tpowell.ca wrote:

Hi guys, I am trying to get this game to work with my Gravis Ultrasound Pnp card with no luck. I will admit that I also have a n […]
Show full quote

Hi guys,
I am trying to get this game to work with my Gravis Ultrasound Pnp card with no luck. I will admit that I also have a non-pnp AWE32 in the same machine.
That machine being a K6-3+ 450.

The game locks up instantly no matter what option I chose:
starcon2 /s:SBLASTER or /s:GRAVIS
in fact, the only way I get the game to load is with the /s:ADLIB switch but the sound is not quite right.

Has anyone been able to find some combination of base address/irq/dma for their combo-SB and GUS that worked for this game?

I'm in the same boat. I think I did get it to load with the /S:gravis option one time, but the stars must've been in alignment at that moment. They aren't any longer. =(

If you figure it out, let me know. As I've said on here before, Star Control ][ is my favorite game of all time and the GUS feature on it is one of the main reasons I purchased a GUS card in the first place. I've been dying to play it with one ever since I learned, decades ago, that it supports it.

Also, this would be my avatar if I were going to follow the trend:

(...maybe not that zoomed in, though...)

The "shix" part of my "aquishix" handle is a shortening of SHofIXti that I started using because of playing old RPGs that only allowed 4 characters in the custom protagonist name input field.

I never got it to work properly.
In fact, I can't even get it to work with my soundblaster (awe32) on my K6-iii machine.
I can run it in ADLIB mode, which I must admit confounds the cr#p out of me. It actually manages to play back the tracker music over adlib. Not very well mind you, but it works (/s:ADLIB).
On my 486, IIRC I too had a brief moment of glory where there may have been a solar flare with the moon in correct alignment where I was able to get it to work in lackluster soundblaster mode.

It was in my top 3 favorite games of all time. To have it play in anything less than glorious Ultrasound mode is just a shame.

Even with later PnP cards (AWE32 and 64) uninitialized, and just the GUS initialized it would still lock. 😵

https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=88&letter=S

In my own multi-card build, Star Control II exhibits some sort of misbehavior when interpreting the ULTRASND environment variable. Remove the second IRQ parameter, and the game should work as expected.

Per my (GUS PnP) settings:

1@echo off
2SET ULTRASND=240,7,7,3
3starcon2 /s:gravis
4SET ULTRASND=240,7,7,3,3

Cloudschatze wrote:

In my own multi-card build, Star Control II exhibits some sort of misbehavior when interpreting the ULTRASND environment variabl […]
Show full quote

In my own multi-card build, Star Control II exhibits some sort of misbehavior when interpreting the ULTRASND environment variable. Remove the second IRQ parameter, and the game should work as expected.

Per my (GUS PnP) settings:

Copy code to clipboard

1@echo off
2SET ULTRASND=240,7,7,3
3starcon2 /s:gravis
4SET ULTRASND=240,7,7,3,3

You...are...my...HERO!

How the HELL did anyone ever figure that out, though? That's not even...I mean...out of all the ridiculous bugs I've seen in my day...

Cloudschatze wrote:

In my own multi-card build, Star Control II exhibits some sort of misbehavior when interpreting the ULTRASND environment variabl […]
Show full quote

In my own multi-card build, Star Control II exhibits some sort of misbehavior when interpreting the ULTRASND environment variable. Remove the second IRQ parameter, and the game should work as expected.

Per my (GUS PnP) settings:

Copy code to clipboard

1@echo off
2SET ULTRASND=240,7,7,3
3starcon2 /s:gravis
4SET ULTRASND=240,7,7,3,3

Dude, wow.

How did anyone ever discover this fix?

tpowell.ca wrote:

How did anyone ever discover this fix?

by making a typo in his config :>

mrau wrote:

by making a typo in his config :>

Could be. I'm pretty sure I'd just used DOSBox' debugger though. 😉

I (sloppily) recorded a video of Star Control ][ on my 486 outputting sound through my GUS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i92e79mDuo

It's hard to play games one-handed. 😉 I kept swinging the camera back to the speakers so it's clear what the problems are. Strange artifacts, clicks/pops, and other nonsense.

Anyone have any idea what could cause this? I play One Must Fall 2097 right afterwards in the video to demonstrate that it's just SC2 that's acting this way. Nothing else does. I've successfully played Doom with the GUS as well on the same system.

I don't know if it'll do it, but try changing from DMA 3 to 5. There's a bug with 8-bit DMA transfers in SC2.

So many different solutions seem to fix various issues with this game. It's pretty nuts.

firage wrote:

I don't know if it'll do it, but try changing from DMA 3 to 5. There's a bug with 8-bit DMA transfers in SC2.

So many different solutions seem to fix various issues with this game. It's pretty nuts.

Omfg...

High-DMA doesn't work on this system. My favorite game is unplayable on my favorite sound card because of this BS. !Q#^@#$^&!

Thank you, though! I now have even higher hopes than before that the game will play beautifully when I get my other GUS installed in my 386 system, which doesn't seem to have any high-DMA issues at all.

aquishix wrote:

High-DMA doesn't work on this system. My favorite game is unplayable on my favorite sound card because of this BS. !Q#^@#$^&!

What what?
What system is this?

tpowell.ca wrote:

aquishix wrote:

High-DMA doesn't work on this system. My favorite game is unplayable on my favorite sound card because of this BS. !Q#^@#$^&!

What what?
What system is this?

It's one of my 486DX2-66 systems -- the one I was talking about in the other thread when you commented with your recommendations, re: SBPro, GUS, ViBRA, etc. The subject of my "High DMA Woes" thread. =(