Minimig + Roland Sound Canvas SC-55ST = music ?

[Dwyloc]

My Minimig is currently sitting on top of my Vintage Roland Sound Canvas SC-55ST and now I am wondering is it possible to some how connect the my Sound Canvas to the Minimig's serial port and playback music with it. :idea:

I am not a musician and in fact picked to up cheaply a few years ago to use to with old dos games so I could here the music they way it was intended to be listened to rather than how I heard it at the time with my SoundBlaster 16.

But now I remember MED coming with some sample tunes that required MIDI to playback so dose anyone now if its possible to drive my SC-55 from the serial port of the minimig?

If my memory is correct I am sure I have seen one connected up in the past to a PC's serial port to the other port on the back of the SC-55 I have never used.

Anyway If anyone thinks it can be done it maybe fun to give it a shot as it would also have the added advantage for playing back midi tunes of having no moving parts so I could use the minimig and Roland combo as way of listening to music without the background sound of my PC’s hard disk and other moving parts while reading.

[Dwyloc]

It sounds like it maybe possible then the Minimig only has a 9-pin PC style serial port rather than an Amiga 25-pin serial port so I cant just plug in an old standard Amiga midi interface even if I had one.

Maybe if I lookout my old MED disk and the docs which came with it I will find some hints on what to try.

As I have never used midi on the Amiga before maybe trying to get my midi module working with Amiga software under WinUAE would be an easier first stage then I can take thinks from there.

[Dwyloc]

@ral-clan

I am very happy with my SoundCanvas when I was younger most PC games needed one If you wanted to listen to the music as the Musicians intended it be head but as a teenager there was no way I could afford one but today you can pick one for the price of one or two new games so purchasing one was a bit of a no brainer for me.

Sadly I have no talent for creating music so I don't think I would spend very much time trying to get Bar's & Pipes working as I would not know what to do with it if I did :-? but I did have fun playing with MED so I hope I can at least figure out how to make it speak to my SC-55.

I also have a Roland MT-32 as well which I purchased first as you just cant emulate the sound it makes and if you love old Graphics adventures like I do you quickly learn that as good as scummvm is something is missing with the software midi emulation.  Between my MT-32 and my SC-55ST my games now all sound incredible or at lest the music dose a good midi module dose not help with the sound effects.

Anyway as I have a SAM on order I can let people know how I get on trying to connect them to my SAM under OS4.1 as well if people are interested?  My testing is only likely to go as far as can I get them working with scummvm under OS4.1, but I expect if they work with scummvm they will also work with other midi software under OS4.

The first challenge is still trying to work out how to plug them into a new Amiga though.

For anyone else out there who also likes playing old DOS games as well as playing old Amiga game I highly recommend picking up an old SC-55 or similar for use with DOS box it sounds so much better than software midi emulation and its pretty much plug and play unlike back in the old dos days.

[Dwyloc]

@ral-clan

Yes but it can't do the custom non predefined patch's that most MT-32 music and games use so its basically useless as the MT-32 is Linear Arithmetic synthesis rather than a GS synthesis device.

In fact the SC-55 MT-32 support is so crap Roland make a model that effectively had both the MT-32 and MT-32 hardware in the same case, the CM-500 only lacking the LCD display.

I have quite often heard the MT-32 described as a mixed analogue digital synthesiser.

And for technical reasons is very hard to emulate if you have never tried playing with a real MT-32 you dont know what you are missing