VAGRANT PRESENTS A FiRE PRODUCTION: Why The Gravis UltraSound Sucks Have you ever noticed the extraordinary number of people that are in art groups that support the Gravis UltraSound? Have you noticed that some BBS systems mention it in the same breath as the omnipresent Sound Blaster... If so, you've been lied to. I'm an UNLUCKY soul who is stuck with one, and I'll tell you why I describe this situation in this way. First, I want to give some history. I'm a part-time computer technician at Gim Computers in downtown Atlanta. I'm a fairly decent techie, but due to time constraints and age problems, I don't get paid in cash, but in computer hardware. One of my "gifts" was a Gravis UltraSound, and that was a real mistake... I was handed it as I went out the door, and tried to install it into my 386 DX/40. I was suprised to find that this board had "Wavetabe Systhesis." I thought that this would be a great find, but I was mistaken. I installed it to find that it wouldn't fit inside my fairly new and not exactly non-standard Full Tower case! I managed to insert it after much manuvering, pushing, and plain brute force. It went in the second from last slot, several slots away from my video card, which, under normal circumstances, shouldn't cause any problems. To my suprise, the Gravis was affected by radiation coming off my video card. Ever unflappable, I moved the card away, and restarted my machine. I was off. I installed the software that came with the card, and found that it took 7 mb MINIMUM. This is unheard of for what isn't exactly a presentation quality card. It turns out that it copies patches to the drive, instead of the standard On-board ROM. This hogs disk space and is slower than the standard way of compressing them onto the card itself. At this point, I knew that I was in trouble. The next day, I was dead tired. I had had customers yell at me all day yesterday, and came home to a small disappointment. I was prepared to face the worst, and I did. The Gravis was unsupported by most of the softwares I had bought or gotten in less honorable ways. :) I was stuck with Sound Blaster support, commonly known to GUS users as SBOS (Sound Board Operating System ) and that made me even more displeased. I had expected PAS, or even SBPro support, but, instead SB, Mono, 8 bit support. I was livid, and called their BBS looking for information. I found a BETA, Roland emulation, but still a beta. The Roland fixed a music problem, but not the digital sounds and voice. I was stuck with SB, no matter what. I installed a game I had bought for only the purpose of installing after I recieved my sound card, Hardball III. Not exactly top of the line, but still a very servicable game. I installed all of the software correctly, set it up for Roland Music, SB sound. It didn't work. The emulator managed to lock the game. The digital voice managed to make the game lock-up at the start of action. I had to turn off the Sound, and run only Music. Once again, I was upset. I called Accolade the next day, and told them about my problem. They said they knew nothing about it, and told me to call Gravis. Unlikely, considering that they're based in Western Canada. I had already run up enough of an LD phone bill over this, and I decided to give up and live with 8-bit Mono. I came up with another idea. The GUS has 256k of DRAM on it, and I figured that was hardly enough. I went into work, and got another 256k of DRAMs... If you have ever seen a DRAM, you know you're in for a hard day's labor installing it. For those of you that don't, they look like 1 inch by 1/3 inch pieces of black ceramic, with little metal pins coming off the back. This is where you connect the DRAM, by bending the pins and inserting them CAREFULLY, into the slots. If not, you can 1. destroy the ram, 2. stick yourself badly, or 3. have to re-bend the pins and start over. I took out the card, once again with much difficulty, and began to install the 2 chips of 2x256k DRAMS. I missed, several times. The layout of the DRAMS was so compact that it was nearly impossible. Very badly made and planned card. It should have COME with 512k, as it's nearly REQUIRED. I finished, and found I had wasted time, energy, and some blood! All of the apps had run the same and I even found that one of my MIDIs even stopped working. I tried a different game, and got the same results. Once again, another game that I had obtained, Ultima Underworld 2. Different manufacturer, same result. The game started slowly, VERY slowly, and then stopped at a point 2 screens through the game. I had reached my tolerance limit. I began thinking of ways to get it to work. I tried the 32-bit AIL drivers, which change digital drivers into ones that work with the Gravis. Those didn't work. The games which did support Gravis, such as Doom, wouldn't run under normal circumstances, or told me that the Gravis couldn't be found. Overall, I'd say that a Gravis UltraSound is a bad purchase. The current lack of software compatability makes it a bad choice for users. The card lacks a SCSI port, unlike most Creative Labs products, and the layout of the card makes it almost impossible for the average user to use, service, and do necessary upgrades. To all of the people who say the Gravis is a great card, I say, "buy one, and call me in the morning."