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No MIDI output on Game Port

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First post, by anetanel

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Hey all.

I got this "Super I/O" card with an "Acer M5101_A2" chip in my 286. It has a Game Port socket, but when I connect a MIDI device to it (I have an MT-32) it does not work. As in the MT-32 does not indicate any communication.
When I put an SB16 in this machine, and used its MIDI port the MT-32 worked without problems, without any drivers or configurations for the SB16.
I ran Dune install and it tells me that it can't initialize the MIDI card. Neither on port 330h nor 300h.

Does it mean that the Super I/O card does not support MIDI? Or is it a configuration issue?
There are no jumpers on the card to configure anything.

Thanks.

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Reply 1 of 6, by Kamerat

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anetanel wrote:

Does it mean that the Super I/O card does not support MIDI?

That seems to be the case unfortunately.

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Reply 2 of 6, by darry

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Not all game ports have midi functionality . It was a trend that was introduced on sound card game ports by Creative Labs with the Sound Blasters featuring DSP 2.0 (as far as I know). Most sound cards followed this trend afterwards . I doubt any (Super) I/O cards had midi functionality on their game ports .

Reply 4 of 6, by yawetaG

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darry wrote:

Not all game ports have midi functionality . It was a trend that was introduced on sound card game ports by Creative Labs with the Sound Blasters featuring DSP 2.0 (as far as I know). Most sound cards followed this trend afterwards . I doubt any (Super) I/O cards had midi functionality on their game ports .

Oh well, that answers my question here, in a sense. 😀

Reply 5 of 6, by Great Hierophant

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darry wrote:

Not all game ports have midi functionality . It was a trend that was introduced on sound card game ports by Creative Labs with the Sound Blasters featuring DSP 2.0 (as far as I know). Most sound cards followed this trend afterwards . I doubt any (Super) I/O cards had midi functionality on their game ports .

Not quite correct. The Sound Blasters always had some kind of MIDI port, from DSP 1.05 on upward. I believe DSP v1.05 is the earliest DSP found on production cards. However, the Sound Blaster MIDI ports did not support any kind of MPU-401 compatibility until the Sound Blaster 16. The proprietary Sound Blaster MIDI standard was not well-supported in games.

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Reply 6 of 6, by darry

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Great Hierophant wrote:

Not quite correct. The Sound Blasters always had some kind of MIDI port, from DSP 1.05 on upward.

According to the Sound Blaster hardware programming guide, you are indeed correct, but there are limitations as to the degree of functionality prior to DSP version 2.00 .

"SB-MIDI mode provides an interface for MIDI I/O in Normal mode as well as UART
mode. UART mode requires a DSP with a minimum version of 2.00. Under Normal
mode, all MIDI out data must be preceded by a MIDI output command, but under
UART mode, a write to the DSP is taken as MIDI data."

from section 5-2 of https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2011/reading … oundBlaster.pdf

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