[sdiy] PC synth

[Bob Weigel]

I've got a really nice Kurzeil based sound card here if someone wants to 
make a higher end system. As I recall the drivers only worked with '95 
and they foulded up something and never fixed it for 98 but they are 
great sounding with super nice specs.  I dunno if I'll ever get around 
to using it.  Thought I would but it may never happen.  Let's see it's 
called an Apex from AVM...hey!  Someone wrote a shareware package that 
might work in 98 for this thing it appears!  I haven't looked for a long 
time.  It's got SIMM slots and is a pretty cool little unit if the 
software is any good.  -Bob

Roy J. Tellason wrote:

>On Wednesday 23 August 2006 06:22 pm, anthony wrote:
>  
>
>>I have a number of old PC's that I used to use, but are now collecting
>>dust.
>>
>>The slow one (AMD K6 200MHz) I was thinking of using to load up a bare
>>bones Linux type of OS (it's loaded with Mandrake 5.0 right now) and
>>installing my Yamaha YMF724 sound card. I can't remember if the synth on it
>>is wavetable or OPL3 - I think it's the former, but it sounds great
>>whatever it is and just using the box as a MIDI controlled synth.
>>    
>>
>
>That's funny,  your calling that an "old slow" machine -- my SERVER is a 
>K6-200 here.  :-)
>
>  
>
>>Anybody have any experience doing something like this? What would be the
>>best software to use and what would be the best install of Linux or FreeBSD
>>or whatever so that I didn't have to run X Windows. Linux runs great on
>>slow machines until you try to run X...
>>    
>>
>
>I run Slackware here on several boxes,  that one mentioned above,  this one 
>I'm typing on (with X and KDE),  and also a firewall/router.  It's not too 
>bad running X and KDE in that kind of a machine if you a) give it enough RAM 
>(I wouldn't recomment less than 64M) and b) get an older version of Slackware 
>to run,  security and other fixes are available for versions back to 8 or so 
>I think.  Not that you need to worry about them for such an application.
>
>  
>
>>The faster machine (AMD K6II 400 MHz) is my Windows 98 machine. I tried
>>running Cubase on this thing and it was a joke.
>>    
>>
>
>As far as I'm concerned,  98 is a joke...
>
>  
>
>>But I hadn't found MiniHost at that time or ASIO4All. So I could try that.
>>But I was wondering about some other kind of PC synth - like CSound or
>>something. Ideas?
>>    
>>
>
>No idea offhand.  But do check out Slackware.  And maybe you'd be interested 
>in a program called "Baudline",  a rather nifty spectrum analyzer that runs 
>under linux.  :-)
>
>  
>