Fantastic story and thank you for sharing! Yes DOS machines are a lot of work and parts can be expensive and finicky. For many of us here it started with the desire to play old games but then we enjoy playing with the old hardware, DOS, Windows and Drivers even more 😀

Emulation is indeed fantastic and if you want to play games I highly recommend it. I also admit that most DOS games I have played, I did so on DOSBox with the comforts of a modern machine.

The retro computers are for tinkering, documenting things, sharing knowledge and all of that.

That's pretty slick!

Nice story 😀 And what is that thing left of the keylock on your P3?
Looks like a stereo PC-speaker :p

Dosbox is awesome but As Mau1wurf1977 said, some of us just love to mess around with old hardware 😀

Just to add one little thing, your MT-32 should have worked with your AWE64, at least for many games. You only really need the very expensive real mpu-401 interfaces for games that require the "intelligent mode" .
You just need to make sure the feature is enabled with your aweutils and you select the proper interface port in the game usually 300-330.

As a side note, i play my games on real retro pcs now but i miss the filtering options of dosbox to smooth out those huge pixel. One solution i like to use is to output the computer on a CRT TV, it does a wonder of smoothing things.
I played a game of the original 16 colors Duke Nukem on a 32" TV the other day, it was fantastic!

MaxWar wrote:

Nice story 😀 And what is that thing left of the keylock on your P3?
Looks like a stereo PC-speaker :p

that is a front loading hard drive bay to easily swap hard drives. That way I can easily switch between DOS and Windows 98 SE, kind of does look like a speaker i agree!

Thanks for the tip about the AWE64 and aweutils, I will certainly investigate further in that regard.

I like the idea of using a CRT TV for gaming, kind of like having a built in 2XSAI filter 🤣

Nice systems. What's that Speeze thing? Is it some kind of sound absorber? Does it actually make a difference?

Stull wrote:

Nice systems. What's that Speeze thing? Is it some kind of sound absorber? Does it actually make a difference?

Thanks Stull, yes it is a sound insulator, it came with the case I got, I didn't fit it myself, to be honest I cant really say it makes any difference at all, I wouldn't have bothered to fit it if it didn't come with the case.

Nice and clean! I love that "devil inside" sticker 😀

And the MT-32... You're lucky 😀 When yesterday my girlfriend asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I said: "Nothing, I really have everything I need", while a large part of me was screaming inside: "MT-32! You want MT-32!" 😁

RacoonRider wrote:

Nice and clean! I love that "devil inside" sticker 😀

And the MT-32... You're lucky 😀 When yesterday my girlfriend asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I said: "Nothing, I really have everything I need", while a large part of me was screaming inside: "MT-32! You want MT-32!" 😁

🤣, was not as expensive as you might think, I got mine for about £100 on eBay, i think they were about £400-£500 when they first came out back in the day

If you don't care so much about the LCD screen on the MT-32, the MT-100 does the same for a lower price. I got my MT-100 for 25 dollars.

Nice basic case with no over the top “styling” I like it! Good build too.

Only thing I would change is 512MB RAM (just casue windows likes it) and a Sound Blaster Live or above for EAX (depending on what games you play that is) but really there isn’t much this PC won’t be able to do

I remember when everyone had the HDD caddy’s (accept me) that in its self is retro
Bit late now but you probably could of played the dos games from Win98 (I admit that is cheating a little) but even then dosbox is better than a real PC 9 times out of 10 if your just after gaming. Your “problems” are actually challenges once they are fixed the whole thing gets a little boring

I did consider 512mb of ram, but there is one game I like to play (Actua Golf 2) that will not work with 512, you get a not enough memory error if there is more than 256mb ram installed. I don't know much about EAX, what does it do? Would there be a significant difference for old school games?

fair enough then, really Win9x games came out when 128MB was alot, 256 was about the time people were moving over to XP 512 just gives you extra to play with, but your not going to miss it.

EAX gives better sound effects in games like background noise, more defined echo’s in tunnels, stuff like that. Some games you notice it alot like NFS, other games like Diablo2 not so much but still abit. Do a quick search on the internet and you can find a list of what games support it if your playing those games then I’d recommend it Sound Blaster Lives are cheap and plentiful, Audigy’s start to cost a bit more but the Audigy 2 ZS is a very nice card!

vetz wrote:

If you don't care so much about the LCD screen on the MT-32, the MT-100 does the same for a lower price. I got my MT-100 for 25 dollars.

Careful 😀 The MT-100 has the PCB of the revised MT-32. Roland refers to this as MT-32 (new) in their service manuals.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

vetz wrote:

If you don't care so much about the LCD screen on the MT-32, the MT-100 does the same for a lower price. I got my MT-100 for 25 dollars.

Careful 😀 The MT-100 has the PCB of the revised MT-32. Roland refers to this as MT-32 (new) in their service manuals.

What do you mean? The MT-32 has three revisions to it, the latest added a headphones jack on the backside, which I thought was the same as the MT-100? Some games do only sound 100% correct on the old revisions, and some only on the new revisions, but most ones work no matter what revision.

There are two versions of the MT-32. MT-32 (Old) and MT-32 (New). The other modules are CM series and have their own differences.

Good thing about the MT-32 (New) is that it avoids the buffer overflow issues. But apart from that it's the odd module out as it's not 100% compatible with the original MT-32 and doesn't have the 33 extra sound effects of the CM series either.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

There are two versions of the MT-32. MT-32 (Old) and MT-32 (New). The other modules are CM series and have their own differences.

Good thing about the MT-32 (New) is that it avoids the buffer overflow issues. But apart from that it's the odd module out as it's not 100% compatible with the original MT-32 and doesn't have the 33 extra sound effects of the CM series either.

The later MT-32 also lacks the manual digital volume control which can be used to avoid clipping problems in some games. Albeit, they can still be software configured to address this.

kool kitty89 wrote:

The later MT-32 also lacks the manual digital volume control which can be used to avoid clipping problems in some games. Albeit, they can still be software configured to address this.

Yup exactly 😀

When the MT-32 (Old) is really busy it doesn't react to you changing the volume wheel.

Wing Commander is an example of the clipping. At the fireworks scene you have to set the volume to ~ 65 on the MT-32 (Old) to not get any clipping. On all other units you are out of luck.

Seems to me if you have an old or new MT-32 your going to hit some kind of problem, i think im glad i got the old one though, as reading this and other posts the old version seems to have less issues and can be resolved easier with DOSBox anyway.

What an excellent-looking system; the drives and caddy match the case color just about perfectly! No shame in using Dosbox; it certainly is much more convenient, and lets you emulate some hardware that one otherwise might have to spend a considerable amount on.