VOGONS


First post, by humanoid

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I recently picked up a Gravis Ultrasound MAX rev. 1.8 that I'd like to put in the P200MMX box I'm building. From what I've read the SB emulation isn't real hot on the GUS MAX so I was wondering if I could use the GUS for midi and use a SB16 (CT2290) for the fx. Checked the web and here for some info but didn't find what I think I'm looking for. I may not actually know what I'm looking for though! 🤣

How should the card addressses be configured and how would the sound be output from both cards into one set of speakers? Do you link the cards through the line-out and line-ins?

Reply 1 of 7, by DonutKing

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I have done this on my 486 with a GUS classic and a SB16 CT2800. As you've said, the SB emulation on the GUS sucks, especially for FM synth.

I use IRQ5, IO 220 and DMA1 for the SB16. From memory the GUS uses IO 240 IRQ11 and DMA3. (I'll have to check to confirm).

Basically just choose the device you want in the game's setup. Make sure your SET BLASTER line is configured for the SB16. you won't need to bother with SBOS or Mega-Em unless you want GM/MT32 mode. Later versions of Mega-Em let you disable the sound blaster emulation while using GM/MT32 mode. I think I'm using driver version 4.11.

If you want to use General MIDI devices like an SC55 or wavetable daughterboard then it becomes messy. Again, you can set the to cards separately, (I set the SB16 to MIDI IO port 330 and the Gravis's MIDI IO port to 340), however some older games only look at 330. For more recent games just pick the correct IO port in setup and you're set.

Yes, you can use the line out of one sound card into the other's line in. However I found the GUS was MUCH louder than the SB16 so it was very difficult to balance the volume. I ended up buying a cheap stereo mixer box with seperate volume controls for each channel off ebay.

Reply 2 of 7, by humanoid

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Hey, thanks for all the info! I rolled up my sleeves and went to work - plugged the card in and no video. Unplug card and reboot - video's ok. I'm using a GA-5AX mobo which has (for me) a somewhat complicated array of PCI/ISA settings. I'm assuming it's some kind of address conflict but the SB16 I had in the system initially installed okay. There does not appear to be any IRQ jumpers on the GUS, just base address jumpers.

Reply 3 of 7, by DonutKing

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Does the GUS work in another system? it sounds like its faulty....

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 4 of 7, by humanoid

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Hmmm... didn't think of that. I'll check.

Reply 5 of 7, by elianda

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There are no IRQ jumpers on the GUS,

jumper Base Address
then set ULTRASND variable accordingly (and ULTRADIR)
run ultrinit.exe

nothing else required.

f.e. I have my GUS at
Port 240
Playback IRQ 7, DMA 7
Record IRQ 7, DMA 7
thus ULTRASND=240,7,7,7,7
(this resource doubling between playback and record prevents full duplex operation, but I guess no one uses a GUS this way today, it saves precious ISA hardware resources though)

Then check with some tracker playback program like cubic player or xtc-play. As rule of thumb, if DMA fails then it will freeze the system on playback start. If IRQ fails it plays the first buffer and then stops playback and can still be aborted to DOS by pressing ESC.
If a resource fails, set ULTRASND at command prompt to other settings and rerun ULTRINIT and try again.

For GM/GS and/or UltraMID support I usually use MegaEM 3.11b. You can load it even above a real hardware device at 330. MegaEM will catch those port accesses at 330 and translate them for GUS. This is a very easy way for switching MIDI playback devices.
If you just have a himem config or MegaEM fails in UltraMID operation you might as well load UltraMID.
If the specific game does not support loading instruments patches automatically, ultramid can preload instruments via command line switch (also volume setting).
If MegaEM was used in UltraMID mode it will reload the GM bank file after the game quit to command prompt automatically.

Load MegaEM or UltraMID only if you have to. I prefer to write a short game starter batch that loads those files like this:

megaem -gm
lh ultramid
game.exe
ultramid -f
megaem -u

So if MegaEM fails to load because you booted a config without EMM386/QEMM386 it will fall through to loading Ultramid. In the other case Ultramid will not load since MegaEM already gives UltraMID API.

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Reply 6 of 7, by humanoid

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Okay, back at it again this morning. Plugged the card into my 486 system and it booted right up. I have the DOS install floppies, so I used them. They installed a program group and said they would modify the autoexec but didn't. I manually added the lines to the autoexec (thanks elianda) and the GUS produces sound in win95, so that's good. Doesn't show up at all in the device manager though. Ran "install new hardware" through Win 95 but it won't detect the card. I'm currently looking for some Win95 drivers.

Also, using the same GUS autoexec parameters for DOS, I get several "file not found" messages and a message that the GUS could not be found. 😒

Reply 7 of 7, by humanoid

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Got it working on the 486. Kind of a convoluted setup but boy, does it sound good! Phew! At least I know the GUS itself isn't toast. 😵

The Windows 95 drivers I found and some tweaking in the DOS files
seemed to do the trick. It still comes up with an error when booting to windows 95 that it can't find the file "GUS" (no file of that name seems to exist). The install program put this line into my win.ini file:

RUN=C:\ULTRASND\GUS

Might be left over from the Win 3.1 setup - not sure.

At any rate, thanks for the help so far. Now, to figure out why it won't work on the Pentium system...