A d v a n c e d ÜÜÜÜ ÜÜÜÜÜ ÜÜÜÜ ÜÜ ÜÜ Ü ÜÜÜÜÜ Þ ÜÜ Þ Ý ÞÛ ÛÝ ÞÛ ÛÝ Û ÞÜÜÜÜÜ Þ Ý ÞßßÛß ÞÛ ÛÝ ÞÛ ÛÝ Û Ý ßßßß ß ß ß ß ßßßß ß ßßßßß Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd. Fax (604) 431-5155 BBS (604) 431-5927 V32bis Compuserve: GO PCVENB (71333,350) InterNET EMail: tech@gravis.com FidoNET: 1:153/978 SBCNET: 13:900/3 UltraSound AIL & MIDPAK/DIGPAK V1.0 (GUSAIL10.ZIP) 1.0 About these Drivers 2.0 Installation 3.0 Who Supports 4.0 Revision history and Packing List 5.0 Troubleshooting 1.0.0 *************** CHAPTER 1. - ABOUT THESE DRIVERS ******************* 1.1.0 Audio Interface Libraries (AIL) - MIDPAK/DIGPAK =============================================== The Audio Interface Libraries (AIL), (we know them as "Miles" Drivers) and DIGPAK are a set of interface drivers which enable software developers (mainly game developers) to integrate sound capabilities into their programs. Once a developer has integrated his program into the AIL drivers the application will work with all sound cards on the market who provide AIL drivers. The AIL's provide support for MIDI as well as the Digital Sound interface of an audio card. These library drivers allow the developers to use UltraSound's wavetable synthesizer and allow them to utilize the UltraSound's digital interface to play 8 or 16 bit audio in either mono or stereo mode. Advanced Gravis & FORTE have recently designed and released to Miles Design and The Audio Solution Inc. the AIL and DIGPAK routines for the UltraSound card which provide the mechanism for developers to easily intergrate with, and use UltraSound's features. Developers who have the AIL's and/or DIGPAK can get the driver updates and intergrate their programs into the UltraSound. The AIL/DIGPAK updates will also be available through the Advaced Gravis BBS or any of our nodes. Please refer to GRAVNODE.TXT for a complete list. Developers who do not have the AILs can get them from Miles Design and/or DIGPAK from The Audio Solution Inc. Developers who want to take full advantage of UltraSound's advanced features; and do not want to pay either Miles Design or The Audio Solution Inc. license fees, Advanced Gravis and FORTE have a stand alone driver as well. These drivers use a Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) utility called UltraMID. Developers utilizing this TSR are able to do digital playback at 8 or 16 bits up to 44.1kHz sample rate. Also, this allows programmers to use all of the UltraSound's 32 digital voices as well as the superior wavetable synthesizer. These drivers are another level of support for the UltraSound card developers. Both the AIL and DIGPAK interfaces provide a means for programmers to easily design software for many sound cards using only one API while Advanced Gravis/FORTE's stand alone TSR allows developers to take advantage of UltraSound's more advanced features. 1.2.0 What does ULTRAMID Do? ====================== Think of ULTRAMID as a 'Resource Allocater'. Since we are trying to play both digital audio and MIDI through the same card a mechanism is required to allocate the cards resoucres. For example, who can use what channels to do what, loading patch files, allocating and freeing memory, etc... We have tried to keep ULTRAMID as small as possible, but it still requires 50K. This will all load high however. We are working on making it smaller, but there is not many more bytes we can squeeze out of it. Future versions of UltraMID may use either extended or expanded memory so that the low memory required will be reduced as much as 50%. ....................... END of Chapter 1 ........................... 2.0.0 ****************** CHAPTER 2. - INSTALLATION *********************** Loading the drivers is easy, getting it to work with games is the tricky part. If you are reading this you have probably already unzipped all the files into a directory. Once this is done type "INSTALL". This batch file will copy ULTRAMID.INI to your ULTRASOUND\MIDI directory. It does this by looking for your ULTRADIR environment variable. Once the file has been copied type "ULTRAMID -C". Make sure SBOS is NOT loaded. I'll talk about the command line switchs later on. Basiclly, the "-C" instructs ULTRAMID to load a subset of the general midi library. After a few moments ULTRAMID will tell you that it is loaded. Now for the tough part. First, find a game that uses the AIL or DIGPAK/MIDPAK drivers. A partial list is provided at the end of this README. To determine if a game uses these drivers look for files with end with ".ADV". What we will now do is overwrite some of these files with the Gravis drivers. You should make a backup of the games current .ADV drivers, just in case something happens. A table is provided below with some guidelines on which files you should overwrite: COPY FROM COPY TO CONFIGURE THE GAME AS ================================================= GF1MIDI.ADV MT32MPU.ADV Roland GF1DIGI.ADV SBDIG.ADV Sound Blaster OR GF1MIDI.ADV SBFM.ADV Sound Blaster GF1DIGI.ADV SBDIG.ADV OR GF1MIDI.ADV MT32MPU.ADV Roland GF166.COM SBLASTER.COM Sound Blaster (DIGPAK) By looking at the names and size of the .ADV drivers you should be able to determine which cards they are for. For example: ADLIB ADV 14693 07-07-92 6:00a = Adlib ADLIBG ADV 16175 07-07-92 6:00a = Adlib Gold ARIAXMID ADV 44836 03-26-93 10:26a = Aria MT32MPU ADV 10590 03-16-92 12:00p = Roland MULTISND ADV 7042 03-09-93 12:51p = Turtle Beach PASFM ADV 15160 07-07-92 6:00a = Pro Audio Spectrum PCSPKR ADV 8306 03-16-92 12:00p = PC Speaker SBFM ADV 14743 07-07-92 6:00a = Sound Blaster SBP1FM ADV 15153 07-07-92 6:00a = Sound Blaster Pro GF1DIGI ADV 5200 06-03-93 3:49p = UltraSound Digital GF1MIDI ADV 10784 06-03-93 3:50p = UltraSound MIDI In general if any .ADV file is > 10K it is the music driver and should be copied over with GF1MIDI.ADV. If any .ADV file is < 10K it is the digital audio driver and should be replaced with GF1DIGI.ADV Once this is done simply run the games setup and select whatever sound card that you just over wrote with the Gravis drivers. For example, if you copied over top of the Sound Blaster and Roland drivers then you would configure the game for sound blaster roland. That is it. If everything is working correctly you should now be getting UltraSound support in that game. If not please refer to the trouble shooting section in chapter 5. 2.1.0 Hints and Tricks ================ - In theory you could copy over top of ANY of the .ADV drivers as long as you know which sound card to configure the game for. - Some programs do not use the regular naming convention for .ADV drivers, for instance Ultima Underworld II by Origin. The convention for UW2 is DM*.ADV, and DD*.ADV. The DM is for MIDI and the DD is for digital audio. Since we can't tell by looking at the file name which sound card these drivers are for you may just want to copy GF1DIGI.ADV overtop of ALL DD*.ADV files and GF1MIDI.ADV overtop of all DM*.ADV drivers. REMEMBER TO BACKUP YOUR ORIGINAL .ADV DRIVERS - In theory, a game should be looking in its sound driver directory for any files with a .ADV extention, then present the user with a list of the sound card drivers found. For instance, in Spell Caster 2000 you simply have to copy the GF1*.ADV drivers into its directory. It will then detect these drivers and you may choose ULTRASOUND from its setup menu. This is the only game so far that I've been able to find which does this. - (06/22) Origin uses a slightly modified version of the AIL drivers. As such their games may sound slightly off or not work at all with our drivers. An example of this is Strike Commander, which will not work at all with the standard AIL interface. - We have found some games that use both the AIL drivers and access the sound hardware directly. An example of this type of game is EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. Since these type of games do not rely soly on the AIL drivers and try to access the hardeware directly they may not work with these drivers. 2.2.0 Command Line Switchs ==================== ULTRAMID by default will try to patch cache all MIDI songs. This will give you the best quality sound but may not be compatible with all games. If you have problems trying to get a program to recognize the drivers try and load ULTRAMID with the -C parameter. -C - Preloads a 256K, 512K 768K or 1024K patch library, depending on how much memory you have on your UltraSound card. This option does not sound as good as patch cacheing but should work with all games. -F - Unload ULTRAMID from memory -Mxxx - [1-127] Sets the master volume for music. In some games the music may over power the speech. If so you can use this switch to adjust the master volume as required. The default volume is 127. 2.3.0 UltraMID and SBOS ================= These two programs will NOT work together. Since they both try and use the UltraSound memory to store sounds they WILL conflict. You MUST remove SBOS before loading ULTRAMID. To unload SBOS from memory type "SBOS -F". 2.4.0 What is ULTRAMID.INI ==================== This file is used by ULTRAMID to figure out what patches to load, and if using the -C parameter which patches should be re-mapped. ULTRAMID.INI consists of 5 columns of numbers followed by a name. Below is a table explaining what these numbers and names are used for: Patch Number 256K 512K 768K 1024K Patch Name ================================================ 0, 2, 1, 1, 1, acpiano 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, britepno 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, synpiano 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, honktonk 4, 2, 1, 1, 4, epiano1 In a latter release we will be changing the name of this file to ULTRAMID.INI or something else. 2.5.0 Limitations of ULTRAMID ======================= The AIL standard only calls for ONE STEREO digital channel. Since the UltraSound is capable of 32 independent digital channels this poses quite a limitation. AIL also does not contain any hooks for 3D audio. For this reason we will be making information available in the future so that you may program directly for ULTRAMID to take advantage of the above features. 2.6.0 Support ======= These AIL, MIDPAK/DIGPAK drivers are intended for developers who will be releasing future programs that use the AIL drivers. We are releasing these to the general public so that you may attempt to patch older games to include direct UltraSound support. Since this is our first public release of these drivers we have provided a file called FEEDBACK.TXT, which you may fill out and send back to us with your comments. For example, how did you get it to work with game 'XYZ'. Tips you may have for others, etc... Since most of you will be using these drivers to patch games which have already been released the game publishers CAN NOT offer support for these drivers. So if you can't get them to work with their software DO NOT CALL THEM. 2.7.0 General Information =================== - We currently support V3.2 of the DIGPAK standard. - We currently support V2.0 of the AIL standard. - You may have heard the names 'John Miles' and 'John Ratcliff' and wondered who they are. John Miles is Miles Design, the designer and creator of the Audio Interface Libraries. John Ratcliff is The Audio Solution (MIDPAK/DIGPAK). They are two seperate companies who work together towards the same goal. A standard interface for sound cards. - Documentation on how to program directly for ULTRAMID will be made available in the future by Forte and Advanced Gravis. - If you are interested in AIL or MIDPAK/DIGPAK you may contact Audio Solutions at any of the numbers provided later on in this README. - ULTRAMID will look for your ULTRADIR environment variable to locate your MIDI directory. ULTRAMID.INI must reside in your MIDI directory. - Tech NOTE: Developers: Please use a multiple of 32 bytes for sound buffers. The Gravis UltraSound card can only DMA to 32 byte boundaries; so to reduce UltraMID overhead, a multiple of 32 bytes will mean no polled I/O. - (06/22) Sierra and Lucas do NOT use either the AIL drivers or DIGPAK. - (06/22) If possible try copying overtop of the MT32 drivers. As some games will load up a different (usually better) music score. An example of this is the 7th Guest. ....................... END of Chapter 2 ........................... 3.0.0 ****************** CHAPTER 3. - WHO SUPPORTS *********************** 3.1.0 The Audio Solution ================== The following is a list obtained from the Audio Solution BBS (PRODUCTS.LST). It is a little out of date but does include some information on which game publishers are licensed to use these drivers. THE AUDIO SOLUTION P.O. Box 11688 Clayton, MO 63104 Order/Information: (314)-567-0267 9am-5pm Central Mon-Fri Technical Support: (314)-926-0232 9am-5pm Central Mon-Fri BBS: (314)-939-0200 24 hours 7 days. MILES DESIGN, INC. 6702 Cat Creek Trail Austin, TX, 78731 (512) 345-2642 / FAX (512) 338-9630 / BBS (512) 454-9990 DIGPAK/MIDPAK COMPLETE PRODUCT LIST (as of 1/3/93) This list does not reflect all products produced by product line licensees; since we are not always informed of those products as they are released. It also does not reflect the products in development (over 100) which use either DigPak and MidPak. Product Name Publisher Use =========================================================================== <unamed> Epyx DigPak+MidPak ATC/Tracon Wesson International DigPak Animal Quest Alive Software DigPak+MidPak Battle Chess 4000 Interplay DigPak Battle Cruiser 3000AD Three-Sixty Pacific DigPak Beyond Shadowgate ICOM Simulations DigPak+MidPak Bilou Concepteva DigPak BodyLink Stragem DigPak Chess Maniac 5,000,001 Spectrum Holobyte DigPak+AIL Chessmaster 3000 The Software Toolworks DigPak Contraption ZAck Presage Software Co. Inc. DigPak+MidPak Creepers Destiny Software DigPak+MidPak Cribbage Master Ninga DigPak Cyberstrike Simutronics DigPak DNA Parrot T&t Research DigPak Dinosaur Adventure Knowledge Adventure DigPak Fun Univ Ntwk Intfc Fun Univ Netwk DigPak+MidPak Gateway to the Savage Strategic Simulations Inc. DigPak Gateworld Trilogy Home Brew Software MidPak GemStone III Simutronics DigPak Grandmaster Chess IntraCorp DigPak+MidPak Guardians of Eden Access Software MidPak Guzzle Puzzles Redwood Games DigPak Inspector Gadget: Azeroth Publishing DigPak+MidPak KidDesk Edmark Corporation DigPak Layout for DOS Objects, Inc DigPak+MidPak Le Ponctueur C.R.A.P.O., Inc. DigPak Magic Crayon Alive Software DigPak+MidPak Marvin The Moose Milliken Publishing DigPak Math Sequences Milliken Publishing DigPak Math Zone Milliken Publishing DigPak Mechwarrior II Activision DigPak MicroLeague Baseball IV Microleague Sports Assoc. DigPak+MidPak MicroLeague Football II Microleauge Sports Assoc. DigPak+MidPak Microleage Cards Microleage Sports Assoc. DigPak Millie's Math House Edmark Corpoartion DigPak Milliken Storyteller Milliken Publishing DigPak Monopoly Deluxe Virgin Games DigPak Mutanoid Math Challenge Legacy Software DigPak+MidPak Mutanoid Word Challenge Legacy Software DigPak+MidPak My Paint Saddleback Graphics DigPak Oregon Trail Deluxe MECC DigPak+MidPak Pickle Wars Redwood Games DigPak+MidPak Places to Play Magnetic Images DigPak Pools of Darkness Strategic Simulations Inc. DigPak Ragarok (Valhalla) Norsehelm Productions DigPak Realms of Avarton Kram DigPak Return to Zork Activision DigPak Shadow President DC True DigPak Sights & Sounds Macmillan/McGraw Hill DigPak Solitaire's Journey Quantum Quality Productions DigPak+MidPak Space Adventure Knowledge Adventure DigPak Space Chase 1,2,3 Safari Software MidPak Spaceward Ho PC Presage Software Co. Inc. DigPak+MidPak Stepping Stones Bonus Compu-Teach, Inc. DigPak+MidPak Stickybear Townbuilder Optimum Resource DigPak Switch Progressions Cooper, R.J. & Assoc. DigPak+MidPak Switch Quik Cooper, R.J. & Assoc. DigPak+MidPak T-Zero Dennis Cunningham DigPak+MidPak Terminator 2029 Bethesda Softworks DigPak The 7th Guest Virgin/Trilobyte DigPak+AIL Tom Landry Football Merit Software DigPak+MidPak VGA Jigsaw Alive Software DigPak+MidPak Waterford Mental Math Waterford Institute DigPak+MidPak Wheel of Fortune Gametek DigPak+MidPak WorldAtlas The Software Toolworks DigPak+MidPak Product line licensees of DigPak and/or MidPak. Product line licensees have the rights to include DigPak and MidPak in any product produced by their company. Electronic Arts Activision Spectrum Holobyte The Software Toolworks SSI, Strategic Simulations Inc. Milliken Publishing Company Commodore Computer Virgin Games Compu-Teach Knowledge Adventure Gametek Product line licensees to AIL (Mile Design's Audio Interface Library) which uses the same MIDI drivers as MIDPAK. Activision Strategic Simulations Electronic Arts Origin Systems Spectrum Holobyte Virgin-Games Knowledge Adventure Bethesda Softworks Interplay Microprose Gametek Impressions Mindscape UK 3.2.0 Other Products Found to use these Drivers ========================================= Great Naval Battles Tony La Rusa Baseball II War of Two Worlds Spell Caster 2000 Trump Castle III Buzz Aldrin's Race To Space ....................... END of Chapter 3 ........................... 4.0.0 *************** CHAPTER 4. - ABOUT THIS UPDATE ******************* 4.1.0 Revision History ================ V1.0 - (06/25/93) Yes, a version 1.0 release ;-) V0.97B - (06/22/93) Fifth Beta - Fixed DMA bug. Fixed patch loading bug. Fixed xmidi multi-sequence bug. Fixed digital hang bug. Fixed problem with 512K patch library V0.96B - (06/17/93) Fourth Beta - Fix DIGPAK buffering 4.2.0 Packing List ============ ULTRAMID.EXE AIL TSR - Required for drivers GF1MIDI.ADV UltraSound MIDI AIL Driver GF1DIGI.ADV UltraSound Digital Audio AIL Driver GF166.COM UltraSound DIGPAK Driver ULTRAMID.INI Patch Map README This README file GV.EXE Gravis Document Viewer INSTALL.BAT Copies ULTRAMID.INI to your UltraSound MIDI Directory FEEDBACK.TXT Beta Test Feedback Form GRAVNODE.TXT List of Gravis BBS Nodes SDKORDER.TXT Gravis SDK Order form GROOVIE.INI Information on how to configure The 7th Guest PUPDATE.EXE Used to fix .PAT files if necessary. READ Troubleshooting ....................... END of Chapter 4 ........................... 5.0.0 *************** CHAPTER 5. - TROUBLESHOOTING *********************** I copied the drivers on top of other drivers, but now the game says that it can't find the sound card: 1) Most games require running a set-up program to tell it that you have changed sound cards. Try finding such a program and running it. It most likely will not show Gravis or Ultrasound in the list of available drivers, so you will have to pick the sound cards which you copied the AIL or DIGPAK drivers to. 2) Some games use modified AIL or DIGPAK drivers. Most of the games from Origin have been modified and therefore are not compatible with these drivers. 3) Some games only use the AIL or DIGPAK drivers for certain operations. For the rest of them operations it may try to access the sound hardware directly. These type of games will not work with UltraMID and our AIL/DIGPAK drivers. I have sucuessfully installed the drivers for a game, but sometimes the music seems strange, as if its missing notes: 1) Restart UltraMID with the -c option to preload instruments. Most music will take more than 256K of memory. 768K to 1Mb is the optimal setup for the UltraSound card. 2) If you have replaced any of your patches with non-Gravis patches, the size may be different. The patch sets in ULTRAMID.INI are configured so that your UltraSound card will be loaded with as many patches as will fit into its available memory. Leaving 8K for digital audio. This means, if you try and load a patch that is 4K bigger than the original, than there will only be a 4K buffer left instead of an 8K, and the drivers may not be able to load correctly. 3) Your patches may be out of date. A program called pupdate.exe is available which will repair old or bad patches. doo.pat is an example. run pudate like this: pupdate -check_patch -force_update *.pat in your ultrasnd\midi directory. Pupdate will show you incorrect patches and ask if it should update them. Answer yes to all of your patches EXCEPT BLANK.PAT. BLANK.PAT is meant to be silent and should not be corrected. Pupdate will also create backups of all of your patches as it modifies them. acpiano.pat will become acpiano.pa1. acpiano.pa1 will become acpiano.pa2, etc. Playback of digital audio sounds choppy. 1) Your disk or CD may be too slow, and the sound card plays sound faster then your disk can retrieve data. 2) The UltraSound cannot play interleaved stereo data, and must use your pc to seperate the left and right channel data before playback. Slower 286 or 386 machines may not be able to keep up with high speed, high fidelity audio. 3) The game is using audio buffers which are too small for the UltraSound to effectively "double buffer" the data. The technique called "double buffering" provides clear sound without clicks or pauses in audio, and smooth animations in video. Optimal data sizes for UltraMID are multiples of 2K for stereo data and multiples of 4K for mono data. When I run ULTRAMID I get a 'error loading patch' message. 1) You must be running the patches that came with the V2.x software. This includes V2.0, V2.2, V2.4, V2.5 and the latest V2.6 disk sets. 2) A patch may either be missing or corrupt. If you are unable to determine which one simply reinstall the patches. The games says that it can't run because there is not enough memory. 1) If you are using an Expanded Memory Manager (emm386, qemm, bluemax, 386max, etc) you can load the driver into high memory to provide more conventional memory for your game. Make sure the following line is in your config.sys: DOS=HIGH,UMB If you are using DOS 5 or DOS 6, you can use the LH command to load UltraMID into high memory. For example: LH ultramid -m100 -c will load ultramid into high memory, set the master volume to 100 (out of 127), and preload as many patches as will fit into your UltraSound card. 2) If you cannot use an Expanded Memory Manager but can use an extended memory manager (himem.sys), then also include the DOS=HIGH,UMB line in your config.sys so that DOS will be loaded into upper memory. 3) If you can't fit UltraMID into high memory, try loading other drivers or TSR's into high memory using DEVICEHIGH= instead of DEVICE= in your config.sys and LH in your autoexec.bat files. 4) DOS 6 comes with a utility called MEMMAKER that will help you optimize the use of memory on your machine. QEMM comes with a utility called optimize to help you optimize your memory. BLUEMAX and 386MAX also have programs to help you maximize the use of expanded and extended memory. 5) If there are other drivers in your system that you don't need to play the game, try making a floppy disk with just the programs you need to get your machine running. For example, FORMAT /s a: will format a disk in the "A" drive and copy MS-DOS to it. Then create a minimal config.sys and autoexec.bat such as: CONFIG.SYS: DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.exe 1024 ram (size varies) DOS=HIGH,UMB SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS\ /E:768 /p files=20 buffers=20 LASTDRIVE = D AUTOEXEC.BAT: PATH C:\DOS;C:\ULTRASND;C:\UTILS SET ULTRASND=220,1,1,11,7 SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRASND SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T1 LH C:\UTILS\MOUSE LH ULTRAMID -m100 -c rem if you have the memory available, and you are not using rem the -c option, Smart Drive improves the performance rem for loading patches tremendously. I have 8Mb on my rem machine, so I usually set up a 4Mb disk cache. LH C:\DOS\smartdrv /Q 4096 0 c These examples are for experienced DOS users, and probably won't work with your machine without some modification. Please consult your DOS manual or a book that covers memory management to get more hints on how to manage PC memory. ....................... END of Chapter 5 ........................... THE ENDDownload Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
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Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
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