OrganGrinder

i agree, i was just speculating pie in the sky stuff. making a router for 16x16 would exceed my current needs anyway.

hi stryd i was just thinking, is there any reason why we couldn't use the DIN and DOUT modules for midi messages? obvisously we would need to use a chip with more memory than the 18f452 so that we can have the buffer(s) to avoid dropping messages. thats a potential of a 129x129 router on one core! ;D of course there would be good reason why we couldn't go that big.

hi i suppose it is possible to do what you said, create a (large) breakout box for the hammond tonewheels which is then controlled by midi. robinfawell's solution has its possibilities and can be done using a high end pentium3 (1.0 - 1.4 MHz) as for simulating the leslie speakers, why not get some proper rotary speakers from hammond (http://www.hammondorganco.com/). they can take a signal from any audio gear.

i have read on this forum about work on implimenting a scanning matrix so that more inputs can be read. the downside of this technique is that input latency is increased from around 1ms to 8 ms. i think it would be better to connect 2 or more core-midio128 in a daisy chain. you will probably have a lower latency than a scanning matrix. additionally midio128 can be setup to recognise the difference between a passed through midi in signal and a midi out from further up the daisy chain. (sorry, but i don't think this is reading the way i mean it) i believe it is done with the configuration file, but i don't know exactly how.

hi there are also raiser cards available for pci-e and pci-x. don't worry too much about pci-x because pci-e is far superior from what i have heard. and if you are particularly desperate, i might be able to find an isa raiser card in my spare parts bin (LOL) OrganGrinder

hi all the hammond sound is unique!!! i understand that it is produced by some electro-mechanical means. add to that, the B3 went out of production in the mid 70's after a production run of around a quarter century. good news is that hammond is selling an upgraded model called The New B3 for about a year now http://hammondorganco.com/B3.htm. alternatively native instruments has a software synth called the B4 II http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=b4ii_us&ftu=5b3b828ddb49ef0 OrganGrinder

hi sd2000 it appears that your problem is that you are activating the DOUT pins on discrete volume levels from midi. the problem is that the volume signal probably will use other values in the volume messages. therefore you need to configure your system to activate the appropriate pin on its range of volume levels. i believe hand coding which DOUT to activate for each of the 128 volume levels can be done. (if there is an easier way, can someone who knows midio128 better than myself explain it) btw the signal levels you are providing for each DOUT appear to be on a logarithmic scale, it might be a good idea to check the pot attached to your expression pedal and make sure it is a linear pot and not a logarithmic pot. (i don't know how to tell the difference, but it should be available with a google search) on a linear scale, an even distribution would be: [table][tr][td]DOUT[/td][td]Hex[/td][td]Dec[/td][/tr][tr][td]1[/td][td]0-15[/td][td]0-21[/td][/tr][tr][td]2[/td][td]16-2A[/td][td]22-42[/td][/tr][tr][td]3[/td][td]2B-40[/td][td]43-64[/td][/tr][tr][td]4[/td][td]41-55[/td][td]65-85[/td][/tr][tr][td]5[/td][td]56-6A[/td][td]86-106[/td][/tr][tr][td]6[/td][td]6B-127[/td][td]107-127[/td][/tr][/table] of course this assumes that your minimum and maximum volume signals from your hardware are 0 and 0x7F(127) respectively. now once you get the system working, there is no reason not to adjust the values for reasons of comfort, ascetics or placing the transition points at the same places as the orignal organ. just take care not to have any overlaps (which would power more than one of the DOUT) or gaps (which would have none of the DOUTs powered). best of luck OrganGrinder

Hi Toneburst I recently resolved a problem which seems very similar to what you are describing my core was being powered by a 9volt battery, which was going flat. as the core was rebooting due to low voltage, it was sending partial signals which mios studio was interpreting as single byte signals try checking the voltage at core:j2. i found that the reboot is programmed to occur if the voltage drops to about 4.5 volts. btw the battery was supplying 7.5 volts before the bridge rectifier and voltage regulator. my solution was to connect the core to a transformer wall adaptor and it now works without any problems (other than a hot voltage regulator, but thats a different story) alternatively you could try a fresh battery just so that you know, i originally thought i was somehow uploading corrupted programs to the core and went through a serious process of redownloading and reinstalling mios studio, and the mios programs i was using to test my cores. at one point i was afraid that i somehow damaged the pics by some unknown means. OrganGrinder

hi all i have just midified one of the manuals of the gulbranson!!!! once i got the hang of what i was doing it was easy. i think i can get a scanner so i can show what i did to the schematics, on the organ i only needed to remove 2 resistors per key, cut a few wires and connect the wires from the din to the circuit. now to figure out the pedal controllers - this could be a little harder as the pedal contacts work through an active matrix, but i'll see what i can do... OrganGrinder

i have just successfully used midi-ox to upload the syx file without any problems. to clarify what i did... 1. installed mios with mios studio 2. installed midio128 with mios studio using the midio128_v2_1c package 3. configured midio128.ini from the mk_midio128_syx package 4. run the batch from a cmd prompt as per the mk_midi128_syx readme (needs perl) 5. configured midi-ox as per the readme from mk_midi128_syx 6. uploaded the midi128.syx file to midibox 7. tested the configuration - and it worked without a problem. i have tried using sysexbox_18f_v1_1c, but without success, but i think that was from a totally unrelated problem with power supply (which i have rectified). i have not retried using sysexbox, so i don't know if it works as expected. OrganGrinder

you can also use the RS232 with the midibox ltc module. it may need some custom wiring/coding for use with the c64, maybe someone has already done it with midibox. OrganGrinder

welcome abord scube the problem with your question is that it is not clear what you are asking. i have come with two interpretations: 1 you are wanting to run c64 audio software on a midibox device; or 2 you are wanting to build a midi device using midibox for a c64 the answer to version 1 is probably not, what is being asked is to emulate a different computer architecture and would be far too much work for most hobbiests, not to mention most pics probably dosn't have the memory to do anything useful if it was possible. now i assume you were meaning version 2 and would like to interface a midibox with a c64. i would say that it is possible but you need to ask someone who has more understanding of the c64 than i do, there are plenty of them on this forum. OrganGrinder ps sorry about my picking, but i find that if the question is clear and not subject to interpretation, everyone benefits.

hi pk thanks for your reply, and thanks for not overreacting to the emotional parts of my post. i have been insired inspired by the organ retrofit ideas that have some around of late, particularly the use of midi as the communication medium of keyboard/stop controls. a software solution which has got me thinking is hauptwerk (http://www.crumhorn-labs.com/), a pipe organ simulator. but i have a few problems with it, firstly it is expensive. but the main issues i have with it are that it is proprietry software (closed source) and although this appears to be a philisophical issue, my concern with closed source is what happens if the developers interests change or the company goes bust. but my main issue with it at the moment is the need for a single monolithic computer in order to run the full featured system - there is mention of using a dual opteron system with 8GBytes of memory - you can buy a new computer for the cost of each of these opteron processors. i was going to give an overview of a software alternative i was thinking of developing - but it would have gone too far off topic (it would deserve a new thread) and i don't think i have developed the idea enough to post at this time anyway - but to put it simply, a open source alternative to hauptwerk. btw miditzer is a great piece of software, provides good sound and can be run on the "normal" level computers available today. my problems with it at the moment are only with regard to configuring it with the "strange" hardware that i currently have available (read my previous posts). OraganGrinder

i agree with you pk what i asked was (now read slowly this time) how to setup the audio output from the pc (the two stereo out channels) to cater for a specific hardware audio input configuration which is not a "standard" audio system. at the simplest how to reconfigure windows quadraphonic output into 4 discrete mono channels - now don't repeat that it is already there because windows filters the sound for use with what is assumed to be a surround sound system. for example as in the setup i described earlier say the two main channels are channel 1 and 2, the leslie speaker is on channel 3 and the subwoofer is on channel 4. if i play a tibia sound, i expect the sound to output through channels 1 and 2, but if i have tibia tremelo engaged, i require sound through channel 3 instead (that is how the leslie rotory speaker system works, right?) if i play a note with a pedal, i expect the signal through channel 4 (i am not sure if this is only channel 4 or in addition to 1 and 2). my organ was built in the 70's, they knew about wave theory and developed the organ to take into account loud and quiet spots generated by multiple speakers - that is why the main channel is divided into main a+b and main a-b (this information i got from the service manual). now the Ta-Da responses to my previous post simply tell me to combine all the output channels from the computer and connect them equally to the inputs to the amplifer which is not the question that i asked. i asked how to utilise the hardware which i have already to its full capacity with the features that are available - why would i want a simulated tremelo (which is not much better than a vibrato) by a synth when i have a fully functional leslie system. if the Ta-Da responses were meaning that i connect each of the four pc audio outputs to individual audio input of the poweramp, that is an even stupider suggestion. think of it, a sound from the front left in one main speaker, the front right to the other main speaker, a sound from the rear right through the leslie and the rear right through the subwoofer. if this is a suggested work around for use with fluid synth, i would have expected alot more detail including settings for fluidsynth (and i don't think settings to this details are supported anyway) i am sorry that this may upset those who did respond to my query, it is that i asked a question well beyond how to connect pc audio out to organ audio in and i assumed that the level of detail that i gave would have indicated what i was after, i was talking about specific audio channels on the organ indicating the contrast to the audio channels of a quadraphonic output from a pc. i have not programmed audio output from a pc before, and i do not know if directing audio to specific audio channels is possible - but i assumed it was always done this way until recently with libraries which only required where the sound was coming from and the library would handle the channel mixing. so to sum it up ... can the software and pc audio out be reconfigured to cater for the specific audio inputs which the power amplifers of my console have? as stated before the audio input channels of the console are main a+b, main a-b, subwoofer and leslie speaker. OrganGrinder

it would be great if miditzer and other software would send audio out which is suitable for the amp inputs of retrofitted consoles, i wonder if we could ask the developer(s) to do so. in my situation with a gulbranson 600 connecting the audio outputs from a computer to the preamp of the console would be a difficult task, firstly there are many audio inputs in addition to signals being passed on to reverb units and other filters, on top of that there are many controls which are adjusted with variable resistors. an alternative that i was thinking was to bypass the preamp and let the computer and software handle the issues of mixing, filtering etc and just send out what would be sent to the consoles power amp, which then goes to headphones/speakers. to do this, the computer would need to output audio on 4 discrete mono channels tibia leslie, pedal, a+b main, a-b main. obviously the first two are to the power amp inputs which go through to the leslie speaker and the subwoofer respectively, and the second two are amplified and passed to the main speakers. obviously if the pc audio output is not enough for the consoles power amp, a customised preamp (4 channels) would be needed to boost the signal to get best results from the amp/speakers. OrganGrinder