A lot to unpack here...

First, exactly which hardware you're using isn't clear:
- there are tens of different Sound Blaster 16 cards. Some are configured only with jumpers, others via tools, yet others are PnP cards. So pretty relevant which one you have. Look up the "CT"number on the card's PCB. It will be something like "CT1730" or "CT4170" (or a number in between). That will tell us which SB16 it is and how it is configured.
- you mention a Roland UM-One. Is that connected to the same PC under Windows 98? If so, which resources have been allocated to it by Windows? (specifically I/O port and IRQ) - look in Device Manager details. And does that work? (or at least: show up in Device Manager without exclamation marks)

Then sofware:
- exactly which DOS 'drivers' (no such thing as an SB16 DOS driver, at most it's an initializaton tool for the versions of SB16 without jumpers) are you using? What DOS software to use differs depending on which SB16 card you have.
- why are you using DOS 'drivers' under Windows 98? Have you installed the regular Windows Sound Blaster 16 drivers for your card? If so, which version? Does MIDI work with them?

Most likely you don't have a hardware issue but rather a software resource conflict. Exactly what to do about it does depend on the hardware you have.

I’m going to post about this here because it is starting to deviate from a MUNT issue into more of a sound card issue and I think people in this sub forum might be able to help better (I’m having trouble deciding which forums to post stuff in cause it’s a mix of issues.)
I have a Sound Blaster 16 ISA sound card CT1740. I was trying to get the game port MIDI connection working (to connect to my laptop running MUNT, using a game port to midi adapter and then a Roland midi to usb interpreter). It just wasn't working at all, so we switched the jumper settings from using port 300 to port 330 which solved my problem. Sorta. I also changed the IRQ to 7 and disabled printer port in the BIOS and tried using a different ISA slot, all didn’t change anything.

The game I am trying to get it working for is Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. The current status is that MIDI works if the voices are disabled, and sound blaster with voices works on its own, but try to run it with both voices and MIDI and the game locks up / black screens at the beginning. One of those attempts I for a stack overflow error, as it did when I was testing with softmpu, but normally does not.

On another note if I attempt running the game with incorrect IRQ settings the game will start, play MIDI, and sorta play voices (they get cut off) but the correct IRQ settings plus MIDI cause the crash.

I’m considering whether this is simply a “your sound card just can’t handle both at the same time” and I need a new sound card. But since it starts to play sounds on the wrong settings I don’t think that’s it.

Sound Blaster 16 cards are notoriously buggy when it comes to MIDI - and one of the bugs (actually, the only one that affects the CT1740) is not being able to play back MIDI at the same time as high qualitiy digital audio samples. However this normally results in slowdowns in music and/or skipped notes, not crashing games.

In any event, I'd agree that this issue doesn't have anything to do with MUNT here. MIDI is essentially one-way traffic and if MUNT is running on a different computer, whatever is happening at that end should be irrelevant to behaviour on the PC running the game. It should show exactly the same issue if you run it with same settings without the MIDI cable connected (just without any MIDI music, obviously).

Then the question what's happening. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is known to be a speed sensitive title, running best on a 16MHz 486. On faster systems its AdLib audio is garbled. I don't know what its expected MIDI behaviour is on a faster system, but I'd suggest disabling L1 and L2 cache on your Pentium to slow it down and see what that does.

Then there's the resource settings stuff. The CT1740 is one of the earliest SB16 cards and so totally non-PnP. Really old games (i.e. the sort of things that use MT-32) tend to assume the card is at base address 0x220, IRQ 7 and (8b) DMA 1, and MPU-401 MIDI interface to be at base 0x330 and IRQ 2 (this last one is hardcoded, not selectable on the CT1740). So it sounds like you have it exactly where it should be. But it might still have conflicts with other cards, with onboard devices or with PnP stuff. IRQ 7 is typically used for the parallel port, so if you haven't already done so (and you aren't using it), disable parallel port in BIOS. Then tell BIOS to reserve IRQ 7 for legacy/ISA to avoid PnP mess (exact name of / path to these settings depend on the model of your motherboard). It's not likely other cards will use IRQ 7 unless there's a standalone I/O card in your system, but it might pay to check.

dionb wrote on 2025-01-16, 14:11:

Sound Blaster 16 cards are notoriously buggy when it comes to MIDI - and one of the bugs (actually, the only one that affects th […]
Show full quote

Sound Blaster 16 cards are notoriously buggy when it comes to MIDI - and one of the bugs (actually, the only one that affects the CT1740) is not being able to play back MIDI at the same time as high qualitiy digital audio samples. However this normally results in slowdowns in music and/or skipped notes, not crashing games.

In any event, I'd agree that this issue doesn't have anything to do with MUNT here. MIDI is essentially one-way traffic and if MUNT is running on a different computer, whatever is happening at that end should be irrelevant to behaviour on the PC running the game. It should show exactly the same issue if you run it with same settings without the MIDI cable connected (just without any MIDI music, obviously).

Then the question what's happening. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is known to be a speed sensitive title, running best on a 16MHz 486. On faster systems its AdLib audio is garbled. I don't know what its expected MIDI behaviour is on a faster system, but I'd suggest disabling L1 and L2 cache on your Pentium to slow it down and see what that does.

Then there's the resource settings stuff. The CT1740 is one of the earliest SB16 cards and so totally non-PnP. Really old games (i.e. the sort of things that use MT-32) tend to assume the card is at base address 0x220, IRQ 7 and (8b) DMA 1, and MPU-401 MIDI interface to be at base 0x330 and IRQ 2 (this last one is hardcoded, not selectable on the CT1740). So it sounds like you have it exactly where it should be. But it might still have conflicts with other cards, with onboard devices or with PnP stuff. IRQ 7 is typically used for the parallel port, so if you haven't already done so (and you aren't using it), disable parallel port in BIOS. Then tell BIOS to reserve IRQ 7 for legacy/ISA to avoid PnP mess (exact name of / path to these settings depend on the model of your motherboard). It's not likely other cards will use IRQ 7 unless there's a standalone I/O card in your system, but it might pay to check.

I had used a tool to disable my L1 cache previously and that made the system too slow. I forget if it made it completely unable to load or just very slow, but either way it made the game unplayable. Beyond that I haven’t found any tools that helped fix the issue.

IRQ 7 parallel port I had disabled in the BIOS. It just seems really odd to me that trying to run it on irq 3/5 works but the voices get cut off (or same thing when the card is set to irq 5 and I try running the game on irq 3/7)

There is a weird crashing issue when skipping dialogue using the period key also, but that issue also happens on my pentium 4 machine in dos mode and sb live card. But if I play in windows 98 instead of in DOS that issue doesn’t happen. I have another post on that in the DOS forum, but no one has given any solutions, just mentioning it because it might be related.

Do you think the sound card is the issue? If so what would you recommend I replace it with, if I want to do mixed SB audio and MIDI…

Have you patched the game? Many LucasArts game really need to be patched for anything faster than a 486...

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-16, 17:07:

Have you patched the game? Many LucasArts game really need to be patched for anything faster than a 486...

No, I don’t even know where a patch would be. I am running versions of the game found online or copied from my steam folder (with Atlantis.000 added)

Ah! I recently built my library of games on a 486 and I had to patch many of these Sierra and LucasArts games to work properly with MIDI and/or FM music devices...

https://ia803205.us.archive.org/view_archive. … om-20130427.tar
https://www.patches-scrolls.de/node?page=16

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-16, 17:22:

Ah! I recently built my library of games on a 486 and I had to patch many of these Sierra and LucasArts games to work properly with MIDI and/or FM music devices...

https://ia803205.us.archive.org/view_archive. … om-20130427.tar
https://www.patches-scrolls.de/node?page=16

I had some trouble with that in the past because the batch file could not recognize the CD and I think there was a problem with the batch file, but I think I understand what it is trying to do and navigated to the CD folder and typed C:\fate\atlantis.exe r s and all variants that failed to work before, and they still failed. Note I don't have the original CD copy which still has the manual copy protection intact, but I don't think that the updated versions of the game would have anything to do with sound settings 😒 I only have steam, and gog, and whatever I can find online to work with... Also you linked me to 2 different things, are those just 2 versions of the same patch?

I also tried moslo and it made the game really slow but didn't help.

I've tried disabling the L1 cache using a different utility before and the game would not load, I managed to get the game loaded once while running cpukiller but usually won't load at all.

I just tried krondor with some patches to play midi and sound effects and that game seems to be working fine in regards to the simultaneous thing. However one issue I am having with that game is sometimes some of the midi notes hang much longer than they are supposed to. I was having the same issue with some adventure game studios games but that was just regular sound blaster audio. Resulting in loud unpleasant music. Do you think maybe it’s just the sound blaster card and I should get a new one? I don’t have a lot of money to spend but I feel like there is so many issues with the sound that might be what comes next

Kitty Trouble wrote on 2025-01-16, 20:50:

I just tried krondor with some patches to play midi and sound effects and that game seems to be working fine in regards to the simultaneous thing. However one issue I am having with that game is sometimes some of the midi notes hang much longer than they are supposed to. I was having the same issue with some adventure game studios games but that was just regular sound blaster audio. Resulting in loud unpleasant music. Do you think maybe it’s just the sound blaster card and I should get a new one? I don’t have a lot of money to spend but I feel like there is so many issues with the sound that might be what comes next

Very common problem and a very documented one: the hanging note. See list of affected Sound Blasters 16: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o0_u- … #gid=1663779470. CT1740 is a potential candidate depending on you DSP version.. I believe the software called "MidiTo" can tell you that.

Kitty Trouble wrote on 2025-01-16, 19:26:

I had some trouble with that in the past because the batch file could not recognize the CD and I think there was a problem with […]
Show full quote

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-16, 17:22:

Ah! I recently built my library of games on a 486 and I had to patch many of these Sierra and LucasArts games to work properly with MIDI and/or FM music devices...

https://ia803205.us.archive.org/view_archive. … om-20130427.tar
https://www.patches-scrolls.de/node?page=16

I had some trouble with that in the past because the batch file could not recognize the CD and I think there was a problem with the batch file, but I think I understand what it is trying to do and navigated to the CD folder and typed C:\fate\atlantis.exe r s and all variants that failed to work before, and they still failed. Note I don't have the original CD copy which still has the manual copy protection intact, but I don't think that the updated versions of the game would have anything to do with sound settings 😒 I only have steam, and gog, and whatever I can find online to work with... Also you linked me to 2 different things, are those just 2 versions of the same patch?

I also tried moslo and it made the game really slow but didn't help.

I've tried disabling the L1 cache using a different utility before and the game would not load, I managed to get the game loaded once while running cpukiller but usually won't load at all.

I have the original CD but I prefer preserving it... So I simply create a partition with the content of that CD in it. The game/executable does not look for the CD, but just its content. So that's not the problem here...

As for the patches, I believe there are 2 patches for Fate of Atlantis in there... But I found a more complete (and official list) on the Disney website: https://appsupport.disney.com/hc/en-us/articl … igital-download There are 4 patches for PC!! But no description of what they do exactly and I can't remember which one I've used...

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-17, 02:11:

Kitty Trouble wrote on 2025-01-16, 19:26:

I had some trouble with that in the past because the batch file could not recognize the CD and I think there was a problem with […]
Show full quote

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-16, 17:22:

Ah! I recently built my library of games on a 486 and I had to patch many of these Sierra and LucasArts games to work properly with MIDI and/or FM music devices...

https://ia803205.us.archive.org/view_archive. … om-20130427.tar
https://www.patches-scrolls.de/node?page=16

I had some trouble with that in the past because the batch file could not recognize the CD and I think there was a problem with the batch file, but I think I understand what it is trying to do and navigated to the CD folder and typed C:\fate\atlantis.exe r s and all variants that failed to work before, and they still failed. Note I don't have the original CD copy which still has the manual copy protection intact, but I don't think that the updated versions of the game would have anything to do with sound settings 😒 I only have steam, and gog, and whatever I can find online to work with... Also you linked me to 2 different things, are those just 2 versions of the same patch?

I also tried moslo and it made the game really slow but didn't help.

I've tried disabling the L1 cache using a different utility before and the game would not load, I managed to get the game loaded once while running cpukiller but usually won't load at all.

I have the original CD but I prefer preserving it... So I simply create a partition with the content of that CD in it. The game/executable does not look for the CD, but just its content. So that's not the problem here...

As for the patches, I believe there are 2 patches for Fate of Atlantis in there... But I found a more complete (and official list) on the Disney website: https://appsupport.disney.com/hc/en-us/articl … igital-download There are 4 patches for PC!! But no description of what they do exactly and I can't remember which one I've used...

In case I do get a new sound card, do you have one that you would recommend? I want one that can handle digital sounds and midi (simultaneously) and not have the weird hanging that I’m reading is an issue with some SB cards. DOS is a priority… but I will run windows programs too. I also don’t really want to spend $200 on a sound card if I can get away with $20

Kitty Trouble wrote on 2025-01-17, 02:40:

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-17, 02:11:

Kitty Trouble wrote on 2025-01-16, 19:26:

I had some trouble with that in the past because the batch file could not recognize the CD and I think there was a problem with the batch file, but I think I understand what it is trying to do and navigated to the CD folder and typed C:\fate\atlantis.exe r s and all variants that failed to work before, and they still failed. Note I don't have the original CD copy which still has the manual copy protection intact, but I don't think that the updated versions of the game would have anything to do with sound settings 😒 I only have steam, and gog, and whatever I can find online to work with... Also you linked me to 2 different things, are those just 2 versions of the same patch?

I also tried moslo and it made the game really slow but didn't help.

I've tried disabling the L1 cache using a different utility before and the game would not load, I managed to get the game loaded once while running cpukiller but usually won't load at all.

I have the original CD but I prefer preserving it... So I simply create a partition with the content of that CD in it. The game/executable does not look for the CD, but just its content. So that's not the problem here...

As for the patches, I believe there are 2 patches for Fate of Atlantis in there... But I found a more complete (and official list) on the Disney website: https://appsupport.disney.com/hc/en-us/articl … igital-download There are 4 patches for PC!! But no description of what they do exactly and I can't remember which one I've used...

In case I do get a new sound card, do you have one that you would recommend? I want one that can handle digital sounds and midi (simultaneously) and not have the weird hanging that I’m reading is an issue with some SB cards. DOS is a priority… but I will run windows programs too. I also don’t really want to spend $200 on a sound card if I can get away with $20

Since you're hooking up your MIDI device through gameport, you could go for an AWE64 Value: no hanging note and cleanest sound/voice a SB16 can provide. BUT, FM music is not gonna sound really good... But I still try a few more solutions before that:

1) I checked and I am using Indy4fix.exe patch with my P100 and P233. I just unzipped the content, and copied over the content of the CD I have on my HDD. Give it a try!
2) Have you tried "Atlantis/Atlantis.exe R" and "Atlantis/Atlantis.exe R1"? I had a similar problem with Monkey Island where one would work and not the other, even though they are both for port 330.

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-17, 04:57:

Since you're hooking up your MIDI device through gameport, you could go for an AWE64 Value: no hanging note and cleanest sound/v […]
Show full quote

Kitty Trouble wrote on 2025-01-17, 02:40:

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-17, 02:11:

I have the original CD but I prefer preserving it... So I simply create a partition with the content of that CD in it. The game/executable does not look for the CD, but just its content. So that's not the problem here...

As for the patches, I believe there are 2 patches for Fate of Atlantis in there... But I found a more complete (and official list) on the Disney website: https://appsupport.disney.com/hc/en-us/articl … igital-download There are 4 patches for PC!! But no description of what they do exactly and I can't remember which one I've used...

In case I do get a new sound card, do you have one that you would recommend? I want one that can handle digital sounds and midi (simultaneously) and not have the weird hanging that I’m reading is an issue with some SB cards. DOS is a priority… but I will run windows programs too. I also don’t really want to spend $200 on a sound card if I can get away with $20

Since you're hooking up your MIDI device through gameport, you could go for an AWE64 Value: no hanging note and cleanest sound/voice a SB16 can provide. BUT, FM music is not gonna sound really good... But I still try a few more solutions before that:

1) I checked and I am using Indy4fix.exe patch with my P100 and P233. I just unzipped the content, and copied over the content of the CD I have on my HDD. Give it a try!
2) Have you tried "Atlantis/Atlantis.exe R" and "Atlantis/Atlantis.exe R1"? I had a similar problem with Monkey Island where one would work and not the other, even though they are both for port 330.

Neither one helped. Though this time it did fail to load a couple times with "just" roland though it usually didn't in the past. Weird. I recorded it this time. I forgot that OBS had a noise gate on desktop audio and I don't feel like re-recording it, so the first "Normal SB" playthrough will have cut-off audio, but I was only really trying to show that normal audio works, it's not the important thing. The crashes as well as the last playthrough showing the cut-off voices on the wrong IRQ at the end of the video are what I wanted to show you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oryW8eF8Xyc&feature=youtu.be

I just think that this has to be a sound card issue... I'm having bugs with almost every single game I try to play related to sound. I do have a SB live, but I don't feel like transferring it back and forth between my XP machine. Though maybe I could use it just once in order to test...

Kitty Trouble wrote on 2025-01-17, 02:40:

[...]

In case I do get a new sound card, do you have one that you would recommend? I want one that can handle digital sounds and midi (simultaneously) and not have the weird hanging that I’m reading is an issue with some SB cards. DOS is a priority… but I will run windows programs too. I also don’t really want to spend $200 on a sound card if I can get away with $20

Probably best to tell us what you have available for USD 20...

Be aware there is no 'perfect' sound card out there and that you can have multiple cards in the same system to combine their strengths.

You now have an early SB16, a late CT1740 with bad DSP. Its good features are 16b SB16 digital audio and a real Yamaha OPL3 FM synthesis chip. Its bad features are MIDI bugs, DMA clicking and generally high noise levels.

I'd recommend keeping the SB16 for the good features and choosing a second card to compensate for the MIDI issues. Because you don't need SB16 DA support or OPL3, that gives you a lot of choice. The best MIDI solution, in particular for MT-32 games, is an original Roland MPU-401 or a clone, such as the MusicQuest cards or the new PCMIDI cards. They give you bug-free MPU-401 and intelligent mode support (so you don't need SoftMPU). However the vintage cards are rare and - unless you are very lucky - very expensive and PCMIDI, while very reasonably priced for what it is (EUR 110 including shipping), isn't USD 20 either.

Cheaper alternative is a sound card with bug free UART-mode MPU-401. Given you don't need SB16 or OPL3 - or even good quality audio out, pretty much anything out there will work. Cards based on Advance Logic ALS1xx, Aztech 23xx, C-Media CMI83xx, Crystal CS42xx, ESS18xx or OPTi 9xx chipsets should all fit this bill. They all offer bug-free MPU-401 UART. Apart from that they are SBPro2.0 compatible, offer FM synth either via a real OPL3 (like the card you already have), a 1:1 clone of it, or via their own implementation (Crystal and ESS). In addition, some also offer non-SB16 16b audio (ESS's proprietary AudioDrive; Aztech and OPTi give you WSS). But tbh you don't need any of this. If you just want compentent MIDI, go for the cheapest you can find.

If you really don't want two cards in a system, things get more complex. All SB16s have buggy MIDI to some extent (the slowdowns/dropped notes when HQ digital audio is playing affects all of them) and SB16 digital audio support in other cards is very rare, and chipsets that offer it almost all involve some other compromise. If you want your cake and eat it, i.e. SB16 support and bug-free MIDI on one card, there are basically two chipsets to choose from: Advance Logic ALS100 (*not* 100+/100plus) and C-Media CMI-8330. Both are late ISA chipsets and tend to be implemented on some very low-end cards. That leads to poor audio quality. That said, your current CT1740 is also noisy as hell, so it wouldn't be that much of a downgrade. The CMI-8330 has a built-in 1:1 OPL3 clone, the ALS100 is invariably paired with an external 1:1 OPL3 clone. So on paper you have everything you have now, but without the buggy MIDI. But unless you happen to have one of these locally for less than USD 20 anyway, I'd suggest the two-card solution would be better.

Oh, and finally: you can mod your SB16 DSP to get rid of the hanging note problem. It won't help with the slowdowns though.

If you really want to replace your card, I recommend the PicoGUS. PicoGUS: ISA sound card emulator with Raspberry Pi Pico (Gravis Ultrasound, AdLib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS) Shop links on the GitHub

You'd lose 16-bit Sound Blaster, but old DOS games that use the MT-32 don't support it. You'll get great MIDI support and no longer need to run SoftMPU. It can do SB Pro with OPL2. But the highlight is GUS support, and your Pentium could be the correct chip to pair with it.

SScorpio wrote on 2025-01-17, 12:49:

If you really want to replace your card, I recommend the PicoGUS. PicoGUS: ISA sound card emulator with Raspberry Pi Pico (Gravis Ultrasound, AdLib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS) Shop links on the GitHub

You'd lose 16-bit Sound Blaster, but old DOS games that use the MT-32 don't support it. You'll get great MIDI support and no longer need to run SoftMPU. It can do SB Pro with OPL2. But the highlight is GUS support, and your Pentium could be the correct chip to pair with it.

It was my first thought, but he's connecting his MIDI device through gameport... So PicoGus won't do.

@Kitty Trouble: are you 100% sure your copy works and is good? A few times I thought it was a hardware problem while it was just a buggy version I got from the Web...

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-17, 14:27:

It was my first thought, but he's connecting his MIDI device through gameport... So PicoGus won't do.

He bought a gameport -> MIDI adapter which is running into a USB MIDI adapter into a newer PC. The PicoGUS comes with a MIDI cable that well still let him connect the USB MIDI adapter or whatever other MIDI device.

SScorpio wrote on 2025-01-17, 14:56:

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-17, 14:27:

It was my first thought, but he's connecting his MIDI device through gameport... So PicoGus won't do.

He bought a gameport -> MIDI adapter which is running into a USB MIDI adapter into a newer PC. The PicoGUS comes with a MIDI cable that well still let him connect the USB MIDI adapter or whatever other MIDI device.

Darn! I keep forgeting about that cable!! Then, PicoGus FTW!