Hello, and Bootstrapping MIOS

[Guest pkstone]

Hi all,

This is my first post on this forum, but I have been studying all the aspects of Thorsten's excellent Mbox work for weeks now.  You may skip to the bottom if you don't want to read my long-winded intro.  :)

I'm rebuilding a custom controller called the "Axe Thing" that I built in the late 80's (see

http://www.spacecase0.com/phil/axething.jpg for a picture (but beware, it's about 700K!) :)

The old Axe Thing used a 6502 computer and a hand-wired MIDI interface to scan the 32 touch switches along the neck and send them out as (fixed-velocity) MIDI note messages.  Its trackball (and the three keyboard-style switches on the "horn" plugged directly into the Commodore Amiga's gameport; the MIDI notes and trackball info fed into and controlled custom music software I developed on the Amiga.

I have (reluctantly) moved on from the Amiga over the last few years; however, I have also found great joy in using Reason in live performance, so I have hit on the idea of redesigning the Axe Thing to use as a Reason controller.  I'll be scanning the trackball's encoders directly (in addition to the neck touch switches), adding a joystick, a few knobs and extra switches, led's, and, I hope, a piezo percussion sensor - as in the eDrum.

The MBHP will be my inspiration for the hardware, though I will probably wire a custom version of it to fit in the small space I have available.  MIOS looks like the way to go with the firmware - what an excellent design!  I'm a newbie to PIC programming (though studying hard and learning fast), but it looks like Thorsten has done all the hard work and organized things in a very easy-to-use format.

My question (FINALLY!):  it looks like I'll need to build the programmer in order to get the bootstrap code into the PIC18F - is that correct?  After that's done, I can just reprogram using MIDI?

Thank you for your excellent work, and your generous help, Thorsten.

Phil Stone

[Guest pkstone]

OK, I think I see how it  works now.  I was confused because the first time I downloaded the MIOS binary and html docs, the archive didn't expand correctly (using PKUnzip).   With WinZip, I got all the files correctly, including the mios_v1_0.syx file, which I couldn't find before.

So, I think I've solved the "text adventure"  :) , to work with MIOS, I'll need to build a core module, build a JDM programmer, burn the bootstrap code into the PIC, upload mios_v1_0.syx via MIDIOX, and then upload some app. code.

Piece of cake!   :)  I can't wait to get started.

Phil

[Steven_C]

Wow! looks like a lot of inginuity in that thing!

good luck with your midibox adventures! ;D

bye from Steve, btw, thanks for helping me understand how to load bootstrap etc!!!!!