VOGONS


First post, by LSS10999

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The driver I'm using for Terratec Aureon 5.1 PCI (CMI8738-based) doesn't have MIDI support on NT 3.51. I don't know if there were ever a driver that supported MIDI, so I've been looking for a usable software MIDI synth solution to take its place, but I'm yet to find one that can properly run on such an old OS.

So far I managed to get Yamaha S-YXG50 (NT version) partially working on NT 3.51. You at least need the following prerequisites to get S-YXG50 usable:
- PSAPI.DLL/IMAGEHLP.DLL from up to Win2000 (optionally DBGHELP.DLL)
- DSOUND.DLL from up to DirectX 8.0a (NT)*.

* After some thorough dependency walking, it seems all the DirectSound 8 and DirectMusic 8 libraries I could find have no dependency issues (though bugs may exist) on NT 3.51. S-YXG50 only needs DSOUND.DLL.
Not all DSOUND.DLL versions can be used, so check it with Dependency Walker first. I only checked the related DirectX DLL files at the moment, but for proper operation additional files and a lot of registry entries need to be added, yet NT 3.51 itself doesn't seem to offer a trivial way to insert the registry entries in bulk.

The installer for S-YXG50 (NT version) runs without issues. If all the dependencies required by the soft synth drivers are met, you should be able to choose it in MIDI Mapper after reboot.

Unfortunately it currently only works correctly within XGPlayer and can't properly play any music outside it, such as in games, as well as Windows' stock Media Player. I don't know if this is an issue with the soft synth itself, or it is an limitation with NT 3.51 itself.

Other than the S-YXG50, is there any other soft synth solution that can be properly used with older Windows like NT 3.51, as a system-wide MIDI option?

Reply 2 of 5, by Schule04

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Wingroove might work

Reply 3 of 5, by LSS10999

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Schule04 wrote on 2022-03-05, 00:31:

Wingroove might work

I did try Wingroove. It works, but I don't know how to register it to be usable outside its provided player. It's 16-bit, I think, as it's originally meant for Win 3.1.

EDIT: It seems I really can't install its driver on NT 3.51. The Driver Installation checkbox is greyed out (English 0.9E version).

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-03-04, 16:59:

The S-YXG50 VSTi might be an option, if the latest version of the MIDI VST host driver will run on it.

https://github.com/Arakula/vstdriver/releases … g/v1.0.0-alpha3

You can find the VSTi by using Google.

I wonder if NT 3.51 can really run a VSTi host... hmmm...

EDIT: Forget it. The VSTi host you mentioned requires SHLWAPI and a few missing KERNEL32 functions.

EDIT 2: It seems using DSOUND.DLL from DirectX 8.0A got rid of dependency issues for Timidity++ but I don't know how to configure it in detail.

EDIT 3: A late edit on this. GXSCC can also be used to play MIDI on NT 3.51 but it's not for use with other applications.

Last edited by LSS10999 on 2022-03-25, 05:22. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 5, by RetroGamer4Ever

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Based on what I little is out there about that card, it wasn't made for use with that version of Windows. The DSP used has an onboard MIDI synth and SBPro mode, so it should have MIDI functionality through drivers and programs, but as I said, it apparently wasn't made for use with that OS and should be used with XP/Vista.

Reply 5 of 5, by LSS10999

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RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-03-05, 03:37:

Based on what I little is out there about that card, it wasn't made for use with that version of Windows. The DSP used has an onboard MIDI synth and SBPro mode, so it should have MIDI functionality through drivers and programs, but as I said, it apparently wasn't made for use with that OS and should be used with XP/Vista.

CMI8738 has a very long history. My first CMI8738 was about two decades ago, on a Socket 370 motherboard as an onboard device. I mainly used it with Windows 98 SE at that time and the onboard card worked very well.

The generic CMI8738 NT4 driver (v2.30) does mention something about MIDI in its OEMSETUP, but it doesn't actually expose any MIDI option when I installed the driver. The driver (and its utilities) has no dependency issues with 3.51 and it correctly detected my card. However, the config utility only mentioned about I/O range and IRQ, but it has little use as the program can detect where the card really is.

NT 3.51 will not show the Midi Mapper control panel item if you have no usable MIDI devices.