Sounds like your USB cable is not passing SysEx commands from the games to the MT-32.

That was indeed the case... after having received three different cables from eBay (two of which gave me the issue I wrote about here, the other one resulting in a "Checksum Error" and even worse sound... I lost all patience with eBay and drove quite a while to a store I discovered carries these cables here and bought one that seemed to be a bit higher quality than the generic ones I'd gotten on eBay.

In any case, with this new cable, everything is (finally!) working perfectly! 😁

I absolutely love how the Police Quest 2 opening tune sounds on the MT32, especially since the adlib version there is really bad.
Such an amazing difference, feels like the sound equivalent of back when I got my first 3DFX card 😁

Hi laffer35, care to share which cables didn't work properly (E-MU?), and which one did?

Of course 😀

I'll see if I can list the ones that did not work later on, but generally they were cheap, generic cables from eBay.
Not sure how much point there would be as even if looking at the pictures in the auctions in question... I've found that sellers on eBay quite often use a different picture than what the cable actually looks like.

It seems your best bet, eBay or elsewhere, would be to buy a specific brand named cable, to make sure you know exactly what you are getting.

Such as the cable I ended up getting, the one that turned out working perfectly.

The name of the cable in question (reading on the 'box' it came in) -

MIDISPORT Uno
1 -In/1 -Out USB MIDI Interface

By some company called M-AUDIO.

This one I bought in a normal store (not online, in other words), but I'd think it should be just as easy to buy it somewhere online.

By the way, one thing I should point out - on the back of the packaging, it lists compatible operating systems, and this is what it says -

Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista (32 bit)

I happen to have Vista 64 installed but I figured it might work anyway, it's just a cable... and it does.
So even though it only lists Vista (32 bit) on the packaging, it works perfectly in Vista 64 as well. Not sure why they specify 32 bit like that, maybe it's related to the driver CD you get with the cable.

But that's the thing - Windows automatically installs a driver when you plug it in, and it works perfectly fine... so I've never had any need to use that driver CD.

EDIT - I'm fairly certain everything is as it should be with this cable, but this is the first time I've used an MT-32 so if something sounded slightly 'off' or anything like that, I can't guarantee that I would have noticed.

If you want to know exactly what it sounds like using my setup here with that cable, here are some videos I recorded showing how it sounds (just skip the adlib portions) -

Leisure Suit Larry 2
Leisure Suit Larry 3

The MIDISport UNO went through a revision. The newer version is completely plug-n-play in Windows Vista/7. Unfortunately, the old version (which I have) is not, and M-Audio took so long to release 64-bit Vista drivers for it that I was running Windows 7 x64 by the time they were released.

I had actually bought an E-mu X-MIDI 1x1 Tab to replace the MIDISport UNO for a while, but it seemed to corrupt SysEx transfers, causing Exc. Checksum Error messages to appear on my MT-32. As much as I was annoyed with M-Audio for taking so long to get those drivers released, it was nice to be able to press my MIDISport Uno back into service once I had decided that the E-mu X-MIDI wasn't going to work out.

HunterZ wrote:

I had actually bought an E-mu X-MIDI 1x1 Tab to replace the MIDISport UNO for a while, but it seemed to corrupt SysEx transfers, causing Exc. Checksum Error messages to appear on my MT-32.

I can confirm this. Both the plug'n'play and proprietary drivers suffer from the problem. I'm now using it to connect to my SC-55 for which it seems to work properly (no messages on its display) but I'm not 100% sure... ?

rcblanke wrote:

HunterZ wrote:

I had actually bought an E-mu X-MIDI 1x1 Tab to replace the MIDISport UNO for a while, but it seemed to corrupt SysEx transfers, causing Exc. Checksum Error messages to appear on my MT-32.

I can confirm this. Both the plug'n'play and proprietary drivers suffer from the problem. I'm now using it to connect to my SC-55 for which it seems to work properly (no messages on its display) but I'm not 100% sure... ?

Yeah, I've also observed it with both the E-mu drivers and the stock PnP Windows drivers. I've thought about using it to independently connect my SC-88 (should be safe since I don't think SysEx is generally used for even Sound Canvas specific stuff) instead of chaining my MT-32 to it, but it wouldn't really buy me much; it's almost easier to toggle the SC-88 mute and MT-32 power than it is to change the DOSBox or Vista MIDI device in software.

I tried contacting E-mu support about the issue a few months ago, but of course they barely had any idea what I was talking about and mostly just tried to blow me off with some half-assed troubleshooting suggestions. They are owned by Creative after all! 😜

Nice, seems I was pretty lucky then when buying this thing... I had no idea there had been issues in the past with this cable, getting this one was pretty random... it was the only one they had in the store.