Bondi wrote on 2021-03-11, 09:42:

Thank you for the info. But for some reason SoftMPU works with HOMM2, which uses DOS4GW.

SoftMPU seems to work with games using the "Miles Sound System" sound library for some reason . I have tried Warcraft II with success and Heroes of Might and Magic II uses the same library.

To be more specific:
SoftMPU works if the port access to the MIDI port is done from V86 mode.
Dos Extenders like DOS4GW also have the feature that sub routines can be called from non-protected mode, which might be the case for MSS.

Tanks for the explanation elianda.

That makes sense, elianda. And now that you mention it, I believe there were also some protected mode games that used the real mode MIDPAK and DIGPAK drivers from The Audio Solution. DOS extenders typically pass INT 10h calls (video BIOS routines) and INT 21h calls (DOS disk access routines) on to real (or V86) mode. I guess such games used a DOS extender that also passed INT 66h calls (DIGPAK/MIDPAK routines) on to real mode in that way. Those games might therefore work with SoftMPU as well.

Someone here feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but the only protected-mode-specific DOS audio driver model that has been open-sourced is AIL/32 (recognizable by their .DLL file extension, not to be confused with the Miles 3.0 driver model that was sold to Bink, developed further to this day, and never open-sourced).

So someone could take the sources of the MT-32 and General MIDI AIL/32 drivers and modify them to produce drivers that can drive such MIDI devices through the serial port like SoftMPU can. Basically a native driver for serial MIDI interfaces, instead of an emulator. There aren't many games that used AIL/32 drivers, though. I believe Simcity 2000 was one of them, but I'm not sure.

Also, the closed source Miles 3.0 and HMI drivers for MT-32 and General MIDI could perhaps be patched to support serial MIDI interfaces natively as well.

Princess Maker 1 (Japanese) and Princess Maker 2 are now liberated from fixed IRQ=9 .
I found where the IRQ number is inputted as constant 9 (it was just 9, not 2 or 9) and modified hex from corresponding executables.
For Princess Maker 1 (Japanese) it is AUTOEXEC.EXE and for Princess Maker 2 it is MMD.COM.

I uploaded these executables using another IRQs, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11 (port 330h).
https://kykypyza.tistory.com/7

Tested for IRQ=5, 11 and SoftMPU 1.9.1 and it works.

'Innocent Until Caught' is now freed from IRQ=2.
The original Roland driver 'IUC_RLND.DRV ' uses fixed IRQ number 2.

I modified the hex to assign IRQ 5, 6, 7, 10 or 11 (port 330h).
https://kykypyza.tistory.com/9

Tested with IRQ 7.

Would it be possible to implement SoftMPU as a VXD driver for Windows 9x (for use in a Windows DOS box)?

I'm thinking of building one in the future. Just need to make a source code for it and build it on a real Win9x system and test it out on my 486 running Windows 95C.

Perhaps, there is a viable alternative already. Quite some time ago, VDMSound on Windows 9x was created, and it proves being workable at least (surely not perfect). Probably, some debugging can make it even better, and may appear faster than creating a new VxD driver from scratch (which is a lost technology these days).

The Roland SCC-1 demo disk includes a program that plays some included sample MIDI files. The program locks up without an intelligent MPU-401, but with SoftMPU, it complains that port 330 (or wherever SoftMPU is configured), is occupied by another piece of hardware.

Probably not within the scope of this project as it's not a game, but it's an example of a program that looks for an intelligent MPU-401 for something other than MT-32 style hardware --

http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=9 … &menustate=38,0

Sound cards IRQ2/9 compatibility test

Test Game: Princess Maker, Princess Maker 2

CPU: VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2A

ESS ES1868F - pass, cpu slow down to 66*4
ESS ES1869F - pass, cpu slow down to 66*4
Yamaha YMF718S - pass, cpu slow to to 133*4
Yamaha YMF719E - pass, cpu slow to to 133*4

Sound Blaster 16 PRO CT2950 - pass, cpu L1 Disable
Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects CT4170 - pass, cpu L1 Disable
Sound Blaster VIBRA 16 CT4180 - pass, cpu L1 Disable
Sound Blaster AWE32 CT4330 - pass, cpu L1 Disable
Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4380 - pass, cpu L1 Disable
ASUS I-A16C - pass, cpu L1 Disable

All sound cards list above are Initialization by UNISOUND.

kykypyza wrote on 2021-04-06, 15:48:

'Innocent Until Caught' is now freed from IRQ=2. The original Roland driver 'IUC_RLND.DRV ' uses fixed IRQ number 2. […]
Show full quote

'Innocent Until Caught' is now freed from IRQ=2.
The original Roland driver 'IUC_RLND.DRV ' uses fixed IRQ number 2.

I modified the hex to assign IRQ 5, 6, 7, 10 or 11 (port 330h).
https://kykypyza.tistory.com/9

Tested with IRQ 7.

thanks for sharing these!
I will link your site to the PCMIDI page if that's allright

keropi wrote on 2021-05-03, 16:53:

kykypyza wrote on 2021-04-06, 15:48:

'Innocent Until Caught' is now freed from IRQ=2. The original Roland driver 'IUC_RLND.DRV ' uses fixed IRQ number 2. […]
Show full quote

'Innocent Until Caught' is now freed from IRQ=2.
The original Roland driver 'IUC_RLND.DRV ' uses fixed IRQ number 2.

I modified the hex to assign IRQ 5, 6, 7, 10 or 11 (port 330h).
https://kykypyza.tistory.com/9

Tested with IRQ 7.

thanks for sharing these!
I will link your site to the PCMIDI page if that's allright

That's OK. I also uploaded modded executables and Roland drivers for 'David Wolf' and 'It Came from the Desert'.

kykypyza wrote on 2021-05-05, 12:15:

That's OK. I also uploaded modded executables and Roland drivers for 'David Wolf' and 'It Came from the Desert'.

perfect, thanks!
I have already put the previous ones 😀

'Wonderland' and 'A-10 Tank Killer' (pre-v1.5) are now freed from IRQ 2.
Finally, all games having footnote (2) in the compatibility list for v1.91 are dealt with.

Check out in
https://kykypyza.tistory.com/category/MS-DOS/Game%20mod

There's a list on the Github wiki showing that the Midiman MM401 is compatible with SoftMPU but it is noted as "requires additional SB compatible sound card" - what does this actually mean?

My MM401 works for almost every game, apart from those really finicky Gateway titles from Legend Entertainment and it looks like SoftMPU would be the solution to those particular titles.

My MM401 (which has a MT32-Pi hanging off it) is at 0x330, irq 2; so the overwhelming majority of MIDI stuff just works with it. With Gatway 1 and 2 I just get the title display on the LCD screen but no music.

Is this a configuration that should work? If so, what's the magic incantation of command line args to use with softmpu?

Question: has anybody tried using SoftMPU with the 386MAX memory manager? And if so, did it work? 386MAX is supposed to be compatible with the I/O port trapping API of Microsoft EMM386.

I'm asking this, since 386MAX might eventually be made open source, and bundled with FreeDOS. See https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/message/28740668/ (point 4)

I've tested on sound blaster 2.0 CT1350B (rev 069328) (With added CMS chips) on IRQ 5 :
Day Of The Tentacle without SoftMPU : no music on MT-32
Day Of The Tentacle with SoftMPU : Music on MT-32 \o/

I need to do more test but this is working on my SB 2.0 with the SBMIDI output mode.

digger wrote on 2021-08-08, 20:24:

Question: has anybody tried using SoftMPU with the 386MAX memory manager? And if so, did it work? 386MAX is supposed to be compatible with the I/O port trapping API of Microsoft EMM386.

I'm asking this, since 386MAX might eventually be made open source, and bundled with FreeDOS. See https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/message/28740668/ (point 4)

The 386MAX API is absolutely different than that of QEMM and I doubt it offers port trapping to V86 clients despite it uses exactly that mechanism for its very own API interface.

georgel wrote on 2021-09-02, 10:10:

digger wrote on 2021-08-08, 20:24:

Question: has anybody tried using SoftMPU with the 386MAX memory manager? And if so, did it work? 386MAX is supposed to be compatible with the I/O port trapping API of Microsoft EMM386.

I'm asking this, since 386MAX might eventually be made open source, and bundled with FreeDOS. See https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/message/28740668/ (point 4)

The 386MAX API is absolutely different than that of QEMM and I doubt it offers port trapping to V86 clients despite it uses exactly that mechanism for its very own API interface.

If you read my quote again, you'll see that I mentioned compatibility with Microsoft's port trapping API, not QPI (QEMM). From what I found on-line, 386MAX is compatible with the Microsoft API, including the port trapping stuff, and can even be considered a superset of it. To be fair, though: I haven't actually tried that myself yet. It'll be fun to experiment with this in the weekend. I was just wondering if someone here had already tried SoftMPU with 386MAX already, and if so, what the results were.