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- MIDI Keyboard on Sound Blaster HOWTO 1.0
-
- 1. Copyright
- 2. Introduction
- 3. Requirements
- 4. Adding supports of your kernel
- 5. Installing software
-
- 1. Copyright
- This document is written by Hideki Saito. Reposting is
- allowed, but please do not modify this. Please ask before
- publishing this document.
-
- You can contact me via E-mail at hideki@eskimo.com
-
- 2. Introduction
- Some people may wonder how to use a MIDI keyboard with Sound Blaster.
- Actually, this is not as easy as just connecting the MIDI keyboard to a
- 15-pin MIDI in-out port (the Sound Blaster MIDI in-out port often works
- as a joystick port.)
-
- 3. Requirements
- Of course you need a MIDI keyboard. Please take a little time to check
- to see if you have a MIDI in-out port on the back of your sound card. If
- you see a port that has 15 little holes, you have a MIDI in-out port.
- Some of the Sound Blaster clones may not have a MIDI in-out port. In
- This case, you may want to consider buying a new sound card, or MIDI
- interface card. You can adopt things in this document if the MIDI
- interface card that you are planning to buy, other-wise this document
- will not help, since it is out of your range. You will need am
- SB-to-MIDI cable (this will cost about $15-$40, depending on length, and
- quality of the cable). Remember to connect one end of the MIDI out cable
- into the MIDI-in port on your MIDI keyboard, and other end of the MIDI-in
- cable into the MIDI out port on your MIDI keyboard. Connect other side
- of keyboard into the 15-pin MIDI in-out board on your sound card. After
- that, you need to check if your joystick/MIDI is enabled, other-wise this
- will not work. There are two types of sound cards. If your sound card
- uses hardware configuration, you need to open your computer and change
- the switchs (this maybe jumpers) to enable. If you have a sound card
- that is software configurable, you can run a program to change it. You
- might need to boot DOS if your configure program is on DOS.
-
- 4. Adding supports of your kernel
- Of course your kernel must support sounds. Have your sound card manual
- and check each configuration. Then run a kernel configuring program. You
- need Sound Blaster support (this varies, but most Sound Blaster clones
- will work fine with this setting). According to my settings, you need to add
- MPU-401 support, and MIDI interface support in addition. Make sure
- addresses are correct, otherwise there will be conflicts. Read your
- manual and check each base address,IRQ (on many sound cards, the default is 330, IRQ 7). Make
- sure that you set so both two MPU-401 I/O correctly (those numbers must
- be same). Menu configuration of the kernel would help this. After you
- configured them, you need to rebuild the kernel and image.
-
- 5. Installing software
- After this, you can install your favorite MIDI sequencing programs. I
- will not discuss them in here. If you have no ideas, use the program
- JAZZ!, which is an excellent MIDI sequencing program. You can find it at
- SunSite and a lot of other sites. Also installing PlayMidi is
- recommended. After all, everything should work fine.
-
-