Ran into this back in the day and didn't find a solution either unfortunately.

szobanov wrote:

Hi Everyone, […]
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Hi Everyone,

I have recently acquired a GUS Classic for my DOS/Win98SE rig where it now coexists with an AWE32. Configuration seemed issue-free and in DOS both cards work perfectly fine. In Win98 however, the Ultrasound fails to play MIDI files as the Patch Manager shows no GUS Patches loaded automatically. If I load the patches manually for a MIDI file, the playback works fine. Wave playback is okay.

Has any of you seen anything like this? Why would the automatic patch caching fail?

I have tried with GUS Win9x drivers 1.11 and 1.11b and have also tried a fresh install of Win98SE, to no avail. Resource-wise the GUS sits at 240,7,7,7,7 (have tried 240,7,7,11,7 as well) while the AWE occupies the usual 220,5,1,5.

All ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

First, make sure you have the file ULTRASND.INI in the \ULTRASND and \ULTRASND\WINDOWS directories and that it's at least over 5 kb in size. If you do and still hear nothing, then it's a patch caching issue.

Patch catching for the GUS in Windows is application dependent - meaning the application has to tell the GUS driver what instrument patches to load in order to hear MIDI playback, otherwise you get nothing but silence; this is why Advanced Gravis provided three MIDI files to preload patches in Patch Manager according to the amount of onboard memory the GUS had (LOAD256.MID, LOAD512.MID, LOAD1024.MID). Unfortunately very few Windows media players were patch cache aware (I can't recommend one since I don't use my GUS ACE for MIDI playback in Windows) and I don't believe any third party patch caching solution was ever available.

(Edited to correct some erroneous info. I blame my old, faulty memory 😦 )

I haven't used an older UltraSound card in a long time, but this is also something that happens under Windows 3.1 with the UltraSound PnP. No RAM-based patches will load if the software tries to use an interface other than MCI, unless the software makes the right calls to load the patches. To check your configuration, you could try playing a standard MIDI file via Media Player. If that works, the setup and patch configuration are sane, at least. If not, you have more complicated problems that I don't remember how to solve.

Are you using the standard instrument set included and installed with the card, or a replacement set?

Thanks for the suggestion.

I did have the ULTRASND.INI file only in the \ULTRASND folder and it is over 5kb. Copying it to \ULTRASND\WINDOWS did not help though, there is still no music playing and no patches loaded.

I am using the plain stock Windows Media Player.

So I'm kind of stuck again. 🙁

That's what I did actually. Fresh install of everything, all is stock, Windows Media Player as well with the standard STRIVING.MID that came with the card (and which works totally fine in DOS).

Rather puzzling situation.

640K!enough wrote:

I haven't used an older UltraSound card in a long time, but this is also something that happens under Windows 3.1 with the UltraSound PnP. No RAM-based patches will load if the software tries to use an interface other than MCI, unless the software makes the right calls to load the patches. To check your configuration, you could try playing a standard MIDI file via Media Player. If that works, the setup and patch configuration are sane, at least. If not, you have more complicated problems that I don't remember how to solve.

Are you using the standard instrument set included and installed with the card, or a replacement set?

szobanov wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion. […]
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Thanks for the suggestion.

I did have the ULTRASND.INI file only in the \ULTRASND folder and it is over 5kb. Copying it to \ULTRASND\WINDOWS did not help though, there is still no music playing and no patches loaded.

I am using the plain stock Windows Media Player.

So I'm kind of stuck again. 🙁

Don't bother with Windows Media Player, it uses DirectX to play MIDI files and will not load patches for the GUS (the Gravis Win9x drivers are not 100% DirectX compatible). Instead, look for MPLAYER.EXE in the \WINDOWS folder; that's Media Player from Windows 3.1, updated to work in Windows 98. Double click the EXE to run it, open a MIDI file of your choice, then hit the play button. It will take a few seconds as Media Player loads the patches needed, but it should work.

I'm currently testing a number of MIDI players I've collected over the years with my GUS ACE. It won't be comprehensive, but at least will give an idea of what works and what doesn't. I'll report back as soon as I can.

Wow... with the legacy mplayer.exe it works!

Thank you very much for this insight, never would've guessed that such a basic app could be the culprit. Back in the day I also owned an ACE (and being young and careless, eventually traded it for a Wave Blaster I...), but I do not remember issues like this. Memory fades, I figure.

Anyway, thank you again so much, you have saved me a great deal of headaches!

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

szobanov wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion. […]
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Thanks for the suggestion.

I did have the ULTRASND.INI file only in the \ULTRASND folder and it is over 5kb. Copying it to \ULTRASND\WINDOWS did not help though, there is still no music playing and no patches loaded.

I am using the plain stock Windows Media Player.

So I'm kind of stuck again. 🙁

Don't bother with Windows Media Player, it uses DirectX to play MIDI files and will not load patches for the GUS (the Gravis Win9x drivers are not 100% DirectX compatible). Instead, look for MPLAYER.EXE in the \WINDOWS folder; that's Media Player from Windows 3.1, updated to work in Windows 98. Double click the EXE to run it, open a MIDI file of your choice, then hit the play button. It will take a few seconds as Media Player loads the patches needed, but it should work.

I'm currently testing a number of MIDI players I've collected over the years with my GUS ACE. It won't be comprehensive, but at least will give an idea of what works and what doesn't. I'll report back as soon as I can.

szobanov wrote:

Wow... with the legacy mplayer.exe it works!

Thank you very much for this insight, never would've guessed that such a basic app could be the culprit. Back in the day I also owned an ACE (and being young and careless, eventually traded it for a Wave Blaster I...), but I do not remember issues like this. Memory fades, I figure.

Anyway, thank you again so much, you have saved me a great deal of headaches!

Glad to hear this, it means your GUS Classic is in good working order. When I bought my GUS ACE back in early 1996 media players still used MCI for MIDI playback (as 640K!enough mentioned earlier) and sample loading sound cards (like the Gravis Ultrasound) worked fine. By mid 1998 though DirectX had matured so much that it was now heavily favored over MCI; this meant that sound card drivers had to be fully DirectX certified and compatible to continue to work as before. The GUS drivers weren't, and lost that ability as a result.

I'm still testing the MIDI players I have (have tried out eight so far), but for now it doesn't look good for the GUS. They either use DirectX or a proprietary interface that doesn't load patches. Still have quite a few left to test though, so I'm hopeful that at least one will work. Fingers crossed.

After trying out 19 media players (and a lot of unexpected delays), I found 4 that will load GUS patches and play MIDI files in Windows95/98.

Gravis WinDecks 1.12

Homepage: N/A

Download Link: http://dk.toastednet.org/GUS/utils/WD32v112.zip

A media center from Advanced Gravis, can play MIDI, wave, tracker files and Audio CDs. Very easy to use. After installing, read the help file for more details.

Clarion 0.9.4

Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/9860/ (offline since late 1999, use The Wayback Machine to access it)

Download Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bs1q744gt6gtzys/Cla … ion094.zip?dl=0

Plays MIDI files and Audio CDs. Freeware, easy to use but not very stable (crashes frequently). Since it has a common name it's very difficult to find a proper download link, so I provided my own via Dropbox. I'm also aware that a 0.9.5 version was available at one time (corrects some networking issues), but it's almost impossible to find now.

MIDI Genie 1.90

Homepage: http://earsnest.tripod.com/

Download Link: http://members.tripod.com/~EarsNest/midig190.zip

Plays MIDI, wave, avi files and Audio CDs. Used to be shareware, now it's freeware - the homepage has the info needed to register it and a list of features. Easy to use. Only one of the download links works on the site, I decided to list it here to avoid confusion and frustration.

WinJammer Shareware 3.0

Homepage: http://www.sonicspot.com/winjammer/winjammer.html (offline since 2015, use The Wayback Machine to access it)

Download Link: http://slsite.tripod.com/WinJammer_shareware_install.zip

WinJammer Shareware is a MIDI sequencer for Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and NT. It can record, play, edit and create standard MIDI files. A companion program called WinJammer Shareware Player is also included, can play MIDI, wave and avi files. While the sequencer is somewhat involved to use, the player is easier to understand - just make sure you read the help file first after installing. Unfortunately it is shareware, and registering it now is apparently impossible (the site went offline in early 2015); this is not a major obstacle though, all I will say is that Google is your friend in this case (and before anyone questions my motives, I am a registered user since version 2.30 and no, my personal code is not out there to be found 😜). The download link is for the 32 bit installer only.

I'm sure there are more Win9x media players out there that can load patches and play MIDI files with a GUS, these are just the ones I found in my own collection. Windows 3.x media players could also work, but they have nagging problems of their own - no long file name support and 16 bit code that's not suitable in a 32 bit environment are just two that come to mind.

You could use winamp for it's excellent playlist support. On later version (2.95) winamp come with in_midi.dll 3.03 that traded MCI for Directsound. But you can just replace it with in_midi.dll 2.63b in your plugin directory and bring back MCI support. As well as .sf2 support, so that would be excellent for a gus/sb32 setup. Only drawback I found is that winamp seem to stick on the same music if you have patchmgr.exe open to peep at the loaded patch, so respect your soundcard privacy and you will have no playlist issues 😉

Good that you found a workaround , JayCeeBee64 . I had the same issue in Windows 98 SE and simply decided to not use the GUS under Windows . I came to the conclusion that pretty much all of the worthwhile software for GUS is DOS based anyway, IMHO . In Windows, I have other MIDI devices to choose from, so I just use the GUS under DOS .

JayCeeBee64 wrote on 2018-08-03, 05:36:

Don't bother with Windows Media Player, it uses DirectX to play MIDI files and will not load patches for the GUS (the Gravis Win9x drivers are not 100% DirectX compatible). Instead, look for MPLAYER.EXE in the \WINDOWS folder; that's Media Player from Windows 3.1, updated to work in Windows 98. Double click the EXE to run it, open a MIDI file of your choice, then hit the play button. It will take a few seconds as Media Player loads the patches needed, but it should work.

I'm currently testing a number of MIDI players I've collected over the years with my GUS ACE. It won't be comprehensive, but at least will give an idea of what works and what doesn't. I'll report back as soon as I can.

Just to avoid some misunderstanding: this problem is not DirectX/Directmusic related. MCI works since in case of MCI the application designates/sends the Midi file itself to be played to MCI API so MCI itself can parse/process the whole file (mciSendString):
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previo ... v%3Dvs.85)
But even in Win 3.1 era the Windows Multimedia API (WinMM) already provided immediate MIDI functions to send Midi messages directly to WinMM (midiOutShortMsg, midiOutLongMsg):
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win3 … /midi-functions.
The problem in case of GUS and immediate WinMM Midi API is that the system/driver itself cannot see/parse the Midi file to be played, the API only gets atomic MIDI messages from the player so the GUS driver cannot preload proper instruments.

The majority of Windows based Midi players use WinMM API because it offers more control over Midi file playing (fast forward, modified tempo, key offset etc.) . Midi players using DirectX/Directmusic are actually very rare.