DOS Nostalgia Podcast #28: Roland MT-32 (with Dan Policar)

[@BrunoFonsecaPT]

Great podcast. There is not enough content about the MT-32 on KZbin! Cheers

[@eliptikstudios8996]

Yes! The podcast is back!

[@Kawa-oneechan]

Sierra games on the MT-32? The first two generations had custom patches for each game, with their own front panel messages -- one when startup begins, one as it finishes, then one on quit. The later ones, after General MIDI was introduced, had a single shared patch for all of them that made the MT-32 match the standard better. Those only had the one message, "SIERRA ON-LINE".

[@StusGameReviews]

I found this podcast extremely entertaining and informative, and not just because I know you guys. Keep up the good work! :)

[@zomp]

In terms of Music, really happy to see the C&C Remaster coming together so good. Command and Conquer was one of THE Ultimate DOS games for me. PS: This Channel here should have florished years ago, but sadly not much content.

[@MARCOPLAYSDOSGAMES]

When you start with indy500 ...

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

I thought the soundcard you were talking about was the Gravis Ultrasound, but that came out later..... I remember the janky controller that came with the soundcard that you're talking about though, I'm pretty sure it was a Gravis gamepad

[@dosnostalgic]

There was no controller that came with an MT-32 as it was an external unit, and didn't provide any joystick ports or anything like that.

[@-taz-]

The GUS was later, maybe around 93 or 94, and had sound similar to the Amiga which came out in 1985. The GUS did have the first MT-32 emulator called MegaEm that was made by a fan. And Gravis was already an established joystick company that made the only high-quality gamepad for the PC. The PC analog joystick itself was kind of a mess, so they were all janky.

[@joe--cool]

My CH Flightstick was awesome. Cheap joysticks were janky and became almost unusable after 2 weeks, yeah. Maybe PlasticCog meant the Roland MPU-401AT aka MIF-IPC-A aka MPU-401 interface kit for PC-XT/AT.

[@-taz-]

@@joe--cool I had the CH Flightstick as well, and it was well built, but I'm talking about the basic IBM game port mechanism. It's ridiculous. That is, if you want to know how far left vs. right the stick is, guess how it's done. The CPU must continually read a port and then TIME the delay between set bits coming in from the joystick. So it's very inexact since it relies on calibration, and a timing mechanism, of which there was no very good one on older PCs. As timing was unreliable, so was measuring the position of the X- and Y-axis. Games could cover it up with noise reduction algorithms, but they had to bend over backwards to make the Flightstick or any controller salvageable.

[@-taz-]

To be clear, a long delay might mean left, a short delay right, and a medium delay centered. Of course each PC was different, and even the same PC changed based on how busy the CPU was at the moment, so there'd have to be a dead zone in the center. You might remember a lot of games would think you're turning left or right slightly even when centered. And in flight sims you might just think it's wind!