It will largely come down to which games you want to use with the MT-32. There are games with worthwhile MT-32 support up to 1994 or so (e.g. X-COM) that would require faster than a 386.

On the other hand the majority of MT-32 games would probably be fine on the 386, since that would reasonably cover gaming up to 1992 or so. For example a lot of your late 80's and early 90's adventure games would be fine on the 386.

Yes I'd stick it in the 386. In my experience games that need a 486 and offer MT-32 support will also offer GM, so your X2GS will have you covered there.

Great devices those, bless that Dreamblaster. I only have one retro PC so I have both McCake and X2GS in it, with the McCake installed on a PCMIDI card.

badmojo wrote on 2025-05-22, 04:18:

Yes I'd stick it in the 386. In my experience games that need a 486 and offer MT-32 support will also offer GM, so your X2GS will have you covered there.

Great devices those, bless that Dreamblaster. I only have one retro PC so I have both McCake and X2GS in it, with the McCake installed on a PCMIDI card.

Thank you both for your answers! BadMojo, your answer leaves me with yet another question... for GM music how does your McCake with a decent sound font compare to your X2GS? The reason I ask is I may actually just put my McCake in an external DB15 adapter / enclosure and run it externally. If I could run it with a better MIDI sound font than what the X2GS comes with that would be even better!

Yes that's a good question and I tried to go down that path, but after trying countless sound fonts I couldn't find one that consistent beat the X2GS. There are some amazing ones out there of course but they'd sound awesome with one game, and not quite right with another.

That's a personal opinion of course, it depends on the games you want to play and what you're used to. I'm very familiar with the SC55 sound so that's what I want to hear, and with a little configuring the X2GS sound close to perfect to my ears.