They are rare and for some people that in itself is a reason to own one. I guess there aren't any other options for XT/286 machines.

Sold mine for £50 a while back, as you say they are buggy when used with games that expect MPU interrupts.

My advice is to use a OPL3-SAx card to use with SoftMPU. This card works really well alongside a Sound Blaster/Pro, if you still wanna use an old Creative card with no MPU-401. Takes little resources and i put it at IRQ 9. So far compatibility is 100%. And i've tried tons of games now.

For real hardware, there's no substitute for a Roland MPU-401. I'm glad i didn't waste money on one of those.

You guys make the word buggy sound like they don't work at all. Careful with saying stuff like that here on this forum. Alot of people will Google, find it and take it as fact! It's just another thing here on Vogons that will grew into the typical highly exaggerated claims like:

- Matrox cards have terrible DOS compatibility and a basically useless except for Windows
- New revisions of Roland MT-32 sounding completely wrong
- The hanging note bug being highly noticeable in all games
- Voodoo 3 and 5 useless for DOS Glide games
- It's an useless soundcard unless it has a real OPL3 chip

vetz wrote:

- Matrox cards have terrible DOS compatibility and a basically useless except for Windows - New revisions of Roland MT-32 soundi […]
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- Matrox cards have terrible DOS compatibility and a basically useless except for Windows
- New revisions of Roland MT-32 sounding completely wrong
- The hanging note bug being highly noticeable in all games
- Voodoo 3 and 5 useless for DOS Glide games
- It's an useless soundcard unless it has a real OPL3 chip

With the exception of the Roland MT-32 statement, which i also know it's an exaggeration, i've never seen the others around. Maybe i just didn't noticed them, or it's just a matter of interpretation.

Midiman MM-401 is rare but still possible to find and much cheaper than an actual Roland. I've got some from my collection up on Amibay and nobody is biting. Maybe I should put them up on ebay. 🤣

^ sold my boxed one for 50e on AmiBay a couple of months back... it's a nice card that has problems with a handful of games, not a big deal imho if you can't get a roland one...

I don't think it's unjustified to call it buggy. The fact is that the MM-401 doesn't work reliably with (at least some) games that use MPU interrupts. That's over a third of the known games that require intelligent mode, going by the SoftMPU compatibility list.

^ have you got a list of confirmed non-working titles?
I thought it was only the Gateway games that had this problem, is there any other "important" title not working?
MM401 does supports intelligent mode, even though buggy, does it crap out in all intelligent-mode games?

keropi wrote:

^ have you got a list of confirmed non-working titles?
I thought it was only the Gateway games that had this problem, is there any other "important" title not working?

Same here. Badmojo has tested it extensively and he reported only the Gateway games. I personally haven't had any issues with it. All the popular titles work.

It's not all intelligent-mode games, just (some of) those that use interrupts. The SoftMPU compatibility list shows which games this applies to.
Yes, I agree it would be good to pin down exactly which of these games have problems.

Personally I've only tested it with Gateway and Laser Squad. Both failed initially but did work after a few tries.
Gateway puts the 10 other Legend games under suspicion.
Laser Squad puts Sabre Team and Shadoworlds under suspicion (same developer).

Cool. Since I already own lots of MPU-401s / MPU-IPC-Ts / SCC-1s / LAPC-Is I have no need for a Midiman MM-401 but it would still be nice to have one. A Midiman MM-401 cable is still available on http://cgi.ebay.de/301035274481. 😊 I also had a Midiman DMAN ISA 16 bit card until recently but I gave it away. The only place I could find the disk 1 download was an .EXE and that does not work for me.

Never knew the MM-401 was buggy. I once had a close look out for it, prior to obtaining the LAPC-I, but then, I managed to get a MPU-IPC-T and a MusicQuest PC MIDI card, and I had let go of my initial search.

By buggy, does it mean that it (MM-401) work and sometimes not, or doesn't work properly (or at all) with some particular games?

I have personally tested on the Gateway and Laser Squad games, it just did not work. All other stuff I tested worked fine.
On the same setup the MPU401AT also *did not work* unless I disable ACPI completely (ss7 machine, mvp3 chipset). Tested again with the MM401 and there was some improvement (laser squad did play music but it did not always succeed to switch music scores). I left it at that and sold it to a person on AmiBay that was looking for one.

I can confirm all this valuable information!

If you have a motherboard with ACPI (which used that cascaded IRQ2/9), some interface cards (especially PCI SATA controllers) will cause issues with Gateway.

The MM401 works with 99% of games, but has issues with the "hard cases" that probe for IRQ. Similar to the "hard cases" games that SoftMPU had issues with in the first version.

The good news is that there are only a few games like this. And personally, apart from the Legend games, they aren't very good 😀

So it's still a good card, but the price must be lower compared to a MPU401AT for example.

vetz wrote:

It's just another thing here on Vogons that will grew into the typical highly exaggerated claims like:

Add my pet hate:

Sound Blaster 16 and later doesn't support Sound Blaster Pro Stereo 😀

When only the digital part is affected, which affects basically zero games.

Yet everyone ignores the swapped L and R channels of the Sound Blaster Pro 😁

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Add my pet hate:

Sound Blaster 16 and later doesn't support Sound Blaster Pro Stereo 😀

You need to be sure to specify the "Sound Blaster Pro 2" when making your argument. As written, your own statement is completely accurate, with respect to the Sound Blaster Pro 1.

Yea I keep forgetting it 😀 Are there even any SB Pro 1 compatible cards?