VOGONS


Reply 41 of 47, by madmab

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Oh ok so it's based on cpu useage. Well the couple protected mode games I tried seem rather slow. For example in the dos window the text doesn't "appear" but rather slowly show up. Kinda like being signed on to a 300 baud BBS or something.

Why would CPU_CYCLES_LOWER_LIMIT be set too = 100 then? btw I was referring to CPU_CycleMax sticking at 100 and not CPU_CyclePercUsed.

Reply 43 of 47, by madmab

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wd wrote:

Why would CPU_CYCLES_LOWER_LIMIT be set too = 100 then?

To avoid getting too low because this tends be a misestimation.

Yes but if the max is 100 (percentage) then why would the minimum be 100? Or maybe I'm just confused.

Reply 44 of 47, by wd

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I'll have to look this up, but the low cycle limit is a hard limit on the actual
cycles value (no percentage) whereas the autocycling targets at a varying
cycles value (which can be any cycles value above the limit) that is displayed
as 100%.
The CPU_CycleMax definitely is an actual non-percentage value so it *should*
be usually above the low limit unless something (calculation, cpu load) goes
seriously wrong.

Reply 45 of 47, by digistorm

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As a GUS owner (I have a "reference system" still running 😉) I can say a few things about it:
It was one of the first wavetable cards on the consumer market (1992) so it certainly beat the AWE32.
It is capable of playing MIDI with the correct software loaded (TSR that eats up memory).
Essentially it is a 32 channel wavetable synthesizer, which gives it an edge over GM in games that upload their own samples. Especially electronic music sounded much better compared to the limited GM instrument set.
GUS emulation could be very fast in theory, when you could map the hardware calls of the 32 channels directly to the hardware channels of the soundchip on the target platform. This would be far from platform independent, however.

Reply 47 of 47, by digistorm

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That is true, of course. But skilled programmers or musicians could make wonderful things with it. Compare it with the Amiga which had only 4 wave channels. There may be a lot of crap music, but also some really nice crafted pieces of art. I myself consider it more versatile then a general MIDI box. But, I was a GUS (tracked music) musician myself, in "those days" so I might be biased 😉