Midi port is for daughterboard midi or external midi player (like Roland). The card will play music via FM/OPL3. In other words, if you want midi music, you must buy a midi device.

clueless1 wrote:

Midi port is for daughterboard midi or external midi player (like Roland). The card will play music via FM/OPL3. In other words, if you want midi music, you must buy a midi device.

The MPU-401 interface is a communications interface only. It requires something to communicate with to process the MIDI commands being sent. MIDI synthesis can also be performed by a powerful enough computer running emulation software and featuring MIDI input capability.

As for the problem at hand, this looks like an I/O conflict. Some SCSI adapters, for instance, can use 0x330.

gdjacobs wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

Midi port is for daughterboard midi or external midi player (like Roland). The card will play music via FM/OPL3. In other words, if you want midi music, you must buy a midi device.

The MPU-401 interface is a communications interface only. It requires something to communicate with to process the MIDI commands being sent. MIDI synthesis can also be performed by a powerful enough computer running emulation software and featuring MIDI input capability.

As for the problem at hand, this looks like an I/O conflict. Some SCSI adapters, for instance, can use 0x330.

So what I/O ports should I try ?

gdjacobs wrote:

As for the problem at hand, this looks like an I/O conflict. Some SCSI adapters, for instance, can use 0x330.

Maybe IRQs are also causing trouble. not sure. MPU-401 used to use IRQ2/9, which is sometimes used by the ACPI/APIC combo and network cards.
Same for old EGA cards and a few VGA cards. They use IRQ2 for vertical-retrace. Even some modern BIOSes do reserve that IRQ, even though it is barely needed.

So even though there is no midi device connected to the SB16, he should still not be getting the MPU-401 midi port error? I figured if there was no device for it to find, it would give that error.

he should not get any error, all he would get is a silent test
SB16 mpu does not use any IRQ , just a port... so as long as the other tests work then the mpu one should work too.
Maybe some PnP issue since this is a vibra card....

clueless1 wrote:

So even though there is no midi device connected to the SB16, he should still not be getting the MPU-401 midi port error? I figured if there was no device for it to find, it would give that error.

MIDI does not have any bi-directional handshaking, so if you send data to a MIDI port to which nothing is connected there is nothing to tell the sending device nothing is connected.

Okay, Thanks all. Since It won't play MIDI files anyway. I am just going to swap it out another sound blaster with Yamaha OPL3 chip or just a Yamaha Audition 32 sound card or an AWE64 sound card.

Which would be best for playing MIDI files ?

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Okay, Thanks all. Since It won't play MIDI files anyway. I am just going to swap it out another sound blaster with Yamaha OPL3 chip or just a Yamaha Audition 32 sound card or an AWE64 sound card.

Which would be best for playing MIDI files ?

The AWE64 is least problematic for MIDI, although the onboard MIDI synth isn't as compatible in DOS as everyone would like as it's not available through the hardware MPU-401 device. Only having CQM makes it less desirable (for some? most?) as the sound quality is inferior/not authentic compared to true OPL3.

If there's another card, like a SCSI device, installed that's occupying 0x330, it's really best to move it. Some early games are hard coded to look for an MPU-401 at 0x330 with no option to change (although most would require SoftMPU as well).

I'm not aware of any utility that will find all the hardware I/O ports that are in use. I recommend checking your config.sys and autoexec.bat files to see what's loaded and if anything is manually assigned. Also reading as much information in the DOS bootup messages as you can for clues can be very valuable. If all else fails, systematically use the config/setup utilities or check the jumpers for all the expansion cards you've currently got installed to see if anything is using 0x330.

Again, the most likely culprit (to my way of thinking) is either another sound device or a SCSI controller. Anything like that installed?

For reference, here's a document with many of the most common or default IO port assignments.
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/techspec/PORTS.LST

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Okay, Thanks all. Since It won't play MIDI files anyway. I am just going to swap it out another sound blaster with Yamaha OPL3 chip or just a Yamaha Audition 32 sound card or an AWE64 sound card.

Which would be best for playing MIDI files ?

I use an Audician 32 with a midi daughtercard. I started off with a Dreamblaster S1, then upgraded to the Dreamblaster X2. Works great with the Audician. Just watch out for some hanging note issues with certain Sound Blasters. It's not a big deal to some people, but it is to others.

clueless1 wrote:

I use an Audician 32 with a midi daughtercard. I started off with a Dreamblaster S1, then upgraded to the Dreamblaster X2. Works great with the Audician. Just watch out for some hanging note issues with certain Sound Blasters. It's not a big deal to some people, but it is to others.

The HNB is pretty grating in Hexen.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Okay, Thanks all. Since It won't play MIDI files anyway. I am just going to swap it out another sound blaster with Yamaha OPL3 chip or just a Yamaha Audition 32 sound card or an AWE64 sound card.

Which would be best for playing MIDI files ?

You need a sound card with a MIDI-compatible device attached or included. So either a regular Soundblaster with General MIDI-compatible daughterboard or module attached, or one that includes an on-board synth that understands MIDI. A card with only an OPL3 will not be able to play MDII files natively, unless you use a driver than converts the MIDI data into something the FM chip can understand (and that will sound off).

Not sure which card you own, but if your card isn't PnP, check if there's a MPUEN jumper that's open. If your card has such a jumper and if it's open, the card's MPU-401 interface is disabled.

But you'll still need a MIDI daughtercard in order to actually get anything from the MIDI port. Without it, you won't hear anything even after enabling the interface.

If you don't use MIDI, it's better to leave MIDI in a disabled state so some games that don't have a built-in setup program to choose between MIDI and FM synth can properly defer to FM synth. In such case, a parameter (/DMPU, I think, as mentioned by someone else), is needed for DIAGNOSE to bypass the MIDI test part.

I went with an Sound Blaster AWE64 sound card. It installed fine and everything is working including MIDI playback.
Sounds okay to me.

What are some good programs to use with this sound card for selecting files and playing them.
Currently I only have “SB Player” which only plays audio CDROM’s.

What is the DOS file manager called ?

Intel486dx33 wrote:

I went with an Sound Blaster AWE64 sound card. It installed fine and everything is working including MIDI playback. Sounds okay […]
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I went with an Sound Blaster AWE64 sound card. It installed fine and everything is working including MIDI playback.
Sounds okay to me.

What are some good programs to use with this sound card for selecting files and playing them.
Currently I only have “SB Player” which only plays audio CDROM’s.

What is the DOS file manager called ?

You're going to have to be specific in what you're looking for.

There are many players depending on what you want to play. There are also many file managers, although that's not of critical importance. File managers are a convenience at best in DOS.