Subject: Re: MIDI interfaces?
To: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
From: Sean Davis <dive@endersgame.net>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 07/11/2003 04:14:58
On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 02:48:55AM -0400, der Mouse wrote:
> I want to start playing with MIDI.  I have a soundcard which apparently
> has not only a physical MIDI port but also a synth on it:
> 
> sb0 at isa0 port 0x220-0x237 irq 5 drq 1 drq2 5: dsp v4.12
> audio0 at sb0: full duplex, mmap, independent
> midi0 at sb0: SB MIDI UART
> opl0 at sb0: model OPL3
> midi1 at opl0: SB Yamaha OPL3

While I don't know a thing about the MIDI API, I have never been able to get
midi to work on my SB Awe64 ISA. It has, if I configure all of them in the
kernel, three seperate MIDI devices that NetBSD will recognize: yet playing
a midi has never once worked. It just hangs and I have to control-C it, and
then it waits a while before exiting. From sb(4):

BUGS
     Non-SCSI CD-ROM interfaces are not supported.

     The MIDI interface on the SB hardware is braindead, and the driver
needs
     to busy wait while writing MIDI data.  This will consume a lot of
system
     time.

I'm not sure how correct this is, because playing midi files under windows
has always worked fine on every soundblaster card I've ever owned. Perhaps
the driver is braindead, not the interface?

-- 
/~\ The ASCII
\ / Ribbon Campaign                   Sean Davis
 X  Against HTML                       aka dive
/ \ Email!