OPL2 chips weren't MIDI and didn't have an internal instrument list. The instruments will always be provided through means of software. Most DOS games have their own OPL2 playback driver with their own instruments (for example DOOM's use of the DMX sound library uses the GENMIDI lmp to parse midi data into opl2 form for the card using the GENMIDI file for timbres data), Windows on the other hand generally has a OPL2 driver for the MIDI mapper with its own generic set of instruments (something I wish I had in Windows 7 again)

I believe I chased out one "tech expert" person accusing me as a troll over this.

General MIDI was not an entirely new beast. It defined the standard bank of instruments and percussion, as well as mandated a minimum of 24-sound polyphony (part melody, part percussion). The protocol itself that takes care of exchanging messages between different devices, however, is simply MIDI and it is much older, having been standardised in 1983. That is what the SB card supports (AdLib did not). Every synthesizer could define its own patch map and still be MIDI compliant. Since the instruments for FM synthesis are just a set of wave-form parameters, it was very easy to add support for GM by simply adding the appropriate patch banks to the whatever drivers drove the OPL. In fact, the MIDI interface on these old cards was not tied to the OPL chip at all (software could convert MIDI input to OPL commands, but it might just as easily just record the MIDI data or send out data from a MID file to the MIDI interface, never touching the OPL).

leileilol wrote:

OPL2 chips weren't MIDI and didn't have an internal instrument list. The instruments will always be provided through means of software.

Yes, that would be why I asked about the software.

Kippesoep wrote:

General MIDI was not an entirely new beast. It defined the standard bank of instruments and percussion, as well as mandated a minimum of 24-sound polyphony (part melody, part percussion). The protocol itself that takes care of exchanging messages between different devices, however, is simply MIDI and it is much older, having been standardised in 1983. That is what the SB card supports (AdLib did not).

I'm quite aware of the difference between the original MIDI and General MIDI standards (though I was mistaken on the AdLib.) That was the point of the question. I'm curious as to whether the driver software provided any quasi-standard instrument list for software that didn't use its own patch set.

The driver software didn't really get involved in MIDI playback for the first few cards. Remember that this was mostly DOS and every program was responsible for its own drivers and instrument definitions. Only when Windows 3 became the de facto standard did the manufacturers of the cards write drivers that mapped MIDI to their chips. Windows 3.x had no concept of GM, just of MIDI itself. All it was concerned with was mapping MIDI channels onto drivers. That is what the MIDI mapper did. So, for DOS there was no MIDI driver provided by the card manufacturers. Sequencer software publishers made their own, if they supported FM sound at all.

Windows 3.0 is older than GM and Windows 3.1 was later but, as mentioned above, didn't actually need to know GM. The drivers did. I'm not sure whether FM drivers for Windows, pre-dating GM actually provided their own instrument lists, but I somehow doubt it. Windows 3.0 was the first somewhat successful version of Windows and 3.1 was a megahit. Only at that time, when Windows became a serious contender, was it really interesting for manufacturers to start building drivers for Windows -- that happened after 3.0 became successful, and GM existed by then. Before GM and .MID files became commonplace, .CMF and .ROL file were the most common for FM music, which included their own instrument definitions.

To standardize stuff for game developers, OPL2/OPL3 instrument banks were created that comply to the General MIDI standard of patch numeration. Miles Sound System suite allowed usage of fat.ad/fat.opl banks developed by the Fat Man.

But even having MSS capabilities some developers made different XMIDI tracks for different hardware anyway (and used their own AD/OPL timbres ignoring GM standard). Blizzard and Bullfrog surely did this.

The AdLib card came with the Visual Composer program which used instrument definition files called Instrument Banks (links go to the nicely written Videogame Music Preservation Foundation Wiki).

These instrument banks can be found with quite a few games, but of course most of them used other formats like those mentioned above or defined their own instruments by programming the OPL directly. The latter method can produce the most amazing results, but it's not exactly trivial.