# Gameport/MIDI in Windows Vista



## benanderson (Jan 7, 2009)

I just got a new soundcard, a cheap budget thing for Â£17.60 to replace my old Soundblaster X-Fi (this budget card works just as good funnily enough, hurray for ASIO!). On both cards they have that old Gameport (yellow, 15-pin). When flicking through my new soundcard's manual I noticed it said Gameport/*MIDI*, of course with me being an electronic musician I really need a decent MIDI connection, one direct to the PCI or motherboard is perfect... low lag (this USB one can swivel on it :x )
However, in all my wisdom I use windows vista so I'm having trouble finding:
A) MIDI device configuration to set the gameport as the default device;
B) A gameport listed in the device manager and;
C) A gameport listed in my DAW's MIDI set-up menu (FLStudio8 )

err.... Help?

Thanks in advance 

~BenA.


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## Oskenso (Jan 7, 2009)

Could you give us the device/model name? Maybe we could help you update your drivers :3


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## benanderson (Jan 7, 2009)

Oskenso said:


> Could you give us the device/model name? Maybe we could help you update your drivers :3



Make+Model of the sound-card doesn't matter, gamesports can also be direct to the motherboard. I need gameport drivers. Something which I can see Vista is lacking in after searching. MIDI has also been crippled in Vista with no configuration present.


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## Runefox (Jan 7, 2009)

Vista has zero support for gameports at all.

That said, some enterprising individual has managed to pull XP's gameport support into Vista (32-bit only) using Creative Labs drivers. Take a look, you might be in luck. It will at least get your MIDI/Gameport working, though as I understand it, getting the MIDI interface to work over that in Vista will take some further tweaking.

Oh, and as for selecting the default MIDI device... There isn't an applet for it. Guess what you need to do?

Edit the registry. I wish I was kidding here. It's pretty simple if you can get your head around it, but the point is, why should you have to?

...

And a final note, the cheapo soundcard probably won't have as good performance over the MIDI connection as a more suitable card would (like an Auzentech with the X-Tension add-on), and you'll get higher latencies. And with THAT said, it should work OK beyond that so long as you're fine with that.


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## benanderson (Jan 8, 2009)

Although I got the gameport working using the drivers I have no midi functionality through the port. No MPU-401 device is listed anywhere. With vistas crippled midi functionality and (in my experiance) poor performance over USB audio/midi devices and poor soundcard performance when under heavy processing I might just switch back to XP. Having the gameport present on a cheap soundcard does not affect it's performance, all gameports are the same and some are mounted directy to the motherboard. The performance of the gameport midi is second only to a PCI soundcard with 5-pin midi ports built in. I also have college reasons for moving back to XP.


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## Dragon-Commando (Jan 13, 2009)

Microsoft love to chop the legs off of features that already exist and then give us "new and exiting features!"

They did it to dos, they did it going from 98 to XP and they did it again going to Vista.

If you want to use your midi port properly, you are going to have to go to XP. Everything will run better anyway, so I can't see how it can be called downgrading.


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