MIDI & Sequencers for the 8-Bit

[+Stephen]

3 hours ago, rcamp48 said:

Does that answer your question, and I use Midiplay 1.3 , load in the whole thing in my U1MB board the play it but a lot of my files are bad. (SIO errors?) I do have a loose connection in my Fujinet but it seems to work OK.

There's MANY reason a MIDI file won't play.  Too large, commands not supported, too many instruments, bug in the MIDI player, etc.  It's almost guaranteed that it is not an SIO error causing things to not work.

[ivop]

37 minutes ago, Stephen said:

There's MANY reason a MIDI file won't play.  Too large, commands not supported, too many instruments, bug in the MIDI player, etc.  It's almost guaranteed that it is not an SIO error causing things to not work.

I thought he meant SIO errors during loading. But a MIDI file not playing right on the connected MIDI device can indeed have multiple reasons, as you mentioned. Also, a MIDI file that is not aimed at GM (General Midi) but older non-standard hardware won't play correctly on a GM output device.

[rcamp48]

And the fact that my Fujinet had an open circuit on it due to a loose pin, I just had it soldered and that should fix all of the problems, I am re-writing all 28 sub folders because of this open, probably the reason that Forem XEP never worked right as well because I for the last year had problems with the Fujinet not working right.

 

[rcamp48]

1 hour ago, ivop said:

I thought he meant SIO errors during loading. But a MIDI file not playing right on the connected MIDI device can indeed have multiple reasons, as you mentioned. Also, a MIDI file that is not aimed at GM (General Midi) but older non-standard hardware won't play correctly on a GM output device.

Ya I had downloaded many MIDI files over 1000 of them, I guess I should not expect them all to work right

 

[rcamp48]

6 hours ago, ivop said:

Yes it does. It means you do not stream in real time. You load the MIDI file to extended memory first, and then you play it.

 

I have no idea why you get SIO errors. Maybe you should lower your Pokey divisor if the capacitors are still (as per stock specs) on your SIO bus?

I actually can go live on FB with my setup, but why bother Facebook just blanks all audio anyways YouTube does not (as much).

 

[+DrVenkman]

10 hours ago, rcamp48 said:

I actually can go live on FB with my setup, but why bother Facebook just blanks all audio anyways YouTube does not (as much).

 

You will still get copyright claims and potential strikes on YT as well if your MIDI file is good enough and the instrument playing is of high enough fidelity. It happened to me for a video I posted demonstrated my 1088XLD playing a MIDI version of the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE (movie) theme.

[ivop]

13 hours ago, rcamp48 said:

I actually can go live on FB with my setup, but why bother Facebook just blanks all audio anyways YouTube does not (as much).

It seems you confuse streaming audio out of your Atari to the internet with streaming MIDI data in to the Atari. We were talking about the latter, which is currently not possible with the existing software.

 

[rcamp48]

6 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

You will still get copyright claims and potential strikes on YT as well if your MIDI file is good enough and the instrument playing is of high enough fidelity. It happened to me for a video I posted demonstrated my 1088XLD playing a MIDI version of the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE (movie) theme.

Ya it happens to me all of the time , they just say that you cannot monitize the video and that the author of the copyrighted music will put ads on it, small price to pay to be allowed to use copyrighted music. especially when I created over 600 videos in 5 years.

 

 

Edited June 30, 2022 by rcamp48
typo

[rcamp48]

Rather than waste everyone's time with a whole bunch of MIDI files that do not always work, I am deciding to upload what I have in their original form, that is PC files, long filenames. That way you guys can work on getting them into some sort of readable format for Fujinet etc, and I can do my work as well. I had a problem with my Fujinet which is now solved and I can go back to what ever I was working on ie: Puff BBS. 

 

Here is the zip file:

 

Midi Stuff.zip

[rcamp48]

Good news I have managed to get all of my files to work so far I have played 6 in a row without hitting that 'bad midi file' , file sizes are good , and they so far sound excellent. I will upload all of the 26 files here, after 26 , number 27 will start at 0 and continue to Z in alphabetical order. The reason i was having so much troubles was that I was using 16 meg Spartdos 3.3b atrs, now I am using 4 meg Mydos 4.5 3/4 atrs, they load quicker and instead of typing *.* for a directory you type in *.MID as I used the maximum 34 MIDI files plus DOS, DUP, FMT and MIDPLAY as well. Using *.MID will show you the maximum MIDI files in that window. 

 

Here are the files:

DISK1.ATR    DISK6.ATR       DISK11.ATR        DISK16.ATR      DISK21.ATR

DISK2.ATR    DISK7.ATR       DISK12.ATR        DISK17.ATR      DISK22.ATR

DISK3.ATR    DISK8.ATR       DISK13.ATR        DISK18.ATR      DISK23.ATR

DISK4.ATR    DISK9.ATR       DISK14.ATR        DISK19.ATR       DISK24.ATR

DISK5.ATR    DISK10.ATR     DISK15.ATR        DISK20.ATR       DISK25.ATR

DISK26.ATR

 

 

After uploading at inserting these files, there still is no 'bad midi files' , I will post if I get any but obviously I cannot test them all, that's up to you guys out there and if I encounter any 'bad midi files' I will let you know which ones you are bad.

 

Note that you don't need any keyboards or midi adapters to enjoy these files, all you have to do is load Altirra and turn on MIDIMATE as a device then restart Altirra , then play MIDI to your hearts content. 9 songs now as I type this and all good. Yahoo !!!!!!

 

Russ

 

[rcamp48]

Oh ya for those of you who do have keyboards , if you don't get any sound after playing the MIDI , turn off and on your keyboard, it will start to play.

Russ

 

[rcamp48]

Here is a full list of what is on each one of these disks:

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by rcamp48
Add the last 22 pages

[rcamp48]

11 hours ago, rcamp48 said:

Here is a full list of what is on each one of these disks:

 

 

[rcamp48]

Now that I have had a bit of time to test all or most of those files that I last uploaded I am pleased to say that there was only 1 'bad Midi file' out of 100 that I had a chance to play on The Atari MIDI Show, I am up to Episode # 26 now.

 

 

 

 

 

There you have it, 4 recent episodes of The Atari MIDI Show....

 

Russ

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by rcamp48
adding another episode...

[rdefabri]

Jumping in late on this one - I own multiple MIDI enabled keyboards / synths, and would love to do something with my Atari.  What are you using as the primary interface between the Atari and the keyboard?  I've seen SIO2MIDI builds, but it's quite confusing because you need some kind of software to run it.   

 

I'm slow to start, but a quick learner.  What is the "bill of materials" needed to connect and sequence a MIDI keyboard with an Atari 8-bit computer?  I know all about MIDIMate - that's more or less unobtanium...what is the most up to date way to do this?

 

Great stuff!!!

[Mathy]

Hello Russ, guys

 

18 hours ago, rcamp48 said:

... I am using 4 meg Mydos 4.5 3/4 atrs, they load quicker and instead of typing *.* for a directory you type in *.MID as I used the maximum 34 MIDI files plus DOS, DUP, FMT and MIDPLAY as well.

 

Try using MyDOS 4.55 beta 4, it has many bugfixes and replaces MyDOS 4.53.3 as well as 4.53/4.

 

And if you guys would have read the manual (   ) you would have known that ** does the same as *.* and *.whatever can be replaced with *whatever.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

[rcamp48]

3 hours ago, rdefabri said:

Jumping in late on this one - I own multiple MIDI enabled keyboards / synths, and would love to do something with my Atari.  What are you using as the primary interface between the Atari and the keyboard?  I've seen SIO2MIDI builds, but it's quite confusing because you need some kind of software to run it.   

 

I'm slow to start, but a quick learner.  What is the "bill of materials" needed to connect and sequence a MIDI keyboard with an Atari 8-bit computer?  I know all about MIDIMate - that's more or less unobtanium...what is the most up to date way to do this?

 

Great stuff!!!

Glad to help , all you need is the SIO2MIDI circuit board, you still need to have a box 3D printed for it and you need to make up your own SIO cable for it , it goes to a 6 pin connector on the board, they are available from The Brewing Academy, I have lots of MIDI cables that I have bought over the years from Amazon , all you really need is two of them (one for in and one for out).

 

I can help you with the documentation for MIDIPLAY 1.3 it is simple to use as fdor a place to get the MIdi files in the first place look for my earlier post with a zip file full of Midi files.

 

Getting the Mid files onto the Atari is a breeze , thanks to DIR2ATR and a special batch file (done by the same guy that wrote DIR2ATR I think), anyways I modified the batch file to suit my needs and get all of my MIDI files from  Bit MIDI and MIDI World, plus a few other sites.

 

There are at present 26 disks (4 Megs each) of MIDI files on MyDos 4.5 3/4, I will be adding  a few tonight.

 

If you want to make your own disks for MIDIPLAY 1.3 , you need to have 4 files on the disk first. Dos, Dup, FMT, & MIDIPLAY on each disk, plus with MIDIPLAY 1.3 you have 34 slots on the screen for MID files, I use *MID as the command to get a directory as it only shows the MIDI files and not the system files. With 34 slots I fill up the disk with the full 34 MIDI files and basically use  a Fujinet to hold 8 drives. There are other solutions out there but this one uses SIO which basically plugs right into the back of my Fujinet.

 

If you have any other questions , feel free to ask, as I am more than glad to help.

 

Russ

 

Edited July 2, 2022 by rcamp48

[rcamp48]

For those of you who are interested I have made a disassembly of MIDPLAY with Disassembler 1.1

 

midplay.asm