Native RISCOS MIDI sequencer?

[SiriusHardware]

Following up a suggestion in another thread far, far away, can I ask if anyone knows of a native RISCOS MIDI sequencer which has been / could potentially be ported to Pi RISCOS? I'm not looking for anything with audio recording / playback capability, just a multitrack midi recorder / player similar to first-generation versions of Cubase.

Obviously, such a port would either need to be able to recognise and run with a USB-> 5 DIN midi interface, or more ideally to be able to use the Pi's onboard UART with the addition of optocoupler input / output driver hardware.

I'm aware that there is apparently a high-performance port of Hatari (ST emulator) already working under Pi RiscOS, but I am assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that Hatari (Pi) hasn't been tinkered with to allow use of the onboard UART as one of the possible MIDI interfaces.

[zproc]

I don't know if Hatari on RISC OS has any MIDI... it's stated in the doc that Hatari has only MIDI on linux, it has to be able to use /dev/snd/midi or something like that, but I know nothing about Risc OS...

[SiriusHardware]

I don't know if Hatari on RISC OS has any MIDI... it's stated in the doc that Hatari has only MIDI on linux, it has to be able to use /dev/snd/midi or something like that, but I know nothing about Risc OS...

I'm guessing that if you just compiled the original Hatari source as arm code instead of x86 code, the part dealing with the MIDI interface would most likely still be trying to use a PC-style Roland MPU401 or Soundblaster clone of the same interface on i/o address 330, where they are usually found on PCs.

For Hatari MIDI to work on the Pi, the part dealing with communication with the MIDI interface would have to be re-written to use either a plug-in USB midi interface (which I would imagine would be hard) or the Pi's UART - marginally less difficult, except for the fact that the UART does not natively support 31250 baud as a standard baud rate. Or does it? And if not, is that something which could be incorporated into a future update for RISCOS?

[sborrill]

MelIDI is about to be released as open-source and 32-bit ready

http://www.melidi.co.uk/

The problem remains about the lack of hardware MIDI drivers. MelIDI uses MIDISupport which means, unlike the old days, you only need to write the actual driver bit to hook into MIDISupport, not the whole MIDI stack

[microbitsuk]

Good News Stephen, When can we expect it to be available???

[Shawty]

Remember everyone that ALL midi interfaces on any of the ROS products from Rhapsody right through to Sibleus 7 , where ALL implemented as Relocatable Modules.

Which module you loaded in depended on which driver you wanted to use, and the original Acorn MIDI interface used SWI numbers in it's relocatable module that where somewhere in the 0x404XX range.

Chris's acorns (http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/) I believe has a PDF scan of the original MIDI programmers guide.

All you would need to do would be write a Relocatable Module, that made a public interface available that exposed a compatible set of SWI vectors available in the same number range.

Midi compatible programs should then in theory find these SWI vectors and start sending MIDI Data to them.

I have some C source code kicking around somewhere for a serial port midi driver I started writing for my A5000 many years ago, but never got finished. At the time I had a Yamaha MU10 XG that had a MIDI Serial interface on it, which I wanted to use with RiscOS apps. So I started to write my own MIDI driver. I'm sure anyone with enough passion and knowledge would be able to build on it and bring it up to date, changing it to work with other hardware in the R-Pi version.

Shawty

[gamecat666]

found this by accident!

http://www.arsvcs.demon.co.uk/rci/sound ... anthem.htm

[dfeugey]

Just for information: there is already a working MIDI module for RISC OS 5. It's not complete, but I can play tunes from maestro on a pocket expander with it. It works perfectly. We just need software now: 32bit ports of old titles, or changes to Hatari/DosBox in order to support hardware MIDI.

Bye, David

[dfeugey]

There is now a web page about Midi under RISC OS, with Maestro (the base application for music).
http://www.riscos.fr/ressources/midi-maestro/index.html

[mahjongg]

FYI the PI's hardware is perfectly capable of generating the MIDI baud rate for the UART, so all you need to add MIDI interface to a PI is a couple of cheap optocouplers, a few resistors and a couple of DIN connectors.

[SiriusHardware]

FYI the PI's hardware is perfectly capable of generating the MIDI baud rate for the UART, so all you need to add MIDI interface to a PI is a couple of cheap optocouplers, a few resistors and a couple of DIN connectors.

But is it still necessary to twiddle about with the clock parameters to bend a nearby serial baud rate up or down to get 31250? Or is 31250 now a legitmately settable baudrate in its own right?