Interesting MIDI issue

[Jollyroger]

Hello everyone,

I have recently acquired a CM-64 for my X68000, specifically for Sol Feace (I love that soundtrack!).

Interestingly, when playing the game (and from the music menu too), notes sometimes appear to remain "stuck". What I mean is that some channels keep playing the last note they have been playing "forever", or rather until another note plays on that channel.

Of course this is generally the desired behavior, but I can clearly hear some instruments playing the last note way past the appropriate time, like a volume fade out on that channel was supposed to happen but didn't...

At any rate, the behaviour is not deterministic, as in every time I play those songs the issue may or may not happen, and if it does happen, it can be at a different point in the song.

By the way, after noticing this, I tried with my MT-32 and it too seems to exhibit the same issue, so I am leaning towards the MIDI card (SX68) or the X68000 itself.

Any thoughts/recommendations?

Thanks!!

JR

[SuperDeadite]

SX68 is known for compatibility issues.  Most games do not support it.  The SX68-II fixed the issues and is officially supported by most games though.

[Jollyroger]

SX68 is known for compatibility issues.  Most games do not support it.  The SX68-II fixed the issues and is officially supported by most games though.

Thanks for the note, I should have been more precise, I have an SX68-II (the one with the small MIDI connectors).

[Pinwizkid]

Wolf Team Games seem to be very "timing" sensitive and if you're running them off of a modern hard drive replacement with a CF/SD card, the MIDI data gets fired off too fast resulting in Buffer Overflow errors on the MT-32 (you'll actually see the error on the MT-32 screen when it happens). I don't notice too many issues with Sol Feace on my end, but Granada is unplayable in MIDI mode because it sounds terrible. If you can track down or burn original floppy for Sol Feace and test it again you may be able to confirm that the issue is due to the hard drive and not your midi setup. Unfortunately I don't think there's a fix for this unless someway wayyyy smarter than me can somehow patch the rate in which the midi data is fired to ensure the overflow error doesn't happen.

I also have the an SX68-II just for reference.

[SuperDeadite]

I run Granada off CF all the time, at 10mhz, and the Midi plays the same as on my original floppies.  Only issue I have is the well known intro crash.