ZXpand+ MIDI

[sirmorris]

So this happened.

[Moggy]

But does it work?

[sirmorris]

Yeah.

[Andy Rea]

Wait.... what..... mind blown....


Normal service will resume shortly....


Nope i jumped in the TARDIS last month and zoomed off to the future and apparently Mr C actually does get a posthumous knighthood in the year 2981 marking a thousand years of retro goodness for all mankind...

HugE applause to that man.

[Moggy]

Sounds f@$%#ng good chained to six pro midi modules I know that much!

[nollkolltroll]

Ah, so it streams the binary midi data from a file on the SD-card. No size constrictions?

[sirmorris]

Exactly. There was never going to be a full midi parser, all the heavy lifting is deferred to the pre-processing. There's no reason a tracker-style midi editor couldn't be written for the zeddy though. One of my ideas is that the existing zeddy tracker could have some very elementary midi support built in - even if it's just triggering / timecode generation. This would enable syncing midi instruments to AY tracker tunes.

[Moggy]

Ah, so it streams the binary midi data from a file on the SD-card. No size constrictions?

Just a point from me Charlie if thats OK?

Whilst there is no restriction for a file size on the card or indeed the songs playing time (16 mins for one of my tracks) I have found that MIDI files over a certain size(300k plus) won't convert at the MIDIMASH stage and produce errors concerning index sizes if that means anything to you.

In normal practice that shouldn't trouble most folk as most files tend not to exceed the boundaries in MIDIMASH.

[Moggy]

First there was this.....

[Moggy]

Which lead to this....

For the record.

On the Thursday 22 June 2017 at 15:20 after 108 emails and a dozen false starts, a ZX81 plus Zxpand+ combo using Sir Morris' prototype Midi player played,possibly for the first time ever for an 81,a full blown 16 channel General Midi file via two Midi modules daisy-chained together.
This is not to be confused with the play command 8 channel simple type Midi of the spectrum or the non GM peripherals created for it.

For reference the Midi file was a full orchestrated version of "Alfie" from the film of the same name.


What Charlie has done is in my opinion quite incredible and whilst some niggles still exist the fact that a zeddy can now play files just like the Midi orientated Atari ste or a PC, is quite some achievement and worthy of high praise.


My days are now spent converting my jazz collection so thanks for this Charlie mucho appreciated.




To paraphrase C.M. Schulz "You're a good man Charlie R."