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MIDI Interface


ivop

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I picked up this today...... the specs said it could do general MIDI and I REALLY like it's sound (esp. compared to that wavetable thing):

 

Speaking of daughter boards, I still like my DB50XG very much:

 

post-7778-0-45996100-1510959128_thumb.jpg

 

To replay independent from a sound card, I built the simple MIDI IN adapter board presented in the German magazine "c't":

 

https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/MIDImal-285418.html

 

The interface side has some similarities to ivop's one... :)

 

https://www.heise.de/altcms_bilder/123220/2_hires.jpg

 

How does it sound?

 

There are plenty vids on youtube, here only two of them:

 

 

 

 

Edit:

The reset switch of the adapter board may be a good choice for the Atari interface too - just in case the wave table board goes crazy...

Edited by Irgendwer
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I picked up this today...... the specs said it could do general MIDI and I REALLY like it's sound (esp. compared to that wavetable thing):

 

 

 

 

I must say that getting a MegaSTE also helped in deciding to get this one :)

 

That's indeed a nice module, but comparing a $1000 device (currently still selling 2nd hand for $100-$150) with a 5 dollar Dream chip is not really fair :)

 

 

 

Speaking of daughter boards, I still like my DB50XG very much:

 

attachicon.gifDB50XG.jpg

 

To replay independent from a sound card, I built the simple MIDI IN adapter board presented in the German magazine "c't":

 

https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/MIDImal-285418.html

 

The interface side has some similarities to ivop's one... :)

 

https://www.heise.de/altcms_bilder/123220/2_hires.jpg

 

How does it sound?

 

There are plenty vids on youtube, here only two of them:

 

 

 

 

Edit:

The reset switch of the adapter board may be a good choice for the Atari interface too - just in case the wave table board goes crazy...

 

Every time the MIDI device gets deselected it gets switched off, so the connected board will also reset.

 

Nice card BTW! Might have a look around for a period Wave Blaster board myself :)

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okay with the joy trigger option this will be the most complete and wonderful midi for our 8 bit thus far....

what's your ball park on price in USD?

 

Probably around $15 plus postage and packaging for a PCB with parts. Other options, like assembly by me, housing, SIO cable, DBS2 board, will cost more.

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Every time the MIDI device gets deselected it gets switched off, so the connected board will also reset.

 

I'm not sure if I got that correctly and if this prevents a wave table board from playing "hanging notes" endlessly.

(The reset button of the c't-adapter is directly connected to the daughter-board header.)

 

 

Nice card BTW! Might have a look around for a period Wave Blaster board myself :)

 

I just thought about the orientation of your pin header. For the S2 there is surly enough room, but a bigger board (like the DB50XG) would enlarge the dimensions in depth AND width. The width wouldn't be such a problem while the depth would extend in the direction of the interfaces. Pretty hard to create a somewhat good housing.

Did you thought about putting the daughter board header to the edge of the PCB (rotating it 180°), allowing the S2-board to go inwards? This way a configuration like mine above (with a bigger board) would be no problem at all....?

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I'm not sure if I got that correctly and if this prevents a wave table board from playing "hanging notes" endlessly.

(The reset button of the c't-adapter is directly connected to the daughter-board header.)

 

The way Atari SIO MIDI devices work is that if they are deselected, they are completely powered off. So each time they get to play again, they start "fresh".

 

I just thought about the orientation of your pin header. For the S2 there is surly enough room, but a bigger board (like the DB50XG) would enlarge the dimensions in depth AND width. The width wouldn't be such a problem while the depth would extend in the direction of the interfaces. Pretty hard to create a somewhat good housing.

Did you thought about putting the daughter board header to the edge of the PCB (rotating it 180°), allowing the S2-board to go inwards? This way a configuration like mine above (with a bigger board) would be no problem at all....?

 

I had it that way at first, but switched the header around because it allowed for a far better separation of digital and analog ground planes. Future WB boards (like yours and some ideas I have myself) can also have the header not at the side but somewhat from the edge of its PCB, like a mirror of the MIDI Interface PCB. Larger legacy boards (sometimes ISA card size) are assumed (by me :)) to be connected with a ribbon cable. I plan to have a small cutout in the housing, similar to certain Raspberry Pi casings, to lead a flat cable out.

 

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Crap.

 

Crap.

 

Crap.

 

I've tested the Korg and....it sucks balls.

The digital stuff works just fine....but the output levels.....the Jack connectors put out NOTHING AT ALL......the phone (3.5mm) puts out a very low level. One of the channels is even lower than the other. When connected to my 130W surround amp (Onkyo) I have to turn up the volume completely to hear at least something....

So I opened it and measured all caps around the outputs with my trusty Russian ESR meter. Jezus, about 95% of them are gone. One type seems particularly bad as it shows absolutely NO reading whatsoever.....no capacity, no ESR !!! In my 10+ years of collecting arcade games I have never seen this.... and those machines were from 1978-1985.....this Korg is from 1993 or later (judging the firmware date).

The seller actually demo-ed the unit to me....with a headphone....I just had a short listen with one ear....yeah it wan't to loud, but it played.......another lesson learned.

Trying to solve this with the seller. He says he "never noticed anything" yeah right...are you deaf ? I wouldn't have mind if it was advertised as defective and I'd paid a price for a defective unit but this was advertised as in excellent condition....sigh.

Not looking forward to having to replace 65 or so SMD caps....although it will be a nice practice for my SMD soldering skills....

Sorry...Of topic, but I had to vent my frustration .....and own stupidity....another lesson learned. Luckily I picked this unit up in person....so he knows that I know where he lives......:D

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We don't have Turkey days here.....although Black Friday is poisoning our culture already.....just like Santa Claus, Valentine's Day and Halloween.....sadly. Before we know it, we will be celebrating thanksgiving here too....

 

O well...just saying I very much doubt Turkey day has any impact on this project :D

Edited by Level42
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About the Korg: seller agreed on refunding half the price I paid, I took lots of pictures and documented all cap values and ordered new ones (awesome Black Friday 20% rebate on all parts........uh....oops :D :D)....I already removed all the old ones. Neutralized the slight leakages here and there with some vinegar and next cleaned the PCB. So hopefully I will restore it to its full glory.....

Edited by Level42
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Turkey day is over so how long till we can gobble these up?

 

Well, I'm still working on the SIO plug. I really want to be able to offer a full plug-n-play device, besides all the kit options.

 

We don't have Turkey days here.....although Black Friday is poisoning our culture already.....just like Santa Claus, Valentine's Day and Halloween.....sadly. Before we know it, we will be celebrating thanksgiving here too....

 

O well...just saying I very much doubt Turkey day has any impact on this project :D

 

Santa Claus (Sinterklaas) was actually introduced to the US by the Dutch ;) (before it got changed to the current Santa by Coca Cola)

 

About the Korg: seller agreed on refunding half the price I paid, I took lots of pictures and documented all cap values and ordered new ones (awesome Black Friday 20% rebate on all parts........uh....oops :D :D)....I already removed all the old ones. Neutralized the slight leakages here and there with some vinegar and next cleaned the PCB. So hopefully I will restore it to its full glory.....

 

Nice! Glad you got a partial refund.

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I have something you guys will want.

I was the co-sysop of the Action Annex BBS that operated from 1982-1996.

The owner had to move in with relatives in Connecticut . So he gifted me all the Atari 8bit stuff including the original disks for the BBS.

He said I could do whatever I wanted, so I think it would be nice to gift them to the internet for posterity.

I managed to recover about 80% of the DSDD floppies and a SSSD disks. Comprising about 4000-5000 songs.

Also some of the .MUS Midi music maker files were converted to standard .MID on Atari ST floppies.

Unfortunately, not all the ST disks were readable, about 50% were trashed. I kept them for when I get a kryoflux device and pursue trying again.

 

I also have the Midi Music Maker 1.0 by Sythentic Software disk and in .atr format.

Also, the Crider's .MUS player standalone disks that boot and play from a menu. You can switch disks if they have the autoplay.dat and play a total of 6 disks worth of music on the Atari Pokey synth. It looks exactly like the AMS 2 keyboard. It obviously used code from Craig Chamberlan's AMS2 player for Pokey playing.

 

I also have the MMS disk that would play .MUS files to the MIDI MATE device. I think it would play to the Wiztronics one also. I have a MIDI mate, but no synth to play stuff on.

 

I converted the AMS1 and AMS2 few disks of songs to SAP format using Windows tools.

 

What I need is a FTP dump site and a small contribution to replace the Atari disk drive that I literally wore the mechanism and controller out reading the disks in.

I have the files archived on my PC read directly using the old 5.25" drive.
The disks that were bootable with players, I made into .atr files to catch the boot sectors.

 

I noticed a few music programs missing on atarimania, I might be able to fill in the blanks with a dump to them if they want them.

Does this forum have a common file transfer site? I went looking for a sticky or FAQ to clue myself in. Sorry if I missed it.

 

Comments?

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usually best upload to someone willing to host a torrent if you don't want to, they normally put it on the ftp mirrors also, since it would be a large repository... so a folder called action annex would be created and then the dump would end up in folder in there..

 

Mechanerds friend had quite the BBS back in the day and it was full of music and warez.... quite a repository...

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How does one wear out the controller by reading lots of discs ?

The mechanism...OK, but that's probably only the belt.

 

Why not use dropbox. The complete file can't be that big.

 

The ATR 8000 I was using, died The stock power supply circuit was toast, so It was removed from the board and I put a lab power supply on the thing.

There was a failure in several chips and the short overheated the ram and CPU. I had already replaced all the caps and checked for shorts before the board was turned on.

 

 

I am finishing up the disk imaging and made a catalog of the disks. Some were labelled, some not. Some had a title name for the catalog that was sold with paper inserts of the titles.

Some of the disks were never put on the BBS, but had hand written notes on which song tittles decode the short , eight character filenames.

So a bunch of the files are just going to have to be identified by play and listen.. Name that tune!

If I could identify the disk, I made a disk.txt file for each sub directory as a "disk".

 

The Action Annex BBS software was also released to freeware by Mike Calvin. I am gathering up the disk images for versions 1 through 4.

I helped write the ATR8000 and 850 serial driver assembler code for faster transfers.

 

I will write up a quick FAQ and doc for the whole lot so that it can be decoded and put on some FTP archive for clarity.

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I promise not to derail this thread anymore but I'm very happy to report I succeeded in getting back the Korg 05R/W back to life !

 

33 SMD caps and I almost start enjoying soldering SMD stuff ;) there's something "magic" about seeing the grey/rough looking solder paste turn into a nice silvery shining solder connection :)

 

Using a syringe with solder paste and hot air station I managed to get all the knew caps in place. On two spots i had "to cheat" because the solder pad got removed by a little bit uncareful unsoldering of the old caps. I had to make 1 tiny wire bridge, the other I just scraped away a bit of the soldermask above the track near the pad. (C52, you can see on the second pic it's twisted a bit....)

 

Since I was recapping anyway I also did the 3 through-hole caps. All have been replace with Nichicon or Panasonic 105 degree low ESR caps. Sounds brilliant and loud again as it should :):)

 

Now bring on the Midi interface to have some fun :):)

 

Pics are from half way the job...

post-25272-0-90569500-1512169185_thumb.png

post-25272-0-44071000-1512169342_thumb.jpg

Edited by Level42
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  • 2 weeks later...

 

The ATR 8000 I was using, died The stock power supply circuit was toast, so It was removed from the board and I put a lab power supply on the thing.

There was a failure in several chips and the short overheated the ram and CPU. I had already replaced all the caps and checked for shorts before the board was turned on.

 

 

I am finishing up the disk imaging and made a catalog of the disks. Some were labelled, some not. Some had a title name for the catalog that was sold with paper inserts of the titles.

Some of the disks were never put on the BBS, but had hand written notes on which song tittles decode the short , eight character filenames.

So a bunch of the files are just going to have to be identified by play and listen.. Name that tune!

If I could identify the disk, I made a disk.txt file for each sub directory as a "disk".

 

The Action Annex BBS software was also released to freeware by Mike Calvin. I am gathering up the disk images for versions 1 through 4.

I helped write the ATR8000 and 850 serial driver assembler code for faster transfers.

 

I will write up a quick FAQ and doc for the whole lot so that it can be decoded and put on some FTP archive for clarity.

 

Here is the posting about the Action Annex BBS archive. I finally finished it.

4500 Atari 8bit songs, about 1000 ST

8bit .mus and ST .MID files, software for the 8bit.

 

http://atariage.com/...-bbs/?p=3909830

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This Christmas won't happen ;) Also, the coming weeks are pretty busy, so I'll probably start taking pre-orders in January. Then there's the Chinese new year festivities in Februari which basically means that China Inc. is closed for two weeks :) And I'm not sure whether to run snes2joy first or this MIDI interface. Considering the complexity, I think I prefer snes2joy first. I definitely don't want to do two projects at the same time.

 

BTW I'm also thinking of a name. Came up with MIDAS (backronym for MIDI Interface Device for Atari 8-bit Systems plus the name of my favorite cat :)) but I found out there's already a MIDI company with that name :(

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hmmm how about some ideas..

 

Maximum Midi

Magnum Midi

Major Midi

Midi Maggiore

Midi Morceau

Midi Motif

Midi Movement

Midi Monster

Mr. Midi

Midi Machine

Midi Magic

Melody Midi

 

one of those should pull the trigger, or pick from the two below, it's madness I tell ya! Cold Hard Midi Madness!

 

Opus Magnus Midi

Magnum Opus Midi

 

Now that's a list, wanna vote?

Edited by _The Doctor__
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I like Midi Madness and Midi Motif, but Motif as something Midi-related is already taken by Yamaha and Midi Madness is a VST plugin for generative music.

 

Edit: Perhaps Midnight MIDI? At least it's not taken yet. Or SIO2MIDI, but that's pretty unimaginative...

Edited by ivop
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How about AMI ?

 

Atari MIdi

 

Also a great salute to AMY and it means friend in French...

 

 

Mmmm.....problem with Atari MIdi will be loads of ST references......

 

 

Wait....I’ve got it:

 

MidiM8

 

(Pronounce: MidiMate or MidiMeight)

 

It looks great, won’t give weird results in google, is easy to recognise, is a great reference to 8 bit and.....

 

 

 

Crap.....someone else already figured out that name for another product......

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