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fluke

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Everything posted by fluke

  1. That's doable. I'm still not sure i like the interface though, so i went ahead and wrote it. It looks like this: You can download the PRC file from http://one-two-three-four-five.com/palm/sid-b.prc. It'll need at least PalmOS 3.0, but it doesn't check for it. Tap either side of the encoder to rotate it. It doesn't do anything else.
  2. Other than my dislike of vitual knobs (sliders are much easier to use with a mouse, only 1 axis to travel), it's possible. But it's getting out of the "Palm as a display" realm and into the "Palm port of JSynthLib" realm. Which is something i can't write myself without a Midibox or Palm MIDI interface. I could help someone else write it though, PalmOS isn't very hard to program for in C and it'll mostly consist of writing handlers to convert button presses into SysEx messages.
  3. What do you mean by "the virtual MIDIbox tools"? I was planning on starting with a simple system for mostly text, so as to offload most of the work from the Core module to the Palm, but still make it general purpose enough that it won't need a fully custom Palm application for each sort of MidiBox.
  4. Here's a screenshot to illustrate what sort of commands i'm planning to implement: While you could use it as a framebuffer, i'd expect most of the commands to be text drawing, with the occasional line or box. The P87LPC760 is 8051-based microcontroller. PICs are nicer to use and we already have the IIC_MIDI and IIC_SPEAKJET projects to base it on.
  5. I am planning on a completely custom protocol. PalmOrb already emulates a 20x4 Maxtrix Orbital, which is a HD44780 accessed via serial, so i wanted to do something more, a bitmap display rather a purely character based one. I was thinking of using MIOS's custom LCD driver functionallity and upgrading the applications to take full advantage of the Palm. (Not that i have time to do that at the moment.) The MBHP LTC would work if the display was accessed over MIDI, but wouldn't that mean you'd loose access to the MIDI out port of the Core?
  6. Like many people on this forum, i would like to use my Palm PDA as a display for a MidiBox. I have a plan for how to do this. However, i also have a 6 week old son, so i don't have time to build a MidiBox at the moment. I will probably have time to write the Palm software side. My plan isto take the PalmOrb software and replace the commands with ones that take full advantage of the screen. The Palm would be linked to the Midibox Core via an IIC_MIDI interface speaking RS-232 at 38400 baud instead of MIDI. Newer Palms without a serial port could be connected via IR. The command set would include characters at 3x6, 5x8 and 10x16 sizes, line, box, filled rectangle and bitmap drawing. Some extra custom functions could be developed for drawing such things as ADSR envelopes. So if someone has time now to build the hardware and write the software for the Core module, let me know and i'll start on the Palm software.
  7. http://ucapps.de/mbhp_lcd.html has instructions for wiring a hd61202 based display
  8. This is the problem with ordering from supplies outside of your country, they can just ignore you and there's nothing you do about it. Being in New Zealand, i have less options for suppliers than you do. Suppliers in USA or Europe seem to have good prices, but hugely expensive shipping costs. Futurlec do have reasonable shipping costs, so i was planning on ordering from them. Do you know of anywhere that has good prices and cheap shipping?
  9. There's always this classic algorithm for swapping variables without a temporary variable: x = x ^ y; y = x ^ y; x = x ^ y; ( ^ is the xor operator) It works as long as x and y are not the same variable (ie, not the same address)
  10. I believe i hade the same problem with my MidiSport in beta 4_4 in that Out B didn't work. I didn't experiment with that version much though. My routing window looks like this: With pmidi on Linux i can use both ports separatly and distinctly. The output of pmidi -l (list the available midi ports) is: Port Client name Port name 62:0 Midi Through Midi Through Port-0 80:0 MidiSport 2x2 MidiSport 2x2 MIDI 1 80:1 MidiSport 2x2 MidiSport 2x2 MIDI 2
  11. The newer ARM based Palm devices do support J2ME (Sun did write a MIDP 1.0 JVM for 68k based Palms, but it only supports PalmOS 3.5 and is rather slow). A drum machine would be a useful application for J2ME. Probably only as a metronome, the drums on my phone sound horrible and i think they must have only 3 samples for the entire midi drum range. :)
  12. I have a couple of problems with MIOS Studio beta 7. I have an M-Audio midisport 2x2, which shows up as 2 input ports labeled "M 2x2 [hw:2,0]" and two output ports named the same. Input works from either In A or In B on the midisport, but output only works from Out A, Out B gets no signal. It doesn't matter which device i select in the MIDI Device Routing window. Also, my wife's keyboard continually sends "Active Sensing" messages and none of the filtering options stop it from being printed in the MIDI Monitor window. I'm Java 1.5.0_06 on Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (with kernel 2.6.15).
  13. I haven't tried it, but this page has a circuit for a Palm/MIDI adapter and a simple example program for using it in Basic. Palms (at least the 68k based ones, i don't know about the ARM based ones) can do serial at 31250 baud, so only the voltages have to be adapted. http://www.physicalbits.com/Pilot/PilotMidi.htm
  14. Which connector does the larger Zip drive which works use? External Zip (100MB) drives came in 3 formats: Parallel Port, SCSI and Parallel+SCSI. Internal ones came in IDE and possibly SCSI as well. If it is an IDE drive, a hard drive should just drop in. Or a Compact Flash card with a CF to IDE adapter. The only thing to be concerned about is the maximum size drive supported. The first of the IDE limits was ~540MB.
  15. I have a Midisport 2x2. It works well under Linux with the drivers from http://usb-midi-fw.sourceforge.net/. They use the firmware from the Windows drivers, but it was able to run the installer under Wine so i didn't have to find a Windows box.
  16. I think that's what the sound cards run the YMF262 at. My Aztech sound card says 14.31818, my Sound Blaster 16s just say 14.3 on their crystal.
  17. If R1 and R2 are there to limit the "in rush" current to C1 and C3, then they should be in series with the capacitors instead of parallel. Initially the capacitors have close to 0 ohms resistance (increasing to infinity as they get fully charged) and any resistance in parallel with 0 ohms is still going to be a total of 0 ohms. parallel: Rt = 1/(1/R1 + 1/R2) series: Rt = R1 + R2 The internal resistance of the transformer may be enough to not need the limiting resistors. I would just put the recommended fuse on the primary side of the transformer and only add the resistors if it blows immediately.
  18. Not all SoundBlaster 16s have the required chips unfortunately. Some of them have the OPL3 chips built into their large ASICs, as your one does. If you look at the large chip in the bottom right of your first image, you'll see the "OPL" logo. This is a sure sign that at least the YMF262 is in there and i can't see the YAC512 anywhere either so that (or an equivalent) will be in there too. Time to try eBay? I know the Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 does have it, as well as the Vibra 16 model CT2800 (which isn't on the offical list).
  19. Have you measured the current being supplied by the transformer? If it's less than 400mA per side and the transformer is still getting hot, maybe you've got a faulty transformer? That layout image looks very nice, what did you use to draw it?
  20. I couldn't do that because i need a bi-directional connection between the PalmPilot and the MidiBox FM. I think i've figured out a simple way to do it. If it split the output of MidiMerger 1 into two AND gates, i can use two output pins on the PIC to turn the signal on and off to each device based on which channel the message is going to. Which means i just have to add one 74HC00 chip to the circuit.
  21. Could you post the plans please? I was thinking of making a wooden case for the Midibox FM i will eventually get around to making and your's looks a nice design. That sort of wood is either called Plywood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plywood) in English or just wood with a veneer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_veneer).
  22. The only indicator that a file is a JAR file instead of a ZIP is the presence of the META-INF directory and the MANIFEST.MF file inside it. Otherwise they have the same file structure, compression method (for versions of ZIP >= 2.0) and header at the begining. I find IE ignores the mime type the web server sends and works it out for itself by examining the file contents. Hence it thinks JAR files are ZIPs. IE 6.0SP1 was supposed stop doing that (since it is a security risk), but i've still seen it do it.
  23. What's the board number of your SoundBlaster 16? (Upper left corner of the compoent side when the edge connector is at the bottom, starts with CT.) From the looks of the of the datasheet i found on http://www.datasheetarchive.com/, the YMF289B is compatible with the YMF262, but has a different clock and pinout (and the ability to read from the data registers). It was designed for 3.3V operation,but does run at 5V. So it should work, but you'd need to redo the board layout. The YAC516 is the corresponding DAC for the YMF289B.
  24. I want to build a MidiBox FM and use a PalmPilot (specifically my TRGpro (http://handera.com/Products/TRGpro.aspx)) as the control surface. I also want to be able to plug a keyboard in to control the MidiBox FM and have the PalmPilot recieve the data from the keyboard as well for use as a sequencer. To top it off, i'd like to include my Yamaha DB50XG (a WaveBlaster card addon to the SoundBlaster 16) in there as well. I know i'll need 2 MidiMerger units, how i separate the data going to the MidiBox FM and the Yamaha DB50XG? Both would be listening on all 16 midi channels wouldn't they? Do i need to build some sort of reverse MidiMerger that buffers the midi messages and sends channels 1-10 to the Yamaha DB50XG only and 11-16 to the MidiBox FM? Or are there some standard SysEx commands to tell a device to ignore certain channels? Sorry if this is an obvious question, i'm just starting out with midi devices.
  25. Since the SFX uses tge OPL chip and the MidiBox FM uses the OPL3, it's backwards compatible. Just modify the firmware to use 9 2-operator voices instead of 6 4-operator ones and don't use any other waveform than sine and you've got a Midbox SFX. :)
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