First post, by Strahssis
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Hi everyone,
I like to play early Windows games on old laptops, because I don't have the space to setup my retro gaming PC anymore since I moved. By early Windows games I mean SimCity Classic, Age of Empires, Westwood Monopoly, etc. I mostly have 486's and Pentium-1's. Sound is a problem however. I have been using a self-built Covox Speech Thing clone, which for some games does output sound effects. In short: the support is limited and the sound quality is bad, since the CPU has trouble catching up.
I think MIDI would be a great option for me, but I don't know a lot about it. I just bought a ESS PC-MIDI 1/4 online. I saw it works with parallel and that there is a Windows 95 driver for it, so I should be good to go. What I am wondering is what to connect to it. Roland MT-32's and SC-55's are extremely expensive. I saw a Roland RA-30 for sale locally for a lot less. Would something like that work too? I thought MIDI was universal, so in theory it should work on anything that can output the signal to sound. Better yet, my Roland E-66 (keyboard) has a MIDI-in. Can my keyboard play the Windows games music too?
My question is: what is going to be compatible and what isn't? What do I need to watch out for when buying/using a different "sound canvas"? Thanks in advance!
All the best,
Miko
Mimi: AMD K6-2/266, S3 Trio64, Diamond Monster 3D II, Sound Blaster CT2800, 32MB RAM
Satellite 220CS: Pentium 133, SVGA DSTN, Sound Blaster Pro, 64MB RAM
Contura 420CX: 486DX4 75, VGA TFT, Roland Serial MIDI, 16MB RAM