pouët.net

Hi!

first of all what is gus? [is it gravis ultrasound? it's a sound card???]

second of all, i don't have sound with old games/demos... how can i know what is my settings? [irq,dma,address etc... & if i'll enter them to the demo will it use my sound card?]

buy a 8086!

a GUS is a Gravis Ultra Sound, which was a very special soundcard back in the day. It's so special that you can't ever find one in a computer shop that has recycled parts, and you have to order from Ebay or something. And when you do that they don't ship it because people apparently can't part with a GUS.

In truth, it's a damn fine card to have. If you can find one, you should get one. I do believe it's ISA, so you'll need an older machine. Still, having an older machine can let you see older demos. I myself have to do this someday.

(Read: oh yeah that'll happen.)

there's a thing called gusemu32.. perhaps that helps..
Istn't there a DOS emulator too anywhere..? I mean.. korso2 and such would be great to watch..

Or anyone could install an old computer and streams the result to the internet.. would be fine to run old demos on it and watch it in a video (I mean old DOS demos were 320x200, that should be possible with a video stream..)

dosbox is pretty good.

get winvice or winuae and watch old c64 or amiga demos instead, they're generally much better as well ;)

(hoping to stir up some flames for a change)

I agree =]

Sir GarbagetrucK: why it's special? ;-p any lame sound card today is better than gus... no?
btw, why here in pouet.net there is a special category for it? Msdos[gus] ? it's just a sound card... not an os...

what made GUS special was it's design... it was one of the first cards based on wavetable synthesis, wich made it particulary good at playing modules... it was a the tracker's dream...
btw: GUS / GUSMAX where ISA GUSPNP was pci

panoramix: yup.. I once coded a s3m player for gus.. in assembler.. :-) that thing was REALLY easy to code..
Upload samles and then tell the soundcard to play sample 1 at 8363 Hz on channel 1..

the best way to watch dos-demos on a windows-pc is to boot dos with a boot-disk. crest's page offers some good tips: http://crest.untergrund.net/config.html

jojo: that's like asking "what's so special about an amiga?". the popularity of the gus in the pc demoscene took off around 10 years ago, because it was easy to program for, saved precious cpu time, and accommodated multi-channel sample output quite nicely (midi was another story). and there's a separate entry for msdos/gus because many demos/intros released in the mid 90s only supported gus sound cards. of course that's not an issue in the windows era, and (finally) there's gusemu now.

Panoramix: Gus PnPs are ISA cards, Gravis never made any PCI soundcards. Also, it was the fact that you uploaded waetable samples to RAM that made the GUS so interesting. A decent number of wavetable cards were already resurfacing by that time, but they usually were using ROM only.

Time to polish up your know-how ;)

*pats his two gravis ultrasound-cards*

My (limited) understanding of why a GUS is required speciially these days is that its coding interface is not quite like any other cards, better or worse. So to run things specifically meant for it you need GUSemu and DOSbox (it's a pity I haven't ever gotten either of them to work... they both crash as soon as I try to do something meaningful...)

For the dutch users, check out http://www.marktplaats.nl if you're looking for a gus. I just bought two cards there and currently some more are being offered.

gloom: *just* two? ;)

Yes, the beauty of the GUS was that it did hardware playback of modules, because the samples were loaded into it's onboard memory, not the computer memory, thus more cpu power left for graphics? And back in the 386 days, that meant way cooler demos, and way cooler music. And even into 486 stuff. Damnit, I need to find my old p150 box that has a MAX in it. My classic I have here is dead :( That and yeah, it's wavetable midi was pretty good.

Dosbox does NOT emu gus, and that gusemu32 appears to only be for it's wavetable (midi) synthesis. I have yet to get it working for module (demo) playback. But I haven't spent much time trying.

ok.. now we heared that fact about the onboard memory.. let's move to something else.. :-)

phoenix: wasn't it also that gravis did a lot of sponsoring into parties/etc... so supporting the demoscene?
Was it then that gravis thought that the demoscene would change the world of computer or what..?

I once heard "guitar slinger", a tune from jogeir in an add of gravis.. they said something like "listen, gravis sounds that good.." :-)

phred: it was really mostly one guy from gravis, who arranged party sponsorships and travelled to places like assembly. he'd give one well-known group a free gus, and all of a sudden everyone lined up with their hands open saying "we love you gravis!". :) But anybody with a brain cell or two can tell you that the demoscene is not a viable market - gamers are. They gave up on soundcards after the GUS PNP & Extreme to focus on game controllers.

I still have my Synergy ViperMax, a GUS Extreme clone (gus+sbpro (ess) on one card) - yet another company where someone tried catering to the demoscene, then got out of the business shortly thereafter. :(

shifter: yeah, "just" two. :)

phoenix: wasn't the demoscene a great place when everyone got free stuff? almost like the game-scene now.. scary thought, what we admire and how it changes so fast.

troll: actually, there's a rather shaky and experimental dosbox build with gusemu. Here's hoping it'll become standard issue ;)

Oh, and phoenix, wanna trade that Vipermax for a real GUS Extreme board? It just happens I haven't got that one yet :)