the guy in the usenet post mentioned msd.exe detected a joystick when none was plugged in do you get the same when running msd ?

5u3 wrote:

Seems like a very strange problem indeed. […]
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Seems like a very strange problem indeed.

I would start from scratch and test one component at a time: Begin with an empty board (except video card). Try if you can get the joystick buttons to work on a random gameport (soundcard, I/O card, whatever). If it works, you can rule out the mainboard. Then continue adding/replacing the cards you want to use in the machine and see where it stops working.

I've got a sneaking suspicion about the GUS ACE...

[Edit:] Check out this old usenet [url=http://groups.google.at/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc … d.tech/browse_t
hread/thread/2464a459888131fb/d879bb14f655353b?lnk=st&q=GUS+ACE+gameport#]thread![/url]

You know what...it was the GUS ACE that was the crook 😮

Have both a rev 1.0 and a rev 1.1 (thanks goes to Samudra for the 1.1)
Both disabled the SB16 joyport by just sitting in the ISA slot phyisically without any GUS software started

Thanks alot for helping me out 😀

Must find a spare GUS Max to use now instead

ps. the Diamond Monster Sound joyport is inactive in pure DOS

Davros wrote:

the guy in the usenet post mentioned msd.exe detected a joystick when none was plugged in do you get the same when running msd ?

Have no msd.exe I'm afraid..think it's not in DOS 7.x

Amigaz wrote:

You know what...it was the GUS ACE that was the crook 😮

Have both a rev 1.0 and a rev 1.1 (thanks goes to Samudra for the 1.1)
Both disabled the SB16 joyport by just sitting in the ISA slot phyisically without any GUS software started

Well, how ironic... The GUS ACE was meant to work along with any other soundcard (they even added a jumper to disable the AdLib port to make sure there are no conflicts), and then they completely botched it by adding a phantom gameport. 🙄

However, this seems to be a software bug, did you try the things suggested by the people from the usenet thread (e.g: the v4.11 drivers)?

5u3 wrote:

Amigaz wrote:

You know what...it was the GUS ACE that was the crook 😮

Have both a rev 1.0 and a rev 1.1 (thanks goes to Samudra for the 1.1)
Both disabled the SB16 joyport by just sitting in the ISA slot phyisically without any GUS software started

Well, how ironic... The GUS ACE was meant to work along with any other soundcard (they even added a jumper to disable the AdLib port to make sure there are no conflicts), and then they completely botched it by adding a phantom gameport. 🙄

However, this seems to be a software bug, did you try the things suggested by the people from the usenet thread (e.g: the v4.11 drivers)?

🤣, yeah...my feeling is that I have encountered some weirdness with all my GUS cards in different systems...and I own every model of them 😁

I tried without launcing any ultrainit stuff and such so it's just the card sitting there physically that's causing it
I'm going to try this with an ALi based K6-III system I'm going to build

Hmmm, I'm pretty sure the problem will go away if you initialize the card with the latest drivers.

I had a GUS ACE (v.1.0) installed in my 486 for a while, and I don't remember it blocking other gameports.
But in the end I went with the classic GUS because it has one nifty feature: a gameport with adjustable speed compensation. This works very well with older software that wouldn't get sensible readings from the gameport because of the computer being too fast.

5u3 wrote:

Hmmm, I'm pretty sure the problem will go away if you initialize the card with the latest drivers.

I had a GUS ACE (v.1.0) installed in my 486 for a while, and I don't remember it blocking other gameports.
But in the end I went with the classic GUS because it has one nifty feature: a gameport with adjustable speed compensation. This works very well with older software that wouldn't get sensible readings from the gameport because of the computer being too fast.

Gonna try the 4.11 update and see what happens

I'll get back with a report 😎

But I guess I will use my GUS Extreme later on... :

you can get msd here
http://oldfiles.org.uk/powerload/msdos.htm

MSD isn't the greatest diagnostic utility, even for DOS, but it's what MS seems to be best at: it's relatively useful for practically everything, which is why it's on every emergency boot disk I make.

Update:

Updated to the 4.11 GUS files, now the joystick work but not the buttons, lololol

Now I will finally ditch the GUS ACE on this machine

Weirdness.

I always ran a SB Pro 2 + GUS MAX setup and never experienced Adlib port conflicts nor joystick port problems.

One wonder why the ACE was made. Cheap alternative only?

samudra wrote:

Weirdness.

I always ran a SB Pro 2 + GUS MAX setup and never experienced Adlib port conflicts nor joystick port problems.

One wonder why the ACE was made. Cheap alternative only?

Running a GUS MAX rev 2.1 now in the same system, no more problems

Update:

Tried the GUS Ace in another AMD K6 system I've built which has a Gigabyte 5AA motherboard with Alladin V5 chipset....same trouble with this setup too

My conclusion is that the GUS ACE is a failure, you have to be very lucky to find a motherboard it doesn't stir up any trouble in

I bet this product was one of the nails that closed the coffin for Gravis

Another update...

Just tested the GUS ACE in my 486 PC which has a MSI 4138 socket 3 mobo, 486DX4 100mhz CPU
Guess what....disabled the joyport on my Sound Blaster Pro 2 there

I think I know why this card is rare now....it must have been a financial disaster for Gravis to develop and produce a card that forces their customers to stop using their joysticks 😵

Some good news about this "problem".

I'm trying to use my gravis gamepad hooked to AWE64G game port among with GUS ACE and face the same problem. After a halfhour of brainstorming i found solution i hope.

ultrinit.exe have some poor documented cmd-line switches:

-s = Don't print version header
-el or -l = Enable Line Input
-dl = Disable Line Input
-em or -m = Enable Mic Input
-dm = Disable Mic Input
-eo or -o = Enable Output
-do = Disable Output
-eo or -o = Enable Wavetable Output
-do = Disable Wavetable Output (Default)
-ec or -c = Enable CD-ROM input
-dc = Disable CD-ROM input
-ej = Enable joystick
-dj = Disable joystick

Seems like -dj switch is active by default for ACE model. I trying to enable it by adding switch -ej after ultrinit.exe in my autoexec.bat and....

...nothing happens. 🙁

As i remember from PnP models usage their iwinit.exe can re-initialize cards many times with new parameters without rebooting. Very useful for change IRQ numbers in example.

Then i'm trying to initialize GUS ACE again with ultrainit.exe -ej cmd string without rebooting and...

"Eureka!" It works now! 😀

Seems that ultrinit.exe ignore some (or all?) cmd-line switches in first loading and react on in in all next loadings.
Now i'm put in my autoexec.bat following strings:

SET ULTRASND=240,6,6,7,7
SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRASND
c:\ultrasnd\ultrinit.exe
c:\ultrasnd\ultrinit.exe -ej -s ; (i'm add -s just for disabling any dublicate on-screen output for that 2nd initialization string).

Hope it works too for all of you, ACE owners. 😉

Heh, all has appeared much simpler.
2nd initialization enable joystick even without any cmd-line switches.
And now look at this.

Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd.

UltraSound Initialization Program - ULTRINIT.EXE v2.26a

ftp://ftp.gravis.com/Public/Sound/Drivers/Ace/GUS0047.ZIP

UltraSound Initialization Program - ULTRINIT.EXE v2.26a ------------------------------------------------------- […]
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UltraSound Initialization Program - ULTRINIT.EXE v2.26a
-------------------------------------------------------

When attempting to disable the joystick port (with -DJ option) on the
UltraSound, ULTRINIT had to be executed several times before the joystick
port was properly disabled.

Similarly with the UltraSound ACE, the joystick connected to the other sound
card might not function properly before the user ran ULTRINIT -DJ several times.

This version of ULTRINIT solves these problems.

Now I've got to quote myself to boost my ego a bit... 🤣

5u3 wrote:

Hmmm, I'm pretty sure the problem will go away if you initialize the card with the latest drivers.

aleksej, thanks for verifying this! 😉

Not absolutely so. Latest drivers package v4.11 includes ultrainit.exe v2.28. Here also exists possible latest ultrainit.exe v2.31 in separate zip archive GUS0045.ZIP, but topic issue require rollback to much earlier v2.26 (GUS0047.ZIP) for fixing and doing that recommended by Gravis. That's just the point!

The filename of the archive and the date of the executable rather suggest that ULTRINIT v.2.26a is newer than v2.31.

I have located GUS0045.ZIP, here it is for anybody who is interested:

http://dk.toastednet.org/GUS/utils/GUS0045.ZIP