Maybe provide your hardware specs first (CPU, RAM, sound card, etc.), as this will help us to narrow down the problem.

OS: Windows 98 SE
Graphics: Matrox G400 MAX
Sound: SoundBlaster awe64 value plus a Roland MT-32
Ram: 64mb
CPU: Pentium II slot 1 350MHz (I think it's 350)

If you are trying to play the older SCI.0 & SCI.1 games, in conjunction with an MT-32, then you are faced with two problems:

1. Your CPU is too fast - you can either try to slow down your CPU with a utility like SETMUL or, you can try a speed sensitive patch for Sierra games called "Gosierra". I believe version 3 was the latest one.
2. For Sierra games, configured to play back music via a Roland MT-32, you also require an intelligent mode MPU-401 MIDI interface. If you don't have one, you can overcome this by using SoftMPU but, then you will have to configure your sound card at IRQ2/9 or, plug in a second sound card that can double as your MPU-401 MIDI interface, set at a different DMA channel & at IRQ2/9.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide any comment on your second point, as I'm not familiar with it.

I totally forgot about softMPU I wonder if it broke on me, I'll have to check that now.

As for the processor, I'm aware the CPU is quite fast for DOS games but seeing as it's a slot 1 motherboard I don't have many options. Luckily it seems to only affects certain parts of games as it makes animations speed up crazy like. Especially in the Leisure Suit Larry games.

Ok, so good news is my Roland MT-32 problems are fixed now, can't believe I forgot about softMPU. However follow up question, is there a way to have softmpu save it's settings on boot? if not how can I make a file to run in dos to automatically set the settings I need?

Thank you for the help.

Now I just need my Manta woes fixed...

ramunegaming wrote:

As for the processor, I'm aware the CPU is quite fast for DOS games but seeing as it's a slot 1 motherboard I don't have many options. Luckily it seems to only affects certain parts of games as it makes animations speed up crazy like. Especially in the Leisure Suit Larry games.

Try using SETMUL and disable your L1 cache (and perhaps also your L2 cache) - you'd be surprised how much it can slow down your CPU.
For these older games, a fast 386 is more than sufficient.

ramunegaming wrote:

Ok, so good news is my Roland MT-32 problems are fixed now, can't believe I forgot about softMPU. However follow up question, is there a way to have softmpu save it's settings on boot? if not how can I make a file to run in dos to automatically set the settings I need?

You can just insert the SoftMPU parameters in your Autoexec.bat and/or Dosstart.bat file.
If, however, you want to have a multiple start up configuration (i.e., you want to boot up in either DOS or Windows), then refer here: How to create a boot (start up) menu under Windows 9x/ME

I've installed SETMUL just in case I need it for something.

See I already have it in the autoexec.bat but it doesn't seem to work from boot, I think that's most likely why I forgot about it because I thought it was automatically doing it. Is there a specific command I need for it in the autoexec.bat

What I have "softmpu.exe SB:220 /IRQ:5 /MPU:330" This is identical to what I put in manually if I go to my SOFTMPU folder.

ramunegaming wrote:

I've installed SETMUL just in case I need it for something.

See I already have it in the autoexec.bat but it doesn't seem to work from boot, I think that's most likely why I forgot about it because I thought it was automatically doing it. Is there a specific command I need for it in the autoexec.bat

What I have "softmpu.exe SB:220 /IRQ:5 /MPU:330" This is identical to what I put in manually if I go to my SOFTMPU folder.

Are you booting up straight into Windows 98SE?
Are you running your games from a DOS command prompt or are you restarting into MS-DOS mode?
If the latter, insert the above command in your Dosstart.bat file (located in your Windows folder).

In your Autoexec.bat or Dosstart.bat file, you also have to specify the path where the SoftMPU file is located.
You can either insert a "SET PATH" environment variable (refer the examples of my start up file I linked to in my other thread) or, type out the full path where the file is located, like: C:\Softmpu\softmpu.exe SB:220 /IRQ:5 /MPU:330.

That did the trick, I just needed to write out the path. thank you very much.

I'm booting into DOS, I've never really had any success getting the Roland MT-32 working in windows so I just stick to DOS.