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Problems with MIDI on a Toshiba laptop (Video included)

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First post, by Vany

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I made this new thread as I had discovered so many more problems with how the MIDI works on this machine. I decided to record it all and I uploaded the video to youtube.

In general, MIDI just never works good on this laptop, save for playing actual midi files via a media player. In games, music skips a note, sounds corrupted, garbled, glitchy, slows down and it seems to do all of that at random. If I try the same games in MS-DOS mode, I lose the wavetable that previously worked under windows, but the FM synthesis which doesn't work under windows - works in DOS. Another thing. When the games are run in WINDOWED mode in Windows, the music sounds fine but games slow down to like 2 FPS.

If anyone has any idea on how to fix this, please do let me know.

What I tried so far:
- Reset BIOS
- Reinstalled OS, Tried Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE.
- Installed drivers from recovery CD and dynabook website
- Added the relevant SETBLASTER stuff to Autoexec and Config files
- Checked for IRQ/DMA Conflicts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSpNnzOyAWY
Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite 4080XCDT
Specs:
OS: Microsoft Windows 98SE
CPU: Pentium II MMX @ 367 Mhz
SPU: ESS Maestro-2E
GPU: Trident Cyber9525DVD, 2,5 MB VRAM
RAM: 128 MB DDR @ 66 Mhz
HDD: Toshiba 4200 RPM, 30 GB

Trident Cyber 9525DVD Test, Review and supported games list

Reply 1 of 2, by Horun

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The Maestro-2 only supports Wavetable in Windows. As per the other topic in Hardware: you cannot use Midi/Wavetable in true DOS in a Game, is not supported by the Maestro-2 chipset.
At 6:37 time in video it shows that IRQ5 is shared ESS and Cardbus in Windows. That could cause issues in DOS if both use the same IRQ, DOS is not as good at "sharing" resources as Windows.
You have IRQ7 and IRQ10 free, Try changing the ESS to IRQ 7 in DOS and see what happens.
Yes the FM does sound a bit horrible in DOS...that is all I got.

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Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 2, by Vany

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Horun wrote on 2021-09-13, 01:27:
The Maestro-2 only supports Wavetable in Windows. As per the other topic in Hardware: you cannot use Midi/Wavetable in true DOS […]
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The Maestro-2 only supports Wavetable in Windows. As per the other topic in Hardware: you cannot use Midi/Wavetable in true DOS in a Game, is not supported by the Maestro-2 chipset.
At 6:37 time in video it shows that IRQ5 is shared ESS and Cardbus in Windows. That could cause issues in DOS if both use the same IRQ, DOS is not as good at "sharing" resources as Windows.
You have IRQ7 and IRQ10 free, Try changing the ESS to IRQ 7 in DOS and see what happens.
Yes the FM does sound a bit horrible in DOS...that is all I got.

I tried to change the IRQ via the device manager, but it won't let me. Would cardbus still conflict with the sound chip even if there are no devices in the pcmcia slots? And honestly, the lack of wavetable doesn't bother me as much as the glitchy garbled mess of a sound that I get while running dos games in windows. Any idea what may cause that?

Trident Cyber 9525DVD Test, Review and supported games list

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