If you are using the Biostar M7VIG Pro mentioned in your signature then it should have it's own gameport, just enable MIDI in your BIOS and you should be good to go.

If you need a better sound card for DOS than your Live! then the ESS Solo-1 and ALS4000 based cards are good for the later VIA chipsets.

Good suggestion I actually have a 400 not a pro so no onboard gameport. I guess I might look for a pro now. I actually am very happy with the live card just can't get the sc-55 to work with my sound card in dos programs. Will either of those cards run a roland sound canvas? I do game a bunch in win 9x and like the eax feature of the sound blaster cards. I did see somewhere that the aureal chipset would work which those had a3d support. Thanks Ill look into those cards.

Kamerat wrote on 2021-01-20, 07:55:

If you are using the Biostar M7VIG Pro mentioned in your signature then it should have it's own gameport, just enable MIDI in your BIOS and you should be good to go.

If you need a better sound card for DOS than your Live! then the ESS Solo-1 and ALS4000 based cards are good for the later VIA chipsets.

could i use the als4000 just as an mpu 401 with the sb live card?

Soulreaper wrote on 2021-01-20, 09:04:

could i use the als4000 just as an mpu 401 with the sb live card?

Yes, just use different resources for your cards. You could also just initialize the legacy addresses for the MPU-401, but that's a bit trickier. You can download an open source initializer from here.

Kamerat wrote on 2021-01-20, 07:55:

If you are using the Biostar M7VIG Pro mentioned in your signature then it should have it's own gameport, just enable MIDI in your BIOS and you should be good to go.

If you need a better sound card for DOS than your Live! then the ESS Solo-1 and ALS4000 based cards are good for the later VIA chipsets.

Would I be good with any old mobo with a gameport. I have been looking around and have found a few socket A boards with gamports. I am thinking of going that route I found a pro board looks like it would be a nice upgrade from the 400.

Kamerat wrote on 2021-01-20, 07:55:

If you are using the Biostar M7VIG Pro mentioned in your signature then it should have it's own gameport, just enable MIDI in your BIOS and you should be good to go.

If you need a better sound card for DOS than your Live! then the ESS Solo-1 and ALS4000 based cards are good for the later VIA chipsets.

Thank You very much. I got a pro board from ebay for 20 dollars and I very happy with it, a nice upgrade plus the sound canvas is now working. Can you suggest a driver for dos for the sblive I don't have a line in mixer option. So I still can't get the sc to work in pure dos but at least I've got the bips on the display moving. It works perfectly in win98 played doom, heretic, final fantasy 7, and sonic and knuckles.

Soulreaper wrote on 2021-01-26, 06:23:

Kamerat wrote on 2021-01-20, 07:55:

If you are using the Biostar M7VIG Pro mentioned in your signature then it should have it's own gameport, just enable MIDI in your BIOS and you should be good to go.

If you need a better sound card for DOS than your Live! then the ESS Solo-1 and ALS4000 based cards are good for the later VIA chipsets.

Thank You very much. I got a pro board from ebay for 20 dollars and I very happy with it, a nice upgrade plus the sound canvas is now working. Can you suggest a driver for dos for the sblive I don't have a line in mixer option. So I still can't get the sc to work in pure dos but at least I've got the bips on the display moving. It works perfectly in win98 played doom, heretic, final fantasy 7, and sonic and knuckles.

I guess I have to use mic in on my card its working.

Right, so you can't hear the Sc-55 in DOS because you can't enable the line-in under DOS?

See this page for drivers and a helpful video: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/sound-blaster-live.html

Pierre32 wrote on 2021-01-26, 08:11:

Right, so you can't hear the Sc-55 in DOS because you can't enable the line-in under DOS?

See this page for drivers and a helpful video: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/sound-blaster-live.html

If enabling line-in is the only problem then you do not even need the emulation drivers, you only need this:
Multichannel DOS mixer for DOS sound builds v0.49 for Live, v1.01 for Audigy

Alright can't get duke 3d to work I keep getting a mpu-401 not detected error when setting up the music. Weather i am in dos or windows I have a messy install from replacing the mobo yesterday. So today I performed a fresh install I installed duke with the bare min just to see if it was a sound card driver conflict. I get the same problem the don't know where to start. Is there a patch out there?

Soulreaper wrote on 2021-01-27, 04:33:

Alright can't get duke 3d to work I keep getting a mpu-401 not detected error when setting up the music. Weather i am in dos or windows I have a messy install from replacing the mobo yesterday. So today I performed a fresh install I installed duke with the bare min just to see if it was a sound card driver conflict. I get the same problem the don't know where to start. Is there a patch out there?

I actually had the same problem a while back, unfortunately I din't get any replies. bjt fixed the problem with SoftMPU by removing the requirement for ACK to be returned.

Kamerat wrote on 2021-01-29, 19:30:

Soulreaper wrote on 2021-01-27, 04:33:

Alright can't get duke 3d to work I keep getting a mpu-401 not detected error when setting up the music. Weather i am in dos or windows I have a messy install from replacing the mobo yesterday. So today I performed a fresh install I installed duke with the bare min just to see if it was a sound card driver conflict. I get the same problem the don't know where to start. Is there a patch out there?

I actually had the same problem a while back, unfortunately I din't get any replies. bjt fixed the problem with SoftMPU by removing the requirement for ACK to be returned.

Thanks I'll give it a try!

Soulreaper wrote on 2021-01-30, 08:00:

Thanks I'll give it a try!

Sorry, think I was a little unclear here. I think SoftMPU and Duke Nukem 3D had the same problem with ACK, bjt fixed SoftMPU. Unfortunately SoftMPU can't help out Duke Nukem 3D. 🙁

Kamerat wrote on 2021-01-30, 08:37:

Soulreaper wrote on 2021-01-30, 08:00:

Thanks I'll give it a try!

Sorry, think I was a little unclear here. I think SoftMPU and Duke Nukem 3D had the same problem with ACK, bjt fixed SoftMPU. Unfortunately SoftMPU can't help out Duke Nukem 3D. 🙁

I didn't think so, it is only for mt-32 stuff right? I am very new to setting up dos this deeply so I am pretty ignorant to most of what I am reading on here. Anyway I did get a usb midi cable with my purchase and it has worked flawlessly in win xp so I tried eduke32 the other night and it worked great. Would I still benefit from a different sound card like the ones you suggested earlier? Again though thanks for the help I do like the new board I have overclocking options now, onboard LAN which freed up a pci slot, and looks like i might be able to run 3.3volt agp card (I haven't looked into it yet but the notch is not there to keep you from installing a agp 1x 2x card into a 4x slot.)

Soulreaper wrote on 2021-01-30, 09:30:

I didn't think so, it is only for mt-32 stuff right? I am very new to setting up dos this deeply so I am pretty ignorant to most of what I am reading on here. Anyway I did get a usb midi cable with my purchase and it has worked flawlessly in win xp so I tried eduke32 the other night and it worked great. Would I still benefit from a different sound card like the ones you suggested earlier? Again though thanks for the help I do like the new board I have overclocking options now, onboard LAN which freed up a pci slot, and looks like i might be able to run 3.3volt agp card (I haven't looked into it yet but the notch is not there to keep you from installing a agp 1x 2x card into a 4x slot.)

SoftMPU isn't only for MT-32, but it only works with real mode games and programs (Duke Nukem 3D is protected mode). The ESS Solo-1 and ALS4000 dosen't need any TSR's when running Sound Blaster emulation under DOS like the Live! need so you will have better game compatibility and they also got hardware FM synth implementations.

Kamerat wrote on 2021-02-04, 02:21:

Soulreaper wrote on 2021-01-30, 09:30:

I didn't think so, it is only for mt-32 stuff right? I am very new to setting up dos this deeply so I am pretty ignorant to most of what I am reading on here. Anyway I did get a usb midi cable with my purchase and it has worked flawlessly in win xp so I tried eduke32 the other night and it worked great. Would I still benefit from a different sound card like the ones you suggested earlier? Again though thanks for the help I do like the new board I have overclocking options now, onboard LAN which freed up a pci slot, and looks like i might be able to run 3.3volt agp card (I haven't looked into it yet but the notch is not there to keep you from installing a agp 1x 2x card into a 4x slot.)

SoftMPU isn't only for MT-32, but it only works with real mode games and programs (Duke Nukem 3D is protected mode). The ESS Solo-1 and ALS4000 dosen't need any TSR's when running Sound Blaster emulation under DOS like the Live! need so you will have better game compatibility and they also got hardware FM synth implementations.

I will be picking up on of those sound cards then too. How would an aureal vortex perform?

Soulreaper wrote on 2021-02-04, 06:38:

I will be picking up on of those sound cards then too. How would an aureal vortex perform?

I wouldn't buy the Vortex for DOS usage if I had a motherboard that's compatible with the Solo-1 and ALS4000.

Kamerat wrote on 2021-02-05, 10:35:

Soulreaper wrote on 2021-02-04, 06:38:

I will be picking up on of those sound cards then too. How would an aureal vortex perform?

I wouldn't buy the Vortex for DOS usage if I had a motherboard that's compatible with the Solo-1 and ALS4000.

I can't find a solo-1 as you suggested this an ess card right? Is there another ESS card that you may be able to suggest?

Quick update I was messing around with memory from windows in the dos shell. If I turn off or on HMA memory from the dos settings menu while in build games it seems to work 60 percent of the time every time. Its not perfect but it is working.