VB 4.3.6 DOS Sound / MPU-401

[maw2k]

hello,

I tried today again to play around with the latest version of VB and MSDos 6.22. So far everything works well. CD, mouse, EMS memory and even digital sound via sound blaster 16 emu.

I installed Wing Commander 3, which was a hardware eater at the time and it runs as good as via dosbox - thumbs up on that one so far. No video issues and digital sound in videos comes almost 100% perfect. But music in don't get to work and I don't know why. It doesn't work in any game anyway if I select SB, SB-Pro or SB16.

Also the MPU-401 midi port could not be found. I dont know if that is a general issue in VB and the DB16 EMU.

thanks for any answers..

M.

[michaln]

But music in don't get to work and I don't know why. It doesn't work in any game anyway if I select SB, SB-Pro or SB16.

AdLib/OPL3 emulation is not implemented. Contributions welcome

Also the MPU-401 midi port could not be found. I dont know if that is a general issue in VB and the DB16 EMU.

Again not implemented. But I wonder what you would expect it to do? Just pretend to be there and do nothing? Or actually do something with the MIDI data?

[maw2k]

AdLib/OPL3 emulation is not implemented.

oh!

Again not implemented. But I wonder what you would expect it to do? Just pretend to be there and do nothing? Or actually do something with the MIDI data?

well the SB16 MPU-401 emulation let you use midi software and also games uses it.

[michaln]

well the SB16 MPU-401 emulation let you use midi software and also games uses it.

Not unless you have an actual MIDI device attached. The SB16 itself includes semi-MPU-401 compatible hardware, but that's just a communications device, much like a serial or parallel port. There has to be something connected on the other end or nothing will happen.

[Tamaria]

OK, I'm late to the party, but a description of the problem and a screenshot are both already in this thread.

Yes. Yes, quite literally, all it needs to do is pretend to be there and do nothing. To put it more specifically, all it needs to do is not throw an error when it's probed.

What is happening is that any software that probes the sound card, from Creative Labs' DIAGNOSE.EXE to your favorite retro video game will probe the MIDI port (which all real life soundblaster 16 cards have, even if they're not used), throw an error and fall over. There's something wrong with your sound card, afterall. Once sound probing throws an error, music does not play, not because anybody did anything wrong, but because that's how the software was written in the early 90s.

A: We physically cannot travel back in time to ask companies to write their software differently
B: It's practically impossible to reverse-engineer old software to ignore errors and play the music
C: The simplest solution is to ask if anybody knows a way around it and,
D: Failing all that, ask VirtualBox developers to, again, quite literally, just pretend MIDI is there and not do anything with it.

[michaln]

D: Failing all that, ask VirtualBox developers to, again, quite literally, just pretend MIDI is there and not do anything with it.

VirtualBox developers do respond to customer requests, and they do take (properly written) source code patches from anyone.