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From: rivero@dev8a.mdcbbs.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: MIDI doesn't work!
Message-ID: <1991May9.143915.1@dev8a.mdcbbs.com>
Date: 9 May 91 14:39:15 GMT
References: <24628@well.sf.ca.us>
Distribution: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Organization: McDonnell Douglas M&E, Cypress CA
Lines: 43
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Nntp-Posting-User: ethredge

In article <24628@well.sf.ca.us>, rhand@well.sf.ca.us (Roger Hand) writes:
> 
> My serial port works fine -- I use it for my modem.  But an ECE midi box
> doesn't seem to work at all.  The box is good -- I hooked it up to someone
> else's Amiga and it worked with no problem.
> 
> I'm using a Bars + Pipes demo that came with an AMiga Plus mag.  The demo
> is supposed to support MIDI output.  I changed preferences to 31K, no
> handshaking, and upped the serial buffer to a couple K.  Nothing!  Not
> for play OR record.  
> 
> The MIDI cables are also good, and the keyboard midi input/output works
> fine if fed from a different MIDI controller.
> 
> Why would the serial port work OK for the modem and not for the MIDI box?
> 
> HELP!
> 
> Roger    rhand@well.sf.ca.us


I'll just bet that the Amiga you use and the Amiga the MIDI box works on are
different models. More precisely, one of them is an A1000. 

  If that's the case, then you need to contact the builder of your
MIDI box to get the correct version for the system you plan to use it on.
There are some differences between the serial ports from the 1000 to the rest
of the family, particularly in where power is supplied and a couple of other
control lines.

  If this is NOT the case, then the serial port on your machine may have a bad
line;; one that is NOT used for serial communications but which is needed
for MIDI. Still one more thing you need to check are the CIA timers, which
many MIDI adapters/software packages use in place of the system clock.
If one of these has failed, it will create some problems for MIDI that don't
show up in other serial port applications. I recall a development project
I worked on that got hung for a while because a CIA timer had died, and
by coincidence, there were NO other programs on that system that used
that particular timer, which made it very hard to track down.

Hope this helps.

Mike