Arggh, midi is driving me nuts.

Arggh, midi is driving me nuts.

[Mark J. Small]

I've been scouring the documentation and google searches for days trying to 
get midi music to play with dosemu.  I know this can be done, but it just 
doesn't seem to be working for me.

I'm running a developer build 1.3.1 on a debian Sarge system. Kernel version 
is 2.6.11. 7 I have a Soundblaster Live card and the wavetable is working 
properly.

I can play midi files using midiplay -a foobar, pmidi -p 65:0 foobar, and 
kmid.  I can alsa use timidity as an alsa device, and play using pmidi -p 
129:0.

I have tried linking from ~/.dosemu/run/dosemu-midi 
to /dev/midi, /dev/amidi, /dev/snd/midiC0D0,1,2,3.

I have also tried loading a virtual midi card using modprobe snd-virmidi.  I 
then use aconnect to connect 75:0 to the one of the wavetable ports.  I then 
link dosemu-midi to /dev/midi1, /dev/amidi1, /dev/snd/midiC0D3.  

In all cases, I get no sound at all when I try to play a midi file using 
megamidi.  If I try to use the Tie Fighter Sound Setup program, the sound 
setup freezes.  

IF I turn on sound and hardware debug messages I can zillions of these:
MPU401: Read status port = 0xbf

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?  I've seen in the mailing list 
archives that Marko Sormunen has an identical setup working properly.

Mark Small

Re: Arggh, midi is driving me nuts.

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Mark J. Small wrote:
> I have tried linking from ~/.dosemu/run/dosemu-midi 
> to /dev/midi, /dev/amidi, /dev/snd/midiC0D0,1,2,3.
Here's what can get you on track.
Remove the dosemu-midi entirely
and play some midi from under
dosemu. It will create the new
dosemu-midi, just a regular file,
and it should contain the raw midi
data. If it does - on dosemu side
everything is fine.
Then do something like
cat dosemu-midi >/dev/midi
It will write the recorded midi
data to your device and you should
hear some noice. If the noice is
there, everything is allright.

Re: Arggh, midi is driving me nuts.

[Mark J. Small]

On June 11, 2005 04:25 pm, you wrote:
> Hello.
>
> Mark J. Small wrote:
> > I have tried linking from ~/.dosemu/run/dosemu-midi
> > to /dev/midi, /dev/amidi, /dev/snd/midiC0D0,1,2,3.
>
> Here's what can get you on track.
> Remove the dosemu-midi entirely
> and play some midi from under
> dosemu. It will create the new
> dosemu-midi, just a regular file,
> and it should contain the raw midi
> data. If it does - on dosemu side
> everything is fine.
> Then do something like
> cat dosemu-midi >/dev/midi
> It will write the recorded midi
> data to your device and you should
> hear some noice. If the noice is
> there, everything is allright.

Thanks for the reply.

I think I've got it figured out now.  My problem was that I did most of my
troubleshooting using the tie fighter installer.  It doesn't seem to work
well with doesmu's midi stuff.  When I tried to test the midi settings within
the tie fighter installer, the dosemu-midi file was created but was size
zero.  When I tried to play with megamid, things worked as you said.

Now a have a symlink from dosemu-midi to /dev/amidi, and megamid will play
midi files happily from within dosemu.

I guess Tie Fighter does something that is incompatable with dosemu's midi
support.

Digital sound is pretty choppy too when I play the game unless I set the
resolution to 320x240.  I guess an Athlon XP 2000 can't quite emulate an
early Pentium.  Doh.

Mark


Mark

Re: Arggh, midi is driving me nuts.

[Robert Komar]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005, Mark J. Small wrote:

> Digital sound is pretty choppy too when I play the game unless I set the
> resolution to 320x240.  I guess an Athlon XP 2000 can't quite emulate an
> early Pentium.  Doh.

Hi,
did you try setting the hogthreshold to 0?  The choppiness could be due
to dosemu going to sleep every so often.  I've run many games at 800x600
resolution on my 1.8GHz P4 with good performance if I set hogthreshold
to 0.  The choppiness gets very bad otherwise, especially if I don't
use the mouse for a while.

Cheers,
Rob Komar

Re: Arggh, midi is driving me nuts.

[Mark J. Small]

On June 13, 2005 02:42 pm, you wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Jun 2005, Mark J. Small wrote:
> > Digital sound is pretty choppy too when I play the game unless I set the
> > resolution to 320x240.  I guess an Athlon XP 2000 can't quite emulate an
> > early Pentium.  Doh.
>
> Hi,
> did you try setting the hogthreshold to 0?  The choppiness could be due
> to dosemu going to sleep every so often.  I've run many games at 800x600
> resolution on my 1.8GHz P4 with good performance if I set hogthreshold
> to 0.  The choppiness gets very bad otherwise, especially if I don't
> use the mouse for a while.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob Komar
> -

Yes, I've tried that.  Are you running on the console or in X.  All my
attempts have been using X thus far.  I know the console would be faster, but
I haven't gotten it working yet.

Mark

Re: Arggh, midi is driving me nuts.

[Mark J. Small]

On June 13, 2005 03:48 pm, you wrote:
> Hello.
>
> Mark J. Small wrote:
> > troubleshooting using the tie fighter installer.  It doesn't seem to work
> > well with doesmu's midi stuff.
>
> If it is available for download, you
> can open a bug report for that problem.

Unfortunately, Tie Fighter is still fully copyrighted.  I'm not willing to
incur the revenge of Lucasarts by posting an ISO of my treasured CD.

I found a free demo, and midi works fine with that.  I also tried a demo of
Sam and Max (another lucasarts game), and midi works well for that too.

> > Digital sound is pretty choppy too when I play the game unless I set the
> > resolution to 320x240.  I guess an Athlon XP 2000 can't quite emulate an
> >
> > > early Pentium.
>
> No, its just that dosemu sound code
> isn't perfect. You can try the following:
> 1. "speed 0" command can make dosemu faster
> 2. Running it under console usually gives
> the better speed too.

I assume that speed 0 is the same as settings the hogthreshold to 0.  This
helped, but not enough.  The digital sound is great until I start a mission.
Then the CPU must get bogged down when all of the graphics get going.

Mark