Gravis Ultrasound ACE \ VOGONS

Gravis Ultrasound ACE

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First post, by ratfink

Posted on 2006-05-23, 21:00

ratfink Offline

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I've got an old Gravis Ultrasound ACE, where the ACE means Audio Card Enhancer. It's supposed to work with Sound Blasters, and I've put mine in a system with an SB16 [CT1740 I think].

The GUS software crashes when I try to set it up. I'm assuming this is a hardware conflict, but running "install" from the Gravis CD sets in chain a process of copying CD software to hard drive, and then running a configuration program - for setting IRQs, DMAs, etc. I've disabled the printer port so I can use IRQ7, and DMA3 is free. But when I confirm the settings, the computer freezes.

I'm running Windows 98 - I suppose that could be the problem.

Any ideas?!

Reply 1 of 4, by Kippesoep

Posted on 2006-05-23, 21:13

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I have the same combo. What I use is:
SB @ 220, IRQ7, DMA1, HDMA5
GUSACE @ 240, IRQ5, DMA3
That worked fine for me (SB IRQ was shared with LPT IRQ).

Mind you, that was under real DOS. Haven't tried anything newer than Win95 on that machine. That said, I don't think Gravis ever released stable GUS drivers for Win98 (or even Win95 -- I only have extremely unstable beta drivers).

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Reply 2 of 4, by 5u3

Posted on 2006-05-23, 22:54

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Most likely there is a hardware conflict. The Gravis installation utility does not always detect blocked resources. Start the system information program (MSINFO32.EXE) under Windows and have a look at the resources you want to set for the GUS ACE. They shouldn't be used by another device, otherwise the GUS won't work (but sharing IRQ 7 with the printer port is usually fine).

If the installation utility already copied the setup tools to your harddisk, you can also try the following:

- Boot into DOS mode
- Change into the Ultrasound tools directory (e.g: C:\ULTRASND)
- Run the following line from your command line:

1SET ULTRASND=240,3,3,7,7
2SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRASND
3ULTRINIT.EXE

(Edit the above lines to match the settings on your system)
If you get a message like "UltraSound Initialization. Version x.xx" without any error messages, the card basically should work with the given settings.

Reply 3 of 4, by ratfink

Posted on 2006-05-26, 16:19

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I've had another go with Windows 98, but it hasn't worked - the ACE seems to do nothing and the SB16 doesn't do sound effects in DOS games, only music. There is no conflict - the SB16 is IRQ 5, DMA 1, 280 and the ACE is IRQ 7, DMA 3, 240.

So I have deleted Windows 98 and installed IBM DOS 5.02 [didn't think it would take to the 10GB hd but it runs fine]. Installed the SB16 DOS drivers from Creative, and the ACE software from floppy. Same settings as above, only now the CE definitely works and I can get MIDI to play from it.

All I have to do now is find some DOS games that use it, and way of transferring them... my machines are usually networked but I have not networked DOS before [will it even work with a PCI 3C905B or do I put in my old ISA Ethernet card.. come to think of it that will mean a motherboard change as I have filled both ISA slots on this board...]. And the DOS I am running does not seem to have CD access - will copying some files from a Win98 boot disk.

On networking, it's probably easiest for me to install Win98 or 95 and multi-boot with DOS.

Advice welcome!