newtmonkey wrote on 2020-05-28, 04:31:

[EDIT] Spoke too soon! The carnival area plays fine, but sitting through the intro leaves a hanging note that never goes away, whether set to 16KB or 32KB.

So, my apologies, but where the buffer suggestion is applicable to Day of the Tentacle, the same command-line options with Sam & Max are seemingly vestigial. It looks like the SB16.WDR driver of the latter uses a 512-byte DMA transfer size; I don't know if this can be easily changed, off-hand.

That said, I've been unable to duplicate any MIDI hanging-note behavior in Sam & Max with the AWE32 card in my 486/66 system, whereas it sounds like you've been experiencing them fairly consistently with the AWE64. This might be worth looking into further, as there's still some uncertainty as to whether a relevant behavior that NewRisingSun identified with the 4.16 DSPs applies to earlier versions. Regardless, assigning MIDI playback to a separate MPU (or even the serial port, assuming an RS-232-capable tone generator or intermediary), is arguably the better solution.

Or consider a HardMPU , especially if some of your games require MPU-401 intelligent mode (nothing wrong with SoftMPU, but the less emulation, the better, IMHO).

Cloudschatze wrote on 2020-05-28, 17:19:

That said, I've been unable to duplicate any MIDI hanging-note behavior in Sam & Max with the AWE32 card in my 486/66 system, whereas it sounds like you've been experiencing them fairly consistently with the AWE64. This might be worth looking into further, as there's still some uncertainty as to whether a relevant behavior that NewRisingSun identified with the 4.16 DSPs applies to earlier versions.

Very interesting! I originally was using an AWE32 with a CM-500 and was getting the hanging note issue regularly in certain games (Wing Commander in MT-32 mode, Sam & Max [CD version] in General MIDI mode). I'm using a Pentium 133 with caches disabled to slow it down to approx. a 386-40 and 486-33, respectively, for those games. Upon switching to the AWE64 I was having the same issues, so I swapped out my CM-500 for an MT-32 and SC55mkii; this resolved the issue with Wing Commander, but not Sam & Max. However, configuring Sam & Max for MT-32 music completely resolves the problem... pretty strange.

At this point I'm going to assume it's either:
- Some weird issue with Sam & Max and my system
- Faulty gameport-MIDI cable that is still working "good enough" for 99% of games

I've ordered DB15MIDI from Serdashop for testing, and have contacted keropi about ordering their Music Quest MPU clone card.

@darry
I'm considering ordering the HardMPU board as a hobby project, but ordering all the bits and pieces for that might be a bit annoying here based on past experience. I'm also a bit paranoid about my poor soldering skills ultimately destroying the card itself or even my PC haha

newtmonkey wrote on 2020-05-29, 02:06:

Very interesting! I originally was using an AWE32 with a CM-500 and was getting the hanging note issue regularly in certain gam […]
Show full quote

Cloudschatze wrote on 2020-05-28, 17:19:

That said, I've been unable to duplicate any MIDI hanging-note behavior in Sam & Max with the AWE32 card in my 486/66 system, whereas it sounds like you've been experiencing them fairly consistently with the AWE64. This might be worth looking into further, as there's still some uncertainty as to whether a relevant behavior that NewRisingSun identified with the 4.16 DSPs applies to earlier versions.

Very interesting! I originally was using an AWE32 with a CM-500 and was getting the hanging note issue regularly in certain games (Wing Commander in MT-32 mode, Sam & Max [CD version] in General MIDI mode). I'm using a Pentium 133 with caches disabled to slow it down to approx. a 386-40 and 486-33, respectively, for those games. Upon switching to the AWE64 I was having the same issues, so I swapped out my CM-500 for an MT-32 and SC55mkii; this resolved the issue with Wing Commander, but not Sam & Max. However, configuring Sam & Max for MT-32 music completely resolves the problem... pretty strange.

At this point I'm going to assume it's either:
- Some weird issue with Sam & Max and my system
- Faulty gameport-MIDI cable that is still working "good enough" for 99% of games

I've ordered DB15MIDI from Serdashop for testing, and have contacted keropi about ordering their Music Quest MPU clone card.

@darry
I'm considering ordering the HardMPU board as a hobby project, but ordering all the bits and pieces for that might be a bit annoying here based on past experience. I'm also a bit paranoid about my poor soldering skills ultimately destroying the card itself or even my PC haha

The Music Quest MPU clone card is a fine choice as well . Either way, I hope you en up with a setup that works well for you .

Thanks very much darry, I am having a ton of fun tweaking and solving the little issues as they come up! Building this machine was a great project to keep me busy during the lockdown.
Honestly, if I didn't know I had other (better) options out there I'd be happy with the system as is, as I've grown to like the AWE FM synth and I can (seemingly) get around the worst of the remaining MIDI issues (like I said above, MT-32 seems to work fine with Sam & Max). I've been told the Music Quest MPU clone card is on backorder for around a month, so that will be an option eventually!