Although Passport's music notation products perform admirably under OS/2, their tech support staff does not provide support for OS/2-related issues. At one time, Passport's Web site used to provide an "unofficial" FAQ which gave tips on how to get their software running under OS/2, even though it was not officially supported in that environment.
Since that information is no longer being made available, this page is an attempt to present a concise guide to running MusicTime, MusicTime Deluxe, Rhapsody and Encore under OS/2. Suggestions and additions are always welcome.
The information provided on this page has been tested with MusicTime Deluxe, Rhapsody, and the demo version of Encore, running under OS/2 Warp (versions 3 and 4).
| Quick Table of Contents |
| 1. Program Properties |
| 2. Playback and recording are too slow. |
| 3. MIDI realtime recording is erratic. |
| 4. Some of the settings don't save. |
The information presented in this Web page is not guaranteed to work. If something suggested on this page does not have the desired effect, please email me with complaints, not Passport technical support. I have no connection with Passport Designs, other than as a satisfied user of their products.
If you have lost your serial number and cannot re-install Encore, Rhapsody, MusicTime or MusicTime Deluxe, I suggest contacting G-VOX and explaining your situation. Do not bother asking for my serial number; I will not provide it!
In order to make the program work well, check the program's Properties notebook, and ensure that the following session settings are in effect. (These are standard settings for all multimedia programs.)
| Property | Value | Comments |
| AUDIO_ADAPTER_SHARING: | Required | For access to your sound card |
| IDLE_SENSITIVITY: | 100 | |
| INT_DURING_IO: | On | For smoother playback |
| SESSION_PRIORITY: | 2-5 | For smoother playback |
According to Usenet messages found on DejaNews, Passport's former OS/2 FAQ suggested setting SESSION_PRIORITY to 5, but on my system, 2 appears to be an adequate value. (Setting it to 1 might sometimes cause brief delays in playback when other events occur on the system.)
The FAQ also suggested running Encore in full-screen Windows mode, though the demo seems to work quite well in seamless mode on my system.
Once I had the program properties set up for multimedia, I still noticed strange behaviour with my AWE32 card. MIDI recording and playback was extremely slow if output port A was set to use either the AWE32 on-board MIDI or the MIDI OUT port, but the tempo was accurate if I used the Voyetra FM circuits as output port A. The Windows Recorder application, however, played MIDI files at their proper tempos regardless of which subsystem was used for playback.
This problem is easily fixed by changing a setting in the SYSTEM.INI file in the WINOS2 subdirectory (default is C:\OS2\MDOS\WINOS2). WINOS2 creates a section for the timer driver, which usually looks like this:
[Timer.drv]
TIMERMax386Res=10
TIMERMax286Res=10
Change the values of both entries; this may require some experimentation to arrive at a suitable value. On my system, several values ranging from 1 to 30 appear to produce the desired results.
When recording MIDI data in realtime (as opposed to step-recording it), sometimes notes are skipped, or have their durations altered. I've found that turning off the Follow Playback option (in the Setup menu) will usually cure this.
In 6/8 time, the recording is also occasionally flaky if the time signature dialog indicates that the program is set to click twice in each measure, rather than six times.
Some of the settings (such as Follow Playback) don't save between sessions, even though the RHAPSODY.INI file (or its equivalent) seems to indicate that the setting has been saved. This does not appear to be an OS/2 issue, since I have observed the same behaviour under real Windows 3.1. As far as I know, there is no workaround for this.