Like most synthesizers this device has midi connectors so technically you could hook it up to a PC running Dosbox but... this wouldn't make much sense as it's not its intended purpose and wouldn't work for games. If what you're interested in is enjoying midi music in games with Dosbox then you need a General Midi compatible module - the SC-55 is an option but there are plenty of other choices as well, a search on this forum will yield lots of info about this.

MMaximus wrote:

wouldn't work for games.

Do you mean it wouldn't work at all or it would just sound wrong?

General Midi is a standard for setting out instruments on a MIDI device. If this has some way of setting up the GM instrument set it should sound ok, the only difference from a Roland SC55 being down to the individual instrument patches, their relative volume and so on.

All GM modules may not sound the same but they will all use the same instruments for each part.

Does this thing you have linked have any way to set a GM instrument set [a button or menu item, etc]? If not, can you set it up maually?

You will surely get a few sounds if you hook it up to Dosbox but it will sound wrong and incomplete. This device belongs to a totally different category of instruments - it's a synthesizer, most likely monotimbral (it can only play data on one midi channel at a time) and with a very limited polyphony.

General Midi music specifies 16 channels of music - not all games use the 16 channels at the same time but most will need at least 3, 4 and upwards. For example one channel for drums, one for bass, one for piano, and so on. A specialized instrument like the System 1m would only play music on one channel at a time, so you might hear the melody but not the other parts.

Furthermore, it doesn't conform to the General Midi standard -the game would send an instruction like "play a PIANO sound on midi channel 1" and the System 1m would probably play a different sound instead because it does not possess the General Midi instruments in its memory.

Last but not least it has a polyphony of 4 notes (as opposed to 24 notes for the original SC-55) - this means that no matter what you do, it won't play more than 4 notes at the same time. For example whenever there would be a 4 note piano chord in the music, you would run out of polyphony and wouldn't be able to hear anything else as long as this 4 note chord is still sounding.

Evolving the topic slightly - is there any web page with embedded midi?

dnewhous wrote:

Evolving the topic slightly - is there any web page with embedded midi?

The Notable Ultima has MIDI that plays on many pages, but I cannot hear it in Chrome, so I do not know if it was removed. http://www.notableultima.com/collectibles/