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Gravis Ultrasound MAX 2.1 won't get setup in DOS or Windows 95 properly or at all

R

retro-pc_user

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SE Michigan, USA
I got myself a GUS Max 2.1 from shopgoodwill.com and nothing was missing or broken.

However, when I installed it in my 486 desktop to go along with my Sound Galaxy NX Pro 16 (also switched to the Snark Barker SB 1.5 clone afterwards), the files install without issues, except the setup program hangs at the IRQ, DMA, or RAM testing. Windows 95 complains that a version mismatch between grvsultr.386 and ultrasnd.vxd , even though I'm using the drivers meant for Windows 95.

This is the third GUS card I've had (the first one had no RAM and stopped working all of a sudden, the second one has no RAM and works in Windows 95 and not DOS, both are clones) and I followed everything correctly.

My 486 desktop is a Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus and I have the following disabled:
COM1
COM2
LPT1-4
Plug and Play

No IRQ or DMA conflicts in Windows 95 or DOS 7.10 either. Could it be the GF1 chip needs a reflow or replacement or is something else not set correctly?

Before I forget, I set the HW Address to 260h, Codec 36C, and the Panasonic drive set to 340h (no IRQs or DMAs for the Panasonic drive since the IRQs and DMAs are for the Sony or Mitsumi drives).
 
It's pretty much normal for the setup to hang on DMA testing, but it shouldn't on the RAM test. Definitely try with a stripped down system and dos only.

GUS clones with no ram? Those would be odd-balls that would not surprise me as not working with a lot of dos games.

The crystals still intact? Should be 3 on a MAX. Standing vertical the way they did them makes them susceptible to breakage, and the one for the GF1 chip is a weird frequency. I'm still trying to figure how to fix my original one (bought in '93).
 
GUS clones with no ram? Those would be odd-balls that would not surprise me as not working with a lot of dos games.
Click to expand...
He most likely means AMD InterWave-based cards. I have one of these as well. The ones with no memory aren't really clones, as they don't support loading of patches, so they are not GUS-compatible at all. They only work in games that uses the default GUS instruments. But these sound terrible anyway.

Also, they are not clones, because the AMD InterWave chip was available to any OEM to build sound cards with.
 
All of the crystals are intact and installed.

I'm planning on reflowing the crystals and the GF1 in case there're cold solder joints and see what happens. Could be capacitor issues as well, but I'm surprised the Panasonic CR-563-B CD drive works.
 
Try in pure DOS with no other sound card installed first before starting to do any soldering on the card! There's absolutely no indication (yet) that it's a hardware issue.
 
Try different driver versions. Not all may work with the MAX.

Also, you tried real MS-DOS, not the 7.x from Windows 9x?

What IRQ and DMA are set on the card? You say it's hanging there but never told us which ones you use.
 
3, 5, 7, and 11 are the ones I'm testing and the DMAs are 1 and 3-7.

I'll install another hard drive with DOS 6.22 and see what happens (I have a hard drive that I can format as FAT16 and install DOS 6.22 on it).
 
The BIOS doesn't have an option for the ISA speed (Packard Bell was known for this back then) and every cars I inserted before the GUS Max arrived had no issues.

By the way, I also changed the HW address to the following: 220, 240, 250, and 260 to no avail. I'll switch it back to 220 and remove the cards then see what happens. Could be a setting I missed.

Also, it might be the riser board has caps that are failing or have failed after 25+ years.
 
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I think you should stick with port 260, IRQ 7, and DMA 3. These are afaik the default values for a GUS and should work. They also allow having a Sound Blaster installed as well, which would use port 220, IRQ 5, and DMA 1.

I would simply try the card in a different system. You never know what weird quirks some OEM systems may have.
 
I turned on the Plug and Play so that it'll detect other cards and it shows the devices that are using the IRQ and DMA. I got the card set to 260h with the autoexec.bat showing the following:

SET ULTRASND=260,3,3,7,7
SET ULTRA16=31C,0,0,1,0

Also, the ultrint command locks up the system as well and I'll toss it into another computer and see what happens.
 
I'm not sure I understand you correctly. Is the GUS actually set to these values? You are not doing this with "SET ULTRASND", that is just a helper so software known where to find the card. You still need to configure it to use these values.

Anyway, let us know if you have luck in a second PC. If it doesn't work there either, it might be bad.
 
For the sound portion of the board, all you have to do is set the base address with jumpers, then ultrinit.exe initializes it with the values set in the ULTRASND environment variable.
 
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