How to play midi music in VirtualBox Windows 98?

Question

I'd build a Windows 98 VM in my Mac with VirtualBox to run some old games, like "Z". It is running, but without the great soundtrack. When testing, I realize that the soundtrack is in midi files, and not even Media Player is playing any midi. It opens the file, knows time etc. (recognize the file) but no sound is played.

There is a Sound Blaster Midi Sinth installed, the problem might be the VM itself that don't emulate the full Sound Blaster 16 card. I'm thinking about some alternatives: to change the VM sound card (not a clue of how to do it), or to install a driver that synthesizes the midi in wave to use the wave port that is working, but didn't find one.

Also couldn't get in the Virtual Box forum, I'd make an Oracle profile, but didn't work. So here I am… any ideas?

Answer 1

(Although I did not try with Z or another game I tried with other/similar MIDI software...)

B)-setup-based (WinXP)

It works great with my B) setup (see below) based on a WinXP VM and the separately to be installed ICH AC97 Audio driver:

1. setup WinXP VM
   • set audio hardware emulation to ICH AC97
2. everything should work fine then without distortions or hickups
3. maybe choose Microsoft GS Wavetable over Microsoft MIDI mapper since the sounds are much nicer then

(the latest Realtek Intel HD Audio Driver for WinXP did not work for me - installed ok, restarted but was not found nor can be manually assigned)

A)-setup-based (Win7)

And then it works only basically with my A) setup (see below) based on a Win7 VM and

• the Intel HD Audio driver (default)
• some MIDI file played in Windows Media Player

but:

• playing a MIDI file in Windows Media Player is fine
• playing the MIDI file in my music software Band-in-a-box 12 over Microsoft MIDI mapper or Microsoft GS Wavetable is crappy with delays, jumps and distortions

It also seems to work with the AC97 driver on Win95 and Win98

(Trying with some MIDI-based music program I first thought it did not work and tried with all the available AC97, Soundblaster 16, Intel HD Audio drivers and did not see some MIDI device in the device manager. But it seems MIDI support is not mapped to a device and the problems are related to the software I tried it with.)

my setups

• Band-ina-box 12 as the app to test it

A)

• no special XP exe emulation setup done
• Win7 32bit guest
• Win8.1 64bit host
• Virtual Box 4.3.28 (latest, 2015-06-01)

B)

• tried some XP exe emulation variants which did not help with the distortions and hickups
• WinXP guest
• Win8.1 64bit host
• Virtual Box 4.3.28 (latest, 2015-06-01)

Answer 2

The standard MIDI port is 440, make sure your software is configured correctly to use the card (though judging by your level of knowledge in asking I'd imagine you've done this).

While this isn't specifically an answer about making VirtualBox do what you want, I'd recommend DOSBox when doing DOS or Win3x gaming over a regular virtual machine for performance and emulation accuracy.

You can get any DOS-based Windows (including 95) running on DOSBox or at least one of the patched builds of it (I recommend Taewoong's build at http://ykhwong.x-y.net/ as it is the most feature-complete). You could probably make 98, 98SE, and ME run on DOSBox too, but anything that won't run on 95 can probably be made to run on a modern version of Windows with less trouble.