GUS Daily Digest            Sat, 11 Mar 95  9:37 PST     Volume 20: Issue  11 

Today's Topics:
						 Dark Forces Question
						GUS and SB16 together
					   GUS Daily Digest V20 #10
					  How to decompress ADPCM ?
						   Kings Quest VII
				 New Standards, Existing Standards...
							Selling my GUS
			 solution to GUS-recording problems (perhaps)
							Ultrsound ACE
		  Warning!!! NMI Disabled boards, Don't buy from TC
				   Where to get Digest back issues?

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.

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Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 17:59:38 -0800 (PST)
From: h0mi <homi@netcom.com>
Subject: Dark Forces Question

I read the comments about the Gus in Dark forces. I was wondering if 
anyone has had any luck with the _demoi_ version? It wont run on my 
system, regardless of how I've set the GUS or the settings. If I set the 
demo for no sound at all, it still does not run. So the full version 
works with the GUS naitively? Any clue if they will make patches to do 
the same with tie fighter or their other games (without emulating cards)? 


"I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely 
idealizing envy." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.		homi@netcom.com
Constantly on the lookout for more additions to my Kill file.
Anyone else tempted to add /*.aol.com/a:j to your kill file?

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

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 15:44:51 -0400
From: j5oa@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca (Craig Galbraith)
Subject: GUS and SB16 together

I tried the SBGUS16FAQ but it's not quite what I'm looking for.  I
simply want to be able to have both cards in my Ambra 486-DX2 66, 
initialize them SEPARATELY with multiple config and autoexec, and play
games and run programs using one or the other.  Right now, I have them
both in at:

GUS 240,7,7,11,7

SB16 220 i5 d1 h5 t6

I can get Windows to work with them each separately by copying in the
appropriate system.ini file for each card at boot-up.  Works great.

Now, whenever I go to play a game with either card...nothing.  Either
it locks up or I can get no sound.  I use to be able to get Heretic to
work when I only had my GUS.  Now I can't get it to work with the GUS Or
the SB16.  Other games I can't get to work now are Strike Commander and
Wing Commander II.

Can somebody help me?

What jumpers where?  What settings?  Help!

Craig Galbraith
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
				  |~ | | (~ |_|  _   _   _   _   ____         
 Craig Galbraith  |  |_/ _) | | | | | | |  \| | |    )     
 j5oa@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca    | |_| | | |\  | | SAINT JOHN
 3rd Year Biology                \___/  |_| |_| |____) 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 21:07:40 -0300
From: "Jurassic Mark" <markus@nbnet.nb.ca>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V20 #10

>Date: Thu, 9 Mar 1995 16:19:36 -0500 (EST)
>From: Buddy <cs3mh3dn@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>
>Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V20 #9
>
>> From: Paul Conroy <tetsuo@daemon.apana.org.au>
>
> ....... The same day I bought my GUS 3 years ago i ripped the 
>                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Not likely, the GUS wasn't out three years ago! 
>
>;-)

	 Correct.  Octobre 1992, if my memory serves me right.  I got one 
of the very firsts.

						Jurassic Mark (Marc Y. Paulin)
	 Mail: markus@nbnet.nb.ca  -  IRC: J-Mark or Markus (In #GUS or #OS/2)
	/WARPing\  "Microsoft gave  us            Beta-testing: NautNews
	|--and--|   Windows, IBM  gave                          Intertia Player
	\GUSsing/   us the whole house"           Original father of the G-List
   * Press any key to continue...  Yeah, but I can't find the "any key"!!! *
	   - Survivor of the APICS '93 programming competition controversy -

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

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 18:17:50 -0500
From: fta@wbb.com
Subject: Re: How to decompress ADPCM ?

> Do you want to just play the files, or to convert them into an
> uncompressed file?

Get the file ADPCMEXE.ZIP to compress and decompress the file (without
hearing it).  You can find it on the GUS sites.  Actually hearing the
compressed sound is another matter, in my experience...

> For just playing them, sound drivers which do this (CODECs) come
> with MicroSoft CD products, such as Encarta and Dangerous Creatures.
> Possibly these drivers might be available on ftp.microsoft.com - they
> sound like the sort of thing you wouldn't be expected to pay for.

I believe MS Video for Windows includes these drivers--but I can't get
them to work!  Try as I might, I can't play a compressed file under
Windows with MSVideo installed (version 1.1?).

Any suggestions?  I've been agonizing about this too!


 ---------------------------------------
| Call me "FRED"  |    <fta@wbb.com>    |
| Toronto, Canada | <ab002@torfree.net> |
 ---------------------------------------
	 - Standard Disclaimer Applies -

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

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 22:49:39 +0100 (MET)
From: ralam@cs.vu.nl (Lam RA)
Subject: Kings Quest VII

I can remember this being asked before (or something else about KQ7) But
I don't get any music with KQ7. Does anyone know if it's possible to get
music, or should I just live with the fact that I will only hear sound
effects.

Remco Lam

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

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 95 16:00:55 EST
From: Bryan Maher <bsm@SEI.CMU.EDU>
Subject: New Standards, Existing Standards...

Richard et al.:

>Instead, they should offer hardware assisted multichannel sample mixing,
>nothing more.  These new cards should most definitely not include patchsets of
>their own, especially not the General MIDI set.

I agree that General MIDI is quite limiting by today's standards but there is
a considerable wealth of pre-arranged music out there that requires GM
compatibility.  It seems that everyone wants to look at sound cards as being
game enhancing devices only when they have just as much application in media
industries.  It becomes difficult to integrate PC sound with external MIDI
devices when GM is tossed to the wind.  I personally have an extensive library
of GM MIDI files either personally authored or from archives.  It would be
remiss not to support the industry standard in electronic music authoring. How
would a musician integrate the future mix-only GUS with his MIDI synths?

>such as the 8-bit, 4-channel (in its earlier incarnations, anyway) Amiga to
>16-bit single-channel DAC+General MIDI.

Yes, a new standard of multi-channel hardware assisted mixing would be nice
but in general, most people who try to change standards fail.  The Amiga, like
the Mac's, use Motorola CPU's which have integrated DSP capabilities.  It is
natural for them to use this functionality for their sound output.  Even
today, Pentiums can not do signal processing as well as a 68040 let alone a
PowerPC.

Also, if you download the GUS SDK and read the specs on IBM's AIL drivers, you
will notice that it provides 16 channel realtime digital mixing with
integrated MIDI event synching.  This sounds fairly impressive to me... it is
just an API for which different hardware manufacturers can write drivers.  If
the hardware has special features which would enhance the efficiency of the
API (vis GUS ) then all the better.  Since I have been out of the game market
for a while, I am not sure how many of these games actually adhere to a
standard API.  It seems to me that the first step in the right direction would
be to get everyone to agree to use the  standards that already exist, but
for some unknown reason, they just choose to ignore.

BTW: For those of you who are into realtime audio applications, I recently
picked up a demo of Software Audio Workshop.  It supports the realtime
playback of up to 4 16-bit STEREO channels at 44.1khz.  It will also play and
record simultaneously with true track synching.  It is a real multitrack
recorder for Windows.  The next version due out sometime in the next quarter
will support upto 8 stereo tracks!  There are also add on modules for digital
effects like echo, reverb, compression, limiting, cross pan and fade... SAW
will also do SMPTE and MTC send and receive.  You can have upto 40 files open
at once and piece individual tracks together (upto 999 segments in a song)
from different segments of your available recordings. (i.e. Track one consists
of 1 minute of a vocals then 30 seconds of guitar lead followed by another
minute of vocals all from 3 separate files). You can contact Innovative
Quality Software at 702 435-9077 for a free demo. They offer lifetime free
software upgrades!

My humble opinion,

Bryan Maher

P.S. I have no vested interest in SAW, I am just really happy to finally find
a real professional audio package for the PC.

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

Date: Sat, 11 Mar 1995 15:33:19 GMT
From: ct91@cityscape.co.uk (Damian Scully)
Subject: Selling my GUS

Hi everyone,
I think the GUS is brilliant when it works, but because it is so fiddly I
might sell it. Has anyone heard of the Aztech Waverider? If you have, maybe
you could let me know how it compare's to the Ultrasound. How much do you
think I could get for my 256k GUS, about =A380. Well I must go, and even if=
 I
do sell my GUS I won't buy an AWE32, just to stay faithfull to all my fellow
GUS users.=20
									  |||||||
									 ( o   o )
										 |
										\_/

								   Damian Scully
							   ct91@cityscape.co.uk

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

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 10:31:17 +0200 (EET)
From: Tuomas E Aaltio <taaltio@snakemail.hut.fi>
Subject: solution to GUS-recording problems (perhaps)
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.91.950310101935.1396B-100000@beta.hut.fi>

Some one complained about noisy sound digitizing/recording. 
These are basics, but by experience, you can get these wrong anyway.

1. DO NOT connect CD's line out to GUS's mic in. It definitely ruins the 
sound and perhaps GUS too. There really is difference betveen mic and 
line-in. Same thing than don't connect line out to amplifiers AUX IN.

2. MAKE SURE that in ultrasoun mixer (windows program) you have GAIN 
adjusted to zero(or was -50dB : that's off). it ruins sound too. Adjust 
LINE IN to -0 dB (that's full volume). put MUTE off on LINE IN.

3. check your CABLE. those mini-plugs are surprisingly lousy. I had two 
(2) suffering from random contact problems.

4. IF everything is in order soundquality should be GOOD. To me it's not 
easy to tell difference between 44Kh 16bit WAV and original CD sound, 
and it's not because of lousy speakers.

Tuomas Aaltio

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

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 10:21:05 -0800
From: blarren@uclink.berkeley.edu (Bart Adam Larrenaga)
Subject: Ultrsound ACE

Could someone either send me specs/info about the ACE or point me to where I 
could find this info?  A friend of mine is considering buying one, and would
like more info on it.  All I could tell him was the it was Ultrasound compatible
and supposedly desgined to work well with other sound cards.

--Bart Larrenaga
blarren@uclink.berkeley.edu

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

Date: Sat, 11 Mar 1995 11:05:17 -0600 (CST)
From: Reginald Atkins <ratkins@comp.uark.edu>
Subject: Warning!!! NMI Disabled boards, Don't buy from TC
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950311105646.20073C-100000@comp>

I bought a board from treasure chest undre the assumption, since I was 
told this by the "experts", that the NMI was "configurable" and the bios 
was Award...in their words as good as AMI.

The result the Motherboard has NMI disabled and cannot be changed after 
multiple calls to TC and the BIOS is so poorly written that (in terms of 
the size of the bios in ram) that my video board is being forced into the 
UMB effectively eating all of it up except 38k (11k if I didn't use the 
HIGHSCAN option on EMM386). so now I barely hit 600k of base ram using 
mouse cloaking on my Logitech mouse and my cdrom drivers are eating up 
tons of space.. and ultramid is impossible to run and still play any 
games that need it because there is no more upper memory to put itself 
in....so my base ram takes a 59k hit.

I just thought I would warn any other GUS users out there .

1st don't buy from TC computers if they tell you the NMI is enabled 
	it is probably a lie to sell components.
2nd     don't get Award BIOS it is total shit!

fortunately I have friend back home who rebuilds PC's and I think I can 
get a trade for free....not everyone has this option though so I thought 
I would warn the world before someone else bought from TC.

Reg.
	someone who believes that TC sould not have won the Best 
Motherboard upgrade award from Computer Shopper.

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

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 15:48:54 -0500 (EST)
From: Tommy Lee <darkguy@io.org>
Subject: Where to get Digest back issues?

Could someone tell me where to get back issues of this digest?  In 
particular, I'm looking for the site with the alternate protected-mode 
runtime thingy.

I think someone's keeping a web site out there with old digests on it...

Thanks,

Tommy.

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

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 20:44:57 GMT
From: ct91@cityscape.co.uk (Damian Scully)

Hi,
Could anyone please tell me wether there will ever be a way of getting the
GUS to work with DOS4GW games. I can't get sound out of more than 50% of my
games, even ones that support the card such as Ecstatica and Descent just
crash my computer, although this may be because I only have 256k. I'm even
considering selling my card and buying an AWE32! Anyone want to buy a GUS?

Damian :(

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End of GUS Daily Digest V20 #11
*******************************
