just get a midi cable that splits the game port, that way you can use a joystick and midi module at the same time without the need for 2 ports.

I have a 15-pin splitter but it doesn't work probably because it is only for joysticks. It is also not a MIDI connector. The Dreamblaster connects into the 15-pin gameport.

https://www.kenable.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=417

This is the cable, they come up on ebay quite often.

It is not a MIDI module, it's a General MIDI daughterboard for a wavetable header or the Chil'n'Phil adapter which is a wavetable to 15-pin gameport adapter. So the Dreamblaster hooks up to either a wavetable header on the soundcard or directly to the 15-pin gameport

http://www.serdashop.com/waveblaster
http://www.serdashop.com/CHiLLandPhilAdapter

The TB Vortex 2 has a wavetable header that works under DOS.

gdjacobs wrote:

The TB Vortex 2 has a wavetable header that works under DOS.

Do you think without drivers where a DOS game would just 'see' it? I don't want to load its SB Emulation so I could use drivers that don't install them.

I'll just have to see.

The Vortex 2 will require the TSR, otherwise the MPU-401 UART won't be initialized.

GiSWiG wrote:

I'm wrestling with sound card setup choices (again) for a build. I only have 1 ISA slot. I have an AWE64 Value, an Audician 32, […]
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I'm wrestling with sound card setup choices (again) for a build. I only have 1 ISA slot. I have an AWE64 Value, an Audician 32, a Dreamblaster S2, a Chill'n'Phil adapter for Dreamblaster and various PCI Sound cards.

I want to try and use the AWE64 as my primary sound card and the Dreamblaster for MIDI. (I know the simplest route is to use the Audician 32) With the Chil'n'Phil adapter I can plug the Dreamblaster in any sound card. I have a Turtle Beach Vortex2 and a Santa Cruz PCI cards with wavetable headers for the Dreamblaster and various other PCI sound cards with joystick ports that can work under DOS (SB PCI family).

The goal is to have a joystick port available for joysticks while using a AWE64 and the Dreamblaster.
So I can think of three options:
- AWE64 and a PCI sound card who's joystick port works in DOS without drivers. Dreamblaster plugged into AWE64
- Keep the AWE64 MIDI/gameport free and have the Dreamblaster plugged into the PCI card's MIDI/gameport
- ^same as above^ but use either Vortex2 or Santa Cruz Wavetable header for Dreamblaster.

I only want sound from the AWE64 and the Dreamblaster. I don't want to load sound drivers for any other card which could be tricky if that is the only way to get the joystick port or wavetable working on the PCI card.

Before I spend potentially many hours trying this, has anyone gotten any of the above options to work? Any guidance or really good guesses?

Thanks!

So you're using the SB AWE64 for Sound Effects and the Dreamblaster mounted on the AWE64 for MIDI is that right?
If you wanted to use they joystick and have midi there was a Y cable that plugged into the game port so you could hook the joystick and the MIDI output simultaneously. I never tried this back in the day since I didn't have a MT-32 at the time so I can't comment if this actually worked giving you joystick support, MIDI support to like a MT-32 and SB AWE64 playing your digitized effects. But I would assume if this all worked this would be how it was done back in the day to get the best sound effects, MIDI, and joystick gaming. Let me know if this works for you.

How does this DreamBlaster Midi sound vs MT-32?

95DosBox wrote:

So you're using the SB AWE64 for Sound Effects and the Dreamblaster mounted on the AWE64 for MIDI is that right?
If you wanted to use they joystick and have midi there was a Y cable that plugged into the game port so you could hook the joystick and the MIDI output simultaneously. I never tried this back in the day since I didn't have a MT-32 at the time so I can't comment if this actually worked giving you joystick support, MIDI support to like a MT-32 and SB AWE64 playing your digitized effects. But I would assume if this all worked this would be how it was done back in the day to get the best sound effects, MIDI, and joystick gaming. Let me know if this works for you.

I got a Y-Cable just for that purpose but it does not work. According to some wiring diagrams, I don't thing the MIDI pins are present on either port.

95DosBox wrote:

How does this DreamBlaster Midi sound vs MT-32?

Well specifically it is the S2 that I have. I don't have a MT-32 or any other external MIDI module. The only way I can get MT-32 music is via MUNT which doesn't work in Win9x so that restricts you to DOSBox under WinXP or later (works under Win7 and Win10). At least for King's Quest 5, its the only game that almost requires it to sound the way it should. For example, bird chirps sound as they should using MUNT as they use MIDI/MT-32. They sound like beeps under Sound Blaster anything and weird horns under General MIDI. Interesting how General MIDI works ok for everything else. The Dreamblaster S2 cannot load sound fonts but the X2 can. PhilsComputerLab on YouTube has a long video that covers it with about an hour of sound samples and also compares the S1 to an MT-32 and a Yamaha.

GiSWiG wrote:

I got a Y-Cable just for that purpose but it does not work. According to some wiring diagrams, I don't thing the MIDI pins are p […]
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95DosBox wrote:

So you're using the SB AWE64 for Sound Effects and the Dreamblaster mounted on the AWE64 for MIDI is that right?
If you wanted to use they joystick and have midi there was a Y cable that plugged into the game port so you could hook the joystick and the MIDI output simultaneously. I never tried this back in the day since I didn't have a MT-32 at the time so I can't comment if this actually worked giving you joystick support, MIDI support to like a MT-32 and SB AWE64 playing your digitized effects. But I would assume if this all worked this would be how it was done back in the day to get the best sound effects, MIDI, and joystick gaming. Let me know if this works for you.

I got a Y-Cable just for that purpose but it does not work. According to some wiring diagrams, I don't thing the MIDI pins are present on either port.

95DosBox wrote:

How does this DreamBlaster Midi sound vs MT-32?

Well specifically it is the S2 that I have. I don't have a MT-32 or any other external MIDI module. The only way I can get MT-32 music is via MUNT which doesn't work in Win9x so that restricts you to DOSBox under WinXP or later (works under Win7 and Win10). At least for King's Quest 5, its the only game that almost requires it to sound the way it should. For example, bird chirps sound as they should using MUNT as they use MIDI/MT-32. They sound like beeps under Sound Blaster anything and weird horns under General MIDI. Interesting how General MIDI works ok for everything else. The Dreamblaster S2 cannot load sound fonts but the X2 can. PhilsComputerLab on YouTube has a long video that covers it with about an hour of sound samples and also compares the S1 to an MT-32 and a Yamaha.

Hmm, I thought the purpose of that Gameport Y connector was to keep the joystick working and also let you adapt the Gameport to MIDI output cable to it to the MT-32. Because originally if you needed to use the game port and lose MIDI to the MT-32 that would blow. But I supposed you could install another Sound card and hooked up the MIDI to that game port and just made sure the IRQ and addresses didn't conflict between the two sound cards. You'd need at least two ISA slots to try this test out.

I found a video from PCL which shows the Gameport to MIDI and gameport break out cable and his explanation seems to also confirm it should work? You could then use a Gameport splitter on the extended game port cable to get two joysticks working and the MIDI In/Out should still work with this breakout cable.

At 1min 2 seconds start on this video you can see the types of cables.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXb3gNj--yo

I know that in XP the AWE64 worked for connecting my to the MT-32 real hardware using the Gameport in DOSBOX. But how necessary is needing that joystick? If you can still use the AWE64 GOLD and MT-32 MIDI output the keyboard wasn't a bad input control device for gaming. Maybe you would need it for X-wing or Wing Commander but not for most of the old school Sierra Quest type games.

I was always used to the original 8-bit Sound Blaster and most games I had not tried it with the AWE64 SB since I got that many years later after I had already beaten the games. But when I did test the MT-32 with those older games it was almost like playing a new game with the same graphics but it certainly elevated the experience. Some of the much older games before I had a Sound Blaster like King's Quest 3 had only the internal PC speaker beeping which was pathetic. Other computer versions of KQ3 were superior like the Tandy. One day when I get a chance I will a review of some of these older games showing how the audio and video compared on each computer platform.

As for your thoughts which of the MIDI options between the Yamaha, S1, and MT-32 did sound the best to you and in what ranking order?

I grew up having a Tandy 1000 (8088) then later a Tandy 1000RLX (286) with 8-bit Soundblaster. Thanks to having Tandy's 3-Voice sound instead of the PC-Speaker, early Sierra games like KQ1,2,3 sounded great compared to single PC Speaker beeps. DOSBox is about the only way you can get that sound (and I wish GOG.COM knew that cause Tandy is not configured in the dosbox config file). There is a patch someone made to translate the 3-Voice to MIDI. I tried it in DOSBox but definitely not the same. Its on the Sierra help pages somewhere. (http://www.sierrahelp.com/)

I also never knew how great MIDI sounded until a few years ago getting the old Sierra games in DOSBox. Growing up, I only knew of Sound Blaster and thanks to Creative's marketing and being a dumb kid, Sound Blaster was the best sound!

As far as the Yamaha, S1, and MT-32 video, I couldn't tell much difference between the MT-32 and S1. Yamaha sounded off to me. I appreciate great sound but I'm not an Audiophile. Spending more than $100 for headphones is ridiculous to me. My favorite headphones are my HyperX Cloud II's and the Panasonic earbuds on Amazon for $6-$10. To some, they might make their ears bleed.

GiSWiG wrote:

I grew up having a Tandy 1000 (8088) then later a Tandy 1000RLX (286) with 8-bit Soundblaster. Thanks to having Tandy's 3-Voice sound instead of the PC-Speaker, early Sierra games like KQ1,2,3 sounded great compared to single PC Speaker beeps. DOSBox is about the only way you can get that sound (and I wish GOG.COM knew that cause Tandy is not configured in the dosbox config file). There is a patch someone made to translate the 3-Voice to MIDI. I tried it in DOSBox but definitely not the same. Its on the Sierra help pages somewhere. (http://www.sierrahelp.com/)

I also never knew how great MIDI sounded until a few years ago getting the old Sierra games in DOSBox. Growing up, I only knew of Sound Blaster and thanks to Creative's marketing and being a dumb kid, Sound Blaster was the best sound!

As far as the Yamaha, S1, and MT-32 video, I couldn't tell much difference between the MT-32 and S1. Yamaha sounded off to me. I appreciate great sound but I'm not an Audiophile. Spending more than $100 for headphones is ridiculous to me. My favorite headphones are my HyperX Cloud II's and the Panasonic earbuds on Amazon for $6-$10. To some, they might make their ears bleed.

I have a Tandy 1000 here somewhere. I only got it in case I wanted to test out games that supported the PCjr and a few titles did support the Tandy 3 voice. Try Ski Or Die. The sound track was amazing back in the day. Later I tried the MT-32 version and it is on another level. King's Quest 2 bootable and KQ1 PCJr also sounded amazing on the Tandy 1000. I think maybe the Tandy 2000 was better or had more memory but the sound chip was the same. The only thing I disliked about the Tandy was they used a proprietary keyboard connector if I remember correctly. Maybe some keyboard adapters exist to convert it to standard 5 PIN DIN to fix that.

As for Tandy support in DosBox I remember testing it and I think it works but certain Non DOS bootables games like KQ1 and KQ2 that could use the Tandy 1000's 3 voice speaker were altered in the later DOS versions. In the original KQ1 PCJr version you could hear some sort of tweeting sound in the background the entire time as part of an overlay background effect. It kind of made things a bit more peaceful than hearing nothing on a regular IBM PC/XT or the DOS version that killed that special feature. King's Quest 2 had crashing sound waves which I think still worked in the DOS version.

In KQ1 DOS they changed the Intro trumpet theme to Greensleeves which only existed in KQ2. I can't remember if KQ2 Bootable had any other Tandy sound features missing in the DOS version. Since the Non DOS Bootable versions of KQ1 and KQ2 don't exist for use in DOSBOX I don't think most people will ever appreciate those rare versions in DOSBOX unless there is a way to convert the Non DOS Bootable version into an image but you would have to find a way to crack the copy protection off it first then either allow DOSBOX to load Non DOS Bootable games or find a way to convert the NON DOS Bootable KQ1 and KQ2 into a DOS variant if that is even possible.

I usually use my 7.1 receiver to output the audio to towers. Headphones can get tiring to use so I only use those if I need to listen to something in secrecy. Sennheiser makes some very affordable ones that work fine with the Sound Blaster cards. You'll need some sort of volume adjuster to hook between the headphone and the wire to the Sound Blaster card. Sometimes in DOS you can't change the volume on the fly so a hardware fix is required.

So it sounds like it's MT-32 vs S1 according to you. Yamaha had strange instruments or what sounded off to you? A lot of the PCI sound cards suffered because of mismatched instruments in DOS games but the Sound Blaster digitized speech they had no problems.

Again, I never had any ext. MIDI modules. I have to rely on sound recordings on a MT-32 to judge.