From: waardenb@cs.utwente.nl (Jerry van Waardenberg)
Subject: Re: SB16 Released at Last!
Organization: University of Twente, Dept. of Computer Science
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 09:04:32 GMT

In article <rwyckoff.25.724387918@cardinal.sc107.wesleyan.edu>, rwyckoff@cardinal.sc107.wesleyan.edu (Catullus) writes:
|> In article <1992Dec14.093859.19956@nuscc.nus.sg> 
|> swkgohw@nuscc.nus.sg (Sir Launcelot Du Lac) writes:
|> [reasons not to buy the GUS]
|> >        1.  'tis not represented by any company here in Singapore, so
|> >                therefore, no support.
|> Agreed.  
|> 
|> >        2.  At this moment, there's little software support, and if General
|> >                MIDI is going to be widely available, then 'tis likely
|> >                that that wilt be the sound standard for games in future,
|> >                not the GUS standard.
|> 	HELLO?  The GUS does MIDI!  With wavetable sounds, built in!  No 
|> let's see here.  Little software support.  Hmm, oh yes, let's see if this 
|> rings any bells - Wing Commander Privateer with SB16 support - oh yeah, I 
|> remember seeing that.  Not! StarCon2, that one SURELY supports the SB16, I 
|> mean the card was only released 1 month after the game was, and it is, after 
|> all, common practice to support unreleased sound cards.  In fact, I remember 
|> seeing a whole slew of shareware utilities for the SB16 on wuarchive, just 
|> yesterday.  (Note: heavy sarcasm.)

That's true. But there are hundreds of games that support the SB or SBpro! The
SB16 is 100% SB and SBpro compatible, so all SB software works on the SB16,
whereas the GUS needs a driver that slows things down quite a bit. (Don't get me
wrong: I think the GUS is a whole lot better than any SB around)

|> 
|> >        3.  I hesitate to trust anything that uses TSR or software
|> >                emulation, seeing all the PAS-16 problems in this newsgroup
|> 	Hello again.  The PAS16 does hardware emulation.  That's hardware.  
|> Y'know, those green plastic things ya stick in those slots?  It's NOT 
|> software.  It has the complete chips of the MediaVision Thunderboard (
|> an SB knockoff) built in.  I know people who own them.  And when was the 
|> last time you were able to download a hardware upgrade, anyway?  A new 
|> version of SBOS for the GUS has already been released, and I've had about 
|> 90% success with that. (as opposed to 80% for the old version).  Considering 
|> that of those 90% of games that SBOS will emulate SB for, a further 50% will 
|> have one bug or another that will render them unplayable, I'd call that 
|> pretty good.

Pretty soon all major game companies will support the GUS in its native mode, so
you don't need TSR's. BTW: The PAS is reported not to be 100% SB compatible.
Probably 99.9% though.

|> >Anyway, already gotten my SB16 ASP :):)
|> 	Well, congratulations.
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Again heavy sarcasm! :^)

Jerry

*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------*
Jerry van Waardenberg                                ______ ____  _____   _____
Tele Informatics and Open Systems                      /     /   /    /  /_
Department of Computer Science                        /     /   /    /     -_ 
University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands      /   __/_  /____/  _____/
E-mail: waardenb@cs.utwente.nl