PIC chips and midi stuff

[Rob]

Well, I am proud to announce that after 1 year of beating my head, finally
all this pic chip programming stuff has surfaced and I have learned it with
some sort of confidence.

If you havent learned to use these little guys, you are missing out
completely! The simulator, once you get the hang of it, is what I always
wished I had when I was plugging in hex numbers on the ol 6502 keypad on the
SBC.

It just feels good to get stuff that you program ONCE and it compiles and
simulates properly the first try. The options are truly endless.

    I got the rotor encoder retrofit done in a couple of days (its actually
far trickier than one would first guess) and I just started a program that
will take midi beat clocks and divide it in various ways and spit it out a
couple of midi ports at the same time changing midi beat clocks to triggers
and sending it out. I know this one will be a timing nightmare but Im going
to try it nonetheless. At an internal clock of about 2.5mhz it should work
without too much prob. Ive already got the basic version of it working and
it sims out perfectly.
BTW, once I get the code going, I will post it to my page with a little
tutorial of what I did so you can manipulate it or add to it, or just
program and build it yourself.

Im a little worried about my algo for my midi reception. Someone told me the
start bit comes AFTER the status message? This isnt right is it?

Plus, too, I was wondering if its okay to just run a loop masking for the
reception of the sync bit? Or is their a better way?

Right now, I just wait for a start bit and then after that count 8 bits,
chug them into a register, then mask them and look for the zero register to
go high. If they end up being F8, the zero register will come up then I skip
to the clock counter routine. I dont know if this will work yet, since I
havent breadboarded it yet.


death to discrete logic, unless its unbuffered and being used in a linear
mode! ;)

Rob