GUS PnP - how can I make the most out of it?

[rpgs rock dvds]

I have a GUS PnP Pro, with 8mb of added RAM.  I am also a GUS noob.

What's the best way to use the extra 8mb of RAM?  Please can someone tell me where to get a good patch set?

Let's say I am using a good (and potentially large) patch set... if I run a DOS game inside Windows 98 "dos box", and I choose "gravis ultrasound" as my music sound card, will I be able to hear improved music sound coming from the extra RAM-based patch set, or will the sound card always use the default GUS classic patch set for music? 

Or, to put my question a different way: is there any way to improve the music quality when using the GUS PnP with DOS games, either when playing games in windows 98 "dos box" mode, or in "real" mode DOS.

Thanks very much for any info!
Best regards, Robert.

[Rhizome]

To be honest, the GUS regarding games is only good for Lemmings 3 (uses it's own patch set) and any games that use music modules, such as Epic Pinball, Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies. There are several others, too.

The GUS was mostly used for the demoscene - Fast Tracker 2, Scream Tracker 3, Orpheus and Impulse Tracker all support the card natively (although Impulse Tracker will lack features such as the filters, as the GUS isn't capable of producing these in hardware). Basically, it was used more for producing music than playing games.

[rpgs rock dvds]

To be honest, the GUS regarding games is only good for Lemmings 3 (uses it's own patch set) and any games that use music modules, such as Epic Pinball, Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies. There are several others, too.

The GUS was mostly used for the demoscene - Fast Tracker 2, Scream Tracker 3, Orpheus and Impulse Tracker all support the card natively (although Impulse Tracker will lack features such as the filters, as the GUS isn't capable of producing these in hardware). Basically, it was used more for producing music than playing games.

Within your post, you refer to the Gravis soundcard as "the GUS" - do you mean either the GUS Classic/Max or the GUS PnP, or perhaps both?

I think the GUS Classic/Max was a good gaming card, IMHO. 

[Rhizome]

They all work the same way, which is why I refer to all of them as simply "GUS"

The whole generation of GUS cards are more about producing music with trackers in the demoscene than gaming - they were once called "a trackers best friend"

[BlueMax]

As a tracker, myself, I'd have to agree - it's more for tracking and DOS demoscene stuff than it is for games.  In the gaming world (using SBOS) it was a little on the weak side....

[rpgs rock dvds]

Thanks a lot for all replies. 

[enigma]

Sorry for digging out this old thread, but I also have a GUS PnP.

So in Win9x everything is fine, but as the thread starter already mentioned, what is the best way to use the GUS PnP in dos games?

My hardware is a GUS PnP with the usual 1 MB ROM and 8 MB RAM.

In DOS I have a setup with different soundfont profiles for iwinit. These are for example the 1 MB ROM soundfont, the 4 MB RAM soundfont from AMD, also some pat compilations as the original and propats lite 1.50. These were put together to *.fff and *.dat files with gipc.exe.
These different settings work fine, if I use play.exe which came with the GUS PnP programs to play Midi files.
(these can also used in Win9x)

But back to dos games. Barely any game supports the Interwave. Some support GUS classic however.
So if support isn't native it is usually aquires by using the Miles AIL drivers.

For AIL32 (example Sim City 2000) the usual way is to call loadpats.exe that loads pat files to the GUS memory depending on some .ini. It looks like that it limits to 1 MB. As for SC2000 by default it loads 81 patches, with force to 16 bit it loads 51 patches. So the 8 MB are no advantage here.

For AIL 3.x drivers. The GUS classic drivers do not require to have Ultramid / Megaem loaded and work fine. Still on the level of a GUS classic. The Interwave drivers do not detect my GUS PnP and won't work. (Is there a trick? Even editing the mdi.ini by hand to correct values didn't helped.)

Tho most games use the AIL 1.x drivers (the *.adv). These require UltraMID or MegaEM. I have Ultramid 1.12 and MegaEm 3.11.
MegaEm seems to use always the 1 MB ROM patchset of the GUS PnP. Unloading MegaEm seems to corrupt the GUS PnPs playback configuration somehow. If I run a game using UltraMid / MegaEm afterwards the sound is completely distorted.
UltraMid seems to use the pat files from the MIDI directory. I have also tried using the parameter -16 which seems to work. Still I haven't tested it enough yet. So I am not sure if UltraMids memory limitation is also 1 MB and it simply drops pat data if this limit is reached for songs that use alot of instruments.

Well now my questions:
Is it possible to let MegaEm use a GUS PnP soundfont (*.fff *.dat) or at least use 1024.bnk?
Any other way here, maybe to make a bnk file from a gus pnp soundfont that is larger than 1 MB and is used?

What is the real behaviour of ultramid? Does it take advantage of more than 1 MB RAM?

So any GUS PnP User or even specialist / expert here?

[BlueMax]

I only used mine to write music... 8MB of samples was a low-cost composer's dream!  Low system requirements, too - a 386DX could power 32 channels of audio because it was all in hardware!  Full 44.1khz 16-bit sound, too!