First post, by rfnagel
- Rank
- Oldbie
Tetris Classic for Windows MIDI Music/Sound Problem
(cut 'n' pastes from a few previous messages that I've posted elsewhere here in the forums:
After building up my new(er) XP machine, and then subsequently discovering DOSBox, most everything I have will run just fine. That is, except for one that I'm trying to troubleshoot/figure out... Spectrum Holobyte's "Tetris Classic for Windows". It likes to find an MPU-401 at port address 330, which the SBLive under XPee (WDM drivers at; on mine at least; address DF20-DF3F) doesn't support <aarrgghh>, or even something as basic as a plain-jane OPL2/3 (again, unsupported with the SBLive under WXP).
I don't suppose that anyone would know of a Windows XP driver of sorts that would 'emulate' an MPU-401 at port address 330? Something that would show up in the device manager as such (MPU-401, port address 300, 310, 320, or 330... doesn't matter, as I can hack TCWs drivers to support other addresses), and then subsequently redirect everything directly to the the SBLive's MIDI section, or simply the Windows MIDI mapper? Drives me nutz, as the old Tetris Classic for Windows needs this, and is completely soundless without it (TCW uses MIDI not only for it's music, but for it's sound effects as well).
P.S. TCW uses the real old (the first 16-bit Windows incarnations, I think) Miles Sound Drivers: filenames are AILADLIB.DLL/AILCANVS.DLL/AILSBFM.DLL/MIDPAK.AD/etc... The AILCANVS.DLL driver file I can hack to support port address 300/310/320/330, but if there is no MPU-401 device named as such at one of those addresses in the Device Manager, you're SOL 🙁
P.P.S. The Microsoft Windows Wavetable GS Synthesizer (which also uses Windows WDM drivers, and which many motherboards' onboard sound chipset use for MIDI music synthesis) also will not work for TCW, as this software synth doesn't assign a true MPU-401 MIDI port address to it either.
But, some sort of 'dummy' generic MPU-401 driver (like I mentioned above) that would redirect to the Windows MIDI Mapper would allow TCW to work with Windows softsynth as well.
Thanks for any help 😀
Rich ¥Weeds¥ Nagel
http://www.richnagel.net