nevermind, i've just seen great hierophant's thread at queststudios.

Where did you see it? I've checked ebay and did find it.

I have one already. It works only under Win9x.

it was on ebay.co.uk, but it's ended now.

Well I got hold of an SCP-55 cheap and eventually managed to get an old ISA/PCMCIA card to fit it in my 486. The adapter doesn't need any drivers other than what Windows 95 supplies, and the Roland driver seems to work fine for the SCP-55. I don't have the breakout box but I'm only using the card for playback. Spec of this machine:

AMD 5x86 in a Abit BN6 motherboard
S3 Trio PCI graphics
Realtek PCI NIC
GUS ACE
SCP-55 in an ISA/PCMCIA card
SB Pro 2
Windows 95

The only slight hassle was getting a PCMCIA adapter that would work with a 486 running 95. Tried it on Heretic so far and it sounds good, though not always as good as the GUS imho.

Congratilations!
What drivers did you use? Try to install Win3.11 drivers under MS DOS and check if it would work.

The drivers I used were for windows 95, it's from a zip file I think I got from the roland site. Contains scp95.drv, scp95a.inf, scp95.vxd, scp55.drv [and other files of course]

I only have 95 on that machine right now, but when I get a free moment I will install partition magic and hopefully set up dos and win3.11 and try what you suggest. I think I saw in the scp-55 documents some guidance on how to set it up for dos.

Not sure if the pcmcia adapter will be an issue - ie. whether that wil need a dos driver of some sort.

Will the SCP-55 play under Windows 95 without the external cable? Or does it need to plug back into a line-in?

Does this work under dos? I am thinking about buying one for dos midi.

According to the documentation, it needs Windows 3.1. I have used it with 95. Under 95 it works in DOS games.

The documentation says that the installation adds a line to config.sys.

It also says that the card needs card services and socket services. I don't know if that means it will work under dos if you can get a dos pcmcia driver, or whether that means it's windows only.

It needs an output cable. They also made a "breakout box" [mcb-3] which I think was a cable with midi din's on it.