Glad the new version seems to be working better for everyone.

carlostex wrote:

Too bad it takes a little performance out of my 386 DX40 machine.

Yeah, there is some inherent overhead. Out of all the games that SoftMPU supports, Wing Commander I and II are possibly the most taxing.

I'll re-release SoftMPU version 0.5 shortly for those people with 386 machines. It's much smaller/faster than the later versions but doesn't support as many games. It works with the Wing Commander games, though.

Should we use this thread as the main "discussion" thread?

Just finished shooting my video 😀 You'll like it...

The fourth game I tried, Fate of Atlantis, had a hang at one scene. But after rebooting was good and only after shooting the video I realised the game doesn't even need SoftMPU. And it could be anything really, I blamed it on running so many games before and recommended a clean reboot after each game just to be sure...

Going to quickly edit it and then upload it. Shouldn't take me too long 😀

I have Wing Commander with and without SoftMPU in the video. So might be worth checking the footage.

carlostex wrote:

bjt wrote:

I know of only one game that uses both SB digital sound and intelligent mode MPU (Wing Commander II), and it doesn't use MPU interrupts anyway.

You can add Dune 2 to that list. But you need that patched setup file, so you can select roland for music and SB for digital sound!

dune 2 doesn't use intelligent mode MPU

I tested SoftMPU on a Sound Blaster 16 MCD CT-1750 and it worked with several Sierra games.

Does anyone know if it can work with the MIDI on a Gravis Ultrasound? Does the Ultrasound even support a UART MPU-401 mode through the midi/joystick connector (not via MegaEM software emulation).

I don't think it does...

bjt wrote:

Is Wing Commander II + speech pack the only game that requires intelligent mode and also uses digital sound? Certainly I'm not aware of any others.

I think following cd versions have speech:
Companions of Xanth
Superhero League of Hoboken
Flashback
Simon the Sorcerer

I think following games have cd versions so may have digital sound:
Shadoworlds
Sabre Team
Princess Maker 2

Following games have digital sound I am sure:
Curse of Enchantia
Innocent Until Caught
Hired Guns

It Came From The Desert needs sound blaster to be set to irq 3

Space Quest 1 VGA? At least some sound effects 😀

i don't see space quest 1 on the intelligent mode supporting list
https://github.com/bjt42/softmpu/wiki/Compatible-Games

Maybe it works fine with UART. Will check tomorrow.

Bjt the SoftMPU video I shot today is uploading. It's over a GB and almost an hour long 😀

I assemble all the parts and hopefully it's fun to watch and inspires others to check out your fantastic project.

Great video, thanks for taking the time!

If you touch on it in any future videos, may also be worth mentioning the /DELAYSYSEX feature - this should prevent buffer overflow with the Rev.0 MT-32, even for games that don't need intelligent mode.

Ok guys here is another video!

Almost 1h long 😀

Review Of Bjt42's Softmpu - MS-DOS Time-Machine Gaming - Real Hardware - No Emulators

- Putting together a Super Socket 7 Time-Machine
- Pentium 233 MMX
- 16MB RAM
- Radeon 7000
- AWE64 Gold
- SI SATA PCI Controller
- 320GB SATA 2.5" HDD
- MT-32 (Old)
- Joystick MIDI cable
- Audio cables
- Games: Wing Commander, Space Quest 3, Gateway and Fate of Atlantis

Review Of Bjt42's Softmpu - MS-DOS Time-Machine Gaming - Real Hardware - No Emulators

- It's very RAW. No fancy editing. What you see is what you get.
- It's very long. You might drift off 😀
- Fate of Atlantis locks up but actually doesn't need intelligent mode. So maybe that's why. But rebooting the PC after each game is a good idea anyway
- Check the readme file because new versions might have new features
- Forgot to mention the /DELAYSYSEX feature!

Links:

http://bjt42.github.io/softmpu/

*START HERE* SoftMPU 1.91 - Software Intelligent MPU-401 Emulator

MS-DOS Time-Machine Gaming - Mau1wurf1977's YT Videos

bjt wrote:

carlostex wrote:

Too bad it takes a little performance out of my 386 DX40 machine.

Yeah, there is some inherent overhead. Out of all the games that SoftMPU supports, Wing Commander I and II are possibly the most taxing.

I'll re-release SoftMPU version 0.5 shortly for those people with 386 machines. It's much smaller/faster than the later versions but doesn't support as many games. It works with the Wing Commander games, though.

Here's version 0.5 as promised. It might be useful for those for slower machines. Please don't submit any bug reports about this one though 😀

Bump - new release, see first post for details.

bjt wrote:

Bump - new release, see first post for details.

FYI:
Re: Possible project: preserve/replicate our hardware!

Hi bjt,

thanks a lot for this great utility. I already gave away my Midiman MM401 😀
I am using a Roland Realtime Arranger RA-50 which has a build-in MT-32 sound module. However, the MIDI implementation is a little bit different. After comparing the MIDI implementation charts from the manuals of RA-50 and MT-32 I found out, that the RA-50 does not recognize the "All notes off" command. This difference leads to hanging notes in some games (especially Wing Commander) e.g. if you skip the intro or at the end of songs. You can overcome this by pressing a single button on the RA-50 but it would be great to use your tool to intercept the "all notes off" message and change it to some command that stops the sound module of RA-50.
A simple solution (but time consuming) would be a loop over all 16 channels and all 128 notes by sending a "note off" message for all possible values.
Despite some other minor differences which do not affect DOS games the RA-50 is fully compatible to MT-32. Having a "/RA50" command line switch which adds the requested solution would be great stuff and adds real value for existing and future users of the RA-50.

What do you think?

bjt wrote:

Bump - new release, see first post for details.

Thank You Sir! You are a legend.

BJT: how difficult was it to create softMPU?

Released 1.4 now, it fixes Wing Commander II and will also error out if EMM386 is too old. See first post for details 😀

robot1 wrote:

What do you think?

Should be possible, I'll take a look. I'll need you test it out as I don't think anyone else has a RA-50!

rgart wrote:

how difficult was it to create softMPU?

The hard part is the intelligent-mode logic, which was written by the DOSBox team. The rest is just DOS hacking 😀

bjt wrote:

Released 1.4 now, it fixes Wing Commander II and will also error out if EMM386 is too old. See first post for details 😀
Should be possible, I'll take a look. I'll need you test it out as I don't think anyone else has a RA-50!

Great. Thank you in advance 😀
I posted my experience with the RA-50 in the German DOSForum and at least one other guy bought a RA-50 by now. I'm looking forward to test an upgraded version of SoftMPU. I already looked at the source code, but I did'nt get MSC6.0 and MASM6.11 to run yet. I installed both successfully but cl.exe always freezes 🙁

Thank you for the fast solution of my request!
I am thinking about another application for SoftMPU which can be based on this solution: overcoming Creatives hanging notes bug.
If SoftMPU does not receive a 'note off' in a defined time interval it simply could generate a 'note off' message. Since only early Soundblaster 16 with DSP version <=4.05 and the later Soundblaster AWE64 does not suffer from any variant of the bug this would enable a large number of existing soundcards for joint (bugfree/bugreduced) use of daughterboards and external devices with digital sound.
I think keeping track of the longest playing note for each midi channel would be sufficient. However, finding a good threshold for bug detection requires some testing.

I don't think it's possible with software, unfortunately. The hanging note bug is due to the SB hardware either generating extra Note On commands or failing to send Note Off commands, so software doesn't know anything's wrong.