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[FancyCat]

First of all, new to the forum here, so hello everyone!

Now... looking around my room I see that I can afford to sell a few things and scrape together the extra cash to buy an old Roland MT-32 off of eBay... since this site has thus far been my number one choice for PC retro-gaming, I figure this is as good a place to ask as any. I'm hoping not to spend more than $150 or so on this project, which is why I have a few questions about connecting it to my PC...

My retro-gaming system is a IBM 300GL with a 2gb HD, a CDROM, 64mb of RAM, and runs DOS 6.22 as it's OS with Win 3.11 installed for GUI stuff and certain games. The soundcard is some generic that came in the PC as far as I know, but it works just fine in Soundblaster compatible mode, and it has a gameport...

Now, I read on several websites on how to connect an MT-32 and I got very confused. One site talked about MPU-401 cards and LAPC-I's and SCC's and made the project sound very expensive and not practical for my purposes (as I imagine they're all ISA cards). Others suggested buying a MIDI-to-USB cable, but that isn't going to work because I'm connecting to a pure DOS system, which though it HAS a USB connection, isn't going to work in DOS.

What I'm HOPING to do is to connect the MT-32 to my Soundblaster compatible card's gameport via a MIDI-to-Gameport cable, but some sites seemed to suggest this wouldn't produce TRUE MT-32 output and would just play General MIDI through it... so does anyone out there have an MT-32 connected to an old system and could give me some ideas here? Keep in mind I haven't bought anything yet, I'm just trying to get an idea of how much of a headache this is going to be...

[Japo]

Wow good luck, too bad I'm mostly at a loss to help you. However,

Originally Posted by FancyCat

Others suggested buying a MIDI-to-USB cable, but that isn't going to work because I'm connecting to a pure DOS system, which though it HAS a USB connection, isn't going to work in DOS.

Don't ask but some time ago surfing the Web I found USB drivers for DOS, and stashed them although I never needed nor even tried them. But if you want, download (attached to this post) and try them. Instructions about CONFIG.SYS included.

Just in case I uploaded them to VirusTotal.com, this is the result (clean):
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/4...6a51c435d91541
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/1...e21d7d707c6ba9

[Scatty]

You can connect the MT-32 to the game / MIDI port of your sound card, and you will get the enhanced MT-32 music, not General MIDI anymore, however there're few things to keep in mind.

First, the quality of the sound card can slightly affect the quality of the MT-32 music which has to do with compatibility of such a General MIDI card to MT-32. With a Soundblaster 16 or AWE 64 (don't get AWE 32, trust me) the quality would be very close to perfect, with a SCC card however it would be perfect as both hardware parts are from Roland and are thus more compatible to each other.

Second, some games support the original, first-generation MT-32 which has only 15 bits of signal (sound) resolution while others support both, and yet another ones support the later chipset of MT-32 only, which has 16 bits of signal resolution. So if you use an older MT-32 chipset with a game that supports newer chipset you'll get a music which although will sound very good, won't sound completely originally as intended, same vice versa.

Generally you'll encounter almost anywhere on eBay the earlier, original MT-32, however if you'll see it, I would recommend you to get a Roland CM-500 which is a combination of MT-32 and Sound Canvas which would allow you to listen to a Roland Sound Canvas music on games which don't support MT-32 but Sound Canvas, and vice versa.