Amiga + Roland SC88 Pro

[bbond007]

I ordered a used Roland Sound Canvas SC88 Pro. Its not arrived yet, but I'm just trying to make sure I have the right cables to use it with my amiga.

I do have an Amiga MIDI adapter, but it is kind of bulky and perhaps unnecessary. I understand that the SC88 pro is capable of hooking to a PC or MAC directly via serial, however it appears to have a mini-din like the old 68K macintosh computers. I'm hoping to use a mac serial cable(which I already have) with a 9-25pin NULL Adapter which I ordered. I tried a regular 9-25 adapter with my ohm meter and it appeared the the TX and RX needed to be reversed so the simplest thing to do was to order a different 9-25 pin adapter with a NULL. The SC88 documentation seems to suggest it uses the same mini-din serial configuration as a Mac anyway...

The SC88pro has a switch for Mac vs PC serial. What is that all about? What is the difference between Mac vs PC serial? Both PC and Macs use the same mini-din serial port. What should I set that switch to with an Amiga using a Mac serial cable?

What software on the would you suggest I use on the Amiga? Are there any differences I should be aware of with the direct serial connection vs the MIDI box? Will the software see it as the same?

I'm only really interested in playback of general MIDI. My only other experience with MIDI on the amiga was simply Sierra games with MT32. With the MT32 I used the MIDI box. It does not have a serial connection.

I really don't know anything about the SC88Pro or Amiga MIDI and not found much discussion of the two being used together.

Thanks@

[bbond007]

I don't think you can use the serial connection on the Amiga.  I believe you may have neede special drivers on the Mac / PC side for that - as their serial ports (at least the PC's) couldn't do the odd speed MIDI uses.  They Amigas serial port is more flexible, and could do MIDI's baud rate.  But you will need a MIDI interface.

Actually, this may help. Reading the manual I can see that the switch has 4 states.

PC-1(MAC), PC-2(MAC), PC-1(PC), PC-2(PC)

The PC-1 settings are 31.25K (bit/sec) and the PC-2 settings are 38.4K (bit/sec). Still, the difference between PC and MAC are unclear from the manual.

I would think for any chance of success withy the Amiga, the speed would have to be set to 31.25 so that the machine things its talking to the MIDI box. Would that be correct?

I'm pretty sure the SC55 does not have the serial port unless its an MKII model. I was also looking as SC55s before really deciding on the SC88pro.


Thanks.

[bbond007]

Be interested if you get it to work.  I don't use my Amiga for Midi NE more only MODs and then only listening.

I'll report back either way. I figure first I'll try it the SC88 with my mac with m-audio firewire first to make sure the sc88pro works, then i'll try it with the amiga with the Midi adapter and finally try it directly connected with the various switch settings.

From what I read from the documentation, and I don't quite understand all this, but the SC88pro is like 2 midi devices and you would need a dual midi adapter(on any computer) to use all of the voices, however, that limitation does not exist with the serial interface.

Thanks,,

nate


BTW all I do with my MT32 is old dos games. Lately GODS...

Even with the SysEx thing that remaps it to GM it seems like it make a fairly crappy GM device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsMUlMpp7Bo

fans of the Amiga game might hate it but it does grow on you.

I do like the in-game music. All sound effects are done on the roland wich is cool.

Not my video, but it sounds the same on MT32.

I think it may look a little smoother on my computer. Not as smooth as the Amiga.

[bbond007]

As the SC88 has two MIDI in ports, i'd try using it as two different MIDI instruments connected to the Amiga. But that all depends on how many OUT ports your MIDI interface has. There's a few Amiga interfaces that have 2 or 3 MIDI out ports out there. Use a sequencing software such as Music-X or Dr. T's and assign two seperate channels to your two MIDI ports of the SC. Don't go for a tracker program just yet, as they tend to be akward on the MIDI part. There used to be an editor/librarian named Midi Quest that supported the SC55 module, but it stopped Amiga releases long ago, and i'm not sure it would cooperate with the SC88 although the 55 and 88 are both GM units..

My amiga midi adapter is just a solo. The midi adapter on my mac is a firewire one and I believe at least it supports dual.

I'll definitely look into Midi Quest. I do know (from the pdf) the SC88Pro has a button to emulate SC55MKII! I have also seen youtube videos were people make reference to using that button with dosbox games.

Thanks

[bbond007]

I really like my SC55 and would buy another one if it ever broke or got stolen.  The SC88 sounds even better.  I find it funny when/if people think of these as obsolete or old - they sound fantastic and if one can't make good music with then I think it's more a question of his/her creativity rather than the limits of the instrument.

If people think this stuff its obsolete or old, then I think vintage Roland stuff must have a bit of a following like the Amiga. This thing was hard to get

There are a lot of companies out of Japan selling Roland stuff, but the SC88s have built-in power supplies and Japan is 100v, so I worry about that.

I gave up bidding on a SC55 MKII when it got too expensive.

I watched several other auctions without participating for several weeks because I had ordered a SC88 (not pro) from Sears merchant "Fast Media" (for $179) who send an email saying my item was shipped, but it never showed up.

Searching on the internet, it turns out that is FastMedia's MO. Take the money and send an email saying the Item had shipped and give N/A as a tracking number.

Sure enough, They could not produce a tracking number, and they were dragging their feet saying they needed another 7 "business days" (which is another term for 2-weeks). I called them several times, emailed them, and sent them a stack of old-skool faxes (at 2400BPS) over my MagicJack.

Somehow they were able to get it done the next day.

Now that I had closure with the Sears/Fastmedia I was able to start looking for another SC88 Pro. This SC88 came up on eBay and I watched it for days and came in and snipped it at the last minute at $203.79 with a $209 high bid.

The eBay guy has good ebay cred, so this time I'm pretty sure I finally have a SC88pro on the way. Looks to be in good condition from the picture.

Seems to be in demand

[bbond007]

I ordered the SC88 from the same Amazon seller that sold me the MU90 vis Amazon (from Japan). Amazon said I would received the MU90 in weeks, but it somehow showed up (from Japan to my doorstep in the USA) two days later.

I was scared to order the sc88 from Japan, not because of the shipping cost/time, but because I was afraid of the 100v power and knowing that the PS is integrated. Did you get it yet and did you have any issue with that? Some documentation seems to suggest that it is 100-240v tolerant but that scared me. Did it need any sort of adapter?

I have also been scanning through the documentation of this linux driver called NOTEMIDI.

It is a serial midi driver for Linux. http://michaelminn.com/linux/notemidi/#toc3

At the very least the documentation verified that a the Mac modem cable with the 9->25 and NULL will work, the only difference is I'm going to use a combo. Otherwise My A1200 won't fit on its shelf. http://www.ebay.com/itm/380203662459

The source code may be of some use to me as well.

[bbond007]

commodorejohn

I checked on the x68000 stuff with Roland equipment on youtube. Pretty fantastic. I tried to get one working on my mac because that is the computer I have the MT32 on. I really need to try it on my PC bMecause the only emulator I could find for the mac (XM6i) was not a language I could understand. I was able to get Tetris running but could not even figure out how to get multi-disk games working there is no way I'm going to be able to figure out the MIDI. cool stuff though. I do also have windows 8 on the mac. Should try that. Just need to see if an m-audio firewire driver exists for windows8...

[bbond007]

Just a quick update.

I did get the Roland SC88PRO and hooked it to my mac it worked OK on that so I tried it on the Amiga with the MIDI box with Bars & Pipes and it worked with that as well.

I tried it with the serial interface with the various switch settings and did not get it to work.

I need to double check my cables with my meter and verify that that NULL 9->25 pin thing really is a NULL and not the same thing as I already had:) It does not have anything identifying it as a NULL...

I found another mac serial cable and a 9pin NULL adapter in my stash. This one actually is identified as as NULL. With this adapter I can try my Minimig 1.1 as it has a 9pin serial. I do know the Minimig 1.1 serial is compatible with MIDI. This latest cable I found was new, unopened from the 90s. I have no idea where I got all these mac serial cables from I also found a 25pin one but it looks pretty ratty. That one must be for printer, but I still think its serial.

My SC88Pro looked new and to me really sounds fantastic.