My 386 time machine project so far

Hey that's amazing!

I tried to get my head around MIDI (specifically Roland MT-32) but couldn't hack it. The Retro MT-32 MIDI Gurus all use MS-DOS MIDI sequencers to record the MIDI output from another computer...

I tried to convert some MT-32 tracks from Wing Commander to General Midi. But gave up...

 

Ok here is a recording with another SoundFont: SGM-V2.01. The file is huge. 237MB

Sounds amazing no doubt. IMO all of these SoundFonts sound amazing. They all have subtle differences so it's really hard to pick your favorite.

Here is the recording with a bunch of games: http://www.mediafire.com/?r55f23c2ejovg2p

 

I tried out the ChoriumRevA Soundfont on my Audigy 2 and can confirm that it works very well!! Setup was slightly different to the X-Fi as the soundfont software is different, still very easy though.

I was actually getting the occasional sound stutter when using soundblaster for music on Raptor but that cleared up nicely when using midi, double bonus.

The only downside i've found so far is that some games only let you select one type of sound card so if midi is selected the music is fantastic but the sound effects don't really work.

Thanks for putting these up Mau1wurf1977, I will give the SGM-V2.01 soundfont a go too as your recordings of this soundfont in action also sounds amazing.

 

I assume you play these games through DOSBox?

Pretty much all games that support General Midi for Music have Sound Blaster support for speech / sound effects.

As for DOSBox I can highly recommend D-Fend reloaded. It's a very easy to use frontend and comes with DOSBox ready to go...

 

Nice oldschool build mate. Love the roland midi gear too

Is this for real? If so why would they still be on that platform?

 

Because it's stable and doesn't require moving parts (cooling equipment) to run.

 

Yep i'm playing through DOSBox, I started using D-fend Reloaded after seeing it in your setup guide for these soundfont files.

It works very well but I haven't seen anywhere yet to set soundblaster for sound effects, a specific example is the the driving game Stunts. After setting up the game's profile for the midi soundfonts I run the setup file of the game to pick the sound card (which it doesn't separate music & sound effect sound card selection like most games seem to).

If I pick Roland MT-32 as the sound card the music is great but you don't really get any engine noise/sound effects as it tries to play them as a midi effect, you either get nothing or an instrument sound pretty much.

Hope that makes sense.

Cheers

 

Ok that actually makes sense.

Stunts belongs to the older DOS Games that didn't support 2 separate sound devices (MIDI for music and Soundblaster for Speech / Sound Effects).

To make matters worse, that game support only Roland MT-32. Not the General MIDI standard. In a nutshell you usually get wrong instruments and or missing effects.

So for stunts I recommend you play it with the Soundblaster option.

Although there are MT-32 emulators out there, none of them really work. That's why I got the originals. For General MIDI it's not really necessary. SoundFonts sound amazing.

So bottom line for DOSBox pick Adlib, Soundblaster or General MIDI. Avoid MT-32 unless you have a real MT-32 hooked up

 

That makes sense, fair enough then. I didn't think I was missing anything with the setup of the game.

Thanks again mate.

 

This thead is awesome

Makes me sad I threw out my Amstrad PC1640 with original Sound Blaster 2 in it Had a working hard 10MB MFM HDD too

Nice work on the build!

 

Finally got my first MMX Pentium so I ran all the benchmarks and updated my FSB scaling sheet:

Clearly the MMX is a faster chip compared to the non MMX. So more was changed than just adding MMX commands. It performs very similar to the 6x86 chips...

 

Yes I believe the Pentium MMX had 32kb cache compared to the non-MMX's 16kb. I think there were some other minor tweaks as well.

Plus the Pentium has a much stronger FPU than the 6x86 which will be of benefit in 3D games like Quake

 

I have managed to get the Chorium soundfont to run on Realtek onboard audio on Win 7 x64 I used the software MIDI synth, Timidity++.

Being a software solution this means that basically anyone can use a soundfont with DOSBOX, although presumably with a performance hit compared to a sound card that supports sound fonts natively. In my testing however I didn't notice any adverse affects, but then I've got a 3GHz quad core which usually handles dosbox pretty well

Firstly you need to download this package from Sourceforge - a modified version of Timidity++

Then of course you need the soundfont, either Chorium or another one of your choosing.

When you install Timidity, you will have a new group in your start menu - under Timidity++ run setwindrv

Add the directory where your soundfont is saved in the top text box and click the 'add' button.
Then just below that you need to 'add' the SF2 files and 'remove' the other entries in the 'soundfonts & includes' box.

Save and quit. Now go back into your start menu under Timidity++ and run twsyng
This will put an icon in your system tray, near the clock. Right click it and select preference

click the synthesizer tab. Set 'port max' dropdown to 1 and set port 0 and port 0 to 'MIDI Mapper'. Hit OK. Right click the icon again and select 'start synthesizer'.
You will need to ensure that twsyng is running, and select 'start synthesizer' every time you want to use it, if it isn't already running.

Now go into your DOSBOX config file. Under the [midi] section ensure it looks like this:

mpu401=intelligent
mididevice=default
midiconfig=1

Save and start DOSBOX. At the prompt, type mixer /listmidi
You should get something like this:
0 "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth"
1 "Timidity++ Driver"

If the Timidity++ Driver is something other than 1, close DOSBOX, go back into your config file, and change the midiconfig setting to whichever number was the Timidity++ Driver. Start it up again.

Now assuming all your other settings are default, any DOS game that supports General MIDI, Wave Blaster or Roland Sound Canvas should work on port 0x330 if you choose these options in the game setup utility.

You can further change the way it sounds, by right clicking the twsyng icon, selecting Preference, and changing the options on the Effect tab. I personally prefer no reverb and no low pass filter but this is personal preference.


In my testing so far, Doom sounds identical to mau1wurf's recording, and Duke Nukem 3d sounds pretty close, but mine seems to be a bit more heavily filtered. This is probably due to the cheap onboard realtek audio though, the instruments sound pretty much the same, just some higher notes seem slightly quieter/more muffled. Still sounds pretty damn good though.

 

PC Speaker 2.0

My machine is still going strong. Having now also played with a 486, I must say that using a Pentium and slowing it down (time machine) through L1 and L2 Cache options is really the way to go.

So if you see an opportunity to grab an old Pentium (1) machine, DO it! 386 and 486 machines are pretty cool, but IMO not as flexible and not nearly as easy to work with as a Pentium box.

Anyway I played around with the PC speaker and many sound cards have the option to route the PC speaker signal through the sound card. Most cards have 2-4 mixer inputs (AUX, CD, PC speaker...) and you can also change the mixer levels through a utility.

For this video I just used a very basic Sound Blaster 16 (Vibra 16).

Now I didn't have a "real" PC speaker, just this piezo speaker that most of us know. So the first part shows you what that one sounds. The second part shows you how it sounds routed through the Sound Blaster 16 and hooked up to Logitech speakers.

Because the camera doesn't really capture what it sounds like very well, the final part is a recording through line-in on another machine.

In short, routing the PC speaker signal through a sound card gives you a fuller and richer sound

For the cable I just used one of these CD-Audio cables. I had to "move" 2 pins, but it's not hard and quite obvious.

 

Lol thats pretty awesome.. it actually makes the PC Speaker sound half decent!

I miss Xenon 2

 

It's a great game!

I also have to point out that the very early PCs actually had a real speaker and not the piezo type. So they sounded better. Some speakers where really loud and when you played a game you would annoy the whole house

Xenon 2 is one of the view very good shooters on the PC at that time. It only supports the PC speaker though. No Adlib / Sound Blaster or Roland. The Amiga version has much better sound though.The game came out in 1989 though, so quite early and that's likely the reason why it didn't support Sound Cards.

The Amiga version also has different graphics. The first level has a rich parallax scrolling background whereas the PC has just a few stars floating by.

 

Unless you had a cheapo IBM clone like me which had a piezo speaker

I watched some of the Amiga videos of Xenon 2.. man they used to get some better games than us. I still remember trying to defend the IBM PC honour at school while 95% of people were bagging me out because they had an A500.

I might have to go buy an A500 to see what the fuss was all about. No idea how to use one

 

I was in the same boat!

Was one of the view who "still" had a C64. All my friends had moved to the Amiga. It got to the point where many games simply didn't come out on the C64. Turrican 2 did though, which was awesome! One of the best C64 games I played.

But when I heard that Monkey Island wouldn't come out on the C64 I was gutted. Because I was a huge fan of Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken. So one day my dad had this 286 machine (640KB, EGA, DOS 3.x). He played with it for a while but quickly "gave up" so I took over. There was a fat DOS 3 manual and I started to study it, learning how to format the drive, fdisk it, copy the system files, create folders and all of that.

So now I had a PC and everyone else an Amiga. Once again many games didn't come out on the PC. But all the adventures did and I was happy.

Things started to change at around 1993 when games exploded in storage size (Monkey Island 2 had like 10 or so floppy disks on the Amiga) and games used VGA graphics (256 colours vs. 64 on the Amiga). Sound Blaster also improved the sound situation on the PC. All of this happened within a year or two.

But all the time before this, the Amiga was hands-down the better choice. There are heaps of Amiga fans here and you can always try out emulation and get a taste of what the games are like.

 

Pinball Fantasies PC speaker sound. Just like in the previous video, the signal goes through the Sound Blaster 16.

 

I never got to own a C64 I did play some C64 at a friends house but I don't remember much of it except for the fact it had a very very very stiff joystick and took forever to load games from cassette!

Lucky you got 640kb and EGA I received a 256kb Acer 500 from DSE with MGA (Hercules). Trying to figure out that half the games wouldn't run was painful. Then TMNT came out and required 384KB for the Hercules version

Oh and of course no hard drive either When I purchased a 10MB MFM HDD off a school mate.. that was heaven! I could put a whole Sierra game on it