clueless1 wrote:

Doom is exceptional. The others are above-average. But there are a games I've tried that don't sound that good on the Santa Cruz. System Shock and Strike Commander are two I remember off the top of my head.

Doom does indeed sound very nice 😀

boxpressed wrote:

For Tyrian, I just recorded the first minute after the game is started. The song is called "Tyrian: The Level." I used Tyrian 2000, one of the games you get for free from GOG. I think I had to patch it because of the Turbo Pascal runtime error.

Those samples do sound quite good. Were you able to get a 98SE machine to play them from actual gameplay or sound setup programs?

Well I read about the DOS troubles with this card, so I just played the MIDI files in Windows 98 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Well I read about the DOS troubles with this card, so I just played the MIDI files in Windows 98 😀

Ah, okay. I was hoping that you had been able to get this card to play GM music during DOS gameplay. It's too bad that there are no reports of this, but clueless1 has been able to access the wavetable for GM music in DOSBox on an XP machine. And I assume that the wavetable header would still work.

It just seems so strange that this card would be released in 2000, come with what seems to be a 10MB patchset, and not be usable for GM in DOS. But I guess the patchset would be used for music creation rather than games.

I posted these almost a year ago, but since we're on the subject, here's an old thread with X-Wing, Strike Commander, and Wing Commander 3 samples.
X-Wing Intro Music General MIDI Samples--Santa Cruz vs SBLive!

Sad to hear about its DOS difficulties, but for my purposes, it makes a great sound card for playing GM in DOSBox games. It also works great in ScummVM with both GM and MT-32 emulation.

boxpressed wrote:

It just seems so strange that this card would be released in 2000, come with what seems to be a 10MB patchset, and not be usable for GM in DOS. But I guess the patchset would be used for music creation rather than games.

Yes. SB 16 Pro works well enough though, so does FM. I haven't tested the wavetable header though.

boxpressed wrote:

Ah, okay. I was hoping that you had been able to get this card to play GM music during DOS gameplay. It's too bad that there are no reports of this, but clueless1 has been able to access the wavetable for GM music in DOSBox on an XP machine. And I assume that the wavetable header would still work.

It just seems so strange that this card would be released in 2000, come with what seems to be a 10MB patchset, and not be usable for GM in DOS. But I guess the patchset would be used for music creation rather than games.

Thoughts on trying it with VDMSound?

gdjacobs wrote:

Thoughts on trying it with VDMSound?

Worked here, for MPU-401 emulation at least. Windows 98SE, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and 4081 driver.

Win9x + VDMSound **ALPHA**

Thanks, gdjacobs and Kamerat. My original plans were to try to do everything without any third-party apps, but this one is new to me and looks really interesting. Plus, I'm running out of wavetables to test! The thread linked to above is long -- are the instructions in the first post still the way to go?

Added a few samples to the GUS ACE entry. These samples were recorded using the Pro Patches Lite (PPL) replacement patchset. If you haven't played around with PPL for your GUS, you may want to give it a try. The creator took 248 patches from some of the best patchsets back in the day.

boxpressed wrote:

Thanks, gdjacobs and Kamerat. My original plans were to try to do everything without any third-party apps, but this one is new to me and looks really interesting. Plus, I'm running out of wavetables to test! The thread linked to above is long -- are the instructions in the first post still the way to go?

The instructions inthe first post worked for me. Edited the DOSDRV.BAT file so I dont need to run VXDBOOM.EXE manually at every rerun and added the VDMSPATH variable so I don't need it in AUTOEXEC.BAT. Also edited VDMS.INI and commented out stuff not needed for MPU-401 emulation.

Here's a working link for the VCREDIST.EXE package:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/fil … es/vcredist.exe

Would anyone be interested in recordings from a Thinkpad 755 - pentium 75 equipped with IBM's infamous Mwave sound/modem DSP card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Mwave ? I have a working one, but DOS/Win3.1 only. It uses for MIDI synthesis a (roughly) 8MB patch set of .wav files. Which games would you like me to test if so?

(FWIW I also have an ISA Mwave card so I could potentially try the same in slower or faster systems as well)

stamasd wrote:

Would anyone be interested in recordings from a Thinkpad 755 - pentium 75 equipped with IBM's infamous Mwave sound/modem DSP card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Mwave ? I have a working one, but DOS/Win3.1 only. It uses for MIDI synthesis a (roughly) 8MB patch set of .wav files. Which games would you like me to test if so?

(FWIW I also have an ISA Mwave card so I could potentially try the same in slower or faster systems as well)

I have an IBM Audiovation sound card that works in DOS and Windows 3.1 only with what I think is an early variant of the Mwave. It does not do GM in games. Does your Thinkpad do GM in games or just play MIDI files from Windows? I was thinking about adding the Audiovation but only if I could find a game it could work with.

I'm interested in the ISA Mwave. I was thinking about buying one (for science 🤣 ). Does it do GM for games like Duke3D and Doom?

boxpressed wrote:

stamasd wrote:

Would anyone be interested in recordings from a Thinkpad 755 - pentium 75 equipped with IBM's infamous Mwave sound/modem DSP card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Mwave ? I have a working one, but DOS/Win3.1 only. It uses for MIDI synthesis a (roughly) 8MB patch set of .wav files. Which games would you like me to test if so?

(FWIW I also have an ISA Mwave card so I could potentially try the same in slower or faster systems as well)

I have an IBM Audiovation sound card that works in DOS and Windows 3.1 only with what I think is an early variant of the Mwave. It does not do GM in games. Does your Thinkpad do GM in games or just play MIDI files from Windows? I was thinking about adding the Audiovation but only if I could find a game it could work with.

I'm interested in the ISA Mwave. I was thinking about buying one (for science 🤣 ). Does it do GM for games like Duke3D and Doom?

I haven't tested any games yet, just finished installing a couple of days ago and was busy yesterday so I didn't try games yet. As for the ISA Mwave TBH I have never used it so I don't know what it can and cannot do (got it in a bundle of cards a while ago and just put it in my pile of cards). I assume it has the same capabilities as the Thinkpad built-in one as they were essentially the same design. I can't seem to find any specific drivers for the ISA Mwave card, but I hope that the same drivers I'm using on the Thinkpad would work.

The "classic" (or infamous) Mwave is the 2780 (the last four digits on the IC markings). This is the one found on the modem/sound card combo.

But some Mwave ICs were used only for sound cards, such as the Audiovation. The Mwave IC on my Audiovation is the 33G2866.

This is to say that you might need different drivers. But, yes, please post a link to the thread if you can get a recording.

Well I'm not really planning on using the ISA card anyway. I was going to use the laptop card assuming it does allow MIDI music in games.

Sounds good.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the Mwave drivers emulate a MPU-401 compatible device under DOS. I can't get any music in games that allow selection of GM or MPU-401 (tested with: Doom, X-COM, Frontier First Encounters). The latter has an extensive setup program with many options for sound setup and testing. The best I could get is SBPro SFX and OPL3 emulation for music.

I didn't do much testing in a DOS box under Win3.11 (no time now, have to leave for an appointment). I only tested Doom, and it doesn't work at all (freezes computer, requires hard reboot).

I downloaded some .MID files (from the four games I test) and got my Audiovation to play them with Media Player in Windows 3.1. They're not good but not unlistenable, either.

This card seems to need Windows 3.1 to work with DOS games, according to the manual. No mention of any DOS drivers. I may install a Windows 3.1 game that uses GM and see if it works.

The manual mentions XWING by name in one of its examples, so I assume that there's some gaming potential with the card.

Nope, tried X-wing both in pure DOS and under Win3.11 and I get no GM music. I can only get sound if I select SB (and that required some juggling of drivers, to meet the minimum memory requirements of the game which is 550K - I have many drivers including PCMCIA and Mwave DOS drivers).

Added a new card today: the Reveal SoundFX Wave 32.

I've had a few cards in the chute that haven't panned out for various reasons (the IBM Audiovation, the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, the AT&T/MediaMagic Roadrunner modem/sound card combo, etc.), so I haven't updated in a while. Although I can get those cards to play MIDI files from Windows, I'm choosing not to include them at this time because they fail when asked to play GM from DOS games.

I finally got around to unsealing the Reveal card and testing it out. It is a near clone of the Ensoniq Soundscape S-2000, but the board layout is slightly different, and the sound is slightly different. This is a beautiful card.

I want to try to get back to including cards that are cheaper and more readily available, but I seem to be running out of them! However, I have one on the way that may work out. Stay tuned.

Added the Compaq Business Wavetable Sound Card today. This is an ESS card through and through, with the ES1869F AudioDrive and the uncommon ES692S synth.

Very cheap right now on eBay for the interested. A great value.