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.

[boing4000]

AFAIK MIDI is some kind of serial port. If there is any Amiga software that could use the RS232 port as a MIDI interface, minimig should do the same.
But thats all I know about it, never used an Amiga on any kind of MIDI devices.

[Crom00]

Should work long as the midi app and tunes and fin on an adf.
Also with the correct cabling you should be able to get a midid setup as the midi cables connected to the serial ports.

[JimS]

MIDI is serial, but it's a current loop rather than a voltage level interface like the serial port. I'm thinking one of the MIDI interfaces made for the Amiga should work, assuming the MINIMIG serial port has the power voltages for the interface. (And they're on the right pins.)

That said, I remember running a cheap Casio keyboard on my Amiga with an interface made from one resistor and a DIN plug. It's the MIDI in that needs optical isolation. Unfortunately I don't remember the specifics... maybe it was on Aminet

[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.

[Ral-Clan]

The SoundCanvas is still and excellent sound module.  Although old, it can still produce professional results (the piano sounds are very good, for instance).  I have one and use it in my home recording studio all the time.  Bars & Pipes even has a special module for picking patches from an SC-55.  Of course, I used a regular Amiga MIDI interface.  My A2000 died in August, but now I am using UAE and a PC to run Amiga music software (still with the SC-55 and a lot more!).

Now....as to getting it connected to a MiniMig.  That is the big question.  As an Amiga musician, I find it a bit frustrating that there is so little information about MIDI compatibility from the makers of the new Amiga clones (A-Clone, MiniMig, Natami, Sam440).  Of course, most of these people are not musicians....but it would be nice to know if and what MIDI interfaces will work with these machines?  The old Classic interfaces?  New PC/Mac USB interfaces?

[Oliver]

There are some really basic serial port to MIDI interfaces available for Amiga. I believe there is at least one design on Aminet.

If I remember correctly (it has been a while for me), standard Amiga serial ports could actually run at MIDI Baud (31250 b/s +-1%). Not sure if the MiniMig can do that or not. If it can, that simplifies the design of an RS-232 to MIDI interface.

Alternatively, lots of Roland sound modules come with a 'MIDI to host' port. This is basically a serial port on the sound module, which accepts MIDI data at standard RS-232 Baud. This requires a (fairly simple) driver though.

Whatever you use, it will have to supported by your sequencer. I'm pretty sure most Amiga sequencers would support serial port MIDI interfaces.

[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.

[Ral-Clan]

I should probably tell you that the SC-55 has an MT-32 sound-set inside it.  Meaning, it does all the MT-32 did (with the same sound samples - both being Roland products) and more.  So I'm not sure you need both.

[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

[Lutz G]

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

And you can do it with your Amiga
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDCshk1Q0Ak
 
 
Lutz

[Forcie]

 As an Amiga musician, I find it a bit frustrating that there is so little information about MIDI compatibility from the makers of the new Amiga clones (A-Clone, MiniMig, Natami, Sam440).  Of course, most of these people are not musicians....but it would be nice to know if and what MIDI interfaces will work with these machines?  The old Classic interfaces?  New PC/Mac USB interfaces?

I cannot speak for the others, but Natami has a serial port which is directly bangable by the Amiga custom chipset registers. So Amiga serial peripherals, including MIDI interfaces, works just like on a classic no matter what software is used. (You will need a 25<>9pin D-Sub converter though).

External MIDI is one of my personal intended usage areas for my own Natami system, and it has actually been discussed quite a lot on the Natami boards. And we actually have quite a lot of musicians and people interested in audio tech on the team - so do not worry about that.

USB to MIDI dongle support is a matter of supporting it in the USB stack, so Natami is in the same boat as other classic Amigas here. Poseidon USB has  simplemidi.class and camdusbmidi.class. But I think most serious musicians would prefer the no-latency glory of the Amiga serial port to a USB dongle. There are even musicians going back to sequencing on their old Atari STs and Amigas from their modern Macs just because of the total responsiveness of the MIDI interfaces as compared to USB solutions.

I will recieve my own Natami board shortly, and I will play around quite a lot with my HW synths. Just need to get hold of an Amiga MIDI interface again, currently short on that.

[kolla]

The few MIDI interfaces I have for Amiga are pretty simple, but they pull power from the two amiga-specific pins on the 25 pin Amiga serial port.

[Forcie]

Yes, you might need to borrow an ATX molex in some cases.