[sdiy] Two Nuts & Volts articles from last year

[Eric Brombaugh]

Interestingly enough, the author of the MIDI-nator article gave a link 
to his personal website where pre-programmed PIC processors were 
supposedly available, but the webpage is now gone:

http://www2.netdoor.com/~rlang

It is available on the web archive though, for those who are interested 
in what was there:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050213094945/www2.netdoor.com/~rlang/

The Nuts & Volts website has a zipfile with the source code and a PC 
layout available here:

http://nutsvolts.com/~downloads/MIDI-NATOR.zip

It's also worth noting that there's a silicon bug in the PIC18F4550 
EUSART that causes data corruption when data is sent and received 
simultaneously. This showed up in someone else's USB-MIDI project. Read 
more about it here:

http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp_usb_pic.html

Eric

Eric Brombaugh wrote:
> I picked up the August 2005 N&Vat a used bookstore last week (Yay 
> Bookmans!) and I can give a quick summary of the MIDI-nator article:
>
> He's using a PIC18F2455 (built-in USB and UART) to build a USB-MIDI 
> interface. It's configured as a USB audio device class with the MIDI 
> subclass, so Mac OS X and WinXP should automatically use their 
> existing drivers to handle it (meaning you wouldn't need to write any 
> OS-level USB drivers for it).
>
> There is a fair amount of background on MIDI and USB, but the source 
> is not included in the print article and is available on the N&V 
> website (www.nutsvolts.com/ftp/index.htm).
>
> I'd guess that unless you already have the parts handy, it's cheaper 
> just to buy an m-audio MIDISport UNO. You'd end up with the same 
> functionality - just fewer LEDs.
>
> Frankly I'd be more interested in USB-CV interfaces, and while this 
> article could be used as a starting point for that there are already 
> plenty of projects like that on the web.
>
> Eric