VOGONS


First post, by static-

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Hi All.

A bit off topic in terms of emulation, but I was wondering if in order to hook up a real mt-32 to an old machine for games, do I need anything inbetween? I have a SBpro in there right now, and figured I could connect the mt-32 directly to the midi port, I thought here would be a good place to ask.

Thanks!
- static-

Reply 1 of 16, by HunterZ

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To connect to a SBPro, you'll need a special Sound Blaster MIDI cable that connects the DB-15 joystick port to the MIDI-IN of the MT-32 synthesizer.

Note that it will probably need to be Sound Blaster specific, as they didn't make their joystick MIDI connectors emulate the MPU-401 until the SB16.

Reply 2 of 16, by static-

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Thanks for the reply. I wonder where I could find a cable like that. I suppose getting an MPU-401 interface card would do the trick as well?

Actually, now that I think of it I have a MIDI Adapter cable I bought for my old midi keyboard. I'll give that a shot if I win this MT-32 bid 😀

Reply 6 of 16, by static-

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hehe. Pretty cool stuff! I think I need to get some more equipment though. As you said, the SBPro MIDI interface is different. I was able to use a SB MIDI port utility from queststudios that allowed me to try out a Sierra game. That worked perfectly (woohoo), so I know it works.

I'm not exactly sure what I should buy at this point. Do I need a specific MPU-401 ISA interface card? Will any do? Would it be easier for me to just find an ISA SB16? I assume the midi port on an SB165 is MPU-401 compatible?

I'd also like to be able to switch between SBPro midi and MT-32 with ease, and of course have voice. I probably need a small mixer to be able to do all of this. Any thoughts?

Reply 7 of 16, by HunterZ

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I'm 90% certain that an ISA SB16 will be work, and that it will be easier and cheaper than any other method.

As for mixing the SBPro and MT-32, can you run the output of the MT-32 into the line-in of the SBPro and then unmute it? That should make the SBPro mix the MT-32 output with its own. Alternatively, a mixer should work well, and I'd be interested to hear from anyone where one would acquire such a device (I suppose they have overpriced units at my local music instrument store...)

Reply 8 of 16, by static-

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Thanks for the help! So here's what I'm assuming I'll need:

2 mono 1/4 inch to 1 stereo minijack cable. with that, I can output the MT-32 to line-in of my SB16. This should get me MT-32 midi sound w/ SB16 voice in one. I assume I can "unmute" line-in in a true dos environment.

Are all games compatible with this type of configuration? For a sierra game, for example, would I just choose MT-32 MIDI output and it should know to go through the SB16 mpu401 uart port?

Thanks!

Reply 9 of 16, by HunterZ

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It should work, but bear in mind that I've never really tried it.

You'll need to get some DOS Sound Blaster utilities to be able to unmute the line-in, but it can be done.

I also don't know what audio cables you'll need exactly, as I don't know what outputs the MT-32 has. It sounds like you know what you're doing though 😀 I do know that the SB16 uses a standard stereo headphone jack (the little size used by 99% of headphones these days, not the big phono plug size) for line-in (and most everything else for that matter).

There's no reason that this shouldn't work with all games.

Oh, the SB16 also uses a DB-15 joystick port for its MIDI I/O, but it is able to emulate an MPU-401 so you I think that means you don't need to have any drivers installed to let MPU-401 compatable games talk to your MT-32 through a SB MIDI cable.

Does that utility you got from Quest Studios not work with all games? If it does work then you probably don't need a new card unless you want to not have to use the utility.

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I've thought a lot about it because I've always wanted to have that kind of setup myself, but I've never actualy got around to it.

Reply 10 of 16, by static-

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The MT-32 has seperate ports for Left and Right audio, and they're the bigger 1/4 inch ones 🙁 Pretty annoying! I'm pretty sure I'll find something at Radioshack to take care of that though.

Yeah that Quest Studio utility was basically a driver that the sierra installer would recognize. I selected it and it worked great (shock and awe when seeing *SO U WANT 2 B A HERO* on the MT-32 LCD 😀 ). Also proved that my MIDI Adapter cable did an ok job, but this won't help me much for other games.

So I'll give the SB16 a shot. I assume its capabilities to emulate MPU-401 is at the hardware level. Found some dos drivers for it too from the creativelabs.com website.

Reply 11 of 16, by HunterZ

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Yes it does it in hardware. I had several SB16's back in the day and remember Sierra games detecting that I had an MPU-401 even though I didn't have anything connected to the card's MIDI I/O.

Reply 12 of 16, by static-

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Allllllright. So I got the cabling all figured out. Inputting to the Line-in worked wonders. All that's left now is to find an old ISA SB16 or something. I was hoping to avoid eBay but I can't seem to find anyone in town who has one lying around 🙁

I also tried to plug in an SBLive! value with the SBEINIT.COM sb16 emulation. Works great, but I can't get it to passthru the MIDI output. I think this is probably a limitiation of the emulator.

Reply 13 of 16, by HunterZ

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You can try searching at pricewatch.com. Make sure it's ISA though.

About the SBLive!: it uses an Ensoniq software synthesizer to emulate an external MIDI synth. I'm not sure if it can be disabled or not (there may be some magic command line switch, for example)

Reply 14 of 16, by static-

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Got my hands on an SB16 Vibra, and that seemed to do the trick. Some games don't seem to work though (Ultima6 doesn't seem to want to output to the MT-32 and runs very very slowly for some reason), however most are ok! I wish the SB16 had a volume knob though. The settings I choose in the SB mixer program always get overwritten and maxed out as soon as I run the game (tried epic pinball & lands of lore). I guess the game is resetting the default values and makes them wayyyyyy too loud.