You need to tell the Sound Card to use the external MIDI rather than the internal. How you do this I don't really know as I don't use such a card for DOS.

Usually there is a config file or some flags in the driver.

I found this quote (dont know if its true)

"Note also that the Sound Blaster Live! (I don't know of any other PCI sound cards with this problem, but I could be wrong.) does not allow use of the MPU-401 port in a DOS box under Windows 9x/ME so it is impossible in this instance to use an external MIDI device. "

ps: sblive manual if you want to search through it
http://www.manualowl.com/m/Creative%20Labs/SB … 0/Manual/242730

Davros wrote:

"Note also that the Sound Blaster Live! (I don't know of any other PCI sound cards with this problem, but I could be wrong.) does not allow use of the MPU-401 port in a DOS box under Windows 9x/ME so it is impossible in this instance to use an external MIDI device. "

How very Creative. Live! is constantly climbing the "crappiest SB ever" ladder, isnt it?

What he could do is to maybe disable (or remove) every other MIDI output device in Windows 98 and load up Duke in DOS prompt. If it even then doenst work - then the note you pasted must be true.

Ah thanks for that...what a pain. I have a spare ISA soundcard I think i'll put in there and use for DOS only 😀 hopefully that'd work without too much resource management nightmares.. I'm still relearning all this stuff I used to know years ago 😀

While Creative sometimes deserves some bashing, I think in this case it is just an issue with the driver from Creative. Usually this software is designed as if the card is the only soundcard in this system...
So I would recommend to try the kxdrivers. You can configure every hardware feature available. This driver is really an eye opener towards getting full access to the features of a SB Live!. You can even drag'n drop DSP modules into the Emu10K and cable the in- and outputs with other modules as you like.
http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/down.php

By default it uses the black output jack for front speakers as they have better DACs.

Ensoniq created this DOS driver so maybe it's more their fault that this functionality isnt there. I wonder what kind of DOS support EMU10K1 was to have before they bought Ensoniq.

This is why ISA gear is so popular and it works much more often without to much hassle.

Well the OP has a Pentium 2. So yea, just get an ISA card!

Yeah I have one of those cheap Yamaha YMF cards that I'll put into the machine sometime today. Have one in my Pentium 1 machine and it works great 😀

If all else you could search for a YMF724 based pci card with the SB link cable provided your board supports SB link for ISA dos support.