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best dos midi player for dos ?.

soviet9922

soviet9922

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Jun 12, 2013
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Montevideo, Uruguay
Hi guys, first of all happy new year ! is almost 2020 so whe can live the second part of space odyssey.
Next i have a 286 1 megabyte system its a shame i cannot get 4 megs to work but.
Also i purchased a roland SC-55 and the soundblaster midi cables all works fine.
The problem is that using dosmid 0.9.2 loading any bigger than 100k midi file get an out of memory error.
Theres any better dos midi player ? that can take bigger midi files i believe that having 1 megabyte of ram it must be more than enough to load a 100k midi song.

Using dr dos and having 634k of free base memory and 311k of xms memory.
 
I wrote a player last year, but it only works with intelligent mode midi cards, not uart mode. So unfortunately, it wouldn't work directly with your soundblaster uart midi.

I wouldn't mind trying some of your large midi files out on it, if you have a download link for any of them, just to see if it's capable. My player is limited to 8 tracks though, which could be an issue with some larger and/or more complex midi files.

Scott
 
I've made a MIDI player that preprocesses all data into a file, and then streams that data from disk. You only need about 128k of memory for files of any size.
It currently supports UART MPU401, Sound Blaster MIDI and IBM Music Feature Card as MIDI interfaces.
It's still an early version though, so it may not play all files correctly.
 
Scali said:
I've made a MIDI player that preprocesses all data into a file, and then streams that data from disk. You only need about 128k of memory for files of any size.
It currently supports UART MPU401, Sound Blaster MIDI and IBM Music Feature Card as MIDI interfaces.
It's still an early version though, so it may not play all files correctly.
Click to expand...

So you done your own midi player ?.
I read your blog in an usual manner but never seen the article where you link the player can you point me to the precise location ?.
 
soviet9922 said:
So you done your own midi player ?.
I read your blog in an usual manner but never seen the article where you link the player can you point me to the precise location ?.
Click to expand...

Yes, I've described the VGM player in some detail: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/putting-the-things-together/
With this basic replay technology, I've also implemented the same preprocessing for MIDI data.
It works, but it's not very userfriendly at this point (I just build a binary for my specific hardware configuration). So it's not really ready for release at this stage, but I could build a version for you that you could test with.
In that case I'd need to know the base address of your SB.
 
I was going to say dosmid, but I see you have problems. I have never ran into issues with it.. is it every midi over a certain size or just one particular one?
 
Scali said:
Yes, I've described the VGM player in some detail: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/putting-the-things-together/
With this basic replay technology, I've also implemented the same preprocessing for MIDI data.
It works, but it's not very userfriendly at this point (I just build a binary for my specific hardware configuration). So it's not really ready for release at this stage, but I could build a version for you that you could test with.
In that case I'd need to know the base address of your SB.
Click to expand...

Thank you i could love to beta test your software is the standard sb 220h :D
 
The best DOS player for the SC-55 and/or SCC-1 is GSPLAY, as it fully supports intelligent mode and GS extensions. From the file_id.diz:

Code: 
GSPLAY is a standard MIDI file player
for DOS.  It supports 7 popular MIDI
interfaces with special support for
GM/GS format sequences.  Features
include onscreen note and patch
displays, fast loading, karaoke
lyrics, script capabilities, file
copy/move during playback, more.
Freeware by Mark Fontana.

I was able to play just about all MIDI files on my SCC-1 installed in a 4.77 MHz 8088 system with GSPLAY when most other players fell on their face. I even tested the GS extensions, which work.
 
Trixter said:
The best DOS player for the SC-55 and/or SCC-1 is GSPLAY, as it fully supports intelligent mode and GS extensions. From the file_id.diz:

Code: 
GSPLAY is a standard MIDI file player
for DOS.  It supports 7 popular MIDI
interfaces with special support for
GM/GS format sequences.  Features
include onscreen note and patch
displays, fast loading, karaoke
lyrics, script capabilities, file
copy/move during playback, more.
Freeware by Mark Fontana.

I was able to play just about all MIDI files on my SCC-1 installed in a 4.77 MHz 8088 system with GSPLAY when most other players fell on their face. I even tested the GS extensions, which work.
Click to expand...

Thanks, this software do the trick the tempo is always to fast on songs i have to get it to 90% to get the correct one but plays all midis :D
 
soviet9922 said:
Next i have a 286 1 megabyte system its a shame i cannot get 4 megs to work but.
(...)
The problem is that using dosmid 0.9.2 loading any bigger than 100k midi file get an out of memory error.
Using dr dos and having 634k of free base memory and 311k of xms memory.
Click to expand...

Since you have more base memory than xms memory, have you tried running DOSMID with its /noxms switch? Worth a try.
 
Here is a quick video to show my MIDI player. It plays CANYON.MID on an 8088 running at 4.77 MHz, using a DreamBlaster S2P, which is a MIDI synthesizer connected to the printer port (so no fancy MPU-401, no FIFO buffer or anything to help the CPU in playing MIDI, have to manually toggle LPT status lines, perform the appropriate delays and send each byte separately with the CPU).


Note that this MIDI player is a background routine, running on the timer interrupt, so there is CPU-time left to do other stuff in the foreground (it is meant to be used for games and demos).
Background info on how the player works is described in this blog: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/putting-the-things-together-part-2-midi-and-other-problems/
 
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Scali said:
Here is a quick video to show my MIDI player. It plays CANYON.MID on an 8088 running at 4.77 MHz, using a DreamBlaster S2P, which is a MIDI synthesizer connected to the printer port (so no fancy MPU-401, no FIFO buffer or anything to help the CPU in playing MIDI, have to manually toggle LPT status lines, perform the appropriate delays and send each byte separately with the CPU).



Note that this MIDI player is a background routine, running on the timer interrupt, so there is CPU-time left to do other stuff in the foreground (it is meant to be used for games and demos).
Background info on how the player works is described in this blog: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/putting-the-things-together-part-2-midi-and-other-problems/
Click to expand...

SCALI i have been testing your cool midi player but experiecing some issues i have done a video that summary how goes.
The midi player can stop randomly or get a buffer full on the roland module, also it get stuck on "small delay" until i press esc and then it starts.

 
soviet9922 said:
SCALI i have been testing your cool midi player but experiecing some issues i have done a video that summary how goes.
The midi player can stop randomly or get a buffer full on the roland module, also it get stuck on "small delay" until i press esc and then it starts.
Click to expand...

The MIDI player is integrated in the VGMPlay version that I also posted in the other thread, try this one? https://www.dropbox.com/s/rsuwx7pauu3toj8/VGMPlay_DRO.zip?dl=0
It fixes a few problems with long MIDI commands.
Perhaps it fixes your problems.
If not, could you send me the MIDI files you're testing with, that have problems? Then I can try them on my own system.
It can take a while until the MIDI file is read and preprocessed entirely, so you should give it some moments.
You can see it here on my Commodore PC20-III, an 8088 at 4.77 MHz, playing CANYON.MID:
So you can see, this machine takes about 30 seconds to prepare the file for playing.
 
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