_|/|               Signature 1.31                      | V | ^ |
+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
|Yossi Oren, Al-Daf Techno-Mercenaries, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel. Help    |
|TInternet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL     TT The people are T|
||Bitnet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN                      || with the Golan ||
||Drag yer damn objects around.  I've got work to do.|| Heights!       ||
+====================================================++================++

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 22:33:47 -0700 (MST)
From: "Shawn T. Rutledge" <rutledge@enuxsa.eas.asu.edu>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #17

> Date: Sat, 16 Apr 1994 23:38:36 -0600 (CDT)
> From: rgn7128@tamuts.tamu.edu (Robert George Nederhorst)
> Subject: Frequency Generator for GUS?
> 
> I am looking for a frequency generator for the GUS.  I just want a plain jane
> program that when I say 100 it will generate a 100hz tone.  Something like  that
> Is this available, if so, where?

Well, Goldwav does it after a fashion.  I mean, it has a very nice function
generator where you can type in the formulas to synthesize whatever you want.
In case you actually like FM you could do that too.  The formula you'd type
in for your 100 hz example would be sin(2*pi*100*t).  The only drawback is that
it evaluates the function and makes a wav file rather than doing it in real
tine.

-- 
  _______                                                             KB7PWD
 (_  | |_)                                            shawn.rutledge@asu.edu
 __) | | \__________________________________________________________________
* sci fi * Internet * PIC * RISC * SunSparc * GUS * robotics * ARS * fusion * 

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 08:56:17 +1000 (EST)
From: Iain Huxley <ihuxley@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #17[D

> Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 18:49:11 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "M. Wells" <mww2g@kelvin.seas.virginia.edu>
> Subject: Whassup with that long WiReD posting about SB garbage?
> 
> Whoever posted that: don't!  If you wanted us to read about FM, Creative
> Labs, etc. then say "gopher to wired.com if you want to read about some
> FM stuff and the new Yamaha chips and Creative labs."  But don't post
> hundreds of lines of material that doesn't belong in this mailing list.

I think GUS owners are generally interested in the GUS's opposition, and I don
't believe it's appropriate for you to order someone not to do so.  
You should certainly not assume that your opinions are shared by all.  They're not!

Iain.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 08:20:07 -0500 (CDT)
From: vic@cd.com (Vic Serbe x237)
Subject: Re: GUS Unix AU player for dos/windows

GUS Server writes:
> 
> Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 09:19:34 -0400
> From: Hui Chi-Wai <a258huic@cdf.toronto.edu>
> Subject: Unix AU player for dos/windows
> 
>   Subjects says it all, was wondering if there was a .au file player
> for dos/windows usable by the GUS.  I know of goldwave that can be used to
> convert .au files to .wav .voc but was hoping there was a plain player.

Goldwave 2.0 not only does all the conversion, but you can load and
*directly play* any of the formats it supports.  This is why I like it so
much.  I have a Sun SPARCstation, Amiga, and a PC.  I have one Windows
player/editor/converter that works directly with them all... Goldwave.
I'll be registering this software real soon.  I just wish he could take a
credit card over the phone.

-- 
Vic Serbe (vic@cd.com), Applications Engineer
Central Data Corp. - Makers of the scsiTerminal Server
800/482-0315 or (+1) 217/359-8010 (FAX-6904)

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 94 10:18:31 MDT
From: Stuart Yoshida <yoshida@elektra.fc.hp.com>
Subject: Hey, I *LIKED* the WiRed article!

  Thanks to whoever posted the article titled "History and Future of
  Synthesis"!  I think that it was *VERY* valuable to read about where
  music synthesis has come from, and, just as importantly, where it is
  going!  I don't think it was an edorsement for Creative Labs, Yamaha,
  or any other Synth company.  It merely showed how we got to where we
  are today.  If anything, it was an advertisement for Standford
  University!  The "waveguide" technology mentioned in the article is
  worth thinking about.  Electronic Musician Magazine certainly thinks
  so!

  Hey, Gravis, how about "waveguide" technology in the next GUS?!

--

  Stuart Yoshida

Internet: yoshida@elektra.fc.hp.com
   Voice: (303) 229-2324

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 3:40:15 -0500 (CDT)
From: NSZ48837@vax1.utulsa.edu
Subject: Need help with Tornado and Field of Glory

Hello

	I am a new gus-user and need some help with Tornado and Field of
Glory.  I've tried play those games with Magem and Sbos but no luck.
I can play music with Tornado (use Megaem) but got no F/X.  With Field of
Glory, the game just crashed after the intro :(  I have a 486/66 with 8meg
	Are there patch files for these games?  Any help would be appreciated!
Thank in advance

Song Nara

NSZ48837@vax1.utulsa.edu

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 15:56 GMT+0100
From: RTHI@btma74.se.bel.alcatel.be
Subject: raptor

So Raptor works OK for me when I select NO music and NO SFX or
when I select SFX and NO music.

However, when I use Ultrasound as music card the start and
after a while the game exits with error:

ERROR[35]: unexpected interupt=0000 in rap.exe at 0080:0918

Any suggestions?

Roland

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 17:22:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: mikebat@netcom.com (Mike Batchelor)
Subject: Re: ringwhstl, DOOM 1.2, block devices, and other stuff

Not the GUS Server once wrote...
$  
$  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Sat, 16 Apr 94 15:02:32 EDT
$  From: "NEMO G DE FURIA" <cs911084@red.ariel.cs.yorku.ca>
$  Subject: a couple more GUS0041 woes
$  
$  2)  The gunshot still sounds like a ring whistle; how do I remedy this one?

Thanks for reminding me of this.  I forgot also to change patch #127 in
ultrasnd.ini back to pistol1 after upgrading.

$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Sat, 16 Apr 94 15:41:09 EDT
$  From: jeffow@aol.com
$  Subject: Doom Stuff
$  
$  Exactly HOW and WHICH file do you edit to get more than 4 channels in DOOM?

Default.cfg in the \doom directory (no longer in the c:\doomdata
directory).  The line is 'snd_channels 4' - raise the number as high as
you care to.

$  Also, anybody know when the new version of doom is coming out which will
$  support the GUS better than v1.2?
$  
$  My problem with doom 1.2 is that whenever you shoot the acid barrels, the
$  explosions are messed up.  I know its a problem with 1.2, since using the
$  exact same set up, 1.1 works fine.  ANybody else have this problem?

No.  1.2 works better than before, for me.

$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Sat, 16 Apr 1994 15:28:02 -0700 (PDT)
$  From: Shane Conder <saconder@olympus.net>
$  Subject: gus
$  
$  I'm having trouble getting sound out of sc2000.  I read the readme and did
$  what it said (sbos, no memory managers) but that didn't work.  SB sound
$  would be ok, but SC2000 has support for roland cards, which would be
$  better for music.  Anyone know of a way to get sound out of this game?  

There is an update from Maxis on epas, or archive.orst.edu in the epas
mirror directory, that updates Sim City 2K to support the GUS with Miles
drivers.  If you can't locate it, Maxis officially supports the patch, and
from my experience, will be glad to help you get it set up if you call
them.
$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Sat, 16 Apr 1994 19:07:49 -0500 (CDT)
$  From: Antonio Guia <guia@cc.umanitoba.ca>
$  Subject: Problems: constant clicking
$  
$  While the computer is turned on, there's an occasional click which comes
$  [...]
$  I'm not sure what is causing it, i've taken my computer apart and made
$  sure everything is seated correctly and configured to non-conflicting
$  addresses, irq's and dma's.
$  
$  Any suggestions as to what may be causing this will be appreciated.  The
$  system is an AMD486DX40 with 256k cache, 16 megs ram, 350 meg connors ide,
$  80 meg maxtor ide, both fdd's, colorado 250 tape, ATI Mach32 ultraPro+,
$  vlb IDE controller, answering machine at 0x220, 2400/9600 fax/modem on
$  com2, 14.4/14.4 faxmodem on com1, bus mouse (irq2), and the gus 2.2 with
$  ULTRASND=220,7,6,11,5

Sure you got everything?  What about the answering machine at 0x220?  Does
the click coincide with the telephone ringing? :)

According to my GUS manual, if you set the base port to 0x220, then the GUS
will use all ports from 0x220 - 0x22F and also 0x320 - 0x32F.  It also
uses 0x388 and 0x389 for Adlib.  So beware if you have an Adaptec SCSI
controller at 0x330. Apparently, if you set your GUS to baseport 0x230, it
will conflict with the Adaptec on the next bank of port addresses.

$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Sat, 16 Apr 1994 12:47:18 -0400 (EDT)
$  From: gt0074b@prism.gatech.edu (P.Chen)
$  Subject: ultrinit.sys error
$  
$    I've been getting a "Too many block devices" error from my
$  config.sys when it gets the device "ultrinit.sys".  The line
$  looks like:
$    DEVICEHIGH /L2:....  =c:\ultrasnd\ultrinit.sys ultrasnd=220,5,5,7,7
$  
$  Any ideas?

Don't load ultrinit.sys high.  No need, it takes no memory once it is
finished.  This is DOS 6.x's way of telling you how stupid its memory
optimizer is. :)

$  This started to happen a few months ago, even before I upgraded to
$  the 3.1 install disks.  

Like, right about the same time you installed DOS 666? :)  If you add the
line 
*ULTRINIT
to the end of memmaker.inf in your DOS directory, MemMangler will stop
trying to load it high.

-- 
Mike Batchelor      | UseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinuxUseLinux
mikebat@netcom.com  | xuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesUxuniLesU
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plug 'N' Play:  A specification invented by Microsoft and Intel which
enables a computer and its operating system to create hardware conflicts
without user intervention.

No more jumpers to misplace!  The computer will misplace them for you.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 01:45:09 -40962758 (EET DST)
From: Janne Korkkula <jk@snafu.muncca.fi>
Subject: Re: SONY SRS-D4K vs AR Powered Partners 570 Speakers

Vincent Poy <hippo@mercury.sfsu.edu> wrote:

> [...] have been thinking about going with either the SONY SRS-D4K 3 Piece or 
> the AR (Acoustic Research) Powered Partners 570 Speakers [...]

	If you really need small but good active speakers, go
	for the smaller Genelecs. (Not-only-)IMHO those cheap plastic
	imitations of speakers you listed aren't a reasonable choice
	for any use.
	A low-end integrated amp and even cheap passive speakers
	provide you with sound quality far beyond the capabilities of
	those plastic toys. If you already have a HiFi-setup, why not
	connect the GUS to it?
	Another reasonable choice would be to get decent headphones.

	My two cents, once for all.

-- 
Janne Korkkula           #  Krogiuksentie 8B     #  E-mail: jk@muncca.fi 
Tel. +358-0-458-2260     #  00340 Helsinki       #  IRC Nick: JK
Fax. +358-0-458-2559     #  F I N L A N D        #  Finger/mail 4 PGP2.2 key

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 1994 09:58:36 +0100 (BST)
From: Toby <T.W.Nichols@hertfordshire.ac.uk>
Subject: Stuff

In response to a few things:

1. For anybody who wants native GUS music and stereo Sound FX in SC2000, 
download the file GAIL3214.ZIP from any of the GUS FTP sites 
(archive.epas.utoronto.ca or archive.orst.edu)

2.Mods are still the best music format in the computer world :)

3. The best player for MTM Klf files is the Inertia Player. V1.1. This 
should be on epas and orst and may be on wuarchive.wustl.edu in the 
MSDOS_UPLOADS/modplayers dir.

4. mOOse

Finally can anybody help me ?
I have a program that generates noise files with brainwave syncronisation 
patterns in it. The problem is that good ole Playfile plays it with 
annoying clicks in it. These clicks are NOT part of the sound, they are 
created by the way Playfile works. If you know of a way round this or of 
a program that will play VOC files (big ones up to 26Mb) please let me know.

Cheers,

# | \        /  ~~|~~ /~~~\ !   !      {} ............................ | #
* <  \  /\  / /~\ |   |     |---|  /\  {} Pessimism? It'll never work. > *
# |   \/  \/  \_/ |   \___/ !   ! /~~\ {} ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | #

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 16:54:34 -0500 (CDT)
From: Antonio Guia <guia@cc.umanitoba.ca>
Subject: Ultrinit.sys problems

|  I've been getting a "Too many block devices" error from my config.sys
| when it gets the device "ultrinit.sys".  The line looks like: 
|    DEVICEHIGH /L2:....  =c:\ultrasnd\ultrinit.sys ultrasnd=220,5,5,7,7 
| Any ideas? 

If you take a look at a list of what's in your memory you'll find that the
ultrinit.sys is never loaded.   From what i can understand it merely tells
the hardware on the gus which DMA ports and which IRQ's it should be
using.  This is important if you have some program loaded which requires
sensing of a soundblaster since the hardware will say hello when inquired
whether it's a soundblaster.  This is also important to set which inputs
or outputs are to be active, and what volume they should all be set at (if
gravis ever put out an ultrinit which could do all that i'd be pretty
happy), but the ultrinit never actually stays in memory.

the summary:   don't use the DEVICEHIGH to load it, use only
DEVICE=ULTRINIT.... instead, and don't worry about doing anything fancy
with it.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 22:57:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: "M. Wells" <mww2g@kelvin.seas.virginia.edu>
Subject: WiReD article

I expected more people to be upset with downloading that large an article
for mail.  I know it's an interesting article (I read it a few months ago
in that issue of wired), but I figured many people would much prefer a quick
sumary, plus a few lines of "this is how to get this article from wired's 
gopher, www, or mailbot site.  Just my opinion....

Mike

------------------------------

Date: 17-APR-1994 19:21:44.52
From: Richard Wyckoff <RWYCKOFF@wesleyan.edu>
Subject: Wired article

I don't think that was a malicious post at all...not at all like your favorite
and mine, Jim Blakely, (and his NT rantings^TM).  Instead, despite Wired's focus
on the SB, there was an interesting and applicable portion of that article- 
the waveguide portion. I've heard of waveguide synthesis recently myself, 
and it sounds incredible, if it works as well as they say it does.  It seems 
perfect for gaming - at last, an answer to General MIDI!  General MIDI makes 
my skin crawl...much as I like hearing sampled drums, the other sampled 
instruments get really old really quickly.  I find that after playing about 
three or four games with GUS General MIDI support, THEY ALL SOUND THE SAME!
I *never* had this problem over years of SB FM...even though all those games
sounded cheap, at least they were expressive and differentiated.  There's only 
so much expressiveness you can get out of waveforms, however (at least 
without a lot of effects, which are not supported in the General MIDI 
spec).  Waveguides, however, promise *real* expressiveness and guitar and
horn sounds which don't insult my intelligence.  (I also think the GUS' guitar
and horn samples are still substandard, and General MIDI composers seem to
insist on using those...)

If some company comes out with a waveguide card soon which gets a lot of
game support, I'd consider switching to it (for games).  What I'd like to see 
Gravis do, though, is turn the Ultrasound into a REAL sampler.  There is 
*no PC comparison* to the Sample Cell II card for Macintoshes - up to 32 
mega*bytes* of RAM, and one of the most beautiful and easy to use interfaces 
for adding and controlling samples.  The Ultrasound has real promise, although 
I think the big problem right now is software, not hardware.  I'm sure there's 
a GF2 chip in the works to address the memory problem (1 meg for professional 
musicians? hah!), but until there is an EASY way to add and manage samples
on the card (namely an integrated sample editor/patch maker, or else a patch
maker with direct hooks to a good sample editor - if a good sample editor
even exists for PCs...I've yet to see anything that compares to Sound Designer
II, Mac), the Ultrasound is unsuitable for composing music.  Of course, much of
this is the brain-deadness of Windows, and there's not much we can do to get 
around that until either Microsoft gets some real MIDI support into it or the 
PC community adopts a different operating system.

I bought an Ultrasound with the hopes that I'd be able to approximate what
I can do with the Mac in our school's electronic music studio, as well as
have nice game sounds.  Game support is acceptable but not great, but I've
given up on musical applications until there's a new GUS with new software,
or I can afford to buy a Mac setup just for music...

------------------------------

From: (null)

from Creativ Labs:
Sound Blaster AWE32
 (A NOT DOOM-compatible(!) soundcard which is:
 SB AWE32 = SB 16ASP + WaveBlaster + 20voice OPL3)

from SPEA Video Seven
media fx
 It is: SB compatible, has a 16 bit DAC/ADC and 2MB ROM 
 with 128patches (4 ADSR sample/patch) and costs about $270.
 Great sound!

from Sound Galaxy(?)
Sound Galaxy NX Pro Extra (also called as Pro III.)
 It is: SB compatible (OPL3 onboard) and has an ARIA chipset
 (GUS compatibility?) and costs like a GUS.
 Sorry I have no more infos about this card till now. Maybe tomorrow.

And at last a 3D soundcard:
	Convolvotron    for 17.800$
So expensive and not even compatible with my PC!
(Well guys, it is for Silicon Graphics computers.) :-)

There will be more infos as soon as I have time to get the cards,
and have time to type it. If you have some experience with the
last ones (NX PRO and SPEA) please let me know!

Viktor

------------------------------

End of GUS Daily Digest V12 #18
*******************************
