Gravis UltraSound or GUS is a sound card for the IBM PC compatible systems. It was lunched in 1992 and is notable for it's ability to use real-world sound recordings (wavetable) of a musical instruments rather than artificial computer-generated waveforms. As one of my friends used to say back then: "it sounds like a CD".
To enable GUS in DOSBox all you need to do is:
1. Download the archive with the GUS files from https://alex.www.pc-freak.net/files/GUS/ULTRASND.zip. Extract the archive (there is already a directory in it so you don't have to create one) preferably where you keep your DOSBox stuff (like Games).
2. Find your DOSBox config file. Depending on the version or host OS, the dosbox conf file is located either inside the user profile folder or inside the same folder as dosbox.exe. In Windows 7 the config file is located at
In GNU/Linux it's in "/home/Fred/.dosbox/dosbox.conf" where "Fred" is your username.
The name of the conf file may also have dosbox version (for example –
"dosbox-0.74.conf").
Open it with a text editor like notepad (Windows) or equvalent for GNU/Linux (vi, Kate, gedit…). Locate "[gus]" section (without the quotes) and edit it so it looks like this:
[gus] # gus: Enable the Gravis Ultrasound emulation. # gusrate: Sample rate of Ultrasound emulation. # Possible values: 44100, 48000, 32000, 22050, 16000, 11025, 8000, 49716. # gusbase: The IO base address of the Gravis Ultrasound. # Possible values: 240, 220, 260, 280, 2a0, 2c0, 2e0, 300. # gusirq: The IRQ number of the Gravis Ultrasound. # Possible values: 5, 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12. # gusdma: The DMA channel of the Gravis Ultrasound. # Possible values: 3, 0, 1, 5, 6, 7. # ultradir: Path to Ultrasound directory. In this directory # there should be a MIDI directory that contains # the patch files for GUS playback. Patch sets used # with Timidity should work fine.
3. Start DOSBox and mount "ULTRASND" directory to "C:".
You can do that with
mount c (directory to ULTRASND)
For example if you have extracted the archive in "C:\Games" it has created "C:\Games\ULTRASND" and the command you will have to write in DOSBox is
mount c c:\Games
(example: if your game is in "C:\Games\Heroes2" and your GUS directory is "C:\Games\ULTRSND" (if you have extracted the archive "C:\Games\") then you "mount c c:\Games" and you are set)
or for GNU/Linux if you have extracted the archive in "/home/Fred/Games" it has created "/home/Fred/Games/ULTRASND" and the command you will have to write in DOSBox is
mount c /home/Fred/Games (where "Fred" is your user name).
(example: if your game is in "/home/Fred/Games/Heroes2" and your GUS directory is "/home/Fred/Games/ULTRSND" (if you have extracted the archive" /home/Fred/Games/") in then you "mount c /home/Fred/Games" and you are set)
You can make this automatic so you don't have to write it everytime by adding this command in the end (bottom) part of your dosbox conf file and save it.
You're practicly ready. All you need to do now is set Gravis UltraSound in your game or application setup (for example with the file "setup.exe") with IO: 240, IRQ 5 and DMA 3. If you prefer you previous sound card you can do that by selecting it again from the setup without disabling GUS from the dosbox conf file.
In Vkotankte (Vk.com) – or the so called Russian Facebook there is a functionality to listen music while putting info on your wall or just chatting with friends. It's very, very handy functionality which facebook lacks. There while listening to some random Russian songs I come across a very, very nice modern disco pop song, I'm sure many others will like it. Too sad people part of western culture knows nothing of what is happening in Russia and this part of the world. There is plenty of nice Russian cultural things and modern songs to listen to.
Djigan – Hold me for the hand (Derzi mne za ruku) / Джиган – Держи меня за руку
Seems, My life is going nowhere. Today I drinked half of a bottle of Wine and 1 beer. I was out with Alex. We drinked in the city park. Through the day I started my first bsd jail using a tutorial online. I smoked a lot of cigarettes and I want to stop them again. Most of the people I met are not a good company for me that's what I'm thinking more and more. Also I'm thinking more and more I have to change my living place. If only I could find the love of my life … We moved bookshelf and stuff from our room ( My mother again has decided to make repairs in our room. ). I'm asking myself why shall I live a meaningless life. At least my interest into computers and computing started to appear again (this is cool). My faith is really going away since I pray and pray for something .. and I don't receive it ( Or at least I don't see it). I'm tired of waiting. I need to have this physical healing to continue my normal life. I'm not proud of me I was a little aggressive when we was in the Mino's coffee before an hour or so … Now I intend to watch another episode of stargate SG1. And to go to the DreamLand. If only I could live into a Dreamland all the time. I'm starting to realize I should change the music I listen, I should change a lot of my behaviours If I want to have a new and happy life. Autumn is a beautiful Season 🙂 The autumn rain shall come and restore us :)END—–
Some time ago I’ve stumbled upon a rocking song by a demoscene artist named with the loud and a bit funny name NINJA! 🙂 Anyways you can download the song here Industrial Bushido . By the way the guy has plenty of awesome music. All this is stored on the great modarchive website be sure to visit it! I guarantee you’ll never sorry that.END—–
I got curious whether someone had ported also the successor verion of Heroes of Might and Magic II strategy role play turn-based games sequels – Heroes of Might and Magic (HOMM) III. And was striken even Heroes of Might and Magic 3 game port is already available! To play HOMM 3 you need to install VCMI application on your android phone or tablet, if you search it directly from GooglePlayer Store you will notice 2 VCMI versions, be careful as one of the applications is already depreciated and is not working. VCMI app is based on the open source VCMI engine (check out VCMI wiki here) – attempt to rewrite entire Heroes of Might and Magic 3 from scratch!
Heroes of Might and Magic 3's graphics and music (all stored in the modern for that time mp3 music format) was strikingly innovative for its release time (HOMM3 was published in y. 1999).
I still remember the many days and night spent together with friends and my sister playing maniacally Heroes 3. Though Heroes 3 doesn't make in imprint in my mind just like Heroes 2, from my gamer period years 1999 to 2001.
Heroes 3 was one of the games I and many of my friends (at that time aged 17 – 18 yeard old). The game plot is not that different from Heroes 3 – you command an army of mythical creatures from different nations mythologies and from various ages. Heroes are given a choice of skills to upgrade upon levelling up, as well as becoming better at combat or the use of magic. Yiou command the hero over a map with sources, you get the resources to build new structures and army. There are artifacts all around you can get to make your hero strength greater, there is level of wisdom and varios other skills you can raise. You can buy multiple heroes and build strong armies and fight other player armies. Each player has his own number of belongings (castles, villages, mines etc.). The game includes plenty of mystic beings. Just like Heroes 2, a different "races" / castles / armies exist, just to mention few you can play with: Castle, Rampant, Tower, Inferno, Necropolis, Dungeon, Stronghold, Fortress Conflux …
Game Storyline
Heroes 3 story line unfolds across 7 playable campaigns all set upon the imaginery continent of Antagarich. During the campaigns, the story is told from alternating points of view, giving players the opportunity to play as each of the town alignments.
Following the disappearance of King Roland Ironfist of Enroth, his wife, Queen Catherine, is left to rule the realm. In the meantime, her father, King Gryphonheart of Erathia, is assassinated. Without their beloved King, the kingdom of Erathia falls to the dark forces of Nighon and Eeofol. Queen Catherine returns home to Antagarich seeking to rally the people of her homeland and lead them against the evil that has ravaged their nation.
Erathia's capital of Steadwick is sacked by the dungeon lords of Nighon and the Kreegans of Eeofol. Meanwhile, the nations of Tatalia and Krewlod skirmish at the western border, seizing the chance to expand their territory. Catherine's first task is to establish a foothold in the conquered kingdom by enlisting the aid of allies. The wizards of Bracada and the elves of AvLee answer her call, and together they push towards Steadwick and eventually retake it, quickly quelling the border war in the west. Soon after, Lucifer Kreegan, a commander in the Eeofol armies, sends an envoy to Erathia claiming that Roland Ironfist is captive within their territories. AvLee invades Eeofol, but fails to rescue Roland, who is transported to their northern holdings. Afterwards, Catherine invades Nighon, pushing the dungeon armies back to their island home.
In the meantime, the necromancers of Deyja, having been responsible for the assassination of King Gryphonheart, plot to revive his corpse as a lich. They plan to use his wisdom in leading their own armies of the undead. However, King Gryphonheart's will proves too much for the necromancers even in his corrupted state, and he becomes a rogue lich. Having little other recourse, Queen Catherine is forced to ally herself with the necromancers and together they set out to destroy the lich of King Gryphonheart before he becomes too powerful.
A final bonus campaign, accessible only after the main campaigns are complete, tells the story of separatists living in the Contested Lands, a war-torn border between Erathia and AvLee. Tired of the skirmishes that bring unrest to their homelands, they join together to fight for independence from the two large kingdoms. It is later implied that this rising was orchestrated by Archibald Ironfist, the antagonist of Heroes of Might and Magic II.
Whether you're looking for a game to kill some time and enjoy the old "spaceship shoot and run games" check out Torus Trooper. Originally game was developed for MS Windows and is remake of an old Atari Arcade Game – Tempest.
Those who played Tempest know well that this game was revolution for its time and probably remember also a similar world famous Space Duel game.
Atari's Tempest Arcade game
The objective of Torus Trooper is mega simple as in most arcade games. You're speeding up through a tunnel all time with a spaceship with the only goal to kill as many enemies as you can and survive as longer as possible. Playing the game you can get some memories of demoscene tracked music, future crew Second Reality / Unreal demos. Game was created by ABA GAMES company, authors Tumiki Fighters and GunRoar another 2 nice 2D Linux arcade games.
Tumiki Fighters
GunRoar
Probably best thing of Torus Trooper is its nice graphics and superb demoscene like soundtrack. I truely love the pace of the game, raising up the player adrenaline in minutes. To install in a bundle Torus-Trooper Tumiki Fighters and Gunroar on Debian / Ubuntu Linux run the usual:
As most of computer geeks, music is very important to make up my day and bring me up from bad mood or boredom. I like doing things from console, so even though nowadays Linux Desktop is so convenient, I still often prefer playing my mp3s from command line. In that spirit its worthy share with newer Linux users about existence of few mp3 players I used over the years to play my MODs / XM / Wavs / Mp3 etc.in pure console:
1. First and maybe most used over the years is mpg123and its clone mpg321
mpg123 is first mp3 player I ever used in Linux with no graphical environment and even to this day I install it on every Linux Desktop I have to configure. Its small its handy and it plays well most of mp3 music. Historically there was some issues with licensing of mpg321 making it not 100% (GPL-ed free software). Therefore a clone of it was made mpg321. mpg321 is also a good mp3 player, but in some encoded mp3s my experience shows mpg123 plays music better (with less glitches).
Install both mpg321 and mpg123 on Debian and Ubuntu and rest of deb based Linuces is with trivial:
debian:~# apt-get install --yes mpg321 mpg123
...
2. MP3Blaster (More interactiveNcurses mp3 and ogg vorbis player)
debian:~# apt-cache show mp3blaster|grep -i -A 1 description
Description-en: Full-screen console mp3 and Ogg Vorbis player mp3blaster is an interactive text-based mp3 and Ogg Vorbis player with — Description-md5: 0f28b31112e54bf3e946048856a7b6ce Tag: interface::text-mode, role::program, sound::mixer, sound::player,
root@noah:/home/hipo/Плот# apt-cache show mp3blaster|grep -i -A 1 description Description-en: Full-screen console mp3 and Ogg Vorbis player mp3blaster is an interactive text-based mp3 and Ogg Vorbis player with — Description-md5: 0f28b31112e54bf3e946048856a7b6ce Tag: interface::text-mode, role::program, sound::mixer, sound::player,
To install:
debian:~# apt-get install --yes mp3blaster
...
3. Open Cubic Player – Cubic Player rewrite for UNIX and Linux
Those who remember how we used to listen music in DOS (Disk Operating System) days, should certainly remember Cubic Player – IMHO it used to be best MSDOS music player to play CDAudio, midi, MODs, WAVES etc. sound formats. I was more than delighted to find out some few years ago, some geeky developers started project aiming to rewrite from scratch Cubic Player for UNIX OS-es. Open Cubic Player is nowadays reality stable and kicks ass. I warmly recommend it to everyone who want to play music from console or terminal! It simply kicks ass!!! 🙂
4. Cmus C Music Player (mp3 / wav / aac / flac / ogg vorbis) console player
debian:~# apt-cache show cmus|grep -i description -A 2
Description-en: lightweight ncurses audio player C* Music Player is a modular and very configurable ncurses-based audio player. It has some interesting features like configurable colorscheme, mp3 and ogg
Install it with:
debian:~# apt-get install --yes cmus
...
5.Good old but gold Mplayer
noah:~# apt-cache show mplayer|grep -i description -A 2
Description: Ultimate Movie Player For Linux. It plays most mpeg, avi and asf files, supported by many native and win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VCD, DVD and even DivX movies too. The other — Description-en: movie player for Unix-like systems MPlayer plays most MPEG, VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg, FILM, RoQ, PVA files,
noah:~# apt-get install --yes mplayer
7. herrie – Minimalistic console music player
Other newer player I just recently heard of is Herrie. I red quite positive things about it, installed it but never got into habit of using it.
8. MikMod – Portable tracked music player
Talking about geek music and old school stuff it is impossible not to mention MikMod. Even 12 years after i saw it for first time I still use it often to play cool music from modarchive.org. Its my personal believe MikMod is a player for hard core coders and hackers 🙂
noah:~# apt-cache show mikmod|grep -i description -A 2
Description-en: Portable tracked music player Mikmod is a very portable tracked music player which supports a wide variety of module formats including compressed sample Impulse Tracker —
I'll be glad to hear from others what was your favourite console sound player
I’ve been an old times Metal head. The moment I accepted Jesus Christ as a Lord and Saviour and been visited by the Lord’s Holy Ghost grace, my life changed severely. I found out most of the metal bands, I used to be regularly listening to is against Christ and anti-christian in essence, I still however hold my love for Metal as my teenage years were dominated by Metal Music. Happily I found there is plenty of nice Metal music a Metal head could enjoy that are written for glorification of Christ and hence did not have the negative spiritual anti-christian charge that is so typical for a lot of the bads in the metal music world. Recently I’m not listening to as much music as few years from now but still every now and then I like playing some of my old Christian metal loved bands. I was maintaining a small list of Christian metal nice bands I found and playlisted on youtube. If you’re a metal geek you might enjoy my old christian metal playlist here 🙂.
For Christians, who are looking for online Christian Metal community I also suggest you check out Firestream – The believer’s Heavy Music Refugee . There are plenty of other interesting places on the net dedicated for Christian metal fans;;;
I will end up this post with 2 videos of one very favourite Ukrainian Christian Metal band – Angel 7;
Angel 7 – Jesus the Saviour
Angel 7 – The Last Day
There are probably plenty of other nice Christian Metal sites and resources on the net; surely I’m missing a lot here? if you know some other good Christian Rock / Metal resources please drop a comment.
I use Debian Linux for my desktop for quite some time; Even though there are plenty of MP3 / CD players around in Debian, I’m used to the good old XMMS, hence I often prefer to use XMMS to play my music instead of newer players like RhythmBox or audacious. Actually audacious is not bad substitute for XMMS and is by default part of Debian but to me it seems more buggy and tends to crash during playing some music formats more than xmms ….
As most people might know, XMMS is no longer supported in almost all modern Linux distributions, so anyone using Debian, Ubuntu or other deb derivative Linux would have to normally compile it from source. Compiling from source is time consuming and I think often it doesn’t pay back the effort. Thanksfully, though not officially supported by Debian crew XMMS still can be installed using a deb xmms prebuilt package repository kindly provided by a hacker fellow knuta.
Using the pre-build deb packages, installing xmms on new Debian installs comes to:
One more day passed. I have pains and I scream to God for guidance and help. I’m not sure where am going to as usual. Today we had to have German. I wentto the college only to find out that the German lesson is removed from the schedule. A friend of mine who is in germany Shaltev has sent me a Video of his band.The band is called viamala, here is there website http://viamala.org. I really liked there music btw. Tomorrow I have Dutch. The day was a sort of quite for me thanks and Praise be to the Lord creator. By the way my health is not well. I have pains in different organs sometimes. You know life is hard. I’m loving more and more the FreeBSD :). I watched Ice Age and currently I’m watching Ice Age 2. Great anime (I’m having fun with it. I often think of becoming a monk. Life is such a vanity.END—–
