Controlling An Old Opl3 Via Midi

Hi, people! This is my first post and, before I ask something, I want to thanks you all. This forum is an important documentation to us, many of my doubts with Renoise was, even I never asked something before, solved here in this community. ;)

And, since it’s my first topic, if I’m posting it in the wrong place, please, accept my apologizes.

Well, let’s begin… I’ve an AMD K6-II based computer with one Sound Blaster 16 with OPL3 chip. I really want to use this old computer to play live with the OPL banks and to compose too, using the Renoise. At first time, it seemed simple to me, all I need to do is to connect my MIDI controller into the MIDI IN of Sound Blaster, but I forget that I need a software that allows me to control the MIDI capabilities of the sound card. And here’s my doubt: what program? There’s some old program(s) that I can use to edit the FM banks and control the OPL chip via a MIDI controller?

Just to add some technical concerns about the computer, it have Windows 3.11 installed (I can update to Windows 95 or 98 easily), 16mb RAM, 1,2gb HD and, – of course --, the Sound Blaster card. :w00t:

I would like to thanks in advance and sorry for my bad English.

If you want to use the OPL chip with those platforms, i would rather suggest you to try messing around with ScreamTracker 3 which is perfectly capable of allowing you to access the OPL waves and synths.
I don’t know for sure if you could use Midi with S3m.

Renoise won’t run on anything less than Windows XP and requires a CPU with minimum capabilities that the AMD K6-II doesn’t have at all, but i suspect you want to use Renoise on a regular todays PC and control that soundblaster through a midi connection right?.
Perhaps MidiYoke also has a variant for Windows 3.11, but that was too long ago for me.

Hi! thanks for your response.

Yes, I want to control the OPL3 chip by two ways. The first and simple one is connecting my Roland MIDI controller directly in the Sound Blaster card. The second one is using it with my new computer to compose, wich will act as a MIDI controller. I uploaded an image showing the two options that I want to use: 3602 OPL3.jpg

I’m searching for MidiYoke at Google and I found some interesting things. I will download to test latter. Thanks!

Got your solution:

Windows 2000 will run most xp programs fine with under 256 MB RAM.
K6-II’s are like what 300-700Mhz?
As far as controlling the OPL3 with renoise, sounds really fun.
If i remember correctly early versions of renoise ran fine on my 700Mhz thinkpad, but i know it’s bulked up a lot since then so you may want to go with a USB>ISA adapter and just run your soundblaster on an XP machine and nice processor.
I’d be curious as to how well the creative drivers midi
worked with a modern midi program like renoise.
That’s kind of a dream setup to me too.
Maybe get a second soundcard dedicated for added audio processing and get a dual SID soundcard too.
ASIO4ALL it all together = badass.

…so, any updates on this project?

keeps eating popcorn :D