pouët.net

Yes, the GUS Extreme has 2 512KB chips soldered on the board. The ViperMAX has one chip, and one socket for a second chip (like the regular GUS).

Speaking of GUS, some clown thinks a boxed GUS MAX is worth $800 on ebay!

I got the GUS MAX cards from Moby today. Thanks for the cards! They're a lot trickier to setup than an original GUS card though. I had to disable the FDC, and both serial ports to get it to play.

Jah jah, I know you have to make sure CD-ROM base port isn't the same middle number as the GUS base port since GUS doubles up (ie 240 == 340) and that can also conflict with something else in the system.

It seems to be impossible,at least in this p2 400mhz system to allow it to coexist with the SB16 even though its possible with my Classic. Looks like I'll have to take one my socket 7 PCs collecting dust with just a pure GUS MAX to have some fun with it. The codec chip is nice that you have the mixer now, but man is it a bitch to get the MAX to coexist with anything. Might be why they appear to be more rare compared to the classic.

Also forgot to mention that I did set the CD-ROM disable jumper and removed jumpers for IRQ and DMA for the CD-ROM on the card too. What a hog to configure!

I have used a GUS MAX next to an SB Pro for years, in a 486 and later in a Pentium.
My settings were like this:
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4
SET ULTRASND=240,6,7,11,5
SET ULTRA16=32C,0,0,1,0

I was using an SB16/Vibra PnP with this setup and for some reason no matter what combo I set for the GUS MAX (SB16 was hardcoded to 220) the SB16 was grabbing something that wouldn't allow the CODEC to work.

I do have an SB Pro somewhere I suppose I could try that and a box full of no name cards based on the ESS chipsets.

My GUS+SB16+wavetable midi rig for several years used this:

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5
SET ULTRASND=240,7,7,7,7

I rarely encountered a game or demo that wouldn't work with this, and because I ran the SB16 output into the GUS's line in, I could mix'n'match depending on the game.

GUS MAX though? Getting it all to work just fine with a GUS Classic is pretty easy, and likely just as easy with an ACE.

I'll try one of my clones sometime soon in the box I got working with the MAX and see what happens. Might just be that P2 motherboard I had problems with was ghosting I/Os and other nonsense.

Creative's PnP drivers are a bit strange - not 100% sure what's going on but 'ctcm.exe' seems to pick settings out for the card, write them to ctpnp.cfg and then 'aweutil.com' reads them and initializes the card. The problem is the util will happily pick random values rather than the working config it used last time.

My trick was to edit ctpnp.cfg with the settings I want and then attrib it to read-only (along with ctmix.cfg for good measure), so they are not overwritten and the card is always set up on the right IRQ, DMA, etc.

(Gravis' PnP drivers do no such thing - once setup they remain where you set them... but the MAX is not a PnP card so this doesn't help you.)

For the record:
BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
ULTRASND=260,7,6,12,5

AWE64 PnP + GUS PnP Pro (no SBOS or MegaEM loaded.) Note that I do NOT have LPT1@IRQ7 enabled on this machine so PnP config is happy to use it.

I don't think an SB Pro will work in a P2. It has a very slow DSP chip on it. Most SB detection routines will time out before the DSP responds on a fast P2.

Also, the GUS MAX may not be a true PnP card, but everything other than the base address is software-programmable, and settings will be updated as soon as you run ULTRINIT.EXE.
In fact, in my SB Pro + GUS MAX set up I had wired the base address jumpers of the SB Pro and the GUS MAX to a switch, where I could swap between 220 and 240. This could be done 'on the fly': just adjusting the BLASTER and ULTRASND variables to the new settings and running ULTRINIT.EXE again was enough to re-initialize the card. No need to reset the machine.

I had to do this because some games/demos hardcoded the base address to 220.
Likewise, my SB Pro was an early one, which came with IRQ 7 settings from the factory. Some games also hardcoded this. Later SBs would come pre-configured with IRQ 5, and wouldn't be able to run this software. I seem to recall that some Sierra/Dynamix games did this, I think Stellar 7 was one of them.
Probably also plenty of demos/intros that hardcoded such settings.

I didn't know you could change the jumpers on the fly on the GUS cards. I figured some kind of quick switching while +5V was running to the card could damage the ICs so I never tried this.

In fact, basically all GUS cards use software-defined DMA and IRQ which can also be changed during runtime if needed.

Only exception: Some very early GUS classic revisions used a jumper for enabling the joystick port, newer ones used ultrinit.

The GUS seems fairly agnostic with regard to IRQ/DMA assumptions by software? I was playing around with some demos yesterday (Tran - Ambience & Luminati among others) and realized I had the settings wrong after posting my ULTRASND variable here. It didn't seem to make any difference whether I selected IRQ 11 or 12 (WTF, the GUS isn't even configured to use IRQ 11 at all) or DMA 6 or 7 (one of which is supposed to be for *recording*...) - the sound worked fine in all cases. I haven't tried this *everywhere* though.

I think the demos mostly just care about the baseport. Not sure how they were directly writing to the cards in those DOS days.

Hardly any demo used the DMA or IRQ. All just use port access to write to dram instead of DMA. Maybe some used the irq's for special timing purposes but I'd think that's mostly used by games/apps. When using the GUS to do regular soundblaster like streaming of audio and use IRQ's when half the buffer is empty and needs to be refilled.

The IRQ is used by a quite fair amount of mod players for timing purposes (either by using one of the 2 dedicated GUS timers, or by abusing the looping/ramping functionality of a voice as a more versatile timer).

Only a minimal amount uses DMA for sample uploading though - just writing all byres via port i/o is way easier and since it is usualy done just once not timing critical either.

Bump, still looking for a ViperMAX/GUS Extreme/Clone there-of.

Thanks to Moby and flure for the original GUS MAX cards at people prices!

Moby has sold his GUS ???!!!

I have my GUS in some 486sx PC that i don`t know where i left. Gotta go and search in my mothers house.

I still keep safe my GUS Viper, the Music Contest 6 prize.
As well as GUS Ace in 486 PC.
Only GUS PnP is given to my friend for a time. Want it back :)

I have a Vipermax in a 386-40 which I haven't run in years. I could see if it still works. I also have a GUS ACE (full 1 MB!) in a much faster Athlon XP box, but it's had some issues in recent years. So if the Vipermax works better, I might not be so willing to part with it. Keep this thread alive and I'll remember to check it out.

Okay, keep me posted guys. I have enough GUS Classic cards, but if they are the v3.7x varieties that have the ICS mixer I may be interested.

And yes, Moby sold his GUS MAX cards to me :P

Finally dug out my 386-40, and it still works. The Vipermax is working well too. GUS plays fine, SB is good, Adlib is good. Still does mixed OPL/SB stuff like Black Glass 2 okay.

Like I said, I'll miss it, but if you're still interested, email me an offer at xprojected(a)yahoo.com. I'm in the US too, FWIW.

Starts at 100...
http://www.ebay.fr/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xgravis+ultrasound&_nkw=gravis+ultrasound&_sacat=0&_from=R40

Yeah, the hell with those rip-off artist prices. I love my GUS cards but they shouldn't be worth this much. I have a hard time understanding why in the past couple of years they aren't showing up as much on ebay anymore and finding their clone variants on ebay are close to impossible for me.

In any case, I hit up Phoenix about the ViperMAX. Still on the prowl for a GUS ACE, if someone has PnP they would let go at a negotiable price I am all ears but I'm not specifically looking for one. I also remember the Gus PnP cards had that Utopia Sound Bank. Did anyone actually buy those patches and did they sound awesome?