Bc2000 (for the BCF2000 & BCR2000)

--- In bc2000@yahoogroups.com, "electron8000" <electron8000@...> wrote:
> Firmware version is also 1.02.

In itself this is good news, but the bad news is that this scuppers my idea that your firmware version is to blame...

On startup, the BCR2000 (closely related to the BCN44 of course) calculates a checksum of its whole firmware area, and if this doesn't match the expected (stored) value, it doesn't show the firmware version, but "noOS".
The BCN44 may or may not work the same way; but in any case I suspect that your BCN's firmware as such is NOT the problem.

I've finally managed to find a setup where I can see incoming FE and F8 bytes in MIDI Tools, i.e. using an old PC with a SoundBlaster card, running Windows XP.
However, I didn't see any problems when I fed my D-5 synth's output (FE plus other MIDI data) to my BCN44 and from there to the SoundBlaster card.

So right now my best guess is that there is indeed something very wrong with your BCN44's MIDI Merge: buffer? timer?

I'm not quite sure whether your PSR310's FE and/or F8 are to blame.
What happens if you feed the BCN44 MIDI messages that don't include any FE/F8?
E.g. you could use the "MIDI Keyboard" window in MIDI Tools to set up a continuous "arpeggio" (RIGHT-click on the piano keys to make them stick), route these signals to the BCN44 via your soundcard, and loop these signals back to the soundcard and MIDI Tools. If this ALSO produces hiccups, you'll know the problem is NOT your PSR310's FE and F8.
And what happens if you connect the BCN44 to a different soundcard?

In any case, the situation looks bleak, I'm afraid.
Even if you can pinpoint the exact circumstances of the problem, it seems unlikely that you'll be able to fix it - assuming the cause is a hardware problem in the BCN44.

A desperate try: are you sure it's not a MIDI cable/socket problem?

Mark.