VOGONS


First post, by adalbert

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Hello, one of my vintage laptops used for old software is Pentium II 366MHz Dell CPI. It runs Windows 95 OSR2, but I can upgrade it to Win 98SE if needed.

dell-latitude-cpi-1.jpg

It has two audio devices installed:

NeoMagic MagicMedia 256 Audio
NeoMagic MagicMedia 256 Sound Blaster Emulation
(optional driver)

Sound works fine under Windows applications, but there was no MIDI music and no MIDI devices installed. User's guide stated that this laptop uses sound blaster emulation and 'software wavetable', so I installed Yamaha XG50 Soft Synth and I got MIDI in Windows.

But I would like to have MIDI in DOS games, launched in Windows.
I get sound effects playing fine, but no music, although games seem to detect music card.

Sound in DOS games work only in Windows because it needs driver for emulation.

NeoMagic MagicMedia 256 Sound Blaster Emulation driver has reserved three I/O ranges in control panel:

0220 - 022F
0388 - 038B
0300 - 0301

so it has also ranges that are used for playing music, like 0x388, but the sound card probably doesn't have build in music sythesiser.

Is it possible to emulate MIDI synthesizer for use with DOS games, when only sound effects are working, or to route MIDI signals from DOS to be played by Windows synth - Yamaha XG50?

I have noticed that there is VDMSound for Win 9x but I heard that it is unstable alpha.

Repair/electronic stuff videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/adalbertfix
ISA Wi-fi + USB in T3200SXC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX30t3lYezs
GUI programming for Windows 3.11 (the easy way): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L272OApVg

Reply 1 of 9, by Davros

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Are you sure it doesnt have midi ?
A soundcard without midi from that era would be very unusual
can you get hold of the original drivers, they should set up your set blaster lines
most cards from that era are sbpro/sb at the register level so midi emulation shouldn't be needed

edit: that cards seems a bit unusual doesnt it also do video ?

Guardian of the Sacred Five Terabyte's of Gaming Goodness

Reply 2 of 9, by adalbert

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Well, I'm pretty sure it doesn't. And yes, it seems to be a weird all-in-one integrated chip.

Anyway, I managed to install VDMSound under Windows 95. It can emulate both SoundBlaster for audio and AdLib for music. But it is unstable and crashes when using both.
When emulating just AdLib, it is perfectly stable, but I have no sound effects.

So, the perfect soultion would be to enable VDMSound to emulate just music, and use Sound Blaster emulation from my laptop sound card.
I tried messing with config file but with no luck. Could anyone try to help solving this?

Repair/electronic stuff videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/adalbertfix
ISA Wi-fi + USB in T3200SXC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX30t3lYezs
GUI programming for Windows 3.11 (the easy way): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L272OApVg

Reply 4 of 9, by smokeycockatiel

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Sorry for the bump

I have a cpi a 400xt and there's no midi 🙁

35, From Worcestershire England, Autistic, Hobbies, Steam Engine's-Briggs And Stratton Engines, Dell Laptops,Record Collector,

Reply 5 of 9, by Gryphon

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I wanted to bump this thread myself some time ago as last year I bought latitude CPi A366XT with intention of playing dos and early windows games on it and encountered same problem There seem to be 2 versions of latitude CPi. One with prefix D and other with prefix A - the A being newer with "beefier specs" . Old D one has crystal audio sound card which emulates both sound and music under dos and windows,and new one Neomagic media which can sort of emulate some midi but it appears that it's incapable of emulating music for dos games at all.

I was able to have sound and music in windows versions of games like Warcraft 2 or Heroes of Might and Magic 2 on CPI A. I was however unable to have any music in dos versions of these games running under windows 98se. There should be midi drivers for neomagic card which you can try to install. These should at least enable sound on dos games but you still wont have music. Maybe I'm mistaken and there is a way to play music natively but I doubt it.

You can alternatively download dosbox and try dropping your games there. You should be able to play them with sound and music at normal speeds - if you want to play older dos stuff.
CPI's cpu should be able to handle that.

Reply 6 of 9, by ragefury32

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Nope - the Dell Lat CPiAs do not have a DOS kosher sound card - that’s a known issue for pretty much all DellLats between the CPiD (CS4237B) and the CPx (ESS Maestro series). All the other Dell models in that range are Neomagic AC97 devices only (except one specific LS model that uses a Crystal CS4281)

Reply 8 of 9, by genghiskhanpl

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Pauls comp emporium wrote on 2021-03-21, 18:18:

here is a video i made showing how to get sound and music to work in dos games

Dell CPi A440XT with neomagic 2200

https://youtu.be/4O3zgTgMbrI

How did you manage to get sound? i've installed these drivers but with no luck 🙁

Reply 9 of 9, by Pauls comp emporium

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Was working on a new video for the CP series as now own 3 of the 4 cpi laptops but did not finish it one day 🤣, the CPI neomagic is the most greif you get the right driver it works will check the driver as not sure the video has the correct link its been a while. if you install the wrong one first i think it will screw up the one that actually works if you try and install after, the cpt /cpx laptops are much better uses ATi rage and ess for sound and music i think the CPX has the 800x600 screen which is better for 98 and dos as because of screen stretching on the higher res pannels, also the dell c dock 2 not the port replicator has PCI slots in if you can find this you can add 3dfx banshee and any PCI audio card live audigy etc. i will check the driver i have install and post another reply when i get time.

So the driver reports in 98se device manager
Date 5-15-2001
magicmedia 256av Audio Driver (WDM)
hardware version 032
file version 5.12.2111-4oq
built by winDDK

windows/system32/drivers has Nm5a2WDM.sys date modified may 15th 2001
Size 128kb (131,744)

Works within Windows98se command not pure dos
My Doom settings

Music : Sound Canvas ...not sure why this works

SFX SB 220 5 1

Voices 3 dont think this matters tho 8 would prob work

config.sys and autoexec.bat are both empty

i checked the download in the video seems to match

Edit
Tested a few games today on the Dell CPi

Well known games/titles
Duke 3d, doom, monkey island 1 working with sound and music quality was reasonable
Carmageddon worked only with midi crashed on auto detect and did not work with digial sound

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hH8MAkbnZUA Doom On CPI
SFX and music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1AjgutW1rA Midwinter 2 on CPI
SFX and music