VOGONS


First post, by Muz

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My sound card is Cobra AW744, how to get the FM or called OPL3 sound effect from the sound card when I play the Windows Media sample like the Canyon.mid? It shows here FM and MPU401 in the audio config, which is different address. 388, and 300. I cannot hear sound from two of the output below. DOS Games like Doom has sound though.

MIDI for AW744/YAMAHA DX-XG MPU401 : No sound
MIDI for AW744/YAMAHA DX-XG Synthesizer : Has synthesizer sound
MIDI for MPU-401 Compatible : No sound

MIDI.jpg
MIDI_2.jpg

Reply 1 of 23, by Deksor

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You need the "playmidi" software found in the DOS drivers, I don't think you can access to the opl3 with windows media player

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Reply 2 of 23, by Muz

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Where to get the "playmidi" software? Do I have to buy a new sound card which has OPL3 label chip in it in order to get the OPL3 effect?

I found out that most OPL3 sound cards are ISA card. My board only fits AGP and PCI though.

Reply 3 of 23, by Jo22

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Muz wrote:

My sound card is Cobra AW744, how to get the FM or called OPL3 sound effect from the sound card when I play the Windows Media sample like the Canyon.mid?

You need to have an FM Synthesizer driver to be installed. The OPL3 is a sound chip, it has no idea what MIDI is.
Something like Creative Music Synthesizer or Voyetra SuperSAPI.
They both are MIDI to OPL3 "wrappers". Win98 has at least one of them in its driver library..

Re: Getting Adlib General Midi to work in Windows 3.1 on Dosbox

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 5 of 23, by Muz

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After I installed the FMSYNTH, it shows white box error.

FMSYNTH.DRV

FM Chip not found

OS is Windows 95 OSR. Does this mean the sound card has no OPL3 chip integrated in it? The sound card look like this. It has no OPL3 chip label in it though.

d5c_a91_300_300-driver-aopen-aw744-pro.jpg

Last edited by Muz on 2018-07-14, 11:40. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 8 of 23, by derSammler

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If at all, you need to install the one that comes on the driver disc for the sound card. Also, depending on whether you install the WDM or VXD drivers, the feature may not be available (well, Win95 can't use WDM, so...). I own two of these cards as well but have not used them so far.

Reply 9 of 23, by Stretch

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You can run YMF7x4Utilities, which can allow the installation of the FM MIDI driver. But it may cause problems with FM games like Doom if you play from within Win98.

Win 11 - Intel i7-1360p - 32 GB - Intel Iris Xe - Sound BlasterX G5

Reply 11 of 23, by Jo22

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Muz wrote:

I ran the utility in Windows 95, but nothing happen. Just a blank program.

I'm not surprised, Windows 95 has medicore MIDI support (in comparison to 3.1).
I'd try the Voyetra Super SAPI: http://soundshock.se/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=454
Alternatively, just install one of the OPL3 drivers supplied with Windows95.

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"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 12 of 23, by Muz

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I have tried the Windows 95 supplied driver, don''t work, only blank sound.

This is a sample rate of OPL3 that I am try to find.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX7LKufAvXE

Reply 13 of 23, by cyclone3d

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Muz, I've been talking to you through eBay... Anyway, for the soundbanks, you can swap out the supplied 2MB soundbank with a better 4MB one by using PowerYMF. It is available on my Google Drive folder in which I have put all XG related stuff I have found so far... not the same folder as the modified drivers folder - link is on my signature below.

Going to try to do some testing to see if I can figure what is going on with the issues you are having.

One other thing.. make sure to check out this thread having to do with the Yamaha ymf cards:
Yamaha YMF7x4 Guide

And this one about the 4MB soundbank
Yamaha S-YXG100plus SoftSynth for Win9x 4MB waveset working!!

Edit: The FM Synth driver you tried above looks to only be for Windows 3.x. It is just a really old version of the one I linked below. (1.04.. the one below is 2.14)

Try the one available for here that is meant for 3.1 and 95:
http://www.midiox.com/jsoft.htm#FMSynth

The Description link gives a good amount of information.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 14 of 23, by Muz

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cyclone3d wrote:

Try the one available for here that is meant for 3.1 and 95:
http://www.midiox.com/jsoft.htm#FMSynth

it also shows white box error.

FMSYNTH.DRV

FM Chip not found

Reply 15 of 23, by cyclone3d

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Ok, I'll see if I can get it working in 98SE and try to report back tomorrow.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 16 of 23, by yawetaG

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Muz wrote:

I ran the utility (YMF7x4Utilities) in Windows 95, but nothing happen. Just a blank program.

As in "nothing happened", or in "the dialog boxes showed up but was empty and lacked any text"? The latter would be normal on a non-Japanese version of Windows 95, as the screenshot on the website shows Japanese fonts being used by the program and if those are absent* you either get gibberish or no text at all. Despite this, everything should work as intended - you just have to guess which option to press.

* you can't install such fonts either on a version of Windows 95/98/NT lacking support for double-byte characters. There are some web browsers that can circumvent this problem, but obviously it only works for websites.

MIDI for AW744/YAMAHA DX-XG MPU401 : No sound
MIDI for AW744/YAMAHA DX-XG Synthesizer : Has synthesizer sound
MIDI for MPU-401 Compatible : No sound

Er...wait. The synthesizer option works, you say, but the other two don't work? You did connect a MIDI device to the gameport using a gameport/MIDI cable, right? MPU-401 outputs to the gameport. The synthesizer is the card's internal synthesizer.

As for the OPL3, just guessing here, but you likely need a specific driver for your card because it's a PCI card with an integrated chip. Have you tried Yamaha's official driver packages? http://device.yamaha.com/en/lsi/download/ There's even a special package for DOS support.

Reply 17 of 23, by Stretch

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Muz wrote:

I ran the utility in Windows 95, but nothing happen. Just a blank program.

Yes, I forgot to mention the program is not going to display properly. I have a screenshot of my midi mapper in Yamaha YMF7x4 Guide after I ran the program. I remember the option being in the second tab of YMF7x4Utilities where I enabled FM. After the change you have to reboot.

Win 11 - Intel i7-1360p - 32 GB - Intel Iris Xe - Sound BlasterX G5

Reply 18 of 23, by yawetaG

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For what it's worth, there should be an official Yamaha MIDI to FM driver, because it's installed on my Japanese Windows 98 system and it allows XG Works to play MIDI via the motherboard's integrated YMF-714 soundcard (which is an OPL3 card). Unfortunately I don't have the install package - anyone know how to extract a driver from an existing Windows 98 installation?

Last edited by yawetaG on 2018-07-16, 09:27. Edited 1 time in total.