Gravis Ultrasound - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Gravis UltraSound or GUS is a sound card

Sound card

A sound card is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware...

for the IBM PC compatible

IBM PC compatible

IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...

system platform, made by Canada-based Advanced Gravis Computer Technology

Advanced Gravis Computer Technology

Advanced Gravis Computer Technology, Ltd. was a manufacturer of computer peripherals and hardware. The company was founded in 1982 in British Columbia, Canada....

Ltd. It was very popular in the demo scene in the 1990s, due to its superior sound quality compared to similarly-priced soundcards of its time.

The Gravis UltraSound was unique at the time of its launch (1992) with its use of 'wavetable' sample-based music synthesis

Sample-based synthesis

Sample-based synthesis is a form of audio synthesis that can be contrasted to either subtractive synthesis or additive synthesis. The principal difference with sample-based synthesis is that the seed waveforms are sampled sounds or instruments instead of fundamental waveforms such as the saw waves...

technology on the IBM PC platform — the ability to use real-world sound recordings rather than artificial computer-generated waveforms to base a musical instrument on; so a piano sounds like an actual real piano, a trumpet like an actual trumpet, etc. The GUS was remarkable for MIDI playback quality with a large set of instrument patches that could be stored in its own RAM, having up to 32 hardware audio channels.

The cards (all manufactured on red PCB

Printed circuit board

A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...

s, similar to fellow Canadian company ATI

Ati

As a word, Ati may refer to:* Ati, a town in Chad* Ati, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines* Ati-Atihan Festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines* Ati, a queen of the fabled Land of Punt in Africa...

) were very agreeably priced, although a little more expensive than Creative cards; they undercut many equivalent professional cards aimed at musicians by a huge margin, and brought CD quality audio reproduction within the grasp of home PC users.

UltraSound (Classic)

The first UltraSound was released in early October 1992, along with the Gravis PC GamePad

Gravis PC GamePad

The Gravis PC GamePad is a game port game controller produced by Advanced Gravis Computer Technology. It was the first gamepad for the IBM PC compatible in a market then dominated by joysticks...

. The initial card didn't fully conform to the Multimedia PC

Multimedia PC

The Multimedia PC, or MPC, was a recommended configuration for a PC with a CD-ROM drive. The standard was set and named by the "Multimedia PC Marketing Council", which was a working group of the Software Publishers Association . The MPMC comprised companies including Microsoft, Creative Labs,...

requirement, due to absence of 16-bit audio recording and onboard analog mixer (used to control volume of analog CD, line-in etc. inputs). The final revision (v3.74) of the GUS Classic featured 256 KB

Kilobyte

The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...

of onboard RAM (upgradeable to 1024 KB through DIP

Dual in-line package

In microelectronics, a dual in-line package is an electronic device package with a rectangular housing and two parallel rows of electrical connecting pins. The package may be through-hole mounted to a printed circuit board or inserted in a socket.A DIP is usually referred to as a DIPn, where n is...

sockets), hardware analog mixer, and support for 16-bit recording through a separate daughterboard based on the Crystal Semiconductor CS4231 audio codec

Codec

A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of "compressor-decompressor" or, more commonly, "coder-decoder"...

UltraSound MAX

Released in 1994, a version of GUS with CS4231 codec on board, 512 KB of RAM on board (upgradeable to 1024 KB with a single SOJ

Small-Outline Integrated Circuit

A small-outline integrated circuit is a surface-mounted integrated circuit package which occupies an area about 30–50% less than an equivalent DIP, with a typical thickness that is 70% less. They are generally available in the same pinouts as their counterpart DIP ICs...

chip) and Panasonic/Sony/Mitsumi CD-ROM

CD-ROM

A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....

interface slots. CS4231 provided support for Windows Sound System

Windows Sound System

Windows Sound System was a sound card specification developed by Microsoft for use in their Windows 3.0 with MPC extensions. WSS featured support for up to 16-bit 48 kHz digital sampling, better than the contemporary Sound Blaster Pro...

specs (although the IO port range didn't match the WSS hardware) and could be used for SoundBlaster emulation. The software CD included a demo that featured "3D holographic sound" through the use of software HRTF

Head-related transfer function

A head-related transfer function is a response that characterizes how an ear receives a sound from a point in space; a pair of HRTFs for two ears can be used to synthesize a binaural sound that seems to come from a particular point in space. Some consumer home entertainment products designed to...

filters.

UltraSound Plug & Play (PnP)

Released in 1995, a new card based on AMD InterWave technology with a completely different sound set. Featured
1 MB of sound ROM, no onboard RAM (although it could be expanded to 8 MB with two 30-pin SIMMs), and ATAPI
CD-ROM

CD-ROM

interface. A 'Pro' version added 512 KB of on-board RAM required for compatibility with GUS Classic.

UltraSound ACE (Audio Card Enhancer)

Released in 1995, a budget version of UltraSound Classic with 512 KB of RAM (upgradable to 1024 KB, just as the MAX); had no game port or recording. Marketed as a competitor to Wave Blaster

Creative Wave Blaster

The Wave Blaster was an add-on MIDI-synthesizer for Creative Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster AWE32, and AWE64 family of PC soundcards. It was a sample-based synthesis General MIDI compliant synthesizer...

-compatible cards, it was supposed to be installed alongside a SoundBlaster Pro/16 card as a 'wavetable synthesis' upgrade.
Prototype of this card was named "Sound Buddy".

UltraSound CD3

An OEM version of UltraSound Classic with 512–1024 KB of RAM; featuring AT-BUS CD-ROM interfaces: Sony, Mitsumi and MKE/Panasonic standards. Produced by Synergy. This is the only Gravis soundcard with green circuit board and is similar to a few card clones, including the Primax SoundStorm Wave (model Sound M-16B) and the AltraSound.

UltraSound Extreme

Released in 1996, 3rd party OEM solution that combined UltraSound Classic with an ESS AudioDrive ES1688 sound chip for Sound Blaster Pro and AdLib

AdLib

Ad Lib, Inc. was a manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval...

emulation. Produced by Synergy as the ViperMAX. It has 1 MB RAM by default, but cannot be upgraded any further.

UltraSound Clones and OEM cards

All clones used original Gravis GF1 or AMD InterWave soundchip.

Primax SoundStorm Wave (GF1) - there were two variants of cards from the well known scanner and mouse producer. Re-labeled Altrasound as Sound M-16B and different Sound M-16C with 4x CD-ROM Interfaces.
Synergy ViperMAX (GF1) - same card later repacked as UltraSound Extreme, but with only 512kB RAM onboard.
Expertcolor MED3201 (InterWave LC) - probably the only card with cut-down variant of GFA1 chip - AM78C200 InterWave LC. First series was with standard Am78C201KC.
Compaq Ultra-Sound 32 (InterWave) - one of the last InterWave cards was designed for Compaq Presario desktops. Newer "C" revision of InterWave - AM78C201AKC and TEA6330T fader. Produced by STB Systems.
STB Systems Soundrage 32 (InterWave) - standard InterWave card missing SIMM slots and IDE interface. There was "Pro" variant with 512kB RAM. AM78C201KC chip.
Core Dynamics DYNASonix 3D/PRO (InterWave) - featured additional DSP chip that offered a graphic equalizer and additional sound FX presets.
Philips PCA761AW (InterWave)

GF1

The GF1 was co-developed by Advanced Gravis and Forte Technologies (creator of the VFX1 Headgear virtual reality

Virtual reality

Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...

helmet) and produced by Integrated Circuit Systems under the ICS11614 moniker. The chip was actually derived from the Ensoniq

Ensoniq

Ensoniq Corp. was an American electronics manufacturer, best known throughout the mid 1980s and 1990s for its musical instruments, principally samplers and synthesizers.- Company history :...

OTTO (ES5506)

Ensoniq ES-5506 OTTO

The Ensoniq ES-5506 "OTTO" was a 32 voice wavetable oscillator chip used in implementations of wavetable synthesizers. Musical instruments and PC sound cards were the most popular applications....

chip, a next-generation version of the music-synthesizer chip found in the Ensoniq ESQ-1

Ensoniq ESQ-1

Ensoniq ESQ-1 is a hybrid digital-analog synthesizer released by Ensoniq in 1986. The ESQ-1 featured 8 voices with 3 digital oscillators per voice. Each oscillator could be set to one of 32 different waveforms. Some of these were standard simple waveforms such as sawtooth and pulse, while others...

and Mirage

Ensoniq Mirage

The Ensoniq Corporation's Mirage was an 8-bit sampler introduced in 1984. Priced below $2000 with features previously only found on more expensive samplers like the Fairlight CMI, it became a best seller....

, as well as the Apple IIGS.

The GF1 was purely a sample-based synthesis

Sample-based synthesis

chip with the polyphony

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

of 32 oscillators, so it could mix up to 32 mono PCM samples (or 16 stereo samples) entirely in hardware. The chip had no built-in codec

Codec

, so the sounds had to be downloaded to onboard RAM

Ram

-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...

before they could be played back. Sound compression algorithms such as IMA

Interactive Multimedia Association

The Interactive Multimedia Association was an industry association which developed a set of audio algorithms. The most important is the ADPCM algorithm which is in use by Apple and Microsoft....

ADPCM were not supported, so compressed samples had to be decompressed prior to loading.

The sound-quality of the GF1 was not constant, and depended on the selected level of polyphony. A CD-quality 44.1 kHz sample rate was maintainable up to 14-voice polyphony; the sample rate progressively deteriorated until 19.2 kHz at the maximum 32-voice polyphony. The polyphony level was software programmable, so the programmer could choose the appropriate value to best match the application. Advanced sound effects such as reverb

Reverberation

Reverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed. A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air...

and chorus

Chorus effect

In music, a chorus effect occurs when individual sounds with roughly the same timbre and nearly the same pitch converge and are perceived as one...

were not supported in hardware, although software simulation was possible (a basic "echo" effect could be simulated with additional tracks, and some trackers could program effects using additional hardware voices as accumulators).

Sample RAM

The UltraSound offered MIDI playback by loading instrument patches into adapter RAM

Ram

located on the card, not unlike how instruments are stored in ROM

Read-only memory

Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...

on sample-based 'wavetable' cards. The card came with a 5.6 MB set of instrument patch (*.PAT) files; most the patches were sampled at 16-bit resolution and looped to save space. The patch files were continuously tweaked and updated in each software release.

The card's various support programs used .INI files to describe what patches should be loaded for each program change event. This architecture allowed Gravis to incorporate a General MIDI-compatible mapping scheme. Windows 95/98 drivers used UltraSound.INI to load the patch files on demand. In DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

, the loading of the patches could be handled by UltraMID, a middleware

Middleware

Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...

TSR

Terminate and Stay Resident

Terminate and Stay Resident is a computer system call in DOS computer operating systems that returns control to the system as if the program has quit, but keeps the program in memory...

solution provided by Gravis that removed the need to handle the hardware directly. (Programmers were free to include the static version of the UltraMID library in their applications, eliminating the need for the TSR.) The application programmer could choose to preload all patches from disk (resizing as necessary to fit into the UltraSound's on-board RAM), or have the middleware track the patch change events and dynamically load them on demand. This latter strategy, while providing better sound quality, introduced a noticeable delay when loading patches, so most applications just preloaded a predefined set.

Each application could have their own UltraMID.INI which contained a set of patch substitutions for every possible amount of sample RAM (256/512/768/1024 KB), so that similar instruments were used when there was not enough RAM to hold all of the patches needed (even after resampling to smaller sizes), and unused instruments were never loaded. This concept was similar to the handling of sample banks in digital samplers

Sampler (musical instrument)

A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...

; some games — including Doom, Doom II
Doom II
Doom II: Hell on Earth is an award winning first-person shooter video game and second title of id Software's Doom franchise. Unlike Doom which was initially only available through shareware and mail order, Doom II was a commercial release sold in stores...

and Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter computer game developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive Software. The full version was released for the PC . It is a sequel to the platform games Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II published by Apogee...

— came with their own optimised UltraMID.INI.

The UltraSound cards gained great popularity in the PC tracker music community. The tracker format was originally developed on the Commodore

Commodore International

Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...

Amiga

The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...

personal computer in 1987, but due to the PC becoming more capable of producing high quality graphics and sound, the demo scene spilled out onto the platform in droves and took the tracker format with it. Typical tracker formats of the era included MOD

MOD (file format)

MOD is a computer file format used primarily to represent music, and was the first module file format. MOD files use the “.MOD” file extension, except on the Amiga where the original trackers instead use a “mod.” prefix scheme, e.g. “mod.echoing”...

, S3M and, later, XM. The format stores the notes and the instruments digitally in the file instead of relying on a sound card to reproduce the instruments. A tracker song, when saved to disk, typically incorporates all the sequencing data plus samples, and typically the composer would incorporate his or her assumed name into the list of samples. This primitive precursor to the modern sampler

Sampler (musical instrument)

opened the way for Gravis to enter the market, because the requirements matched the capabilities of the GF1 chip ideally. The problem with the other sound cards playing this format was that they had to downmix

Downmixing

Downmixing is a general term used for manipulating audio where a number of distinct audio channels are mixed together to produce a lower number of channels...

voices into one or both of its output channels in software, further deteriorating the quality of 8-bit samples in process. An UltraSound card was able to download the samples to its RAM and mix them using fast and high-quality hardware implementation, offloading the CPU from the task. Gravis realized early on that the demo scene support could be a sales booster and they gave away 6000 cards for free to the most famous scene groups and people in the scene.

See also: Tracker

Compatibility

As the GF1 chip does not contain AdLib-compatible OPL2 circuitry or a codec

Codec

chip, Sound Blaster

Sound Blaster

The Sound Blaster family of sound cards was the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95, which standardized the programming interface at application level , and the evolution in PC design led to onboard...

compatibility was difficult to achieve at best. Consumers were expected to learn how to tweak the emulation software used to emulate other standards, an activity not necessary with many other cards that emulated the Sound Blaster through their sound hardware. The emulation software ran as a huge TSR

Terminate and Stay Resident

Terminate and Stay Resident is a computer system call in DOS computer operating systems that returns control to the system as if the program has quit, but keeps the program in memory...

that was difficult to manage in the pre-Windows days of complicated DOS extender

DOS extender

A DOS extender is a computer software program which enables software to run under a protected mode environment even though the host operating system is only capable of operating in real mode....

s.

Although there was native support for many popular games which used middleware sound libraries like HMI Sound Operating System, the Miles Audio Interface Libraries (AIL), the Miles Sound System

Miles Sound System

Miles Sound System , formerly known as Audio Interface Library , is a sound software system primarily for video games and used mostly as an alternative for low-end audio chipsets. It uses little CPU time while providing adequate audio output. It was originally a middleware driver library for...

and others, the user had to patch the games by replacing the existing sound drivers with the UltraSound versions provided on the installation CD. Also, the UltraSound required two DMA

Direct memory access

Direct memory access is a feature of modern computers that allows certain hardware subsystems within the computer to access system memory independently of the central processing unit ....

channels for full-duplex operation, and 16-bit channels were generally faster so many users chose to use them, but this led to errors for games that used the DOS/4GW

DOS/4GW

DOS/4G is a 32-bit DOS extender developed by Rational Systems . It allows DOS programs to eliminate the 640 KB conventional memory limit by addressing up to 64 MB of extended memory on Intel 80386 and above machines....

DOS extender, which was common in the UltraSound's era.

The two principal software sound emulators included with software package were:

SBOS, Sound Board OS — Sound Blaster Pro 8-bit stereo emulation and AdLib
AdLib
Ad Lib, Inc. was a manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval...

FM synthesis. It was a real-mode software emulator that recreated the AdLib
AdLib
Ad Lib, Inc. was a manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval...

's OPL2 FM synth chip and required that the user had, at the least, a 286
Intel 80286
The Intel 80286 , introduced on 1 February 1982, was a 16-bit x86 microprocessor with 134,000 transistors. Like its contemporary simpler cousin, the 80186, it could correctly execute most software written for the earlier Intel 8086 and 8088...

processor. There were special versions for the UltraSound MAX (MAXSBOS) and AMD InterWave-based cards (IWSBOS), which made use of the CS4231 codec chip instead.
Mega-Em — advanced emulation software that required at least a 386
Intel 80386
The Intel 80386, also known as the i386, or just 386, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time...

processor and EMM
Expanded memory
In DOS memory management, expanded memory is a system of bank switching introduced April 24, 1985 that provided additional memory to DOS programs beyond the limit of conventional memory. Expanded memory uses parts of the address space normally dedicated to communication with peripherals for program...

manager with DPMI/VCPI support. Mega-Em emulated the 8-bit Sound Blaster
Sound Blaster
The Sound Blaster family of sound cards was the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95, which standardized the programming interface at application level , and the evolution in PC design led to onboard...

circuitry for sound effects and the Roland MT-32
Roland MT-32
The Roland MT-32 Multi-Timbre Sound Module is a MIDI synthesizer module first released in 1987 by Roland Corporation. Along with its compatible modules, it established an early de-facto standard in computer music and was the first product in Roland's ミュージくん line of Desktop Music System packages...

/LAPC-I
Roland LAPC-I
The Roland LAPC-I is a sound card for IBM PC compatible computers produced by Roland Corporation. It basically consists of a MT-32-compatible Roland CM-32L and a MPU-401 unit, integrated onto a single full-length 8-bit ISA card. In addition to normal Roland dealers aimed at musicians, it was...

or Roland Sound Canvas
Roland Sound Canvas
Roland/Edirol Sound Canvas lineup is a series of PCM-based MIDI sound modules and PC sound cards primarily intended for computer music usage, created by Roland Corporation. All Sound Canvas modules are General MIDI compatible...

/MPU-401
MPU-401
The MPU-401, where MPU stands for MIDI Processing Unit, was an important but now obsolete interface for connecting MIDI-equipped electronic music hardware to Personal Computers...

for music. It supported UltraMID TSR functionality.

Developer support

In contrast to the competing Creative Labs Sound Blaster

Sound Blaster

, which generated music through FM synthesis, the GF1 chip produced music through playback of digitized audio samples. Therefore, the Gravis UltraSound could produce far more acoustically complex game audio. However, most PC software had audio engines designed and implemented for the Sound Blaster programming model (FM synthesis for music and frequent sound effects, with an occasional PCM sample for rare high-value sounds.) At this time, many DOS

DOS

game developers had already adopted Middleware audio packages (such as Miles Audio Design), to remove them from the burden of writing low-level audio routines. For most developers, exploiting the Gravis's PCM capabilities would have required a complete rewrite or an additional, dedicated codebase. Although many middleware standards added support for the GUS over time, these were largely just reworkings of the generic General MIDI

General MIDI

General MIDI or GM is a standardized specification for music synthesizers that respond to MIDI messages. GM was developed by the MIDI Manufacturers Association and the Japan MIDI Standards Committee and first published in 1991...

support, without any custom samples to take advantage of the UltraSound's RAM-based architecture, and support for these more-advanced features was slow to come and were rare. Most of the middleware standards adhered to the Sound Blaster programming model, using the Gravis card for improved MIDI playback with the occasional PCM sound effect. Only a handful of games supported the UltraSound's native mode for 'freeform' PCM playback, but those that did used it to great effect (Star Control 2 is one example).

AMD InterWave

The great potential of the original UltraSound enabled Advanced Gravis to license the new GFA1 chip and software to AMD, who were trying to make it into the sound chip market at the time. The chip, released in 1995, was named AMaDeus, with the AMD part number of Am78C201 and was marketed as InterWave. It was enhanced to handle up to 16 MB of onboard memory, IMA

Interactive Multimedia Association

The Interactive Multimedia Association was an industry association which developed a set of audio algorithms. The most important is the ADPCM algorithm which is in use by Apple and Microsoft....

ADPCM-compressed samples, have no sample rate drop at full 32 voices, and featured additional logic to support hardware emulation of FM synthesis and simple delay-based digital sound effects such as reverb and chorus. It was compatible with CS4231 codec installed in the UltraSound MAX or 16-bit recording daughterboard for the UltraSound Classic.

The sound "patch set" was reworked from a collection of individual instrument .PAT files to a unified .FFF/.DAT sound bank format, resembling SoundFont

SoundFont

SoundFont is a brand name that collectively refers to a file format and associated technology designed to bridge the gap between recorded and synthesized audio, especially for the purposes of computer music composition...

, which could be either ROM or RAM based. There were 4 versions of the sound bank: a full 16-bit 4 MB with 8-bit downsampled 2 MB version, and 16-bit 2 MB (different sample looping

Sampling (music)

In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...

) with 8-bit downsampled 1 MB version. A converter utility, GIPC, was provided for making .FFF/.DAT banks out of .PAT/.INI collections.

The reference card contained 1 MB μ-law ADPCM compressed sound ROM, which contained basic General MIDI

General MIDI

voices and sound samples to help FM emulation, and 2 slots for RAM expansion through 30-pin SIMM

SIMM

A SIMM, or single in-line memory module, is a type of memory module containing random access memory used in computers from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. It differs from a dual in-line memory module , the most predominant form of memory module today, in that the contacts on a SIMM are redundant...

s. The IWSBOS emulator was reworked to include Mega-Em features such as General MIDI emulation, and the SBOS kernel was included in Windows 95 drivers to provide emulation in a DOS Box

Virtual DOS machine

Virtual DOS machine is Microsoft's technology that allows running legacy DOS and 16-bit Windows programs on Intel 80386 or higher computers when there is already another operating system running and controlling the hardware.-Overview:...

window.

The process of patching middleware sound 'drivers' was greatly simplified with PREPGAME utility, which could fix most known DOS games automatically either by correctly installing and configuring native InterWave drivers or replacing the binaries for some rare devices like Covox

Covox Speech Thing

The Covox Speech Thing was an external audio device attached to the computer to output digital sound. It was composed of the most primitive 8-bit DAC using a resistor ladder and an analogue signal output, and plugged in to the printer port of the PC.The circuit was marketed around 1986 by Covox,...

. It could also update DOS/4GW

DOS/4GW

extender to work around its 16-bit DMA bug.

The GFA1 featured a GUS/MAX compatibility mode, but base card was not compatible with UltraSound Classic unless some memory was installed.

The InterWave technology was used in Gravis UltraSound PnP
Plug-and-play
In computing, plug and play is a term used to describe the characteristic of a computer bus, or device specification, which facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system, without the need for physical device configuration, or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts.Plug...

line of cards. It was also licensed to various OEM

Original Equipment Manufacturer

An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a...

s such as STB Systems, Reveal, Compaq

Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....

, Dynasonic and ExpertColor. Some high-end OEM variants contained full-blown 4 MB patch set in ROM and proprietary hardware DSPs

Digital signal processor

A digital signal processor is a specialized microprocessor with an architecture optimized for the fast operational needs of digital signal processing.-Typical characteristics:...

to enable features like additional sound effect algorithms and graphic equalizer.

Software drivers for the InterWave were written by eTek Labs, containing the same development team as the earlier Forte Technologies effort. eTek Labs was split off from Forte Technologies just prior to this effort. In August 1999, eTek Labs was acquired by Belkin

Belkin

Belkin International, Inc., is a Californian manufacturer of computer hardware that specializes in connectivity devices, headquartered in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California...

and is currently their research and development team.

Demise

Despite the groundbreaking features, the Gravis's unique sample-RAM architecture proved too much for the industry. Some game developers of the time noted problems with the software development kit and the product's hardware design. On the user-side, the Sound Blaster emulation was especially hard to get right out of the box, and this resulted in a substantially high number of product returns at the store level and thus soured the retail channel on the product. Bundled software was refined over time, but Gravis could not distribute updates effectively.

The company itself also created its own trouble. When Gravis's list of promised supporting game titles failed to materialize, the company lost credibility with consumers and commercial developers. Several publishers and developers threatened to sue the company over misrepresentation of their products — pointing to outright fabrication of Gravis's list.

The shareware games industry embraced the Gravis more than the retail games industry. Famous companies which did this in an early stage were publisher Apogee

3D Realms

3D Realms is a current video game publisher and former video game developer based in Garland, Texas, United States, established in 1987...

and developers id software

Id Software

Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...

and Epic Megagames. Gravis can also claim victory in the demo scene, which had taken the GUS to its heart, ensuring a dedicated, cult following for a number of years. But without the marketing and developer presence of Creative Labs, Gravis could not generate either the sales or support required for the Gravis soundcard to compete in the mainstream market against the de-facto standard Soundblaster.

Although the InterWave chip was a substantially improved version of the GF1 chip, this new design was not able to hold up with the Sound Blaster AWE32

Sound Blaster AWE32

Sound Blaster AWE32 is an ISA sound card from Creative Technology. It is an expansion board for PCs. The Sound Blaster AWE32, introduced in March 1994, was a near full-length ISA sound card, measuring 14 inches in length, due to the number of features included.-MIDI capability:The Sound Blaster...

. More than that, AMD was facing financial troubles at the time so it was forced to close many projects, including the InterWave.

Due to dwindling sales, Gravis was eventually forced out of the soundcard business, and the UltraSound's failure nearly took the entire company down with it. Advanced Gravis, once one of the dominant players in the PC peripherals marketplace, had bet much of the future of the company on the UltraSound and paid the price for its demise. Shareholders sued the company charging gross incompetence by its management, in regards to the entire UltraSound effort. After significant restructuring, including acquisition by competitor Kensington Technology Group

Kensington Technology Group

Kensington Computer Products Group is a division brand of ACCO Brands, Inc. that sells computer accessories and periphery such as computer mice, computer keyboards, notebook bags, iPod accessories and power supplies. The brand is best known for the Kensington Lock, a lightweight lock system...

(via its parent, ACCO World Corp), the company retreated to its core-market, the one which had made it a success — joysticks and gamepads.

External links

GF1 Museum - information on GUS models
GUS Emulator
Gravis UltraSound WDM Driver Project
FreePats – a free collection of GUS-compatible patches by Eric A. Welsh
The History of PC Game MIDI by Eric Wing
Phonomenal... a retrospective view on sound card history
GravisUltraSound.org Museum of GF-1 and InterWave soundcards.
GravisUltrasound.com The Gravis Ultrasound Archives. Files and support forum.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.