Rs-232 vs MIDI vs SCSI?

[David Halliday (Volt Computer)]

The original discussion of RS-232 / SCSI / etc... was regarding using a
computer to control a DSP based synthesizer.  The computer would act as
patch manager and storage device.  

Granted, USP or FireWire would be another excellent choice but most
machines today do not have this option whereas most machines today do
either have SCSI or can get SCSI cheaply.


For basic machine control, RS-232 or MIDI would be great but for any
sort of large data schlepping, this would yield delays which could
hamper performance issues.

Finally, in my other message, I mentioned that a SCSI talker in the DSP
synth would allow it to work with a standalone storage device ( ZIP
drive or plain old hard disk )

This would allow people to develop their programs through a computer,
dump them to disk and then just take the disk to the performance site.
Much more portable.


> -----Original Message-----
> From:	brad.sanders at circellar.com [SMTP:brad.sanders at circellar.com]
> Sent:	Thursday, April 24, 1997 11:41 AM
> To:	synth-diy at horus.sara.nl
> Subject:	Re: Rs-232 vs MIDI vs SCSI?
> 
> 
> *********deletia*********
> 
> However, ANY parallel port protocol is just plain stupid in this
> application (sorry for being so blunt - but it is). If you want a PCI
> card, that's fine - but you can get plenty of bandwidth via far more
> economic channels. PCI requires a pretty sophisticated bus interface
> controller chip - unlike ISA, which requires little more than a few
> digital buffers.
> 
> RS422 supports *in theory* up to 10Mbps or so. Based on more than a
> decade of experience, I can tell you this only works in THEORY. You
> might get 10Mbps over a short cable, but you're NOT going to do this
> with any sort of "network." Plan for 1Mbps TOPS.
> 
> NO MATTER the medium (RS422, RS232, MIDI, USB) it is NOT a "trivial"
> task to "retrofit" equipment. A serial port is a serial port - NOT.
> Some use MSB first, some use LSB first, and EACH of the above has it's
> own protocol.
> 
> If you want to make a new design "portable," use a USB port. You can
> buy USB microcontrollers now for like a buck in high quantities -
> figure five bucks for onesy-twoseys. This should certainly be able to
> control an "analog" synth.