aitotat wrote on 2023-10-13, 04:25:
I hope the AT89S52 chips would arrive soon
same from my side. BTW, @Maelgrum if you need a tester for "6 clocks cycles"-mode, i.e. if you believe anything can be fixed/improved that way, just keep in mind I ordered "AT89C51RC2".
aitotat wrote on 2023-10-13, 04:25:
How hard would it be to implement fake ACK for the MPU? The same way as Ensoniq Soundscape "supports" intelligent mode MPU enough to get most games working. That would be a nice improvement.
Excellent, idea! I think if the DSP code is what handles the MPU UART responses that should be easy. maybe, @Maelgrum is not familiar what we mean and so just to give some further details:
dosdays.co.uk wrote:The ACK Message
Another option (mattw note: for games that need MPU-401 Intelligent mode to connect to Rolland MT-32 device) if […]
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The ACK Message
Another option (mattw note: for games that need MPU-401 Intelligent mode to connect to Rolland MT-32 device) if you don't have a proper MPU-401 interface is if you have a sound card that sends an ACK *acknowledge" response to all MIDI messages that get passed to them which in many cases fools the game into believing you have a real MPU-401 interface. So in our case, it works like this:
1) the game's code sends a MIDI message to say 'play some music'.
2) the clever sound card receives this message (since it is acting as the conduit from the PC to the external sound device) and automatically sends back an 'ACK'. If you had a real MPU-401 interface, it too would send back an 'ACK' message to the running program, but it would probably also send further information with it.
and by pure accident I wrote earlier today about MPU-401 ACK response and how such communication looks like:
Re: Roland LAPC-N / I question
So, if the DSP can be patched to sends out "Fake ACK" (let's call them that way for short) to any MIDI Request that would be huge improvement, indeed! Last, but not least - if there is space in the 8052-MCU ROM (or if needed we upgrade the MCU to one with 16KB, 32KB and even 64KB of ROM space), I think even full MPU-401 code can be integrated, which makes the comment I made in post here:
Re: The Soundblaster DSP project
not even off-the-topic, but an idea for possible way for improvement of the current SB16 DSP-code, but maybe for the full MPU-401 support - not just the ROM space, but the 8052 speed would be a limitation. In any way, just implementing "Fake ACK", if that is possible, will be very huge improvement.