Actually I am having the exact same problem as the OP above. Martian Dreams, Wing Commander 1 (and Secret Missions) and Wing Commander 2 (and Special Ops) all lock up my 486 PC when using my real MT-32. It is only these 3 Origin games that do it and only when trying to use the MT-32 (SoundBlaster support works fine). Other Wing Commander games (Academy, Privateer, Armada, etc.) are fine, Ultima's 6 & 7 work great, all Sierra games work great (TIM, KQ4 and up, SQ1, 3 & up, LSL1, 3 & up, Willie Beamish, etc.). I even tried Buck Rogers 2 - Matrix Cubed and it worked fine as well. I tried these games because they are the oldest ones supporting the MT-32 I have (I initially thought it could be the problem games were using Intelligent Mode on the MPU-401 causing the lockup, but if KQ4 and Matrix Cubed, both designed to run on an 8088, work OK that is unlikely) Again, it is only these 3 Origin games that cause the lockup - All the other MT-32 games, and Windows all work fine. None of my newer MIDI games that use the SoundCanvas have any of these issues either.
Lock up details:
Game loads Origin Sound System! and the OriginFX intro starts. Shortly into the fireworks display at the end of the OriginFX intro, the PC hard locks and the MT-32 starts looping the last sound it was playing. This requires turning the MT-32 and PC off entirely and turning them back on to fix. This same problem happened initially with Wing Commander Academy as well, but that game uses the Miles AIL 2 libraries, so I copied the MT32MPU.ADV file from a working game and that resolved it.
I can get the MT-32 to work in all games except Ultima 7 if I replace the PC MIDI Card with a Gravis Ultrasound running MegaEm 3 to emulate an MPU-401 and output all MIDI through the GUS MIDI port instead. I really should be able to just use the MIDI card and run everything though.
PC I am working with:
IBM PS ValuePoint 6381-F50 - 486SX-25 CPU, 16M RAM, integrated CL-5628 video w/1M RAM. IRQ 9 is enabled by jumper (disables video IRQ - have tried with this both on and off, makes no difference), LPT and COM ports are all disabled in the BIOS as they are unused - PC has 3 ISA slots for expansion containing:
(Slot 1) - MusicQuest PC MIDI Card 8-Bit ISA (100% MPU-401 compatible, when you read MPU-401 in my notes THIS is the card I mean) - set at Port 330, IRQ 2/9
(Slot 2) - 3Com EtherLink III 16-Bit ISA set at Address 3A0
(Slot 3) - Creative SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold 16-Bit ISA set at A220 I7 D1 H5 P300 E620
Roland MT-32 (connected to PC via MIDI IN and MIDI OUT)
Roland SoundCanvas SC-55mkII (connected to MT-32 via MIDI THRU)
15G IDE HDD (Master)
52x IDE CDROM (Slave)
3.5" Floppy Drive
PS/2 Mouse and KB
PC-DOS 2000
Windows 3.11 for Workgroups (all DOS games run in pure DOS)
QEMM '97 (tried under both QEMM and regular DOS HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE)
Troubleshooting tried:
Removing all ISA cards other than the MPU-401
Memtest x86 (24 hrs stable)
Trying different port on MPU-401
Trying different IRQ on the MPU-401
Clean booting into DOS (No Drivers at all)
Connected MIDI IN & OUT to the SoundCanvas, leaving MT-32 disconnected.
If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know. Someone somewhere has to have run into and resolved this before. . .
Thanks,
Michael Miller
* edit * corrected PC Model # and clarified test game choices - BTW, if anyone still has the update patches for QEMM '97, I'd REALLY like to get up with you as they're about impossible to find on the 'net. . . 😀