Rebuilding an old PC for SS1 with Gravis Ultrasound

[6647d12c21154FruityFrank]

Hi there,

I'm in the process of building an old PC for playing 90s games, mainly SS1 and watching old demoscene goodness.
So i got myself a Pentium 200MMX and I still have my SS1 installation CD. So far so good,  but what I can't remeber is, how I got my Gravis Ultrasound to work with SS1 back in the days. You can't select that card in the SS1 setup tool, but there is a batch-file shockgus.bat that prepares the card for SS1. But does anyone remember the exact process of selecting GUS für SS1?

Just to be clear: I'm not interested in mods or dosbox and gog versions or emulations, ... just plain vanilla ss1 (cd version) on real old hardware and a crt

many thanks in advance

got it to work by getting the "Audio Interface Libraries 3.0 (AIL 3.0) V3.11" from here:

http://www.gravisultrasound.com/files/game_utils/USAIL311.ZIP

Instructions are inside. I replaced the sb16 and the mpu401 sounddriver in the system shock install directory with then ones from that zip. Then I chose soundblaster16 and General Midi as sound and midi cards in the system shock sound setup tool.
Autodetect worked. Don't run the shockgus.bat, it will break things.

[6647d12c21306Creamy]

Don't forget a VFX-1 headset!

[6647d12c21421FruityFrank]

i actually have one, but lacking the interface card :<

[6647d12c215aaGawain]

It may work with first GUS cards. I didn't get it to work with my GUS PNP.
You can take a look at this topic.
It is about DosBox but the files may be right or give you ideas where to look.

[6647d12c2184bFruityFrank]

Gawainhmmm, whats the missing link here ... I had SS1 running on a gus in the mid 90s, and all I was able to do back then was to fiddle around with some config files. How the heck did I get it to work back then 
Is it possible that the SS1 floppy version included GUS support and I maybe managed to somewhat copy it over to the cd version?

[6647d12c21a18JDoran]

If you need any advise about building or using old PCs and their software, then VOGONS (Very Old Games On New Systems) at:

https://www.vogons.org/index.php

is a great forum, as, despite the name, they also have many experts on using older hardware too, including some members who prefer to play older PC games on period-authentic hardware. There is a wealth of expertise there on hardware and software (games, drivers, various versions of DOS and Windows 9x/NT x/etc) and they should be able to answer any of your questions.

[6647d12c21cf9RocketMan]

Pretty much all of it is using old hardware.  I seldom see people there talking about new stuff.

Also make sure you don't have a messy autoexec and config file, as SS1 likes to refuse to run due to sloppy memory allocation.

[6647d12c21e5bGawain]

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/System_Shock#Middleware

I'm not sure if I tried this one, but I tried something like this with GUS PNP and it didn't work. I remember creating that CUSTOM.GUS file.

[6647d12c220c4FruityFrank]

JDoran Hello JDoran, thanks for the hint. Since this is a very SS1 specific question I thought I'd try my luck here

[6647d12c222edFruityFrank]

Gawain thanks Gawain, it sortof confirms that I should take a look at the ss1 disk version.

[6647d12c2248bFruityFrank]

So just in case anyone else is trying:
I finally got it to work by getting the "Audio Interface Libraries 3.0 (AIL 3.0) V3.11" from here:

http://www.gravisultrasound.com/files/game_utils/USAIL311.ZIP

Instructions are inside. I replaced the sb16 and the mpu401 sounddriver in the system shock install directory with then ones from that zip. Then I chose soundblaster16 and General Midi as sound and midi cards in the system shock sound setup tool.
Autodetect worked. Don't run the shockgus.bat, it will break things.

enjoy.

[6647d12c225bbRocketMan]

I wonder if you stumbled upon anything the Vogons guys would want to know?  I never had a GUS, as SB just seemed easier and better supported but I might try it one day.

[6647d12c226f8voodoo47]

attached the zip to the first post.

[6647d12c22955FruityFrank]

RocketManI visited the vogons because I had trouble setting up that old PC. But it turned out that some of my gravis card are broke and hence the pc always froze. The one gus that now works is a gus classic. All my gus max cards seem to have some serious hardware issues: lose crystals, one with a burnt trace and the 3rd one, idk yet. I got another old pc to verify its not just some weird/rare gus<->mainboard compatibility issue.

[6647d12c22a3fGawain]

Great. I will have to try this with GUS PNP card.

[6647d12c22c26FruityFrank]

Gawainpnp is a different beast. I tried it today and failed ...
Please let us know when you have any success

[6647d12c22f01FruityFrank]

finally got it working with a gus pnp. Wow, that was hard.

• Avoid irq 11 when configuring the gus
• Don't patch the games' sound drivers
• Configure megaEM 3.11 (part of the pnp setup cd) with SoundCanvas and Soundblaster emulation
• Don't use ultramid

The megaEM part was the hardest, since it refused to run on my maschine. It insists on a memory extender like emm386 which is part of msdos. But no matter what option I tried when loading emm386 in the config.sys, megaEM always had something to complain about and wouldn't load. I tried that special, patched by Gravis emm386 version as well, but no luck ...
The solution was to use a 3rd party memory extender. I tried 386max but without success, then I tried qemm without success at first, but kept trying and chose a minimal configuration. And then, wow, I was about to give up but then it worked. MegaEm starts, System Shock will find the soundcards and the music sounds exactly as I remember from back in the days.

my configs:

config.sys

Code: [Select]

DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\DISPLAY.SYS CON=(EGA,,1)
COUNTRY=049,850,C:\DOS\COUNTRY.SYS
DOS=LOW,UMB
FILES=40
BUFFERS=30
STACKS=0,0
LASTDRIVE=F
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM BE:N
DEVICE=C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND\IWINIT.EXE ID=GRV00001 INTERWAVE=C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND\IW.INI

autoexec.bat

Code: [Select]

@REM ===== Gravis initialization (1.3) =====
@SET INTERWAVE=C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND\IW.INI
@SET IWDIR=C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND
@C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND\IWINIT.EXE
@C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND\GETIWENV.EXE > C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND\SETIWENV.BAT
@CALL C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND\SETIWENV.BAT
@SET ULTRADIR=C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND
@REM ===== Gravis initialization ends =====

@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
SET PATH=C:\ULTRAPNP\MIDI;C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND;C:\DOS
SET TEMP=C:\DOS
KEYB GR,,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
LH mmouse /A0 /Q
MEGAEM

cyb.cfg

Code: [Select]

midi_list 7
lowres_cutscenes 0
midi_io -1
midi_irq -1
inp6d -1
digi_list 0
joystick 128
midi_card 12
midi_dma -1
midi_drq -1
cd_data_dir_path C:\FULL_CD\SSHOCK\cdrom\data
digi_io -1
digi_irq -1
digi_card 1
digi_dma -1
language 0
digi_drq -1


[6647d12c2304aRocketMan]

You have little to nothing loaded so EMM386 shouldn't be a problem, although I'm wondering why you loaded DOS to LOW.  There are a couple of tricks to get more ram such as overwriting the monochrome display area that nobody uses but given how little you're loading into memory, it shouldn't matter.  Although I will say the order you load things does matter and if the memory manager sticks something in the middle of the block, it sometimes causes problems with certain programs that are looking for large blocks of contiguous memory.

[6647d12c23131FruityFrank]

the megaEM tool absolutely insists on loading it. its very specific there ...