VOGONS


First post, by root42

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The GUS PnP Readme states that I should choose SoundBlaster and run the emulator for Epic Pinball and Silverball. Those games (as well as Zone66, Jazz Jackrabbit and OMF) have GUS support, but they won't work with the PnP?

Are there any patches available to still get GUS PnP support?

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Reply 1 of 17, by chinny22

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Really? Ouch!
Main reason I want a GUS is for games by Epic.
Hope a fix exists otherwise will have to take PNP off my search 🙁

Reply 2 of 17, by digistorm

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I have Epic Pinball running just fine on my GUSpnp. I don't remember if I had to run "prepgame" in advance (it's included with the drivers) but it will run just fine. Did you already try the sound setup from Epic Pinball? Sometimes it is needed to run the prepgame utility in advance before it is detected correctly when running the actual game.

Reply 3 of 17, by root42

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I did try the sound setup, yes. I also ran prepgame once. I have to investigate more, it seems. I only tried Silverball so far, because currently I only have the 286 installed in my machine. Will swap it for the 486 board in the next days though.

Funny enough to get a GUS PnP running on a 286 you need to load emu386.exe, because iwinit uses 386 opcodes it seems. 😀 But other than that everything works fine. Pinball Dreams works just marvelous, as well as ModMaster XT.

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Reply 5 of 17, by root42

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Rawit wrote on 2020-07-10, 09:19:

Alle Epic games need "prepgame" when using a GUS PnP.

Ok, I will try that! Thanks!

EDIT: Any specific version of the tool?

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Reply 8 of 17, by root42

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digistorm wrote on 2020-07-10, 12:38:

You can also use UNISOUND now with the GUSpnp instead of IWINIT. Maybe then you don’t need emu386… It seems faster also.

Oh, that is good news. Do I supply unisound with the resource configuration then? Or does it take that from the GUS ini?

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Reply 9 of 17, by digistorm

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I use these lines to initialize my GUSpnp:

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Reply 10 of 17, by JazeFox

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root42 wrote on 2020-07-10, 12:41:

Oh, that is good news. Do I supply unisound with the resource configuration then? Or does it take that from the GUS ini?

digistorm wrote on 2020-07-10, 16:45:

I use these lines to initialize my GUSpnp:

Well, if you only have the GUS PnP plugged, and you only need classic GUS (without wavetable music) you only need 2 lines, ULTRASND environment variable and UNISOUND, example (with master volume setting to 75%)

SET ULTRASND=240,3,3,11,11
UNISOUND.COM /V75

If you want also classic GUS wavetable music working in some games, you'll need to add one more line, the ULTRADIR env variable pointing to the folder where you have ULTRASND.INI and the MIDI folder with the instrument patches:

SET ULTRADIR=C:\DRIVERS\GUSPNP

@digistorm:

for the SB, the MIXERSET line is only needed if you want more detailed mixer settings. For basic mixer settings (Master volume, Wave, FM/Wavetable, Line in+CD), you can use the /Vxxx options directly in Unisound.

--

About Silverball... I remember some time ago I installed from my original floppies and it worked with the GUS PnP without patching the game... anyway I'll re-test it soon...

Reply 11 of 17, by digistorm

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About the mixer settings: If the pc speaker input could also be controlled than that would be great. I myself also use the Interwave chip with trackers so I needed those extra lines as well. Also, some other tools suddenly don’t work if you don’t have all the environment variables, like the pnpmix.exe mixer. I use that now to set the mixers of both sound cards to mute as much as possible (I have an old CT1740 SB16) with batch files. So if I want a game with SB16 or OPL3 sound I enable those inputs with a batch file.

Reply 13 of 17, by root42

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rmay635703 wrote on 2020-07-10, 21:37:

Odd, The most important difference for me is that silver ball Appears to run on a 286 while Epic pinball requires a 386, odd difference for nearly identical games

Yes, that's what I though as well. I think Silverball was earlier, and got later picked up by Epic?

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Reply 14 of 17, by root42

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The information that Silverball runs 286 was from Mobygames. However, it seems that is not entirely true. After starting a table (and no, still no sound from the GUS PnP), I get this here after a few seconds:

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So it seems it is not really compatible with 286s. Too bad. Since Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Dreams runs perfectly fine on a 286 I would have assumed that Epic Pinball was also possible. It doesn't look much more advanced... Jazz Jackrabbit, ok. It has to push some pixels. But Pinball...?

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Reply 15 of 17, by rmay635703

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root42 wrote on 2020-07-10, 22:04:

The information that Silverball runs 286 was from Mobygames. However, it seems that is not entirely true. After starting a table (and no, still no sound from the GUS PnP), I get this here after a few seconds:

Bildschirmfoto 2020-07-11 um 00.02.42.png

So it seems it is not really compatible with 286s. Too bad. Since Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Dreams runs perfectly fine on a 286 I would have assumed that Epic Pinball was also possible. It doesn't look much more advanced... Jazz Jackrabbit, ok. It has to push some pixels. But Pinball...?

Odd, it’s a 640kb game which means it might be the only program that could benefit from the Real mode 386 emulator for 286’s

http://survpc.tripod.com/emu386/index.htm

Last edited by rmay635703 on 2020-07-10, 22:45. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 16 of 17, by root42

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Yeah, not sure why that is so. Meanwhile Pinball Dreams runs perfectly fine:

https://youtu.be/G0I2BfgaSmA

Captured "only" with 30FPS because my iMac is old, but runs at smooth 60 FPS when viewed on a monitor.

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Reply 17 of 17, by mkarcher

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root42 wrote on 2020-07-10, 22:04:

The information that Silverball runs 286 was from Mobygames. However, it seems that is not entirely true. After starting a table (and no, still no sound from the GUS PnP), I get this here after a few seconds:

Bildschirmfoto 2020-07-11 um 00.02.42.png

So it seems it is not really compatible with 286s. Too bad. Since Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Dreams runs perfectly fine on a 286 I would have assumed that Epic Pinball was also possible. It doesn't look much more advanced... Jazz Jackrabbit, ok. It has to push some pixels. But Pinball...?

The opcodes dumped there do not look like valid x86 opcodes at all, neither 80286 nor 80386. It seems like something went wrong before and the processor is attempting to execute data at that point. The dump obviously doesn't help to find out why the processor got there, but if it were due to an unsupported 80386 instruction, that instruction should already have caused a crash.