sammichSID MIDI issues or me being dumb!

[Rave]

Hi all,

 

Please go easy on me, I am new to MIDI and Sammich!

 

I have built a Sammich a few months ago now, and was having problems flashing it, Rowan kindly had a look at it and between him and TK it was fixed (bad optocoupler)

 

Rowan flashed the MIOS and patches for me and I replaced the opto coupler, and bought 2 new SID's as the existing ones were both slightly faulty, now its up and running and the Sammich sounds great triggering the patches from the buttons on it's front panel.

 

Now, here comes the problem:

 

I have wanted to hook it up via MIDI so I can play the patches with a keyboard, which i think should be fairly straight forward based on other MIDI devices I have used.

 

When I hook up the Sammich to my controller keyboard I set it to send on channel 1, I also make sure in the patch on the sammich, in the menu that it is set to also use channel 1, I play the keyboard and nothing happens, I cycle through patches and make sure they are on channel 1 also, but still nothing?

 

I have also hooked the sammich up to fruityloops via a Umidi USB cable (as suggested by the whitelist) and set fruity to output on channel 1, now this does strange things, sometimes the patch will trigger or play randomly or sometimes it causes the sammich to cycle through patches randomly?

 

I have midi out on the keyboard and or fruityloops to midi in on the sammich.

 

I have taken it to a friend who is a bit more knowledgeable with MIDI than me, and he has had a play and thinks there may be an issue with the sammich not properly responding to the midi information, and possibly miss translating what it is receiving.

 

Could this be me just not knowing enough about MIDI, or is there potentially another issue with the sammich that needs correcting, like with the faulty optocoupler?

 

Any help appreciated, and if someone could confirm the best way to make sure it is receiving MIDI and translating it properly that would be great.

 

Thanks,

 

Kai.

[TK.]

Hi Kai,

 

this isn't the normal behaviour, actually the usage should be straightforward.

Especially normal MIDI events (no SysEx data) should work with any MIDI interface - even with the blacklisted ones.

And with any other MIDI device (such as a MIDI keyboard) of course.

 

I'm surprised that after an optocoupler replacement and successful firmware upload there are still issues with receiving MIDI data.

The need for a replacement is already very unusual.

 

Therefore I think that the replacement didn't solve the actual issue.

Rowan, if you are reading this posting: did you check if MIDI notes can be received correctly after the repair?

 

Anyhow, here a link to the troubleshooting guide which helps to identify the problem: http://www.ucapps.de/howto_debug_midi.html

 

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[Rowan]

MIDI reception seemed fine after I uploaded the firmware and patches.

The SIDs behaved a little odd. Some patches would only play out the left (if I remember correctly) audio channel. I put this down to bad a SID chip.

Rave has replaced the SIDS so if that was the problem it should have been fixed.

[Rave]

I can confirm the optocoupler and both SID's have been replaced, the optocoupler was new (I do have a spare I can test with though, so I might try that first) The original SID's had issues with filters and some other weirdness, but the new ones in there now have no problem and sound fine, and have been tested in a C64 with the test SID app.

 

Honestly, I'm a bit at my wits end with this now :( I am wondering if there is anyone that would be able to have a look at the sammich for me, as clearly I don't seem to have the skills to make it work, I am happy to pay for someone's time and return postage if anyone can help.

 

Thanks,

 

kai.

 

[edit] I  have replaced the optocoupler with a new one just in case, but still have the same issues.

 

I will start progressing through the troubleshooting guide and see how it goes.

Edited March 3, 2015 by Rave