Cool. Thanks for the heads up

ymf744, avance logic als120, ess es1688f(soundmaster 16 light), aztech azt2320/azt9900(hansol Synerbeat 16 PNP), ymf719 test
: Softmpu1.9, sb:220 irq:9 mpu:330 (dma:1)

1.YMF744 - pc/pci - sb-link CONNECT
1)Princess maker2 - pass
2)Curse of Enchantia - pass
3)David Wolf - pass
4)Innocent Until Caught - pass
5)Sorcerian - pass

2. Als120
1)Princess maker2 - pass
2)Curse of Enchantia - pass
3)David Wolf - pass
4)Innocent Until Caught - pass
5)Sorcerian - pass

3. Es1688f
1)Princess maker2 - no sound
2)Curse of Enchantia - pass
3)David Wolf - pass
4)Innocent Until Caught - pass
5)Sorcerian - pass

4. Synerbeat 16 PNP - not load softmpu

5. Ymf719
1)Princess maker2 - no sound
2)Curse of Enchantia - pass
3)David Wolf - pass
4)Innocent Until Caught - pass
5)Sorcerian - pass

6.comparisons between SOftMPU1.9 and Voyetra V-4001
-Princess maker2 GM mode tempo : Softmpu1.9 is not accurate.

Thanks for your feedback. I also notice that Princess Maker 2 doesn't work with a YMF718 card. Not sure why, it works OK with my AWE64 Gold.

It's true that the music tempo can be slightly off. I couldn't get it perfect without increasing the timing frequency, which would in turn cause CPU slowdown. I decided to go with slightly too fast instead of slightly too slow.

Could you post a photo of the Synerbeat card that didn't work with SoftMPU? I may try to get hold of one. Thanks

Softmpu 1.9 test - Synerbeat 16 PNP : not load

http://youtu.be/IfAtJafzaC8

Thanks. I may get hold of one and try to fix the problem once my current projects are finished.

Included SoftMPU in the English Wikipedia page. 😀

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPU-401

Cool, thanks Peter.

Recently i noticed a sharp performance drop of my 486 system. After looking at the possible causes, i came to the conclusion that the /DELAYSYSEX option is the culprit. It seems it does more than just slowing down the midi sysex transmissions.

Phil's Doom benchmark score:
With /DELAYSYSEX 6174
Without 4654

Performance penalty about 33%

This is expected. When using /DELAYSYSEX or when playing a game that requires MPU interrupts, SoftMPU uses high-frequency interrupts for timing. Servicing these does incur a noticable overhead on slower systems.

Tested SoftMPU 1.9 on a 486 DX4-100 (LS-486E PCI motherboard with ISA slots) with a Roland MT-32 attached via a connector cable from the sound card's MIDI Out port to the MIDI in port on the MT-32. I then rerouted the sound output back to the Line In on the sound card.

I tested it on the following games with the sound cards listed below:
Innocent Until Caught
Space Quest 3
Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes
Princess Maker 2
A-10 Tank Killer

Sound Galaxy (using AZT1605 chipset):
SoftMPU locks up

Sound Galaxy (using AZT2316A/R chipset):
SoftMPU works fine using default IRQ settings of 5 or 7. Unfortunately, this prohibits me from playing games that requires an IRQ of 2/9.
Had problems to get the card to use IRQ2 (it doesn't support a setting of IRQ9) but, despite "warnings" of resource conflicts, I managed to load SoftMPU specifying IRQ 9 (not 2).
Athough Innocent Until Caught did load and started to play, the game did hang on one or two occasions after a while of playing the intro song.

Maxi Sound Home Studio 2 (using ESS1868F chipset):
SoftMPU loads fine but, I was unable to play music via the external MIDI Port. The sound card keeps on routing all MIDI to the internal Dream chipset with no MIDI messages being transmitted to my MT-32.
I then tried to bypass the Maxi Sound DOS driver and just loaded a generic ESS driver but, no sound coming out of the sound card (I can see MIDI messages being transmitted to my MT-32).
This is definitely sound card related and might require some more testing.

Advance Logic (using ALS100 chipset):
SoftMPU loads fine and plays all games without any problems.
Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes does lock up on odd occasions but, otherwise plays fine.
I had to lower this particular sound card's Line In volume. Otherwise, the MIDI Playback is too loud.

PS: Is it possible for a user to rather specify the IRQ of the MPU Interface, as opposed to specifying the IRQ of the Sound Blaster component of the sound card? I noticed that most of the above sound cards has a separate IRQ for their MPU interface. That should solve many problems for users that doesn't want to change (or are having problems to change) the IRQ of their Sound Blaster compatible card

Thanks for your feedback. That's two Aztech cards that have exhibited problems (AZT1605 and AZT2320). Maybe I'll get hold of one some day and get to the bottom of it.

Unfortunately it's not possible to specify a separate MPU IRQ. SoftMPU uses an undocumented SB DSP command to trigger an interrupt, however this is only available for the Sound Blaster interrupt, not the MPU interrupt.

Using an Audio Excel AV310 (MPU 330, SB 220, IRQ 5) I've tested these games with success:
- Gods
- The Games: Winter Challenge
- Winter Olympics '94

I'm not running a real MT-32 but Munt on another PC. There's actually three CMI devices involved in this setup: 8330 (AV310), 8738 (Asus A7S333 onboard for midi in) and 8788 (bluegears b-Enspirer for TOSLINK audio output). 🤣

Thanks for your feedback. Unless I'm mistaken, those three games should run fine without SoftMPU, as they don't use intelligent mode?

Gods does have buffer overflow problems with an MT-32, which SoftMPU can be used to work around. As you're using MUNT, that won't affect you anyway.

That's strange. The above games are silent without SoftMPU on my system (Pentium III 800E, SE440BX-2, AV310).

Some games have speed-dependent MPU detection routines that give a false negative on fast machines. SoftMPU introduces some overhead that slows things down enough to make the detection routines work. That's my theory anyway 😀

Anyway, it's working which is the main thing.

I agree. 😀
Thank you and the others who made this great piece of software.

Also tested it on a CMI 8738 based PCI card, it detects MPU but not Sound Blaster. But the 8738's DOS support is bad from the beginning.

Tested SoftMPU on some more hardware (only tested with Ski or Die):

Aureal Vortex 8820 (noname PCI card): Working.
Edit: Did some more testing with the 8820 and it works with IRQ9. 😀

SiS 630ET (Asus TUSC onboard/onchip sound, should be based on the Trident 4DWave): Working but digitized sound plays at half speed with SoftMPU loaded. It's possible to select an "Onboard MIDI IRQ" in the BIOS, but SoftMPU will only use the SB IRQ.

Thanks, have added the AU8820 to the compatibility list.

bjt wrote:

Thanks for your feedback. That's two Aztech cards that have exhibited problems (AZT1605 and AZT2320). Maybe I'll get hold of one some day and get to the bottom of it.

Unfortunately it's not possible to specify a separate MPU IRQ. SoftMPU uses an undocumented SB DSP command to trigger an interrupt, however this is only available for the Sound Blaster interrupt, not the MPU interrupt.

Maybe the AZT1605 chipset doesn't fully support the SB DSP command to trigger an interrupt, resulting in a lock up? But, I'm not an expert on this.

Hi guys, how do you make Princess Maker 2 work? i tried hard this morning without results

I have a AWE64 Gold

For this game, i change the cfg file to use IRQ2 or 9, CTCM correctly says IRQ is 2/9

Then i load softMPU,

softmpu /SB:220 /IRQ:2 /MPU:330

And then open the game. With IRQ9 I get no sound, with IRQ2 hangs

Other games works OK with softmpu, just PM2 give me trouble for now

Any ideas? what im doing wrong?

Thanks