Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!cs.ed.ac.uk!nick From: nick@cs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware Subject: Re: MIDI, the Mac and the Serial Port (Help!) Message-ID: <297@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk> Date: 6 Sep 90 11:44:59 GMT References: <302@bksmel.oz.au> Sender: nnews@cs.ed.ac.uk Reply-To: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Organization: Wavetables 'R' Us Lines: 40 In article <302@bksmel.oz.au> svb@bksmel.UUCP (Stuart Begg) writes: >I have recently turned my computing interests to MIDI programming and, >having a Macintosh, have invested in some sequencing software and a >MIDI interface. And while this system works just fine, it has piqued >my interest in developing my own software in this environment. > >My programming experience is quite extensive, however, my hardware and >communications experience leaves something to be desired. With this >in mind, and given that I have read what I think are the appropriate >sections of "Inside Macintosh" (V1-V5), I can't work out how to >configure and access the serial port for MIDI transmission and >receipt on my Macintosh Plus! I seem to be posting a message of this kind once a week now. About time Apple pulled the finger out and told folks about the MIDI Manager. Don't use the serial port driving stuff for MIDI. Don't roll your own. It isn't portable. It isn't future-proof. It isn't asynchronous. It isn't user-configurable. It isn't nice. And parsing MIDI is pretty tricky. (if you don't believe me, I bet I can come up with a nasty example.) Use Apple's MIDI Manager. >Also, what about this crazy speed? 31.25kbps, what sort of speed is >that for a self respecting piece of equipment to run at? :-) Some power of 2 dividing 1MHz. Makes sense when you're building the MIDI interface hardware, I can tell you. You call the RS232 speeds sensible? >I know there are some MIDI libraries around but I would prefer to >understand the process a little more fully by implementing my own. You'll be wasting your time and implementing a dinosaur. Nick. -- -- Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh. nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk !mcsun!ukc!lfcs!nick ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ "Now remember - and this is most important - you must think in Russian."