PhilsComputerLab wrote:

A while ago I did a project using a notebook and USB MIDI adapter and turn it into a General MIDI and Roland MT-32 device.

Gdjacobs got this working on his Raspberry Pi. I finally bought myself one and played around with it. Today I managed to get General MIDI all working. It uses FluidSynth and a Roland USB MIDI interface. I will document the process first, likely do a video about it and then check out the Munt Roland MT-32 emulator.

I must this Raspberry Pi is a real nifty unit. It turns on faster than most PCs I come across these days 😊

I've been working on and playing around with a similar setup, but using serial interfaces between the Retro PC and MUNT host... it works surprisingly well in some configurations, but I've discovered not all interfaces are created equal. I think you might have mentioned this in the video that you're talking about where the cheap knock-off USB-MIDI interface didn't work as well as the name-brand Roland interface. When watching the video I initially thought "why would it be different; MIDI is MIDI right?", but no, it's different, and I've experienced the same thing with both knock-off USB-MIDI interfaces, and cheap USB-RS232 interface. It has to do with buffer sizes and event polling. Small buffers and/or not-frequent-enough event polling on the USB bus means missed notes, controller changes, sysex messages, and more. It can end up sounding pretty bad (I have recordings of many of the setups I've been trying and intend to post them as comparison).

Shades of the 16550 (non A) UART.

Got a TI 486DLC/E-33GA and mounted it on Contaq 386 / MS-3124. Couldn't figure out how to make it work, though. There are 4 jumpers associated with CPU type selection (386 or 486) according to the manual, and it won't boot at all in the 486 setting. It boots in the 386 setting, however, it will hang during POST unless the external cache is disabled in BIOS.
I played with the 4 jumpers and tried some other combinations other than the two documented ones. I didn't keep a record of all the settings I tried, but they are either no boot, or boot with disabled cache, or boot with unresponsive keyboard.

What retro activity did you get up to today?

Well, yesterday I finally got Phantasy Star Universe to install and play on my laptop (Windows XP, 2005). I found a "patched" PSUOFF.EXE file on-line that bypasses the on-line check, allowing me to play the single-player story mode. So YAY - I can finally play a game I've owned for ~7 years and could never play (the servers had been shut down for a long time).

Speaking of my laptop, I updated CPU-Z today on that system and FINALLY got a validation. However, I had to do 2 validations. Here's why:

The Intel Pentium M 770 that is in my system apparently dynamically changes the CPU Multiplier from between x6 (800MHz) and x16 (2.13GHz). So my FIRST validation is here:

But I noticed the pathetically small CPU speed rating and got annoyed. Since my object was to post these into my signature here, I had to redo the validation while running YouTube on Google Chrome in the background in order to force the CPU up into its "working" state. Here's the 2nd validation:

And that one is now in my signature block. Now, the only one left is my first i7-860 system. I haven't validated THAT system because it is not running the original video card I had in it that I would want for the validation tag - the Galaxy nVidia GeForce GTX 480. Instead, it's running my mom's much older GeForce 8400GS card because she doesn't game and there's no reason to suck down an extra 120 watts (idle) or 230 watts (load). That, and it only has half the RAM it did for years (8GB DDR-1600 instead of the 16GB I had before). One of the RAM sticks had gone bad so I pulled that one and it's matched pair in order to keep the system running in dual-channel mode. Besides, 8GB is still overkill for a person who only checks Facebook, listens to iHeart Radio, and plays a few VERY small games (mahjongg and solitaire).

Today I checked how bad my K6-III+ sucks at memory performance - I can't get the stupid DFI board stable with 100Mhz bus speed 🙁

schlang wrote:

Today I checked how bad my K6-III+ sucks at memory performance - I can't get the stupid DFI board stable with 100Mhz bus speed : […]
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Today I checked how bad my K6-III+ sucks at memory performance - I can't get the stupid DFI board stable with 100Mhz bus speed 🙁

Chipset?

VIA®MVP3

You might have done it, but did you install the chipset drivers ?

yes I installed the 4in1 drivers

Deksor wrote:

You might have done it, but did you install the chipset drivers ?

the MVP3 chipset doesn't need drivers to work correctly. Most likely the memory used or the cache chips on the motherboard are bad.

Been working on a homemade external MIDI synth on the cheap. Not finished yet, only powered on today.
If successfull, it is a module that can be produced for something in the range of 17 to 18 US Dollars.
Well... That's for the parts. I have even included a tone regulator board in this price.
And it should be capeable of playing MP3 files too.... (a feature that can be added if I like to)

Though to myself, how do i connect a MT-32 to my Toshiba 400CDT?

Working on voodoo filter threshold code. This look right?

Contemplating building a retro rig for one of my closer friends as a surprise 😈

leileilol wrote:

Working on voodoo filter threshold code. This look right?

I don't know what you're doing, but it's way above and beyond me 🤣!
The bottom one looks much sharper, is that really glide? 😲

You should be able to do this on a real voodoo graphics* by having this environment var set before starting some glide game:

1SET SST_VIDEO_FILTER_THRESHOLD = 0x000000

* - i don't have a real voodoo graphics

leileilol wrote:

Working on voodoo filter threshold code. This look right?

Looks awesomme... 😜

schlang wrote:

VIA®MVP3

Is your Write Cache Pipeline enabled or disabled in BIOS? Here's a thread I started on problems with that setting: BIOS Setting: "Write Cache Pipeline"

Started sorting out my shareware and commercial program CDs, some of which date back to the mid-1990s. I had bought 40 double CD cases to store them in instead of the paper sleeves many were in, and had only two cases left when I was done 😲 In the process I discovered I had a full copy of Paint Shop Pro... 🤣

I double-checked the shareware CDs against those present on the Internet Archive software collection, and discovered most of them were not present there (not surprising, as most CDs I have are from local European publishers). I have at least 5-10 Gb of stuff I could upload there, just have to figure out how to image them - I'm not entirely at ease with using CDs made for 1-4 speed CD drives in modern drives.

Currently cataloguing all those CDs in a little Excel sheet and labeling all of the boxes. I'm at 104 discs and counting (and noticing I'm missing stuff, so a trip to my parents attic will be needed).

yawetaG wrote:

Started sorting out my shareware and commercial program CDs, some of which date back to the mid-1990s. I had bought 40 double CD cases to store them in instead of the paper sleeves many were in, and had only two cases left when I was done 😲 In the process I discovered I had a full copy of Paint Shop Pro... 🤣

I double-checked the shareware CDs against those present on the Internet Archive software collection, and discovered most of them were not present there (not surprising, as most CDs I have are from local European publishers). I have at least 5-10 Gb of stuff I could upload there, just have to figure out how to image them - I'm not entirely at ease with using CDs made for 1-4 speed CD drives in modern drives.

Bit of a stretch, but do any of them have games made using a software called klik and play? Am currently compiling games made with it into an archive.