Turtle Beach Santa Cruz MPU-401 \ VOGONS

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz MPU-401

Topic actions

Post a reply

First post, by boxpressed

Posted on 2017-01-09, 18:01

boxpressed Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1438
Joined: 2014-05-20, 18:29
Location: Wisconsin, USA

I'd like to get some GM samples from my TB Santa Cruz but cannot get 98SE to load a device driver for the MPU-401.

I am using the 4081 drivers, which are VxD drivers, I believe. Later drivers are WDM.

Everything works perfectly with the card except that there's no way to play GM music from DOS games. There's no discrete driver for an MPU-401 in Device Manager, and the Device Manager's settings for the DOS Legacy mode include settings for SB port, IRQ, DMA, and Adlib port, but no MPU-401.

When I tried to add the hardware manually in Control Panel, I did see a setting for "Santa Cruz Virtual MPU-401," but after I installed it and rebooted, Windows wouldn't load because of a VxD error linked to one of the Santa Cruz drivers.

I'm trying to figure out if I'm using the wrong drivers or if I have a damaged card. I have replicated this problem on a BX and 686B system.

Does anyone have a Santa Cruz up and running on their 98SE system, and do you have a driver for the MPU-401 displayed in Device Manager? Thanks for any help!

Reply 1 of 4, by Kamerat

Posted on 2017-01-09, 18:26

Kamerat Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1126
Joined: 2014-03-14, 19:09
Location: Oslo, Norway

boxpressed wrote:
I'm trying to figure out if I'm using the wrong drivers or if I have a damaged card. I have replicated this problem on a BX and 686B system.

The problem is that the Crystal CS4630 doesn't support it. 😢

Edit: According to https://www.cirrus.com/en/pubs/proDatasheet/cs4630-1.pdf it should support it, but I never got it working on my Santa Cruz .

DOS Sound Blaster compatibility: PCI sound cards vs. PCI chipsets
YouTube channel

Reply 2 of 4, by boxpressed

Posted on 2017-01-09, 18:40

boxpressed Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1438
Joined: 2014-05-20, 18:29
Location: Wisconsin, USA

I just saw that datasheet too. It's too bad -- when I used the WDM drivers, the GM music didn't always work, but the parts that did sounded very good.

I found an earlier set of Windows 98 drivers (4019), so I'm going to try those.

Reply 3 of 4, by boxpressed

Posted on 2017-01-09, 19:07

boxpressed Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1438
Joined: 2014-05-20, 18:29
Location: Wisconsin, USA

Well, the 4019 drivers actually installed the Virtual MPU-401 with any prompting or manual installation from me, so that's a start. It loads in Device Manager at port 330.

Unfortunately, I still couldn't get any GM music to play from DOS games. The sound setup programs for Descent and Duke3D just hang, as does Doom when started.

Unless I have a defective example, I'm beginning to think that this is not a good card for DOS games with GM music. The other PCI cards in my review will at least play the music. If this card can't work in an Intel BX system, I don't see how it could work in any other 98SE setup.

Unreal Gold sounds great with it, though!

Reply 4 of 4, by clueless1

Posted on 2017-01-09, 20:59

clueless1 Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 4579
Joined: 2015-12-22, 17:43
Location: Midwest US

More info here:
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
MS-DOS mode comments in that thread seem to confirm your issues. 🙁

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to Sound

Main menu

Common searches