MPU-401 Documentation

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About Theta Band Software

Theta Band Software, LLC was founded in October 1997 by a team of multimedia and internet software experts.

Theta Band Software is committed to delivering next-generation multimedia and internet applications and system software for personal computers.

Theta Band Software products will primarily target IBM's OS/2 Warp operating system family, ensuring that OS/2 users will always be the first and best supported by our technologies and products. Versions for other platforms will be released with the intent of supporting our OS/2 customers.

After all, we could write only Windows software, but where's the fun in that?

Please visit the Theta Band Software website at http://www.thetaband.com

About MM Pack 1.0

Theta Band Software proudly announces the MM Pack - a collection of utilities to enhance OS/2 multimedia. But before we can tell you what the MMPack does, you need to know some basics about multimedia and OS/2.

What is MMPM/2?

MMPM stands for "Multi Media Presentation Manager." It's just the name of the multimedia subsystem of OS/2.

What exactly is multimedia?

The term "multimedia" is a combination of words "multi" and "media". "Media" refers to things like digital audio, MIDI, or video. Multimedia is the process of combining two or more of these media together, hence the "multi" in "multimedia". Technically speaking, playing a wave file by itself is not multimedia, but playing a video file that has an audio track is multimedia. However, few people recognize the distinction, so anything that has to do with audio or video is considered multimedia.

What does OS/2's multimedia subsystem do?

MMPM/2 provides two core functions:

  • Playing and recording of different types of media, like digital audio, video, and MIDI
  • Synchronization between multiple "streams" of these media, so that when you play a video, the audio track is synchronized (for example).

This is just what the core of MMPM/2 does. Most of the interesting work is handled by a variety of "plug-ins" that allow it to understand the different types of media as well as the different types of hardware that you need in order to play or record the media. MMPM/2 supports plug-ins that ...

  • understand the differences between file formats, such as an AVI movie vs. a QuickTime movie. These plug-ins are called "input/output procedures", or IOProcs.
  • understand the differences between data encodings, such as the Intel Indeo AVI format vs. the Microsoft Video for Windows AVI format. These plug-ins are called "compressors/decompressors", or codecs.
  • understand the difference between hardware devices, such as a SoundBlaster 16 vs. an ESS 1868. These plug-ins are called device drivers.

IBM provides several plug-ins with OS/2, but not enough. In addition, some of the existing plug-ins don't always work right, or work the way you want them to. For instance, we've all had problems installing device drivers, or maybe there's a MIDI file that works great in Windows but won't work in OS/2. Or maybe you'd like to be able to play two wave files at once. This is where our MMPack comes in.

What will Theta Band Software's MMPack do for me?

The goal of the MMPack is to fill in all of these holes in MMPM/2. It is a collection of ioprocs, codecs, device drivers, and other utilities which bring out the true power of MMPM/2, and make multimedia under OS/2 more useful and, more importanly, more enjoyable.

MMPack 1.0 includes the following software:

  • MMCHECK - This is a utility that checks your MMPM/2 installation (i.e. MMPM2.INI) for errors or suspicious settings. If it finds any, it will tell you what they are, so that you can fix them.
  • MPU-401 Driver - This is a replacement for IBM's MPU-401 driver, which is used to MIDI support for a number of sound cards, including sound cards that use the Crystal Semiconductor drivers. Enhancements over IBM's driver include:
    • fixes for Warp 3
    • SMP compatibility
    • better hardware compatibility
    • DOS sharing
    • and more!
  • NPDSMI 2.0 - An enhancement over the free DSMI Netscape plug-in, this new version supports compressed (zip and gzip) module files.