The most simple thing to try and get working these days might be the GUS pnp with jazefox's unisound:
UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.81b

Setting an ultrasnd environment variable (e.g. set ultrasnd=240,3,3,5,5 and starting unisound afterwards should come up with a usable card, unless IRQ 5 and DMA 3 are taken. You could also try 240,1,1,7,7 or the likes then.
Turning off everything in BIOS (e.g. any integrated Soundcard, serial or parallel ports, secondary IDE, etc.) always is a good idea to start from.

If even this isn't getting you a usable GUS I'd be checking a simple Soundblaster instead, to see if there isn't even something fundamentally wrong somewhere else, like e.g. the DMA controller, etc.

Hello.

The non-PnP GUS cards (especially those without the WSS-compatible codec) should be even easier for initialization. The original IRQ of the sound card was 11, but either 5 or 7 can be safely used if the LPT ports or any other ISA sound card isn't using these resources.

Example:

1SET ULTRASND=240,6,6,5,7
2SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRASND
3ULTRINIT

ULTRASND has five values.

1. I/O address.
2. Playback DMA.
3. Recoding DMA.
4. GUS IRQ.
5. MIDI and/or SB emulation IRQ.

Using separate DMA values will only allow full-duplex and can work fine using the same DMA channel for both playback and recording. It is used by some programs to quickly transfer samples to the card and 16-bit DMA provides the best performance.

Lastly, try testing with software that properly takes advantage of the GUS hardware mixer such as Jazz Jackrabbit or demoscene stuff like Future Crew's Second Reality.

@Mjay99: thanks for the hint, I'll give it a try. But I'd prefer to use the non pnp since I would like to restore the setup I had in the mid 90s.

I was able to find a bios update for the mainboard and flash it, and almost bricked it, 🤣. Then I found a version thats newer then the one that was installed and flash that one. But of course it didn't make any difference.
The non-max appears to run now, while the max ones always freeze the system as soon as ultrinit is executed, no matter what irq, dma or base adress i try.

@Gmbl256 so with the non-max at least I was able to enjoy Dope from Complex, ... what a blast, looks so much better on a real crt. That alone was worth it ^^
I installed Jazz Jackrabbit demo from the Gravis Cd, but it crashes on startup.

But thats just a start, what I really would love to play again is System Shock. I'll keep you posted.

32smooth wrote on 2023-01-22, 09:23:

The non-max version sortof works, the irq test passes but the dma tests fail, no matter what I try (I think this card works a bit better because of the lack of cdrom interfaces).

This is actually normal. I have a GUS Extreme (uses same chip as GUS classic) installed in a Pentium 133 system. It also fails the DMA test during setup, yet the card itself still works fine.

My recommendation is to re-install that card (by "non-max", I assume it's a GUS classic?), ignore the DMA tests during installation, and then test it out with actual games.

@Shponglefan I'm not sure if its a Classic. On the pcb it just says Ultrasound. I tried another game demo from the gus cd: whacky wheels, and it appears to work fine. I'm still a bit miffed that the maxes won't work, but it is what it is. Getting System Shock to run with that card appears to be another adventure since it relies on the Soundblaster emulation which doesn't work yet. But I wont give up, I asked in the System-Shock forum for help on this one 😀

The GUS Classic refers to the original Gravis Ultrasound. If looks like the attached pic, then that is what you have.

Sound Blaster emulation on the GUS is iffy. It's best paired with another sound card for Sound Blaster compatibility.

For example, in my 486 DX2/66, I have the GUS classic paired with a Terratec Profimedia Gold (ESS ES1868F chip). This way I can get both native GUS support, plus Sound Blaster Pro compatibility with the Terratec card.

Yes, thats looks like my one. I still have a SoundBlaster Pro 2 and enough free ISA slots 😀 so I may combine those. I don't mind which one plays the effects but I definitely want the GUS to play the music ...

Combining them is the best thing. In most games, you would want the SBPro2 for digitized sound effects and the GUS for music.