🎹 MIDI / MT-32 / Roland MPU-401 On DOSBox And Windows98 With DOS-Games (NON MiSTer FPGA Solution) 🎼

#MIDI #MT32 #MPU401

Most of us who played games on PC in the days of MS-DOS were either used to silence, PC Beeper, Adlib, Soundblaster, Soundblaster 16, Gravis Ultrasound all with their distinct sounds and not always comparing favourably with Amiga, Commodore 64 and other Home computers.

The creme the la creme of game music was using a Roland Synth or other Synth hooked up over the gameport /midi interface enabling more lifelike music than the FM-Synth / Chip/Beeper sounds or lower quality sound samples PCM style we got served. Expensive devices and pretty much the holy grail for most of us. I never had one of these back in the day but got a Soundblaster 16 ASP with dual speed Panasonic CD-rom quite early on in my PC-gaming days. Gravis Ultrasound Ace augmented that.

A while ago I made a video on the MT-32 / Raspberry Pi based hardware solution for the MiSTer FPGA running the AO486 PC core (there are more MIDI compatible cores on the MiSTer) and some were interested to find out that this great midi sound can actually be achieved through MS-DOS on your own PC running DOS-BOX using very similar software solutions which sound different distinct and quite well.

Midi on MiSTer FPGA:

Guide to sound settings on DOSBox-X
https://dosbox-x.com/wiki/#Guide:Sound-card-support-in-DOSBox%E2%80%90X

Have a listen.

Hardware & software used:
OS: Linux Mint 21.3 x86_64
Host: 11A5S19C00 ThinkCentre M75q
Kernel: 5.15.0-107-generic
Shell: bash 5.1.16
Resolution: 1920×1080
DE: Cinnamon 6.0.4
WM: Mutter (Muffin)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 3200GE w/ Radeon Vega Graphics (4) @ 3.300GHz
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Vega Mobile Series
Memory: 5674MiB / 15663MiB

OBS Studio
Shortcut Video Editor
Chrome/Mozilla Webbrowsers
Heretic
Doom 1
Doom 2
MS-DOS 6.22 / DOSBox DOS
Windows98SE

The Roland MPU-401, where MPU stands for MIDI Processing Unit, is an important but now obsolete interface for connecting MIDI-equipped electronic music hardware to personal computers. It was designed by Roland Corporation, which also co-authored the MIDI standard. (wiki)

The Roland MT-32 Multi-Timbre Sound Module is a MIDI synthesizer module first released in 1987 by Roland Corporation. It was originally marketed to amateur musicians as a budget external synthesizer with an original list price of $695. However, it became more famous along with its compatible modules as an early de facto standard in computer music. Since it was made prior to the release of the General MIDI standard, it uses its own proprietary format for MIDI file playback. (wiki)

Chapters
00:00:00 – Intro
00:03:20 – Little PC specs Neofetch Screenfetch
00:03:45 – DOSBox-X Fluidsynth
00:08:42 – DOSBox-X MT32 MT32
00:09:07 – DOSBox-X MT32 Auto
00:11:53 – DOSBox-X Windows98 – Roland MPU-401
00:15:41 – Outro / resume what could have been an intro

Enjoy & thanks for watching
– LactobacillusPrime

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