vmpud.386/MIDI Setup

[SinbadBlanc]

Bit of a poser this one (well, maybe not),

Have had problems with my MIDI setup. Am currently using a VIA integrated MIDI port (MPU-401 based). I can activate this in the bios and windows 98 goes ahead and installs the driver for it - great. Go into cakewalk (PA9) and try to select a MIDI input device, the MIDI port being listed. When I select it and hit OK, the whole system locks up!!!!!?????!!!!!?????

Have tried several IRQ settings but with no progress. Thought "must be the driver" so I tried changing it for the MPU401 driver supplied with cakewalk. The system made it very clear that it did not like the driver so I changed it back again. When I restarted the machine, I got a message during startup saying something along the lines of "can't find vmpud.386 which may be required for windows or a windows application. Try reinstalling the application to replace it blah, blah, blah". This I did (several times) but the message still will not go away at startup.

So to summarise, still get a system lockup when I try to select my MIDI port in cakewalk and still get the "vmpud.386" message at startup. Anyone got any ideas?

Sinbad

(PS - By the way, I would just like to say that I am thinking of getting a new MIDI soundcard anyway which I'm hoping may be a solution - what do you think?)

 

[Eurythmic]

This may not help you a lot, but I'll throw it out there, anyway.

A lot of integrated MPU-401 ports are not actually true MPU-401 - they just emulate it. A good example of this is the MIDI/game ports on Sound Blaster cards (I think they may have moved to true MPU-401 on more recent cards; I'm not sure). So although many programs may be able to recognize the port, some things can't - in my case, older games. I purchased a Roland MT-32 a year or two ago to use with my classic computer games, and found that most games actually want to see the MPU-401 at a different address and IRQ.

So I went out and purchased a real MPU-401 card. Problem solved. It works in every MIDI-related program that I own.