MIDI-SYNCH (was Re: simple MIDI?)

[The Dark force of dance]

Y-ellow Dave 'n' y'all.

At 01:21 PM 1/19/98 -0600, POLARIS at vax1.mankato.msus.edu wrote:

>Could someone provide info as to how to do this with an old IBM-clone PC?
>I have a few 8088-based machines, and a couple of 386 machines lying
>about.  Are there texts that would be helpful in turning a PC into a 
>dedicated MIDI controller - maybe a MIDI->CV converter?

Once again, this information is out there on the net. You just gotta search
for it. I can't remember where I saw this stuff. It's kinda a damn shame I
don't have the room to put my little information system online because I've
grabbed a lot of this stuff. Primerially so I can use it off-line but I'll
take a look. Of course the problem with this approach is that you rarely
remember where it was you got them from. Especially when NetBastard trashes
all your book-marks.

Anyway it should be especailly possible with an 8088 based machine since it
was dumb as a sack full of hammers. It couldn't do anything without having
to runn off and look for a ROM on some addaptor or other. In fact if you
boot one with out a disk drive it will either, boot into "BASIC A" which is
in another set or ROMs. Or if you aint got the ROMs, Tell you that it can't
find them and you'd better go get some.

But the site I found had all the dope on how to get any machine to boot
without a drive and run your code straight out of ROM. A very handy thing.
It's pretty common though I'm LED to believe. There is often the need for
DISK-less terminals. That is, a complete PC, anything an XT to a pentium,
with no drives what so ever. There is a ROM on the network card. When the
computer boots it realizes it doesn't know stuff and asks the network card
for help. The network card says "This is the way we read some stuff off a
network server". The network server in turn says. "Here ya go little fella.
Your going to be a windows machine today. Happy booting." And from then on
it treats the server as it's disk drive. But you get the picture.

My learnered colleague, the computer scientist now assures me that we can
not only boot a machine without a disk drive, but also window it remotely.
Actually having a window pop up on another machine which is actually the GUI
from the remote client. On a microsoft based network no less! Can't wait for
that one to fall over. But I digress.

This all ties into the previous thread about using a PC instead of dedicated
hardware. Because it is possible to roll your own code and have a machine
pull up, it suddenly gives new meaning to those boxes of old motherboards
you've been collecting. Hell they don't fly, you can't use 'em as frisbees
and they're too light for boat ankers.

DISCLAIMER:
        I couldn't program a PC to save myself. I can only just program an
8051. I'm a hardware person but I recognise a short cut when I see one.

You'd be better off if you can find all this stuff on the net yourself
because you might find aditional information that I've not secured for
myself. However if worse comes to worse, I can probably ask my information
system to spew forth this guff if you don't mind waiting for it at the
blistering speed of 14.4k baud.

Hope this helps.

Be absoltuely ICebox.
 

>
>
>Dave
>
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