Midibox PSIM modular CV computer?

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A friend of mine purchased one of these over a year ago, and hasn't received it yet...

http://www.synthmodules.com/psim-1.htm

Looking at its specifications, it looks like a Midibox CORE module, with an AOUT board

could easily do everything that this thing can, perhaps even more, since it will have

midi I/O as well.  How difficult would it be to program something like a quantizer, or

S/H for such a module?  Would it make sense to start with the Midibox CV program,

and modify it, or from some other program like the Midibox seq (sequencing would

be a really nice feature too)?

If this worked, and was easy enough to write applications for, there would be a

pretty large demand for such a versatile beast!  I suppose a C++ editor would be a

little easier to deal with - is this in the works, or just a dream at this point?

-gerald

[TK.]

Hi Gerald,

by using the MIOS C skeleton it shouldn't be that difficult to realize a quantizer, simple sequencer or whatever you want. In difference to assembly programs, sharing code with other users is much easier.

So, how about a MIOS user library, a collection of some interesting functions and "program-modules", maintained by users and not by myself?

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[drsyncenstein]

A core + aout + shx8 + bankstick  would be perfect as a building block for programmable analog synths.

I'm drooling when i think about it.

But the problem is, building the electronics is so much easier compared to writing the software,

that iguess very few midiboxers are able to code this.

C might be an improvement for some, but personally, i have enough trouble with basic!

So i'm a bit pessimistic about a library  :(

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Posted by: drsyncenstein

But the problem is, building the electronics is so much easier compared to writing the software,

that iguess very few midiboxers are able to code this.

-----------

I'm going to give it a go.  I installed the C wrapper stuff, but have been running into some problems with make.bat giving me

syntax error

file not found (x3)

Out of environment space (x3)

Assembling MIOS SDCC wrapper

Bad command or file name.

================

Compiling pic18f452.c

Bad command or file name (x3)

blah blah blah.

It seems like the syntax of the dos batch file is not happy with my Win ME.

Ah....

a little web-searching and I found that NT's batch language is pretty much incompatible

with the DOS 8.0 that ME runs.  I'll try to translate it, but it may be hopeless...

Stinkin' old computer...

-gerald

[drsyncenstein]

Hello Logo, i did not say you should not try  :P

[TK.]

Hi Gerald,

I used the good old DOS batch language which is documented here: http://home.att.net/~gobruen/progs/dos_batch/dos_batch.html

(I used it, because all Unix-style make.exe programs I found cannot handle properly with path variables - it causes even more issues with all windows versions)

DOS batch should be compatible with all DOS/windows versions, but a potential problem is, that the PATH variables to sdcc and the gputils is not configured correctly. In WinXP this is done automatically during the installation.

So far I remember in previous windows versions this has to be done in C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT

Are you able to start "sdcc", "gpasm" and "gplink" from the command line?

However, today I wrote some low-level AOUT functions for the C wrapper, it works very well and especially very fast (because they are assembly optimized ;-))

I've also prepared some small C programming examples which demonstrate the possibilities:

• forward/processing incoming MIDI events to AOUTs
  
• forward/processing AIN values to AOUTs
  
• generate waveforms at the AOUTs (AOUT = f(t))
  
• transform incoming waveforms to new waveforms (AOUT = f(x))
  
• set gate outputs depending on AIN levels
  

hope that this gives enough inspirations - once I find the time to write some documentation, I will release it (maybe tomorrow if nothing else happens)

Best Regards, Thorsten.

P.S.: the programming effort to realize this was 2 hours so far ;-)

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Hi Gerald,

Are you able to start "sdcc", "gpasm" and "gplink" from the command line?

Yes - my paths are correct.  I found some info online that indicates many batch commands from NT/XP/2000 are incompatible with old DOS based machines.  Example - in the clean.bat file

if exist _output del /s /q _output

My DOS version 8.0 doesn't support the /q switch.  Don't know why, but it doesn't.

I'll keep plugging away at modifying make.bat so that it works.

However, today I wrote some low-level AOUT functions for the C wrapper, it works very well and especially very fast (because they are assembly optimized ;-))

I've also prepared some small C programming examples which demonstrate the possibilities:

• forward/processing incoming MIDI events to AOUTs
  
• forward/processing AIN values to AOUTs
  
• generate waveforms at the AOUTs (AOUT = f(t))
  
• transform incoming waveforms to new waveforms (AOUT = f(x))
  
• set gate outputs depending on AIN levels
  

hope that this gives enough inspirations - once I find the time to write some documentation, I will release it (maybe tomorrow if nothing else happens)

With this set of examples, you have covered just about everything on my wish-list!  Not only that, but I have always been a wannabe programmer - I can modify examples much much faster than I can program from scratch.  So, armed with these examples, I'm going to have a great time.  Let us know when they're posted!

Thanks much!

-gerald

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I think I found the major problem with the batch file syntax.

Commands like

set SDCC_DEFINES=-DDEBUG_MODE=0

make DOS 8.0 throw up - it doesn't like the second = sign.  I can't think of a way around this - I may end up having to type everything in by hand at the command line.

-gerald

[TK.]

Hi Gerald,

does it work better with following line:

set SDCC_DEFINES="-DDEBUG_MODE=0"

similar things have to be done in tools\make_sub.bat

If this doesn't help, then it's maybe better when I'm writing some kind of makefile generator, which doesn't get use of such special tricks

The Analog Toolbox is now released, the description can be found here: http://69.56.171.55/~midibox/forum/index.php?topic=5080.0

Best Regards, Thorsten.