It's a MIDI adapter card so you can connect it to various MIDI devices like keyboards and sound modules.

Rather boring without the breakout box, but, most likely you can make an adapter cable yourself if you want MIDI out (in?).

See the details from the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPU-401

AFAIK these newer models lack the "Roland Intelligent MPU" feature, it's just an UART MPU-401 device that is meant to be used for serious stuff... 😁

Its something i always wanted 🤣

Do SoftMPU work on it?

The S-MPU (or Super MPU) is an intelligent model. Not exactly useful without the breakout box. It's main advantages are extra features (metronome, timing & such,) external settings so the I/O & IRQ can be changed without opening your case, and 2 each MIDI input & Output (on the box.) Check out the manuals on the Roland site here

^ S-MPU's "intelligent mode" does not work reliably with DOS games.
One can read more here: http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.gr/2010/03/tu … land-mt-32.html

Since it's put out by Roland, I'm wondering why they didn't make it completely compatible? Or was it a case of breaking things while they were fixing them? Personally, I got a MPU-401AT and called it quits 😀 Got a SCC-55 on the card, a MT-32 (old model) on the desk, and have been keeping an eye out for a CM-32L. All-in-all, though, it's still "mostly" intelligent 😀 Just out of curiosity, what games does it have problems with?

When the S-MPU line was released "intelligent mode" was a thing of the past... plus it was meant for serious work so I believe noone cared about intelligent mode being picky/not_working on DOS. I've read many reports online about this thing and never really got one to test 😀

Don't worry about the 401AT , it's fully compatible , I got one running in my p1 dos machine and tested it extensively 😉
A couple of games to test intelligent mode are Gateway and Laser Squad, if music plays fine on them then the interface is ok.

I have a S-MPU card on the way from Japan. I'm planning on using it in a Pentium Pro build I'm putting together. Since I love special touches in my systems I'm planning to use a ASUS MEDIA BUS card with SCSI and Vibra 16 (with OPL3 chip). The MIDI is totally broken on this card, so I needed another solution. I'll report back when I get it up and running with my findings 😀

I'm interested to see if I can run SOFTMPU on it. Then there will be no problems with intelligent mode as SoftMPU supports all those games.

The S-MPU-AT is partially hardware intelligent: it relies on detection of intelligent MPU-401 requests to become MPU-IPC-T compatible (intelligent).
http://media.rolandus.com/manuals/S-MPU-AT_OM.pdf

The S-MPU-IIAT relies on a DOS TSR to become intelligent emulated.
http://media.rolandus.com/manuals/S-MPUII_OM.pdf

Both products were designed for Windows and not DOS back in the day.

I owned both but found the MPU-401, MPU-401AT, MPU-IPC, MPU-IPC-T, SCC-1 and LAPC-I to be better alternatives. As well as select clones such as the Midiman MM-401 and Music Quest PC MIDI Cards (8 & 16BIT).

The S-MPU-AT BOB pops up on eBay from time to time and is usually pretty cheap.