Sorry to bump such an old thread, but I'm interested in knowing if anyone has recently been able to run Tie Fighter Collector's CD-ROM (DOS) with General MIDI music. It seems that the starter of this thread was able to, over three years ago.
For the past few hours I've been trying various combinations of VDMSound 2.10 configurations to get it working, but it always hangs after the "DOS4GW Protected run-time" text or when testing music in the sound setup. It shouldn't be a hardware problem, because it occurs on two very different configurations (dual-core Pentium + Radeon 9550 + integrated audio vs Athlon XP + GeForce 6200 + SB Live!) and System Shock works just fine with VDMSound's General MIDI. My operating system is WinXP Pro SP2.
PS. DOSBOX is still too slow (or Tie Fighter too heavy or my computer not fast enough) to run Tie Fighter at the high resolution mode smoothly.
edit1: The high resolution mode works fine with a GeForce 6200 without Dosbox. With an ATi Radeon 8500LE I just got a garbled mess.
edit2: This is weird. I can get the game running with MIDI, albeit a bit randomly. It usually doesn't hang at the dos4gw text screen when the following conditions apply:
* run the game through install.exe
* "Enable basic VESA support" is checked
* "Try to reduce CPU usage" is unchecked
* The "Try to reduce CPU usage" slider is at the right edge (Med. usage)
If I run the game through tie.exe with the same settings, it hangs. Same happens if I run it though install.exe, but with VESA support disabled or CPU usage lowered. When the game hangs at the dos4gw text screen, CPU usage is 100% until I kill the process.
This is problematic, because setting "Try to reduce CPU usage" to Low usage is crucial for unstuttering sound, music, animation, and input.
If I disable General MIDI from the game setup, none of these cause any problems! I can run the game though install.exe or tie.exe, "Try to reduce CPU usage" works fine, VESA support doesn't need to be enabled, etc. 😕
I compared the logs generated by VDMS. I ran the game with working settings, then I ran it after switching on "Try to reduce CPU usage". The only difference is that the MIDIplayer garbage collector thread is created a tiny bit later () on the non-working configuration:
@I - 08:41:10.694 - MIDIPlayer
Garbage collector thread created (handle = 0x00000168, ID = 3448)
@I - 08:41:10.744 - VDMServicesProvider
Created DOS process (0x105b, 'C:\WINNT\system32\KB16.COM')
@I - 08:41:10.744 - VDMServicesProvider
Created DOS process (0x11d9, 'C:\GAMES\TIECD\INSTALL.EXE')
compared to
@I - 08:41:38.323 - VDMServicesProvider
Created DOS process (0x105b, 'C:\WINNT\system32\KB16.COM')
@I - 08:41:38.333 - VDMServicesProvider
Created DOS process (0x11d9, 'C:\GAMES\TIECD\INSTALL.EXE')
@I - 08:41:38.333 - MIDIPlayer
Garbage collector thread created (handle = 0x00000168, ID = 3580)
The non-working configuration terminates at:
@I - 08:41:42.913 - VDMServicesProvider
Terminated DOS process (0x2acd)
while the working configuration goes on from that with:
@I - 08:41:14.918 - MPU401Controller
MPU-401 Switched to UART mode
@I - 08:41:15.053 - MIDIPlayer
MIDI-out device opened (handle = 0x020954a8)
@I - 08:41:25.647 - MPU401Controller
MPU-401 reset
... and so on.
I've attached both logs to this post. I hope someone else has some insight into this. 😢