You’re talking about the songs. I know what a chiptune is, I’m talking about what sits between those. Protracker was how you made them. When embedding into apps, you had to play them. MOD files had to be converted into something. Lookup pocketmod. Some used PCM, some used midi. Windows had a wonderful midi api and synth back then. That’s what I used.
Oh, so some people actually used DirectMusic's support for DLS? Cool!
No, the MOD file(s) (embedded in the .exe) were just played as is. There were a lot of MOD player libraries even back then and the CPU load was negligible. The players weighed less than 10 kilobytes.