Generating Midi

[The Dark force of dance]

Y-ellow Vance 'n' all.
        This one sounds like my department.

Try an 8051 micro controller. Or better still it's derivatives. The MCS51
family is fairly ubiquitous for MIDI as it has a relatively powerful core
coupled with an onboard UART capable of MIDI speeds and a host of useful
boolean instructions. Not to mention a couple of counter/timers. Also there
is a great amount of source code available on the net to do everything from
MIDI primitives, through to a complete project for a MIDI mother keyboard.

You need to do an AltaVista type search of 8051 and MCS51 to see the
hundreds, if not thousands of sites out there that cover this processor.

Finally I am, or will be using the ATMEL AT89C2051. This is a flashram based
processor using an MCS51 compatible core, including all the cool bits but
lives in a tiny 20 pin package. running @ 24 meg, this things is more than
powerful enough to handle most MIDI apps and it only costs 5 bucks. If
you're going to get into MIDI you have to use a Micro. You may as well use
this one. FlashRAM makes it very quick and easy to program.

Other noteworthy MCS51 based processors include...
Intel 8031. ROMless. Uses external program store.
Intel 8751 Internal EPROM. Same as mask programmed 8051 but UV erasable.
Atmel 89C51 Internal Flash. Same as above but uses flash ram and runs faster.
Atmel 89C1051. Same as 2051 but with only 1K or program storage.

Also, If you want something with more ports than you'll probably ever be
able to eat in one meal, have a look at Siemens's range of MCS51
derivatives. They make a bloody great big huge one with so many on-board
resources that I wouldn't begin to rattle them all off here.

And out of interest, one of my future plans is to convert a Korg Poly61 up
to MIDI. It should be relatively easy. In that all I'll be seeking to do is
mimic the keyboard switch closures. Maybe also the joystick and I'll
probably put some kind of VCA in there so it responds to MIDI CC7.

Finally to see a few MIDI projects already based on MCS51 cores, IE:8031s,
check out John Simonton's PAiA web site. www.paia.com (I think)

Hope that helps.

Be absolutely ICebox.
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