Bought a gameport joystick/MIDI cable splitter from aliexpress, had to redo

Posted on 2021-04-09, 14:48

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A goal of mine a few months ago was to use both a joystick or gamepad on my 486 DX2/66 while still outputting MIDI music to my Roland units (MT-32 and SC-88ST). Games immediately relevant for this: Wing Commander 1&2, Zeliard. I recently got a lot of: Gravis Gamepad, Gravis Gamepad Pro, Advanced …

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Re: ebay cable, help! DB15 Gameport > MIDI with joystick pass through

Posted on 2021-04-05, 16:14

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

so, did you end up having it made?

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Re: games that are better on a Macintosh

Posted on 2021-02-22, 11:55

by

by Mu0n

in Macintosh Emulation

in Macintosh Emulation

My entry for this thread is Archon, which I played on a Mac Plus back in the day. The higher res graphics and bleeding edge fast twitch animations made it superior to the C64 version my cousins had and I assumed others. Those unicorns and Basilisks man, deadly things of wonder. It used to not be …

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Best option for 486DX/2 Roland MT-32 *and* simultaneous joystick

Posted on 2021-02-21, 09:39

by

by Mu0n

in MT-32 General

in MT-32 General

I'm trying to profit from both hardware worlds: using my Roland MT-32 and my newly acquired joysticks. Goals: -Use a Gravis Gamepad Pro with MT-32 in Zeliard -Use an Advanced Gravis Joystick with MT-32 in Wing Commander 1 & 2 Here's my gear: -486 DX/2 66 IBM Valuepoint (upgraded CPU) -Sound Blaster …

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SC-88 backward compatible with CM-32L sound effects?

Posted on 2020-07-25, 14:19

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I'm wondering if my inbound (from Japan) SC-88ST unit can somehow play back those CM series specific sound effects in games such as Out of this World or Elite Plus? Can anyone with a better knowledge of the instrument map of those different units confirm/deny of the possibility for this?

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Re: MT32 Tracker

Posted on 2020-07-22, 23:34

by

by Mu0n

in MT-32 General

in MT-32 General

I'm trying this out today and should release a new track in the next few days, a kind of transcription from a piece written in Studio Session (1986) for the Macintosh. I needed quarter note triplets, which wasn't too hard to accomplish by laying out my eights notes in a larger space and increasing …

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How likely am I to miss the SC-55?

Posted on 2020-07-21, 19:46

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

A few weeks ago, I got a Roland MT-32 to go with my 486. Still awaiting for a midi db15 adapter to cross the Atlantic from Serdashop to Canada, but so far it works great under a modern Windows with dosbox. I also won a Japan Yahoo Auctions for a SC 88ST (not the pro version) and looking forward to …

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Re: New MS-DOS game release: Sardonic

Posted on 2020-07-15, 15:36

by

by Mu0n

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

This is freaking cool, thanks a lot for sharing. What was used to compose the music (on the DOS front)? Was it hard to get it to play back by code?

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Re: Will GOG x-wing/TIE fighter work on retro sys?

Posted on 2020-07-08, 20:31

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I have successfully copied over the game files from a GoG installation to my real 486. I just ignore all the files with lower case characters, long names and obvious modern Windows files. It has worked great for a few games like Master of Magic, Wing Commander 1, pinball illusions, etc. I don't see …

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Using Rock Band 3 keytar to a sound blaster with midi interface

Posted on 2020-06-28, 20:43

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Anyone tried this yet? The rock Band 3 keytar controller while it remains battery powered (3 AA) has a midi out port right out of the gate, as well as a modulating strip (no idea if this would be easy to leverage). I'm still waiting on a game port to midi in/out connector ordered from serdashop as …

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Re: Transfering large files from modern to 486 with a 1.44 mb disk

Posted on 2020-06-26, 20:17

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Hjsplit worked great, thanks!

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Re: Transfering large files from modern to 486 with a 1.44 mb disk

Posted on 2020-06-25, 16:34

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

HJSplit is a popular utility I use rar in these cases, the windows/modern side can create backwards compatible multi-part files and on the retro side even the dos version has a nice gui to easily decompress them without searching for the correct parameters. Do you have a link to the dos version of …

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Transfering large files from modern to 486 with a 1.44 mb disk

Posted on 2020-06-25, 13:19

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Goal: transport files, archives that won't fit in a 1.44 mb diskette from a modern Win10 machine to my 486. Why: an IDE-CF converter is on its way in the next weeks, so this is just a stopgap measure. No, I don't have a CD Drive on the 486, no I don't have a network card either. I used to do this …

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Re: Primer on PC audio?

Posted on 2020-06-24, 23:54

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Once the sound is recorded, is it not just a series of 0's and 1's? I guess Im not sure I fully understand why the sound would not just be the sound regardless of using a sound canvas or your built in motherboard audio chip. I guess I understand why you would need a certain hardware synth to CREATE …

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Re: 486 and Roland MT32

Posted on 2020-06-24, 21:21

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Ok, so I'm going to SoftMPU route. I could be making my own adapter: http://midi.teragonaudio.com/hardware/pc_intfc.htm but.....ugh, I'm feeling lazy and buying it for 10 euros. I ordered this DB15-midi adapter: https://www.serdashop.com/DB15MIDI I'm ordering a pair of these 6.4 mm jack (M) to rca …

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Re: Installing sound capabilities on my new 486

Posted on 2020-06-24, 15:51

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Midpak did the trick. I also had to pump up the physical volume to hear it, and not overload it with the nondescript side tsr Utilities that came with it. Dosmid still doesn't work. I'll keep it around for when my mt-32 has the proper cables.

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Re: Installing sound capabilities on my new 486

Posted on 2020-06-24, 15:08

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Good news on the Sierra games. I'm not overly experienced with DOSMID but I understand it has an OPL mode. You definitely have this selected, and it's on the correct address etc? (The type of midi file should not be a factor here.) Dosmid appears to work, it has some text based animations for …

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Re: Installing sound capabilities on my new 486

Posted on 2020-06-24, 14:48

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Ok, I uninstalled the vibra16 drivers, which were giving me errors from the config.sys lines anyway and put back some generic Pnp sb16 drivers (also from here) and kq1 definitely plays back more than 1 voice through my speaker (ie not my pc speaker). Now, to find a better mid file player...

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Re: Installing sound capabilities on my new 486

Posted on 2020-06-24, 14:34

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yeah, but OS/2 holds no nostalgia for me so I formatted over it and went to DOS. I got the drivers from this vogons.

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Installing sound capabilities on my new 486

Posted on 2020-06-24, 13:37

by

by Mu0n

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I dumped OS/2 and went straight to DOS 6.22. I got the Vibra16 drivers for my CT-2940 SB card. Goal 1) Make DOSMID output any sound while I play canyon.mid and a bunch of mid files I found in that installation of OS/2. The visualizer bars move around during playback but I hear no sound. Meanwhile, …

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