retrofanatic wrote:

$300 is too much, but to someone that wants it that bad, its a bargain i guess. […]
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Kodai wrote:

I knew it was getting out of hand and would be at least $300 so I gave up and let it go, but it was after the midiman auction was over.

$300 is too much, but to someone that wants it that bad, its a bargain i guess.

Kodai wrote:

Oh well. Both those cards have the same problem with the Gateway games that Keropi asked about, so it would only be a spare or backup card to the Music Quest I wont the week before. In other words, the would both be exactly the same function wise and I only needed one. It just never hurts to get a good deal if you can find one. 😄

I totally agree, but yes, as keropi pointed out, i too have heard that the music quest is ok with Gateway games.

This is one time I would love to be in the wrong just so I can tell myself that I don't need a genuine Roland 401 for anything because my $20 knock off is just as good, so I hope you guys are right and the other sites I read were wrong.

@Kodai

ah, I did not knew of that newer revision MQ mpu, thanks for the link... this one seems to have integrated the Z8+ROM+SRAM in this 8bit MCU, probably compiled a new firmware for this specific chip... and ofcourse there is encryption as well...

Hmm I thought SoftMPU is going to solve all of this 😀

Gateway sounds mint with Sound Blaster. Does it support MT-32 AND SB Sound Effects or do the effects come out from the PC Speaker?

keropi wrote:

@Kodai

ah, I did not knew of that newer revision MQ mpu, thanks for the link... this one seems to have integrated the Z8+ROM+SRAM in this 8bit MCU, probably compiled a new firmware for this specific chip... and ofcourse there is encryption as well...

I never even considered any sort of encryption in a midi interface...hmm, live and learn. As long as its 98%-99% 401 compatible, I could care less at $20. I just didn't want to say for a fact that its not 100%, since I haven't tried the card yet. You never know, it may very well be and the other posts I read were either wrong or the posters didn't do something right (incorrect setup for the game or something).

@Mau1wurf1977

Well, my thinking is this: I want as much of my 640k as I can get for those oddball games like Zone66 that just refuse to start with anything less than something like 620k free. While you can push lots of stuff in to upper and high memory there is always going to be part of the 640k base used. With CD drivers, mouse drivers, and about a half dozen other things I want to install in the rig, I'll be pushing to get 590k to 610k free. And I don't want to have to resort to a selection of boot disks for each game. So if I can skip the driver for SoftMPU and save some memory by using a slot that would have just been for a little old 1200 baud modem back in the day, as well as one more octopus cable for the midi / joystick port then its worth it. Simplifying life with more hardware is always the way to do it. 😄

@Kodai:

by encryption I mean the firmware that the MCU is running, it's not an eprom anymore that you can remove and dump... midi data are travelling normally like every other device, but the "os" of the mcu is something that cannot be retrieved and try to use it in older versions to see if it solves bugs...

there is a chance that bjt makes a softmpu that works with dedicated mpus now that he has a roland one , it would be great if it happens

@Kodai

Kepp the boot menu minimalistic (EMS, EMS 16MB, XMS, Conventional only) and then have everything else as batch files. Mouse, MSCDEX, SoftMPU, whatever...

Well its been awhile since I have worked with SCSI (which I just talked a bit about in another thread), but if I recall SCSI device drivers don't play well in UMB. I'm planning on a rather unique SCSI build with and external Media Vision PAS SCSI and external Media Vision RIO CD-ROM drive. I always like the sound of the PAS and loved that little drive back in the day. Finding those parts was a bit of a pain, as they were not very common. But it was a reasonably fast drive for its time and its design makes me think of the NEC TurboGrafx 16 CD-ROM drive. That's another reason I wanted to avoid special startups but yet keep as much conventional memory available as I could. Not to mention I've forgotten everything about manually doing my memory management, so I'm gonna just rely on a memory manger to do it for me. RAMBoost to the rescue!

I made this 3 part video build log about building a MS-DOS / Windows 95 Gaming PC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsZFdFbSzdA&li … ETU-VWM7mUe52OB

In part 3 I show how you can configure your own MS-DOS shortcuts, each with a different CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.

Kodai wrote:

Well its been awhile since I have worked with SCSI (which I just talked a bit about in another thread), but if I recall SCSI device drivers don't play well in UMB. I'm planning on a rather unique SCSI build with and external Media Vision PAS SCSI and external Media Vision RIO CD-ROM drive. I always like the sound of the PAS and loved that little drive back in the day. Finding those parts was a bit of a pain, as they were not very common. But it was a reasonably fast drive for its time and its design makes me think of the NEC TurboGrafx 16 CD-ROM drive.

PAS Zilog SCSI controller is limited to 690Kb/sec, which is equal to 4.6x CD-ROM speed. The only external MediaVision CD-ROM drive I know of is MediaVision Reno. It's a 2x drive. You need a MediaVision SCSI bracket to connect that drive to a PAS.

bristlehog wrote:

PAS Zilog SCSI controller is limited to 690Kb/sec, which is equal to 4.6x CD-ROM speed. The only external MediaVision CD-ROM drive I know of is MediaVision Reno. It's a 2x drive. You need a MediaVision SCSI bracket to connect that drive to a PAS.

Yeah, I meat Reno and not Rio. It was late and I had forgot. I already have the entire setup, so I'm good to go on it. I had one almost twenty years ago, and other than my old NEC multispin 3x, it was my favorite cd drive.

FYI: I bought the Midiman MM-401 (http://cgi.ebay.com/151213174521) after talking directly with the owner. 😀

keropi wrote:

I am pretty sure all mk1's (with or without GM logo) have the fallback feature. I am waiting for a malfunctioning mk1-GM so I'll be able to verify this.

I just verified this: GS-GM MK1 SC-55 units support the "capital tone fallback" feature, just tested with Worlds of Xeen.
So after testing with 3x SC-55s that are all a different version it is safe to assume that every non-mk2 SC-55 supports CTF. 😀

keropi wrote:

keropi wrote:

I am pretty sure all mk1's (with or without GM logo) have the fallback feature. I am waiting for a malfunctioning mk1-GM so I'll be able to verify this.

I just verified this: GS-GM MK1 SC-55 units support the "capital tone fallback" feature, just tested with Worlds of Xeen.
So after testing with 3x SC-55s that are all a different version it is safe to assume that every non-mk2 SC-55 supports CTF. 😀

Thanks for taking the time to test. That's great to know now that I have a 'new' SC-55 (mk1).