SOUND BOARDS: ADVANCED GRAVIS
UltraSound Series
Last update: 12/26/97
- Phone:
- 800-663-8558, 604-431-5020
- Fax:
- 604-431-5155
- BBS:
- 604-431-5927
- e-mail:
- os2.driver@gravis.com for
Gravis, rjm@io.org for Robert Manley
- Web:
- http://www.gravis.com (Gravis),
http://www.io.org/~rjm (Robert Manley),
http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/sander/ (Sander van Leeuwen)
The Gravis boards get essentially no support from Gravis itself,
aside from an ancient and incomplete driver that was once released for
some now-discontinued boards (see below). Fortunately, shareware
drivers, known as "the Manley drivers,"
exist, and are currently being maintained by Sander van Leeuwen.
These drivers work with most or all of the boards on this page, with
the possible exception of the GUS Extreme.
People interested in GUS boards will have to look elsewhere or to the
used market, unfortunately, since Gravis has announced that they're
getting out of the sound card market. At the moment (December, 1997),
the Core Dynamics DynaSonix 3-D board is
still available, and uses the same Interwave chipset as the GUS PnP,
so die-hard Gravis lovers might look into that. Also, I've heard that
the manufacturer of the GUS Extreme is selling the board under their
own name, though I don't have more information than that.
UltraSound series:
Mixerless GUS, GUS Classic, and GUS Max
- Type:
- Wavetable
- Chipset:
- ICS GF1, CS4231
- CD-ROM:
- none (GUS)/proprietary (GUS Max: Sony, Mitsumi, Panasonic)
- Street price:
- N/A (Discontinued)
- OS/2 Drivers:
- Available from Gravis, but limited; or US$30 shareware from Robert Manley
- Drivers from:
- BBS, OS/2 ftp:
grav031a.zip,
ultra110.zip
- Comments:
- Gravis has "released alpha-level" drivers (an oxymoron), and
judging by the documentation, they're OK for OS/2-only use, but DOS
(and presumably Windows) programs will cause problems. Robert Manley
has released shareware drivers that reportedly work well for OS/2
(.WAV and MIDI playback, but not recording), DOS programs (GUS
"native" mode only), and Windows MIDI (after registration), but not
Windows .WAV-file. Sander van Leeuwen, the current Manley driver
maintainer, is reportedly working on Win-OS/2 drivers, but I have no
information on projected release dates for this. There's a beta
version of the 1.20-level drivers available that support recording
(including VTD in Warp 4.0, even on the older boards that support only
8-bit recording). The board itself is reported to produce quite good
sound. Note that this board does not use an MPU-401 hardware
interface for wavetable sound, unlike most wavetable boards. These
boards support full duplex operation, but the older mixerless GUSes
will record whatever is played back, and some board will only perform
full duplex when the input and output streams use the same sample
rate.
UltraSound series:
GUS PnP and PnP Pro
- Type:
- Wavetable
- Chipset:
- AMD Interwave
- CD-ROM:
- ??
- Street price:
- $125-$200 (higher prices for Pro version)
- OS/2 Drivers:
- Available, in beta as of 5/26/97 (US$30 shareware)
- Drivers from:
-
http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/sander/, http://www.io.org/~rjm
- Comments:
- These boards from Gravis utilize the AMD InterWave chipset,
which is supported in OS/2 only by the shareware Manley drivers.
These drivers support most of the features one would expect, including
both recording and playback of digital audio (.WAV) files, Warp 4.0's
VTD features, and wavetable playback (but only using samples loaded
from disk, which requires a board with 1-2MB of RAM to work well, so
users of these boards may want to invest in some on-board RAM).
Unlike earlier GUS boards, the Windows GUS PnP drivers (version 1.0)
work under OS/2, so you get full Windows support (MIDI and .WAV file)
with the PnP models, though some Windows programs may not exit
completely when the drivers are loaded, leading to corrupted OS/2 MIDI
file playback. The recently-released 2.0 Windows drivers reportedly
use VxDs, and so do not work under Win-OS/2, however. Sander van
Leeuwen, the current maintainer of the Manley drivers, says he's
working on a Win-OS/2 driver for all GUS boards, but this is not yet
finished. DOS programs that support the GUS will work in OS/2, but
there's no DOS SoundBlaster emulation from OS/2. These boards also
support full duplex operation. It's possible to get these boards
running with the older 1.10-level Manley drivers, but only by using
the IWINIT utility that comes with the board to set them up to emulate
the older GUS boards. The only differences between the PnP and the
PnP Pro are that the latter includes 512kB of RAM and a microphone.
Given the current pricing of RAM, however, and the need for more to
get wavetable sound under OS/2, the non-Pro version sounds like a
better deal to me, given a typical $40 price difference between the
two models.
Gravis UltraSound Extreme
- Type:
- Wavetable
- Chipset:
- ICS GF1 and ESS 1688
- CD-ROM:
- ??
- Street price:
- ???
- OS/2 Drivers:
- Uncertain
- Drivers from:
-
http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/sander/, http://www.io.org/~rjm,
http://www.esstech.com/techsupp/updates/intro_ud.htm
- Comments:
- This board is a hybrid of the older pre-InterWave GUS and an ESS-based
design. I've heard speculation that the board may work
with either or both of the ESS or Manley GUS drivers, but I've heard no
firm word on either. If you try one of these and have problems with the
Manley drivers, send e-mail to Sander van Leeuwen and he'll try to get
the Manley drivers working with it, if you can help by providing him with
information he'd need. There's a web page devoted to the Extreme at
http://home.dti.net/domingue/extreme.html.
Gravis ACE
- Type:
- Wavetable only
- Chipset:
- ICS GF1 (??)
- CD-ROM:
- ??
- Street price:
- ???
- OS/2 Drivers:
- Available
- Drivers from:
-
http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/sander/, http://www.io.org/~rjm
- Comments:
- This is a wavetable-only sound board intended to supplement an FM
synthesis board like a SoundBlaster 16 or any of the numerous
inexpensive boards based on OPTi, ESS, or Crystal Semiconductor
chipsets. This board is not a daughterboard, though; it's a
separate ISA board, and so doesn't depend on support from the primary
sound card. Unlike other standalone wavetable board, this one can
also play back, though not record, digital audio (.WAV files); it's
essentially a mixerless GUS without audio inputs. Also unlike other
standalone wavetable boards, this one doesn't use an MPU-401
interface; instead, it works with the Manley OS/2 drivers to produce
wavetable sound. I don't have any specific information or tips on
getting it working, though.
Copyright © 1996, 1997, Rod Smith, rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
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