First post, by Scythifuge
- Rank
- Oldbie
Greetings,
I recently purchased a couple of PicoGUS cards. I put one in my 486 (and removed the MPU-IPC-T,) and one in my Pentium 166, and will probably put the MPU-IPC-T in my Pentium III, which will give my three main retro PCs intelligent MPU capability. It has been a long while since I set up midi stuff in Windows 3.1. The main sound card is some manner of Opti 924. It took a while and a lot of hassle, but I have the card installed and stable in MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. The driver seems to utilize the WSS capabilities, and I saw no way to utilize SB Pro mode. I disabled the MPU on the Opti since I have the PicoGUS. I added the Roland MPU-401 driver from the Windows diskettes, after getting an error message with Voyetra Audiostation that there were no midi capabilities detected. I had to manually edit the midimap to add the Roland MPU-401 to the midimap and to each of the 16 channels.
The only game I have tested is King's Quest VI in Windows/Extended Midi mode. However, it doesn't matter if I use MT-32 or SoundFont mode with the MP32L, the game sounds like ass, except of course the digitized speech and what not.
My questions are:
Do I have everything installed and set up correctly? Did I miss anything? How can I get the best MIDI experience in Windows 3.1 with the PicoGUS and the MP32L?
Are Sierra games MIDI music broken in Windows and sounding good only in MS-DOS? Is there anything I can do to fix this?
Does anyone have any suggestions for me and this particular set up? Alternative drivers, changing Windows settings, etc.? I will note that Origin FX screen saver works with the MP32L when selecting the MT-32 in the settings, and this was before remembering to add the Roland MPU-401 driver in the control panel. I also noticed that Sound Blaster Pro music and sounds seem to work in Origin FX when choosing that option and matching the address/IRQ/DMA as it is in MS-DOS.
I do have a (hopefully working) Sound Blaster Pro2 on the way, since I got frickin' sick and tired of having issues with different games/apps between the Opti 929 and 924 cards (though they sound great when they work and they bring back memories of my first three PCs I ever had,) and figured that despite losing WSS, it may be simply less of a headache across the board if I just use an actual, widely supported SB Pro2 alongside the PicoGUS/MP32L.
Scythifuge