Ultrasound Daily Digest     Fri,  5 Mar 93       Volume 2 : Issue  61 

Today's Topics:
						  Alone In the Dark
						Dead Ultrasound Card!
	   DIGEST ADMIN: Late digest?  Lots of readers!  (Bug?...)
					GUS mods under OS/2? (2 msgs)
				  How to play CD-ROM audio thru GUS
							midi connector
					  new sbos v1.4b and x-wing
						  Sampling on a GUS
							  SBOS 1.4B2
						  sbos not working!
  Send your SBOS comments to Gravis (was Re: SBOS 1.4B - Worth it?)
						  Sierra and the GUS
					Volume Problem with SBOS 1.4b2
				Why won't XWing give me SB emulation??

	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: 04 Mar 1993 21:26:18 -0500 (EST)
From: STU_JABIRCHE@VAX1.ACS.JMU.EDU
Message-Id: <01GVFAWWL1TE94E8G4@VAX1.ACS.JMU.EDU>
Subject: Alone In the Dark
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

Alone in the Dark is AWESOME. I have played it with every version of SBOS and
all of them work on my system. 1.22 sounds the best, but 1.4whatever has more
sounds.  I have a 486DX-33 and am using no switches. By the way, the new
version of SBOS is the only one I could get the Xwing demo to work with, but
it sounds perfect. No digitized looping or anything. Get Alone in the Dark.
It's VERY good, graphics-wise, sound-wise, and story-wise. Plus, it's not
one of those cheesy, pathetic "point-and-click" pieces of crud from Sierra.
-=Marc=-

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

Date: 4 Mar 93 16:13:53 AST
From: Steve Prosser <SPROSSER@SHARK.STMARYS.CA>
Message-Id: <MAILQUEUE-101.930304161353.448@science.stmarys.ca>
Subject: Dead Ultrasound Card!
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

Last night, my card gave up the ghost. I had been using it the night
before, and it was working fine. Last night I turned on my 386-40
clone and it said "off board parity error", and it wouldn't count
past the first 64k. I disabled parity and memory count above 1Meg, so
I could get the PC to boot. I ran Checkit and it would hang every
time I tried to run the memory test.

I removed the GUS, and tried the same memory test, and the PC passed
with flying colors. I re-inserted the GUS and had the same error. I
tried the GUS in a 386-20 Everex and it failed. I also tried the
GUS in an identical 386-40 clone I use at work, only to get the same
error.

The local company I bought it from was TrueNorth Computer Supplies in
Halifax, Nova Scotia. I took it in to them at noon today. They said
they can't honour the warranty since it was bought in November '92.
On the box the card came in, it says a one year warranty. They still
were not interested in helping me at all.

My only course of action is now to deal with Gravis directly. I work
in the PC hardware repair business, and I represent a lot of computer
purchasers at my place of employment. I will NEVER recommend
TrueNorth as a supplier of computer equipment.

I hope that this message will be read by many people worldwide and
they will think twice about buying anything from a non-reputable
computer supplier such as TrueNorth. If the GUS didn't die, I
wouldn't have these problems.

If this message is read by someone at Gravis, could you PLEASE
respond to my plight via email. Long distance charges and telephone
tag get expensive from the east coast of Canada to the west coast.

I'll try to keep all you informed...SPROSSER@SMU.STMARYS.CA

Steve Prosser, Networking Technician
Saint Mary's University
Halifax, NS, Canada
(902) 420 5475

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

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 93 15:52:12 MST
From: ddebry@itchy (Dave DeBry)
Message-Id: <9303042252.AA02164@itchy>
Subject: DIGEST ADMIN: Late digest?  Lots of readers!  (Bug?...)
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

	Well, how's that for a completely cryptic subject?

	Yes, Digest v2 #60 was late by a few hours.

	We now have 867 direct subscribers to the list.  Several of
those readers are actually just reflectors forwarding the digests on
to othewr groups.  All in all, we're well over 1000 on direct
readership now -- the FAQ seems to have helped a bit.

	In any case, #60 was late because when then 867th person
added, it brought up a bug in 'foreach' (in csh).  I've fixed the code
and you all should have received your digest no problem by now.

	Enjoy!

-- 
Dave  ddebry@ debry@   \
DeBry dsd.    peruvian. | Regnant populi. (The people rule.)
	  es.     cs.utah.  | Pregnant ropuli. (The snake will soon lay eggs.)
	  com     edu      /

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

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 09:22:06 GMT
From: mew@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Merlyn)
Message-Id: <1993Mar4.092206.708@dcs.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject: GUS mods under OS/2?
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

How much memory do you have? I had gtsr working in a dos window perfectly,
until you tried to manipulate a window click the mouse button etc.  When
the sample would slow for a second and then continue.  I haven't been able to
get gusmod204 to work in interactive mode yet though!  The slowing down on my
system was due to virtual memory swapping (i presume) since whenever I do
anything on OS/2 the hard disk is accessed.  My system is a 386DX33 with 5 Meg
RAM and 2 Hard drives (total 270 Meg).  Without 8 Meg of RAM OS/2 is not
really that usuable unless you can stand the long delays when swapping out to
disk.

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|           Mark Watkins                   /| /| |-- |--; |  \ / |\  |      |
|       University of Warwick             / |/ | |-- |-\  |   |  | \ |      |
|     ( mew@dcs.warwick.ac.uk )          /     | |__ |  \ |__ |  |  \|      |
|                                                                           |
+--------------------"Drink up, the world's about to end"-------------------+

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

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 07:01:49 GMT
From: c60c-2lu@web-2a.berkeley.edu (Donald K. Wong)
Message-Id: <1993Mar4.070149.19979@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: GUS mods under OS/2?
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

Has anyone successfully played a .mod on a GUS under OS/2?  I've tried all
native GUS mod players and they either don't play at all or play really
slow.  GTSR plays at a good speed, but usually stops after 5 or 10 seconds.
Midi and 669 files play fine, tho.
-- 
Donald K. Wong
Internet: c60c-2lu@web.berkeley.edu
	  khwong@ocf.berkeley.edu

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

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 15:57:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Mark Harrison <harrison@lclark.edu>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.05.9303041536.A15533-b100000@sun>
Subject: How to play CD-ROM audio thru GUS
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

> From: song@Cadence.COM (Song-Yu Yang)
> Subject: How to play CD-ROM audio thru GUS
> 
> Hi,
> 
> My system has a SCSI controller, Adaptec 1542B installed. I have a CD-ROM
> hooked up. I tried to use the Media Player of Windows 3.1 to play music
> thru GUS. Unfortunately, I can only get the sound from the phone jacket of my
> CD-ROM. I cannot hear anything through GUS. Is it possible to play the CD-ROM
> audio directly thru GUS? Is there any program can do that?

I've had the same problem (I think) myself.  The Windows drivers mess
something up.  Media Player tells me the CD is playing.  But I get no
sound and if I try recording something, I just get a big blank.  BUT the
CD really is playing.  If I exit to DOS and havn't told Media Player to
stop the disk, then run ULTRINIT, the music suddenly kicks in.

Or if I load Windows and then exit, I get the same problem with any DOS CD
player.  It will say the music is playing, but I don't get any sound until
I run ULTRINIT.

BTW:  I am smart enough to know to enable the Line-in with GUS Mixer.

Mark Harrison
harrison@sun.lclark.edu

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

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 12:58 MST
From: Dustin Caldwell  <DUSTIN@gse.utah.edu>
Message-Id: <9303042001.AA12399@u.cc.utah.edu>
Subject: midi connector
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

Well, I finally got the mid connector working. Thanks to all the people who
offered suggestions. 
The problem was that the 15pin male connector that  I bought had pin numbers
on it, and (rather rashly) I assumed that those would be the same as the ones
used on the schematic in the FAQ. THEY ARE NOT!!! So, I used the schematic
that Remek Lipinski sent to the list, and the pinout that somebody else sent,
and together it worked. This sould probably be added to the faq.

This is the MALE connector seen from the SOLDER side.

  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8
  o   o   o   o   o   o   o   o

	o   o   o   o   o   o   o
	9   10  11  12  13  14  15


Thanks again (MIDI is awesome!!)

Dustin Caldwell

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

Date: 4 Mar 93 03:55:01 GMT
From: gt3017a@prism.gatech.EDU (Guy Elden, Jr.)
Message-Id: <87800@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Subject: new sbos v1.4b and x-wing
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

   Well, let me just say that the new 1.4b version of sbos is a great
improvement over the previous version... keep up the good work Gravis!

Now, has anyone noticed a slight change in X-wing w/this new version?  For
some reason, the little *beep* that would ring when your sight turns green,
indicating a good shot, doesn't happen anymore. And also, the lock-on sound,
as well as the tracking sound for launching torps/missiles doesn't happen
either... and neither does the throttle sound (well, its more of a click-click
now, instead of a beep beep).

It sounded like these sounds were all one and the same w/sbos 1.22, so perhaps
gravis messed up this one sound. Of course, if they want to fix it, they're
going to need to release another big .sbs file to replace the new one, which
supposedly has all the sounds in it now.. (no, I haven't deleted all the old
.sbs 'patches' to see if its true yet...)

anyway, post if you have the same or similar problem.. the more they hear
from us, the quicker Gravis can fix and improve sbos for future releases...

oh, like I said at the beginning.. sbos is better... now when I l;play GS2000,
I get decent digitized sound... IOW, a voice which isn't slowed down to
a crawl, but a real human sounding co-pilot!  yeah!  :-)



-- 
gt3017a@prism.gatech.edu             | "All of us get lost in the darkness,
a.k.a. Guy Elden Jr.                 | Dreamers learn to steer by the stars,
					Neil Peart ------| All of us do time in the gutter,
					'The Pass'       | Dreamers turn to look at the cars"

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

Date: 3 Mar 1993 23:19:16 GMT
From: twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong)
Message-Id: <1n3edkINN2pu@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca>
Subject: Sampling on a GUS
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

Say, talking about sampling using the GUS....

What I have been doing as far as sampling goes is to plug the audio in
of my Ultrasound card to the headphone jack of a portable I have
and the recordings have been coming out just fine. Little to no noise
and sounds pretty good. But I finally gotten around to get an extension
cable so that I can now plug it into my stereo for some better results
... or so I thought. But once I plug my stereo in (headphone jack to 
audio in) and I turn on sample and monitor in USS10, I get this loud
god awful feedback, noise which I can't figure out. I went ahead with
the recording and the volume of the song is correct except for this
terrible noise drowning everything. I plugged it back into my portable
and things are wonderful again. Any hints on what I'm doing wrong so
that I can use my stereo instead of my portable? Thanks in advance.

Thomas.

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

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 93 17:39:23 CST
From: eason@ncrnd3.StPaul.NCR.COM (Dale Eason)
Message-Id: <9303042339.AA07579@ncrnd3.StPaul.NCR.COM>
Subject: SBOS 1.4B2
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

I only tried one game Wolf3d and now it sounds correctly.  The drums and
bass are there now.

It also seem that now I can leave my midi adapter connected and my keyboard
on and not have a system crash when exiting program that uses midi.  The must
have fixed the interrupt problem.  However I only did one small test on this.

Eason@ncrnd3.stpaul.ncr.com

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

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 93 0:29:49 MST
From: sclawson@cadehp17.eng.utah.edu (Stephen Clawson)
Message-Id: <9303040729.AA00989@cadehp17.eng.utah.edu>
Subject: sbos not working!
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

	 well, i'm not sure what to try next...i just got my GUS this morning and
have been playing with it all day.  all the native GUS stuff works (the 699
player, gusdac along with the midi and fli demos), but anything that tries
to do anything with the soundblaster DAC through sbos hangs the machine and
i have to reset the computer.  i haven't even been able to get wolfenstein 3d
or the tiniest bit of unreal to work...i just get this black screen, no 
sound and ctrl-alt-del does nothing...

	 anyway, i'm running a 386/40 (OPTi, although the DMA chip dosen't
have the same datacode as the known bad one), diamond speedstar + (if that
matters) and this all in one card with ide, floppy, serial ports, a (disabled)
game port and the printer port.  i've been trying sbos 1.20, 1.22 and the new
1.4b release.  for some reason -o3 dosen't work with my system, sbos says
something about N.M.I.'s being turned off.  i've turned off the IRQ 2 EGA crud 
on the speedstar and moved the printer port to IRQ 5, but no luck.  this
happens if i'm running 8 or 16bit DMA.  i got the 1.21 set of disks, should
i rush out and get the 1.22 set?  would that do any good.

	 one very annoying thing that happened during messing around with sbos
was getting my CMOS wiped not once, but twice.  i think things are set up
the same as before, but i can't be certain (i'm running AMI).  

	 there was nothing about this in the manuals.  the program to try and
detect conflicts just tells me it can't be certain about things and to 
check section 8 of some technical manual that i don't have.  any ideas?  
i _really_ would like to be able to run some things that support the SB
DAC, since GUS support is somewhat lean right now.

steve
-- 
// stephen clawson              sclawson@cadehp0.eng.utah.edu 
// university of utah                   c-csn@cayley.math.utah.edu

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

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 14:44:07 GMT
From: lance@hartmann.austin.ibm.com (Lance Hartmann)
Message-Id: <C3DCxK.24A8@austin.ibm.com>
Subject: Send your SBOS comments to Gravis (was Re: SBOS 1.4B - Worth it?)
Summary: Fill out comment form regarding SBOS 1.42b and SEND IT IN!
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

In article <mfinkel.731232026@argon> mfinkel@argon.gas.uug.arizona.edu (michael a finkel ) writes:
>
>Well, I have gotten SBOS 1.4B and tested it through many of the programs
>that I have (that worked fine with 1.22).  Everything in the Commander
>Keen family sounds immensely better - FM sounds good.  UnderWorld 2 as
>[REMAINDER DELETED]

Just a reminder:

The BETA SBOS 1.42b software includes a file-form for sending in your comments
regarding this release.  PLEASE MAKE USE OF IT!!!

Thank you,

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

Date: Thu, 04 Mar 93 03:47:50 EST
From: pccmoddan@aol.com
Message-Id: <9303040347.tn06218@aol.com>
Subject: Sierra and the GUS
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

Following is the text of a message sent to the Sierra Representatives on the
America Online service: 

Subj:  Gravis Ultrasound Support
Date:  93-03-04 03:39:48 EST
From:  PCC ModDan
Posted on: America Online

As I make a living composing game soundtracks and otherwise working in the
game development world, I feel I must comment on the sad state of Sierra.
Please forward this directly to your sound support people, whom I hope are
simply being misrepresented as extremely inexperienced and lazy when they are
in fact not. 
   1) The Gravis Ultrasound is a very simple device to support. It is made
extremely easy by the fact that Sierra's music system is based on MIDI. It
would not be "time consuming" to write drivers for this card, or for that
matter the Adlib Gold, etc. College kids with minimum wage incomes and
nothing but the card (no SDK as Gravis has provided to Sierra) have figured
out the Ultrasound in a week or two and written music playing programs that
put your current music routines to shame. 
   2) It does NOT cost a lot of money to add support for new hardware. The
hardware, SDK, and technical information are provided free of cost to you by
the hardware manufacturer. By using the standard General Midi patch set
provided by Gravis to card owners the amount of disk space necessary to add
support for the new card on the distribution disks would be almost nil. 
   3) The low end of my estimates of ownership on the GUS are that there are
around 40,000 owners already, with over 20,000 confirmed directly by Gravis
from returned registration cards. It would be extremely unwise to forget
about 30 or 40 thousand potential customers, many of whom are prepared to
boycott products which do not support their choice of sound cards. 
   4) There will NEVER again be such a thing as THE standard sound card.
Sound technology is an ever changing thing, as are all computer-related
technologies. If Sierra is not prepared to keep up modern technology, then
they'd get out of the game industry before it eats them alive.

The author of this message is in no way associated with Advanced Gravis. I am
an independent software developer and composer, associated only with PCkS
Associates of Union, New Jersey and Trogus Adventures of Los Angeles,
California. 

>End text<

________________________________________________________
Dan Nicholson    -    PCkS Associates - (908)964-8066 - ModDan
							   553 Thoreau Terr. 
							   Union, NJ 07083
________________________________________________________
			   
							   Bucks speak louder than words.
________________________________________________________

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

Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993 00:55:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Benoit Fiset <fiset@CAM.ORG>
Message-Id: <199303050555.AA20696@Altitude.CAM.ORG>
Subject: Volume Problem with SBOS 1.4b2
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

Hi GUSers , 

 Just got SBOS V1.4B2 and funny things happen with the volume keys. The 
 rest is great. Sounds are better or the same depending what program i use.
 
 Back to the problem. The volume keys Don't work any more. The SBOS.CFG is
 in the ULTRASND\SBOS directory, and looks like this :


 VOLUME UP   = [
 VOLUME DOWN = ]
 AUDIO.SND,8000


 Then i look at what SBOS reads for the settings. I used the command
 SBOS -d and this turned out :



			 GF1 SBOS V1.4B2
   
		  Copyright 1991,92,93
 Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd.
		 FORTE Technologies Inc.


 Base port             (220)
 P.C.M. Interrupt      (5)
 Ultra Sound interrupt (11)
 Master volume         (30)

 Up volume key         (1b)
 Down volume key       (1a)



Strange thing. Up volume key is 1B hex, and 1B hex is the keyboard scan
code for the ] key. Are they inverted in V1.4B2? Even thought i press 
the keys they don't do anything. They worked well in SBOS v1.22 !


Am i the only one in The Twilight Zone ?



Thanx for your answers.

=======================

 Ben Fiset

 fiset@Altitude.CAM.ORG

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

Date: 04 Mar 1993 23:48:14 -0500 (EST)
From: DEATH BEFORE DISCO <JKS4675@ritvax.isc.rit.edu>
Message-Id: <01GVFFQV28J695N2MD@ritvax.isc.rit.edu>
Subject: Why won't XWing give me SB emulation??
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

Here's the problem....


1) I can only get adlib support. This is using SBOS 1.20, 1.22, and 1.4b2.
   I have a 486/33 with 16MB RAM and an AMI motherboard.

2) I couldn't get the demo to work either (OK, no surprise there). But I
   got SB support on a 486/66 Local bus system. I used the default settings
   for both systems.

3) I also lack SB support for Comanche (Yep, I got the patch) AND Incredible
   Machine AND Monopoly Deluxe. About the only games that work are Aces of
   the Pacific (but remember to boycott Sierra) and Dune 2.

Question: Would using the joystick port on my IO card instead of my
		  GUS (Disabled on GUS) cause this?? This is the only practical
		  difference in these systems.
Any other ideas??


Please,
Jeff

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

End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #61
******************************
