General MIDI and DOS - Could Not Detect MPU-401 \ VOGONS

General MIDI and DOS - Could Not Detect MPU-401

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First post, by Zuon

Posted on 2016-05-28, 15:51

Zuon Offline

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I have a Windows 98 laptop with an ESS Audiodrive 1878 sound card which I use for playing my retro MS-DOS games. For the most part this works through Sound Blaster emulation, but I would prefer to use General Midi for the games that support it. General MIDI does work within the Windows environment, however, selecting General Midi in my custom-configured MS-DOS Mode states the message, "Could Not Detect MPU-401." I have downloaded and installed the proper DOS drivers for my soundcard (ES1868/ES1878) obtained from this very website, however I can't seem to figure out how to enable the MPU-401 playback. What would be the proper way of solving this little issue? I can provide my autoexec.bat and config.sys if needed.

Reply 1 of 5, by collector

Posted on 2016-05-29, 03:46

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Ask in Marvin. This forum is for getting DOS games going on modern PCs.

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Reply 2 of 5, by dr_st

Posted on 2016-05-29, 08:03

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Is there anything actually connected to the MIDI port?

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Reply 3 of 5, by Elia1995

Posted on 2016-05-29, 12:03

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Have you tried different addresses for MIDI in the setup for the games ? Such as 320, 330, etc... ?

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Reply 4 of 5, by Stiletto

Posted on 2016-05-30, 07:17

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Moved.

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Reply 5 of 5, by Zuon

Posted on 2016-05-31, 02:01

Zuon Offline

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I do not have anything plugged into my laptop other than the PCMCIA DVD-R Drive. I assume the sound card would have a wavetable built in, but from what I'm hearing, is it possible I'd have to use an external device?
Edit: Sorry about before, I didn't quite understand the question. The laptop does not have a MIDI port. The board in the laptop DOES include one, as I've seen from pictures online, but when they were building my laptop, they cut off the midi port so it would fit the case.

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