Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 06:39:04 +0000 (CDT) From: jimd@siu.edu To: Mathew Kanner <mat@cnd.mcgill.ca> Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: MIDI on SB Live! ? Message-ID: <20030515061748.O1048@freebsd2.localnet10>
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I, for one, would really like to see full/complete MIDI capabilities under FreeBSD. I have an Amiga-2000 system that I have been using for MIDI with two MIDI keyboards (playback and input) for quite a few years, and have a SoundBlaster Live! soundcard under FreeBSD. So far, I have not been able to find any useful music generating and MIDI software available for FreeBSD (yes - I have tried/looked at just about everything available from SourceForge, most of which doesn't work under FreeBSD, or is too limited in capability if it works at all). I have tried KDE and Gnome applications, and others for those environments, to no avail. The Amiga Unix Emulation works fairly well for the music software, but I cannot get any MIDI functions to work, and I would prefer native FreeBSD applications. I tried the 4Front OSS package once, but it didn't help and it caused problems with some music/sound applications. I am going to try OSS again under FreeBSD-5.1-BETA. I don't have much installed yet, so don't have as much to lose. I might be willing to offer non-programming support for (EMU10K1) MIDI development support, depending on what is needed. On Mar 22, Michael Nottebrock wrote: > On Friday 21 March 2003 21:01, der_julian@web.de wrote: > > just out of curiosity: Is someone working in MIDI support for Creative > > EMU10K1 based sound cards (aka Soundblaster Live!) ? > On and off, as far as I can tell. If you want MIDI right now, take a look at > what 4Front Technologies offers in their commercial OSS package. Hello Micheal and all, (this is reply targeted at the thread) In not sure about 4front compatability with -current. ALSA would require a complete rewrite to work for multiple platforms because they are intimate with the linux pci interface. IMHO, it would require a fork of their project. MIDI in FreeBSD is highly hackable. It took me only a couple of days to get midi working for an es173x, a made a small web page a few months ago, it was for 5.0-dp2 but would probably work with 5.0-R. As it is, midi can be a kld and all that is required for a particular card is basic IO. The emu10k should be easier than most because we already have code for a generic mpu401. Here are some web links, http://www.cnd.mcgill.ca/~mat/es137xmidi.html (my small es137x midi page, mostly derived from other sources) Nice references for midi hacking: from NetBSD (it's .se.netbsd because .netbsd seems to be down) http://cvsweb.se.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/midi.c http://cvsweb.se.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/midisyn.c http://cvsweb.se.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/sequencer.c http://cvsweb.se.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/pci/esa.c http://cvsweb.se.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/pci/emuxki.c (oops, no midi for emu on netbsd) from ALSA: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/alsa/alsa-kernel/drivers/mpu401/ http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/alsa/alsa-kernel/pci/ http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/alsa/alsa-kernel/pci/emu10k1/ After all of this, the reality is, very few people care about midi for freebsd and it has been neglected for along time. We're lucky that the work done long ago still works. --Mat -- Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering? Pinky: I think so Brain, but pants with horizontal stripes make me look chubby. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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