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GRAVIS ULTRASOUND Plug & Play (Pro)
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F A Q
version 0.8
Date: 10-24-'96

Send comments to: M.Schmitt@fsw.ruu.nl

Visitors since 7-4-'96:

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CONTENTS
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1. Introduction
   1. Release info (of the faq)
   2. Latest News
   3. Contributors
   4. FTP-sites, Web sites, Gopher sites & Daily digests
2. Specifications
   1. What it says on the box: hardware
   2. What it says on the box: software
   3. What it doesn't say on the box
   4. Board layout
3. Installation
   1. Plug & play
   2. Software
   3. New software & updates
   4. Ram expansion
4. Questions & answers
5. Support: software & hardware
6. Programming the Gus pnp
7. Game support
   1. Native support
   2. GUS compatible
   3. Emulation SB via iwsbos or Mega-em
   4. Games with partial or no support
   5. A Beginners guide to using batch files in win95 for games
8. Requirements
9. Contacts

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1.0 Introduction
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This is the sixth release of a mini FAQ for the Gravis Ultrasound Plug & play (Pro). Many questions in the sound newsgroups make it a necessary move. Hopefully others will react and mail me their experience with this new gravis product. I'm of course a Gus pnp owner but have also some experience with pro audio spectrum 16, Soundblaster (16), Gravis ultrasound Max and the Miro pcm 1 pro. At this moment a think the soundcards based on amd's interwave chip give good value for money but clearly they are not intended for professional midi music or harddisk recording. The sound quality is not up to that level (neither are soundcards based on the emu800 chip like the soundblaster Awe32). Anyway here is some information that will help you to decide if the gus pnp is something for you. Moreover it will help you installing the card and / or operating it.
Until this FAQ will have a definitive form version numbers will stay under 1.0. So sections will be added, changed or renamed. Please refer to the FAQ as a whole until there's a 1.0 version. This FAQ is formatted for DOS ASCII text 80 characters wide. In Windows or Mac or X-windows it should be read with fixed with font. From this moment on the filename for this FAQ will be: gpnpXX.FAQ where XX is the version number. So this particular one is called gpnp06.FAQ Good luck and send your comments soon!

1.1 Release info

Version 0.8
* More questions & answers
* Added latest news section
* removed all links to the GUS digest until they are running again

Version 0.7
* more questions & answers
* corrected a few mistakes and a lot of typos
* added active links to WWW, FTP, EMAIL & software
* Diveded the games table in four different tables
* added info about Ricky's GUS Digests

Version 0.6
* more questions & answers
* corrected a few mistakes
* converted the FAQ to HTML for easy access & pretty printing
* added board layout of gus pnp

Version 0.5
* more games tested
* more questions and answers
* corrected a few mistakes
* uniform naming for FAQ file

Version 0.4
* added new software & updates section
* corrected a few mistakes
* more games tested
* more questions & answers
* added a tidbit on programming
* made the FAQ available on my web page
* improved another bit on the layout

Version 0.3
* corrected mistake on windows NT drivers
* added Games compatibility information
* improved a bit on the layout
* added a few FTP-sites for Gus pap drivers and software
* added info on number of voices and sampling rate

Version 0.2
* this version adds info on ram installation
* new section questions & answers
* AMD's web pages for info on the Interwave chip

1.2 Latest News
As you may have noticed there is a public beta of the new GUS pnp 2.0 drivers available from the Gravis Website. What do these drivers offer compared to the older ones we all loved to hate? First of a lot of fixes and additions. I will just name a few. There's is good dosbox support in windows 95. Installations works flawlessly on most systems. There is support for sysex commands (programs like ban in a box will not chash your ystem anymore). There is a new Control panel applet that lets you edit all kind of settings. And it is possible to change patch sets on the fly. Are there any drawback you will ask? And the answer is yes. Since this is a beta release there are still some minor bugs but most you can live with I think. However, there is one big annoyance: all the effects are gone. Gravis was and is aware of this problem but did not have time to fix it before the release of public beta 1. This problem wiil be addressed in the next beta. All in all I think it is a step forward and it is good to see Gravis back in business again.
There are also rumours that Gravis got the SDK from AMD and will put it on their website shortly.

1.3 Contributors
Olivier aka Moebius/SuB_NoRMaL$
David van Dromme alias Stormlord ( What's that! two mad Belgians! ;-) )
Cam Bennett
Michel Schmitt

1.4 FTP-sites, Web sites, Gopher sites & Daily digests

WWW Sites Archive Directories

Main European Site: http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/ultrasound/
http://members.aol.com/gravistec/home.html

FTP Sites Archive Directories

Gopher Sites Menu directory
Main Site: src.doc.ic.ac.uk packages/ultrasound
Mirrors: http://www.st.nepean.uws.edu.au/pub/pc/ultrasound/
GUS Digest Archives: http://gpu.srv.ualberta.ca/~itam/digest.html
http://www.student.adelaide.edu.au/~godfathr/gus/gus.html

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2.0 Specifications
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2.1 What says on the box: hardware
AMD interwave DDSP
32-voice wavetable synthesizer
32 channels for digital effects
interwave effects: echo, reverb, chorus, flanging and fading (only with installed ram)
16-bit, 48 kHz sampling
hardware mixing
output frequency 20 Hz to 20 kHz. 3dB
< 0.1% total harmonic distortion with input of -10 dbm
> 80 dB signal to noise ratio (line in to line out)
Line in ,line out, mic in, Atapi ide CD-ROM, CD audio connector, joystick / midi connector
expandable to 8 Mb ram
512 kb ram (Pro version only)
Microphone (pro version only)
mpc3 compatible
win 95 compatible
hardware compatible with standard ultrasound (with installed ram)

2.2 What it says on the box: software
DOS and windows mixers
stereo rack to play wave, midi and audio
Cakewalk express for midi
Sound forge xp for wave
Real audio software
Internet phone software - Demo (!!!!!)
CompuServe starters kit
5.6 Mb general midi set
over 100 Mb of games and demos

2.3 What it doesn't say on the box
quick install manual
extended manual on CD only in adobe acrobat format
driver disks for DOS, windows, win95
most of the software on CD
no software for making use of the extended ram in win95 (see support for a solution)
can't find the DOS mixer
with extended ram or 512 kb the only effects in cakewalk express are reverb and chorus
no patchmanager
no patchmaker
no standard ultrasound drivers (it seems to be the case that with these drivers you can use the old programs for patch caching and patch creating)
In windows you can use 30 of 32 channels. Why? I don't know but the powerchords program which gives some info on available memory and hardware reports only 30 channels. So this could be related to the windows driver. In DOS all channels are available.
when using more than 14 voices sampling rate can keep up the 44khz. This is good since the old gus (max) would use a lower sampling rate with more than 14 voices at the same time.
The maximum sampling rate I can get is 44 kHz. So where's 48?
Soundblaster and Roland compatible through software emulation (This is not flawlessly but works pretty good. The sound and music is mostly better then the original soundblaster)

2.4 Board layout
Confused about jumper settings, cable connections, memory slots and output connectors. Look at the diagram of the ultrasound pnp pro. This is a sketch and no precise image of the real board.

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3.0 Installation
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3.1 Plug and play
No (funny) jokes about plug and play are here to be found. Just one advice: ignore - at this moment - anything about plug and play on any hardware. Just install the buggers as you did before and be happy that DMA and irq's are software installable. Some systems will recognize the board others don't. For me installation went right in about 15 minutes, for others it took days to get it working. As far as I know this is not exceptional for Gravis, products from other companies suffer from the same problems.

3.2 Software
Follow the instructions in the quick start guide and/or the addendum and software support for windows and DOS will be added. You can use the windows utilities disk for installing the manual and the windows mixer. The acrobat reader can be found on the companion disk. The only problem you can expect is sound in win95 DOS boxes. An answer will be given to as soon as possible. New drivers - version 1.01 - can be found on the gravis ftp site and/or web page (see below).

3.3 New software & updates
The newest drivers for the gus pnp are labeled version 1.01. They are available on the Gravis ftp & website and on the mirror sites. There's also a new version - 1.11 - of the patch converting utility GIPC and of Mega-Em (a Roland & soundblaster emulator). A new version of setultra eliminates a few bugs. MAXMODE is a new utility that will make the Gus pnp compatible with the gravis ultrasound max. For programmer's there is the Interwave Device Driver kit, a freely available (C, C++ only) interface kit for programming the Gus pnp. There is a 4 Mb ram patch set circulating from amd with a reasonable good quality. However, this file is copyrigthed and as such illegal to distribute over the internet. This patch set can be obtained by writing to Gravis. A cd with the patch set will be sent at nominal costs. It is supposed to be on some of the new driver CD's form gravis. The file is called Gsfull4m.zip.

Drivers version 1.01 Disk A
Drivers version 1.01 Disk B
Drivers version 1.01 Disk C
Drivers version 1.01 Disk D
Update Setultra.exe
Mega-Em 3.10
Gipc.exe 1.11
Maxmode utilities
Interwave DDK 1.0
BIOS update
Drivers version 1.02 disk A
Drivers version 1.02 disk B
Gravis windecks version 2.0 (16 bits win31)
Gravis windecks version 2.0 (32 bits win95)

Public beta 1 drivers version 2 win95
Public beta 1 drivers version 2 dos & win3.1

3.4 Ram expansion
The AMD interwave chip can address 16 Mb of memory. The GUS pnp, however, can only address up to 8 Mb according to the manual. If you experiment you will see that the card at least can see 8,5 Mb so maybe it can address 16 Mb. We'll have to wait until someone tries this. You can just add the sims (30 pins, no parity, 1mb, 2mb, 4mb, 80 Ns or better) to the card and they will be used automatically. If you own the Pro version the sims will add up to the 512 kb already on board. One thing the size of the ram on the Gravis PNP is not software installable: if you put more than 4 Mb ram on the board you have replace a few jumpers. Exact information can be found in the online manual on the companion CD (more or less). This disables the 512 kb on the pro version. I didn't move the jumpers and everything works fine. Look further for more details on ram sizes. If you want to change the jumper settings according to the manual this is what you have to do:

With the pro version you can have at least 8,5 Mb. Look at the following table for info on simm combinations. You can install only 1 simm. The card will only recognize it if you put it in last slot (that is the one at the end of the card!).

According to AMD's Tech sheet and people's experiences all examples in the table are valid. However, at this moment it is not clear if the interwave will address 8,5 mb of memory. It is possible that the memory is detectable through sofware but will not be used.

To check the available memory try this:

IN DOS: IWinit -V This will give hardware info + available memory
IN WINDOWS: run powerchords debut and look under midi in the ultrasound dialog. Here you can find the available memory minus the memory currently used by loaded patches. If you installed the memory before installing the soundcard the DOS install program will recognize the memory. You'll have the option of checking the memory for proper operation. This will take a moment if you have installed the full 8 or 8,5 Mb.

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4.0 Questions & Answers
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HOW CAN I GET INFO ON THE INSTALLED SOUND HARDWARE?

Type IWinit -v9 for assorted information (diagnostics) on your sound hardware Type IWinit -? for other options

DOES MY INSTALLED MEMORY ACTUALLY WORK?

With the standard version you will have chorus and reverb if you install memory. If you have lots of memory like 4 or 8 Mb open powerchords and cakewalk express. Load a few midi files in cakewalk express. After every file you will notice a drop in the available memory in powerchords. Although cakewalk express uses patch caching, all the patches are still in memory. One last way is to look for disk activity during patch caching. If you use the standard gus set which is 5.6 Mb and you have 8 Mb installed, disk activity should stop if the complete set is loaded.

HOW CAN I FIX PROBLEMS RELATED TO DMA/IRQ?

Reprogram the p'n'p eeprom and set specific selection posibilities or disable devices according to your needs (!!!). The gus can be theoretically mapped to nearly any address, irq or dma.
Disable automatic p'n'p settings under /my computer/configuration/system if these are giving you any problems in win95 or outside (alteringiw.ini). And set configuration manually.

HOW DO YOU INSTALL THE ULTRASOUNDCANVAS DRUM PATCHES?

In Ultrasouncanvas.zip the banks are bugged. i.e: all banks are 1 number higher than what they should be. in USC*.* they're ok. Cakewalk: Setup channel 10 to use Roland GS Drumkits. you should then have a list of banks you can choose from. There are no instruments bank in USC, just drums. Remember that you have to set up a set in iw.ini that uses all the banks in the kit. Example:

[vendors]
rom_amd_4m=ROMAMDGS_4_2_
rom_amd_1m=ROMAMDGM_1_1_
amd_4m=gsfull4m.fff
amd_1m=gmfull1m.ff8
ultraGS=ROMAMDGM_1_1_, std.fff, pwr.fff, room.fff, brush.fff, elec.fff
default=ultrags

[vendor ultraGS]
std.fff=c:\ultrapnp\ultra
pwr.fff=c:\ultrapnp\ultra
room.fff=c:\ultrapnp\ultra
brush.fff=c:\ultrapnp\ultra
elec.fff=c:\ultrapnp\ultra

WHEN WILL THE SDK BE RELEASED?

A driver developer's kiti is available on the Gravis website and on some of the mirror sites. Check the AMD site for technical info on the interwave chip. There is a document interwave.phd which you can download (acrobat format).
The SDK is not publicly avaible right now but will be made available by Gravis pretty soon.

HOW CAN THE CDROM IDE/ATAPI PORT ON THE GUS PNP BE DISABLED?

In iw.ini, set atapi irq=0, atapi port adress=0 and atapi dma=4. Some people also need to alter the portaddress to an unused location in memory in the p'n'p eeprom to solve their problems.


EFFECTS DO NOT WORK ON DRUM SOUNDS IN RAM PATCHES.

This is a result of faulty patch conversion! Since the GIPC utility has still a few bugs some of patch parameters are converted wrongly. One of the results is that effects on converted drums sounds do not work. The effects do work on the 1mb ROM patches and the 4 Mb amd patch set.
Here's a fix for the problem suggested on usenet:

"Some people owning a Gravis Ultrasound Plug&Pray with 1mb-> probably have noticed that GIPC 1.11 converts the drum banks incorrectly, resulting no effects (reverb, chorus) on drums at all...zilch!none.. So, what you'll have to do is to have the converted patchset running (that is, you'll have to be using it) and do the following. funny thing..it seems like I'm the first one to actually accomplish this :=)
Taken directly from Megabank 2.0 troubleshooting:

What I meant with "Drum Effects" is actually the use of Reverb and Chorus on drums, which also is possible using the instruments. Like: If you have a channel (like, channel 1..the first "voice"..the first number in Track/ Measure window in Cakewalk) you can add better sound/richer/better stereo/more depth by using reverb and chorus on that channel (GM has 16 channels, where channel 10 is for drums). For example: Try loading a midi-tune with drums. Then choose VIEW menu and click on FADERS (still in Cakewalk). You will see a lot of knobs (isn't that what you call it? dunno...I'm a norwegian :) Now, if you start playing the midi-file, why not try fiddling a little with those knobs? hehe...try using FULL REVERB (value:127) on EVERY avaliable channel (1,2,3,4,5,6-->)..now listen..a BIG difference..well, might not be pleasent, but then again you DID use max reverb, which usually isn't needed. But, the drums? Where are the effects on the drums? If you SOLO that drum channel (just try pressing solo button until all you hear is the drums) you will hear that they sound exactly the same with full reverb as without reverb at all. THIS is what I mean with drum effects: It lacks drum effetcs. And that's a major downside with custom drumbanks created using GIPC, as you then won't be able to hear that Military Snare. If you, on the other hand, were able to use effects on drums (reverb, that is), you will hear a BIG difference, both in depth and volume.

Drum effects using Mediaplayer
******************************

For really experiencing this yourself, try exiting Cakewalk, Mediaplayer and everything else you've got running in the background (except for THIS program). Now, follow these steps. One more thing: Playing the file might result in too much bass..if you use a stereo, try lowering the volume before playing it, and then increase it.
0) Quit every program you are running, except this one.
1) Start Cakewalk
2) Select the Settings menu, and click on Midi Devices.
3) A new window pops up. For Output, select InterWave MIDI synth, and deselect the others. For Input, leave those untouched :)
4) Press OK (oh...)
5) Load a midi-file
6) DO NO PLAY IT!
7) Load up Mediaplayer (the one installed/shipped by Windows).
8) Load the same midi-file as you did in Cakewalk
NB! It's VERY important that you load the same midi-file in both programs (Cakewalk&Mediaplayer)
9) DO NOT PLAY IT YET!!...well..if it does..ok..just let it play.
10) Ok, so now you have one midi-file loaded into Mediaplayer AND Cakewalk, however they are NOT playing (hopefully).
11) Now, before starting to play, why not load up the InterWave Mixer? Yes, do that.
If you look at the Effects slider, it should be almost at the top (two lines down from top).
12) Ok..start playing the tune in Mediaplayer. Enjoy.

What happens, is that Cakewalk does something to your GUS in the background! Dunno why, but it works! And it surely sounds more heavy!! Anyway, if you want to hear the difference, try exiting MediaPlayer, and start playing the tune in Cakewalk......

If you want to keep the effects enabled on the drums, just keep Cakewalk in the background, with the same tune, not playing, just staying there doing nothing. Then load up a midi-file using Mediaplayer and the effects will be enabled. BUT as soon as you quit CakeWalk, the effects will be disabled. However, quitting
Mediaplayer is ok.

Drum effects using CakeWalk
***************************

0) Quit all programs, except this one
1) Load Mediaplayer |Note: You can also double-click
2) Load a midi-file |on the midi-file (mediaplayer will start)
3) Start playing it Mediaplayer (if you already haven't done that)
4) Load Cakewalk, while Mediaplayer is still playing the midi-file
5) Load the same midi-file in CakeWalk as in Mediaplayer
6) Start playing in Cakewalk.
7) Stop the Mediaplayer.
8) You now have drum effects enabled in Cakewalk :)
9) If you wish, you can now quit Mediaplayer.
Quitting CakeWalk will disable the drum effects.

Hope this helps. Kevin Boye"

PREPGAME DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE.

If prepgame game gives you the message: "only works with ultrasound pnp" you have to reinstall the DOS drivers. If everything works correctly be sure to make a backup of your root directory. The problem is caused by win95. If you return to a previous DOS or DOS 7 win95 overwrites the autoexec.bat and config.sys files with version belonging to that installation. When installing the Gus pnp DOS drivers the current autoexec.bat is patched but not the back up used by de win95 boot manager.

MY GAME TAKES LONGER TO LOAD THAN WITH MY OLD FM-CARD. WHY?

The gus pnp uses patches to play the midi or music in games. These patches have to be loaded before the game starts. This may take a while. Nothing is wrong here. You'll notice difference in sound quality immediately. Just listen to the music in doom for example.

PROBLEMS WITH IRQ IN DOS4GW GAMES

Hey fellas. As a Watcom DOS4GW programmer I can tell you this. DOS4GW only supports IRQs to 7. That is cause most games use the DOS4GW that comes with the compiler. It supports up to 32MB ram, so for now, most games don't require the professional of DOS4GW, called DOS4G. That usually costs an additional $500, but I do believe it supports IRQ 8 - 15. Until more games require more than 32MB ram, I am sorry to say but I think you will still see this problem. However, one guy mentioned there is a patch. That might help. As a DOS4GW coder, I can tell you it makes life much easier to code 32-bit programs, thus that is why most games use DOS4GW, plus, it is royalty-free. So it is much cheaper than using the professional version. None the less, I don't know why Watcom doesn't fix this problem, actually, it is Rational Systems DOS4GW extender, and they should fix this to allow for all IRQ lines. It has something to do with switching to Real-Mode to access those extra IRQ lines. What doesn't makes sense is, IRQ 8 - 15 are tied to IRQ 2. That is why you often see the IRQ 2/9 option. Usually IRQ9, 10 and 11 are free for use. Sometimes 12 is too. 13-15 are used for other options, like the HD, CD-ROM, etc... (Kevin Duffy)

MY DOS TRACKER ONLY RECOGNIZES 1MB RAM. WHY?

The program detects a regular ultrasound. Native interwave is not supported as yet. But a lot of the trackers can use samples bigger than 1 Mb! However fasttracker 2.06 is not one of them.

GUS COMPATIBILITY IS NOT GOOD PART ONE. WHY?

Look at your ISA bus speed. Seems that for good ultrasound support your bus speed has to be 8 MHz. Sometimes bus speed is called CLKI in your BIOS setup.

GUS COMPATIBILITY IS NOT GOOD PART TWO. WHY?

For DOS ultrasound compatibility. Make sure you have ram on your Gus pnp. This is absolutely necessary. Install ram support from the CD. This will install the regular gus patches on your harddisk. Make sure some environment variables are set right in your autoexec.bat. Something like the following example:

@REM ===== Gravis initialization (1.3) =====
@SET INTERWAVE=C:\ULTRAPNP\IW.INI
@C:\ULTRAPNP\IWINIT.EXE
@SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T1
@REM ===== Gravis initialization ends =====

IS IT POSSIBLE TO USE OTHER PATCHES WITH MEGA-EM?

No. The current version can only use the hardware patchset on thet GUS pnp.

WHY DOES IWinit REPORT CARD BUSY, CLOSE ALL APPLICATIONS IN WIN95 DOS-BOX?

Dunnow. But there is a way to work around this problem. Run a wav file with the media-player before opening the Dos-box. After that the card is free and you may get music in DOS programs. Sound is still not working though.

HOW CAN I USE THE CARD WITH LINUX?

You need to boot to DOS and run IWINIT, then *warm boot* to linux. It'll be detected as a gus, or if you run ultrinit also as a MAX.

WHAT IF WINDOWS CRASHES?

Try removing the line: device=viwd.386 from the WIN.INI

NEW HARDWARE DIALOG IN WIN95 SAYS "l l V" INSTEAD OF "GRAVIS ULTRASOUND PLUG AND PLAY. WHAT IS HAPPENING

The flashbios on the GUS pnp is not initialized in the proper way. Download Ultrapnp.zip from the Gravis site to update your bios.

WHY DOES THE CARD PRODUCE A LOT OF NOISE?

Possible reasons:
- volume level too high
- version of the interwave chip
- long extension cords between you equipment
- interference from other hardware inside you computer
- out of spec diodes used on some rev. of the gus p'n'p cards

Try to mute the Mic and the Line-in in the mixer applet. This will reduce the noise considerably. If you still experience noise, check the speed of the ram on your card. It should be 80 Ns or faster. This help is for excess levels of noise. It seems to be the case that the gus pnp produces a little more noise than the regular gus or ace but I - the writer of the FAQ - have not experienced this excess noise myself... (still Lars Enander one of MIDAS people does so it is not a vicious rumor :-) ) The last news is that on some of the first Pro versions slow ram was used. If this is the case with your card you should return is to Gravis and get a newer version with faster ram. If you don't want to do this and you have installed enought ram of your own than use J8 to disable the 512 kb on the pro. The hiss problem is worse for some revisions of the interwave chip. Especially the B revision is faulty. The noise drop on cards with this chip can be as big as 6 db when disabling the synth. For the out of spec diodes see the next question....

WHAT ABOUT THOSE OUT OF SPEC DIODES?

"I recently purchased a GUS for $200,00 for my new Penteum 133 and have realy enjoyed playing with it the past few days. I decided to try the mic input on it to see if I could record some sounds. This is when I noticed a tremendous DC offset in the recording, about 50%. This means the signal will be clipped on one side long before the other.
In looking at the card itself I noticed two glass seface mount diodes D1 and D2 that look like they are to protect the mic input on the AMD chip from voltage spikes. They go to ground and the +5V supply. I suspectected that they were leaky so I got out the ol' soldering iron and removed them.
A resistance check showed one to have 10K ohms and the other one a little more in the reverse direction. I installed two new diodes of a differeent type (1N4148's) Put the sound card back in and wala...NO more DC offset. It's fixed. It looks like Gravis had let a bad product get out of their factory.
This is just one more case to show that glass serface mount diodes should not be used in production where leakage current can affect the circuit. I have seen this before. I would suggest that Gravis change the design to use an SOT type serface mount package for this aplication. this package has two diodes on one so it would evan cut down the parts count."

MY SYSTEM HANGS WHEN IWINIT TRIES TO INITIALIZE THE GUS PNP. WHY?

Apparently your BIOS is not compatible with the plug & play on the gus ( I am not sure though.. ). Try to run iwinit with the following switch: IWINIT -bbios
Note that bbios must be in lowercase otherwise it will not work. If this does not work and your PC has a pci bus system look in your BIOS setup and check if no IRQ's are reserved for isa slots. If so change all the IRQ's you need for the Gus pnp. If still no success try to upgrade the BIOS (this seems to be a problem with some versions of the ami BIOS). The same problem can be caused by Microsoft InPort Mouse 1.0. removing the inport mouse ill solve the problem. Another possibility to solve this problem is changing jumper 9 on the card. This will disable the plug & play capabilities of the gus pnp.

GIPC SAYS SOMETHING lIKE "CANNOT OPEN PATCH FILE...". WHY?

This is a known bug in GIPC. It's even in the 1.11 update. To avoid it you have to edit the ultrasnd.ini file. Change the following line: PatchDir=C:\ULTRAPNP\midi ---> PatchDir=C:\ULTRAPNP\midi\ You have to do this three times. Once for the ultrasound section, once for the melodic bank 0 section and once for the drum bank 0 section. After conversion do not forget restore the lines!

HOW CAN I CHANGE THE VOLUME IN DOS?

You can't. Ha ha ha. But more seriously there is no DOS-mixer with the latest version of the gus pnp drivers. However if you go to the reveal website you can download the drivers for the wave extreme32. This card uses the interwave also and seems to be compatible. One of the utilities is a DOS-mixer program. If you use mega-em for roland or soundblaster emulation you can set the volume also.

JOYSTICK PROBLEMS. WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Try running iwsbos (or sbos), then change the sound setting to Soundblaster. In this way you will lose sound quality but probably your joystick will work again.

CD AUDIO FAILS TO WORK. WHY?

Be sure to install the mci driver in window or win95. You need this driver to play CD audio. If you still get no sound check the connection between the gus pnp and the your CD-ROM player. Although the connections probably fit it could be that the wiring is wrong.

and:
"The problem is the Creative Labs connector. It seems to be wired backwards.
I've made a number of posts on how to fix it, so here's another one.

Look at your CDROM and the connector on the GUS PnP. You will notice that the
wires don't connect the leads properly. An easy way to fix it is:

1) Get a small screwdriver (such as the ones used for eyeglasses) or a similar
tool.

2) If you look at the white, block-ish plug that attaches to the GUS PnP, you
will see that there are three wires that go into the plug. Each wire has a
crimped-on connector at the end. These connectors are held in the plug by
small, plastic fingers. One at a time, use the screwdriver to lift each finger
and pull the wire out of the plug.

3) Look at how the cable connects to the CDROM and note which wire goes to
which lead. If you look at the GUS PnP, you will see that the four pins on the
boards are labeled 'GLGR' (or something like that). As you might guess, G is for
ground, R is for right and L is for left. Look at how the plug needs to fit into the
connector on the GUS board and figure out how the leads need to be placed in
the plug to make the right connections.

4) To insert each wire back into the plug, just insert the crimped-lead into the
appropriate hole and push. It will snap into place.

5) Once all three leads are back in the plug, insert the plug back into the GUS
PnP connector.

As a note, I've heard that some people prefer to file off the alignment key on
theplug so that they can insert it backwards. This also works, but does cause
permanant alteration to the plug...

Eric Karlson"

I HEAR CLICKS AND GARBLED SOUND. WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Clicks are caused by IRQ conflicts - or schizophrenia :-). Probably one of your other devices is using the same IRQ as the gus pnp. Change the IRQ of the gus pnp or the conflicting device. Garbled sound is caused by IRQ conflict or DMA conflicts. The same applies here: change the IRQ or DMA of one of the conflicting devices.

PROBLEMS WITH SOUND IN DOS BOXES

Change the settings in autoexec.bat to: SET ULTRASND=XXX,X,X,XX,XX Exactly as above. It says so in the readme for the win95 drivers. And yes those are X's where there should be numbers. It works too. It gets the environment variable for DOS programs from the win95 settings So that even though I have those XX's in there if I load up a DOS box and type SET in it (which gives you the environment settings active) I get: ULTRASND=220,6,7,05,05 So it does work. If you DON'T put the X's in the SET ULTRASND line in your autoexec.bat file you will get a message saying that the soundcard is in use by another application.

RECORDING WITH THE MICROPHONE SOUNDS BAD

On the card you will find a switch to disable the onboard amplifier for the mic input. If your recording sounds wrong, change the setting of this switch.

HOW CAN THE GUS PNP IDE PORT BE DISABLED?

To disable de onboard IDE port edit the last section of IW.INI make all references to CD zero. For example CDIRQ=0 and CDDMA=0. In win95 just go to the system icon in the control panel and disable the ide port there.

WHERE ARE THE NEW DRIVERS COMING FROM?

The drivers were written by E-Tek of Rochester New York for AMD, then distributed to Gravis. The drivers were designed to run on a Reveal WaveExtreme-32 InterWave soundcard (which is virtualy identical to the AMD InterWave Standard Reference Design). Source code of these unfinished drivers is with Gravis now and after several beta's we have now the first public beta as implemented by Gravis.

HOW ABOUT OS/2 SUPPORT?

"October 1st, 1996

Announcing the public beta of the Manley drivers v1.20 (SHAREWARE):

Unofficial Advanced Gravis Ultrasound Drivers ("Manley Drivers")
Copyright 1994-1996 Robert J. Manley and Multi-Player Computer Adventures Inc.
Copyright 1995-1996 Sander van Leeuwen
Copyright 1996 Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd

FEATURES
- basic GUS rev 3.7 and MAX/daughtercard mixer support
(NEW) - Support for AMD's Interwave chip:
(NEW) - GUS PnP (Pro)
(NEW) - Reveal WaveXtreme (Pro)
(NEW) - any other Interwave soundcard
(NEW) - mixer application (UltiMIX)
- 16-bit 44.1Khz stereo wavefile playback
(NEW) - 16-bit 44.1Khz stereo wavefile recording
(NEW) - synthesizer recording on normal GUSes
(NEW) - 16 bits recording is faked on a normal GUS (the hardware
(NEW) can only do 8 bits recording)
(NEW) This was added for the Voice Recognition software in
(NEW) OS/2 Merlin.
(NEW) - Codec recording on GUS Max & Interwave cards
(NEW) - full duplex (simultaneous playback & recording) supported
(NEW) - RTMIDI support (not working properly in this release)
- native GUS MIDI playback with patch caching
- multi-session (many registered streams - one active)
- multiple (2) ACTIVE digital audio streams (only GUS and Mwave?)
- this feature requires running MINSTALL to update MMPM2.INI
(NEW) (GUS Max, GUS PnP and other Interwave cards support only one active
(NEW) wave stream)
- simultaneous DART/Digital Audio/MIDI/MOD (in shared mode = /S)
- Ultrasound specific OS/2 VDD giving DOS sessions:
- reduced interrupt latency
- hardware virtualization
- MIDI port emulation of Roland MPU-401 in UART mode
(allowing WinOS2 to load and use those drivers)
- GM emulation for DOS and Windows sessions under OS/2 with
the goody pack which is only sent to registered users
- absolute lowest system overhead possible
- rigorous testing

- GUS native OS/2 MOD player, UltiMOD
(NEW) - updated to support the new features of AMD's Interwave chip!

Downloadable from: http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/Henry/Sander
ftp-os2.cdrom.com (ultra120.zip)
hobbes.nmsu.edu (ultra120.zip)

Sander van Leeuwen (s509475@dutiwy.twi.tudelft.nl)
Robert J. Manley (rjm@io.org)

HOW TO MAKE A GUS COEXIST WITH A SOUNDBLASTER 16?

The GUS & Soundblaster 16 faq

HOW ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE INTERWAVE CHIP?

Here are some snippets from usenet that could sheld some light on this question.

"A call I received last Thursday from an AMD InterWave marketing repled to my discovering that (1) there are 200,000 B-Step InterWave chips left (which no-one should use, since they have a noisey synthesizer DAC output), (2) the bug-fixed, quieter C-Step parts are not even listed any more on the AMD inventory computer (these devices were originaly allocated to STB and Compaq), (3) it is not possible for anyone to buy new C-Step parts as (4) AMD has halted ALL production of InterWave chips, and will NOT accept *any* new manufacturing orders.

The InterWave rep also stated that "AMD had NO intention of letting any other company second-source the InterWave", and that the InterWave mask would remain AMD property (and would not be licensed out to other chip fabs)."

"As a former member of the MultiMedia Products Division at AMD (where the INTERWAVE (tm) chip was designed), I'll try to sort out the facts of what's happenned to the project. AMD, at this time, is NOT considering dropping the current Interwave (tm) parts designed to be connected to the PC ISA bus.

AMD has cancelled work on the next generation Interwave (tm) device that was to be connected to the PCI bus and was designed to use system memory instead of local wavetable memory.

AMD will continue to provide support to large buyers of the Interwave (tm)device (ie, Compaq, Gravis, etc.)."

"September 9, 1996

Dear FusionWave (SM) partner-

I regret to inform you that the FusionInterWave program has been canceled. The entire staff and resources for the InterWave Audio Processor program is being sized down, however AMD will continue to support existing customers through 1997."

_____________________________

5.0 Support: software & hardware
_____________________________

The software that's in the box is fairly complete. However it is possible that you experience some problems with the virtual piano player. At this moment I couldn't get it to work. Another problem is related to plug and play. If your computer supports plug and play on the hardware (BIOS and motherboard) level it is possible that a restart from win 95 to older version of DOS does not initiate the hardware plug and play. The interwave setup program will not be able to initialize the interwave chip and your soundcard goes undetected. If this occurs simply reset your computer and press F8 (to get the boot menu) after the gus pnp is detected. However, fairly complete is not complete. At the moment there is no software for patch managing and no software for creating patches. The old ultrasound programs won't work with the new interwave driver (They look for a gus driver). There is solution to part of this problem. At the gravis site, download a utility called GIPC.zip. With this program you can convert the ultrasound patches into a format the interwave accepts. The readme will gives you some instructions for editing the iw.ini file so win 95 will use the ram patches instead of the ROM patches. It is even possible to mix the ROM and ram patches. With ram installed you can use some of the effects. With cakewalk express this is chorus and reverb. If you use the ram patches. 512 kb can be to small for some midifiles that use large patches and effects! For example I experienced some problems with striving.mid (came with the ultrasound max). After installing another 2 Mb of ram the problems disappeared.

_________________________

6.0 Programming the gus pnp
_________________________

At this moment there are a four possible ways to program the interwave chip. The first on is the easy but limited way: just treat it as a regular gus or gus max. Since the interwave is compatible with the gf1 this will work flawlessly. However, only 1 Mb ram will be available but you can use the SDK for the gus to do the work. Version 2.22 is available on the Gravis ftp sites. The second way is using windows and various mci calls to access the interwave chip. This is of course possible but I have no further info at this moment. The third way is using the released DDK that is freely available on various ftp sites. With these functions you can program the card in native interwave mode. Source code for the libraries come with but there is no Pascal support. The last method you can use is looking at the MIDAS sound system. Interwave support was recently implemented.

Midasiw.zip

________________

7.0 Game Support
________________

Look at the following table for game support. Remember to run the prepgame utility for programs that use DOS-extenders otherwise there will be no native ultrasound support. This has to do with the way such a program recognizes the ultrasound. If a program needs prepgame this will be indicated. A - sign means no support. A * means supported. Some games have two *. This means that the sound setup has the ultrasound option but I was unable to get it working the right way. At the end of the table there are games that have limited or no support. Games that run in windows 3.1 or windows 95 are not tested since windows support is excellent.

A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO USING BATCH FILES IN WIN95 TO CONFIGURE GAMES FOR
THE GUSPNP

This document is aimed squarely at people who are new to Gravis with the UltrasoundPnP, and want to know how to run DOS games in win95. I found the learning curve with the PnP quite steep, and had to dig through a lot of supporting documentation before I even found out this much. So it's very basic, and sometimes stoops as low as spelling things out for you, as though you were a halfwit. I make no apologies;) I also like to think of it in the tradition of putting something useful back in the Internet

What this is NOT, is a multiple boot option. The method works by booting directly to win95 and exiting to DOS to play games. There's a time delay when booting out to DOS. There is no need to resent this time. If you want to configure your computer so it starts a game when you boot up, try a boot disk. If you want to play games in DOS boxes, buy a SoundBlaster.

Apparently V2 of the GusPnP drivers for win95 will work fine in DOS boxes, so rebooting to DOS will be nothing but a tedious memory. Working in a DOS box should make the card fully Plug N Play, and this How-to obsolete. If you read on, though, you may learn something about batch files, so you'll be enhancing your potential.
I am assuming you have RAM on your GusPnP. Games don't support the Interwave chip used on the card yet, so you have to have RAM to be Ultrasound (ie original Gravis) compatible. If you haven't got RAM,reading further will NOT help you get sound in your games. I believe the card takes 256k chips (30 pin SIMM, 70ns or less). Just for games,I can't think of a reason to get more than 1mb right away (although a 4mb chip doesn't cost much more, and more power is always better in the long run)

Okay, three batch files should be sufficient to run your games successfully.

1. C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT (& CONFIG.SYS)

One of the (few) things win95 seems to do really well is the automatic allocation of resources; memory and addresses. This is the sort of AUTOEXEC.BAT that win95 likes to see:

@SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T1
rem This line sets the Soundblaster emulator ports
@SET ULTRASND=220,5,7,11,5
rem This line sets the Ultrasound ports
@SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRAPNP
rem This line sets the GusPnP default directory, which tells
rem games where to look for drivers, patches etc
@SET INTERWAVE=C:\ULTRAPNP\IW.INI
rem This line sets the GusPnP initialisation file, which tells the
rem card which patch set to load, what ports to use, etc
@SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\ULTRAPNP
rem This line puts the GusPnP default directory in the path,
rem so you can type GusPnP commands at any DOS prompt.
IWINIT
rem Initialises the card.

This is something like how the AUTOEXEC.BAT looks after the GusPnP installation procedure, with my comments remmed in. If possible, leave it alone.

Leave your CONFIG.SYS empty. Win95 autoloads all drivers when it starts up, so it's only stuff you want loaded before windows that you put in the CONFIG.SYS

DON'T load himem.sys or an Expanded Memory manager for games, it's a waste of time because win95 will either unload them, load them into the 640k of conventional memory, or cripple its own performance to accommodate them. If you want to load a RAMdrive or something that win95 can't manage automatically, go right ahead.
You should now have over 600k conventional memory and all your RAM convertible to EMS or XMS. Go to a DOS box, type mem /c /p, and see. If you have less than 600k of memory, either you're still trying to load stuff you don't need, or win95 is not unloading the DriveSpace (or DoubleSpace) drivers. These are 100k large, and make a mess of conventional memory. If the DriveSpace drivers show up when you type mem /c, this is how Microsoft says you should fix it. You should do either or both of these (taken from the Microsoft Knowledge Centre (online)):

DriveSpace Real-Mode Driver May Not Be Removed from Memory
Article ID: Q134364
Revision Date: 13-MAR-1996

"- Change the command in the Config.sys file from

devicehigh=<path>\drvspace.sys /move
to:
device=<path>\drvspace.sys /move

NOTE: The syntax of this command is different if you use a third-party memory manager (such as Qualitas 386MAX or QuarterDeck QEMM).

- Remove LoadTop=0 from the Msdos.sys file."

(To remove LoadTop=0 from the c:\Msdos.sys file just open the file with a text editor and delete the line)

That should leave you with all the memory you need, and all devices functioning at maximum efficiency in win95.

2. C:\WINDOWS\DOSSTART.BAT

This is the batch file win95 uses to start a DOS session, when you click Shut Down, Restart in MS-DOS mode. Here's what mine looks like:

@SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T1
@SET ULTRASND=220,5,7,11,5
@SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRAPNP
ddload c:\mouse\mouse.com
ddload c:\cd-rom\mtmcdai.sys /d:mitsumi
mscdex /d:mitsumi
@SET INTERWAVE=C:\ULTRAPNP\IW.INI
@iwinit

Your GusPnP automatically updates the settings in this file every time win95 starts, with a program called SETULTRA.EXE, so the win95 and DOS variables are the same. There's no point in messing with any of the
@SET commands, they'll just be changed back again. What has to be loaded here are all the DOS device drivers. Gravis has really come through here, providing an extremely handy little program called DDLOAD.COM, which the GusPnP installed in your UltraPnP default directory. This program is why you don't have to mess about loading DOS drivers in your CONFIG.SYS, because you can use DDLOAD, a Device
Driver Loader, in DOS. It doesn't work in a DOS box though.
In general, for most efficient use of conventional memory, you should load the smallest drivers first, and the largest last. I don't know if the performance improvement is noticeable.

These are the command lines for DDLOAD.COM from my DOSSTART.BAT (above). (Make sure that the UltraPnP default directory is in the path, or else you have to put the full path name in the line, ie
c:\ultrapnp\ddload.com instead of ddload.)

ddload c:\mouse\mouse.com [or whatever your mouse driver is]

ddload c:\cd-rom\mtmcdai.sys /d:mitsumi [The line is saying:
'ddload'- load a driver,
'c:\cd-rom\mtmcdai.sys'- this cd driver, mtmcdai.sys is my cd driver
'/d:mitsumi' call it "mitsumi". You can call it anything, as long as
you use the same name in the next line.]

mscdex /d:mitsumi [this is the Microsoft CD Executor thing, hence MSCDEX, and it's being told to execute the cd driver called "mitsumi". You don't have to use the Microsoft CDEX program if your cd has it's own one, but I'm pretty sure some games don't like using anything different to MSCDEX]

I have no experience with FlightSticks/fancy Gravis joysticks etc, but if they require a joystick driver for DOS, you can ddload that too.

If you have games that aren't working, that say they need an Expanded Memory manager like EMM386, you could try loading that here. I think I'd be inclined to go to the advanced program properties of the game though, and give it EMS there. (see 4 below, 'Advanced batch files in win95')

Now, every time you exit to DOS, your mouse, cd, everything else, will be functioning.

3. THE_GAME.BAT

Most games will install from win95, and if they support the original Ultrasound card they might autodetect your GusPnP. Don't forget to run PREPGAME.EXE on the game after it's installed, to update the game engine. Hopefully, then it's an easy configuration and everything works. This setup has worked for me with Doom 2, Hexen, Dark Forces, Tie Fighter and Nascar Racing. Terror From The Deep, Rise Of The
Triads. etc.

Be prepared for some hassles setting games up. The worst games are the ones that autodetect a Gravis Ultrasound but then say it's at the wrong address, and then quit, or refuse to save. It wouldn't be a PC
if it worked all the time, anyway.
If your game requires a different I/O address, DMA slot or IRQ setting than the GusPnP defaults, you have to change the settings. For example, Duke Nukem 3D requires an IRQ under 7, and my default is 11.
The Duke3D setup won't let me enter 7, because it detects it at 11. In that case you have to change the GusPnP settings. At the DOS prompt, type:

SET ULTRASND=aaa,b,c,dd,ee

where aaa=the I/O port (usually 220)
b,c=the DMA settings (5 & 7 are the defaults, I think it's
because it's a full duplex card that it needs both)
dd=the IRQ
ee=I'm not sure what this number is, unless it's another IRQ
for the full duplex on the card

Put these settings to whatever the game demands, eg SET ULTRASND=220,5,7,5,7 makes Duke3D work for me. Someone wrote that you can use SET ULTRASND=xxx,x,x,xx,xx (with x's) in the AUTOEXEC.BAT, and
that's supposed to work. Perhaps you could do the same thing here, if you can't find a set of numbers that works.

To run the game you put the 'SET ULTRASND=aaa,b,c,dd,ee' line in a batch file. The quickest way to write a batch file is in DOS, but you can use any text editor, eg win95 notepad, as long as you save the
file in text only format.

To write a batch file in DOS, type:

copy con duke3d.bat [or whatever you want to call your batch file]
SET ULTRASND=aaa,b,c,dd,ee [see above]
cd c:\games\duke3d [yadda yadda]
duke3d
[on a new line, press the <F6> key and <enter> to save and exit]

Move the batch file to the root directory, or the root games directory, and just run it to play the game.

4. ADVANCED BATCH FILES IN WIN95

That's the basics of running games with batch files to get successful sound. If you want to do more advanced stuff, the easiest way is to make a shortcut icon on the desktop to the game.exe file. This shortcut becomes becomes a .PIF file in the same directory as the game. A .PIF file is a fancy name for a batch file that sets DOS
parameters. Right click on the icon on the desktop and select Properties at the bottom of the popup menu. In the properties box, click the Program tab.

A world of options is open to you. You can choose to run the game.exe program when you double click the icon, or you can run your batch file at the command line. If you click on Advanced, you can select that doubleclicking on the icon goes straight to DOS without asking for confirmation. You can also configure a whole new AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, just for the one program (just like a bootdisk), and even autoselect EMS and SmartDrive disk caching.

You can also modify the properties of the game.exe file itself, by selecting File, Properties in the Explorer, or right clicking on the file and selecting Properties, but then you're modifying the properties of the file itself, rather than a shortcut. It's no big deal, but you can delete a shortcut and start again if it's not working, and for a game.exe file you have to put it back the way it was when you started.

5. SCARY THINGS

Q. When I exit to DOS and type 'iwinit' or 'iwsbos' to initialise the card, I get a message that says "Interwave card not found".

A. This seems to be a known bug. Gravis suggest in the manual that you just type iwinit a few more times, until the card does initialise. This has never worked for me. Nevertheless, games work fine. I don't understand it, but I accept it.

I can't think of any other scary things offhand, if you find some,e-mail me.

This How-to was written by Cam Bennett, May 1996, and can be
distributed freely.
Comments, flames to cambell@netlink.co.nz

_______________

8.0 Requirements
_______________

The following requirements are listed in the Gus pnp documentation. However, it seems that 386 processor will suffice to use the card.

486sx 25 or better with 4 Mb ram
DOS 5.0 or greater
Logitech or ms-compatible mouse
16-bit isa, eisa or vlb slot
single-speed or faster CD-ROM drive
Hard drive (30 Mb free space minimum recommended)

___________

9.0 Contacts
___________

Gravis on the internet

Web page: http://www.gravis.com
FTP: ftp.gravis.com
Technical support: tech@gravis.com
Sound support: sound@gravis.com

ADRESS
Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd.
101 - 3750 North Fraser Way Burnaby,
British Columbia, Canada V5J 5E9 1790 Midway lane Bellingham, Washington, USA 98226 Phone: 604-431-5020 Fax: 604-431-5155

Advanced Gravis Europe BV
Antennestraat 70, 1322 AS, Almere, The Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0) 36 536 4443
Fax: +31 (0) 36 536 6011

Justin Cooney Advanced Gravis jcooney@gravis.com

AMD Website

http://www.amd.com/html/products/ind/interwave/wave.html