Reply 20 of 34, by Gona
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I have some Roland hardware so I can say my experiences:
No driver needed for games in DOS.
By games there is two standard, the "MT-32" based and the "General MIDI" based games. Some games say in it's sound setup only "Roland". Most of them are "MT-32" based but some are General MIDI. Here is a list about MT-32 games.
Some game say is's sound setup "Sound Canvas". They are General MIDI.
I have not found game that takes advantage of the "Roland GS", the games are have the same sound on a General MIDI only and a General MIDI + Roland GS device. The only advantage of the Roland GS that you can load the MT-32 compatible sound set. The compatibility with the true MT-32 is slight, but I have found that the Frontier: Elite II is not written on MT-32/LAPC-I but on Roland GS with MT-32 sound set because sound much better on it.
I have tested RAP-10 before. It is General MIDI device without Roland GS. I have try one game with "RAP-10" so I think with native digital out (also without DOS driver), it was terrible. So I say the RAP-10 digital out is not useful for games and the DMA usage is a big disadvantage (as I remember, I cannot disable the digital audio part).
If you want to play with Elite II (on PC) a GS capable device would be the best (SC-55; SCC-1; SCB-55 etc.).
If Elite II is not important General MIDI capable one will be pretty good (SC-7; SCB-7 etc.).
What I have tested with General MIDI games on General MIDI compatible Roland devices: SC-55; SCC-1; SCB-55 and RAP-10 are sounds the same for me.