COMPAQ ARMADA 1700 with Windows 98 \ Seq/Software to rock the OPL3? (Page 1 of 2)

And I think the only way you can get MIDI capable OPL3, is to build one of the those MIDIBOX FM things:

http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_fm.html

windows 3.1 !! yikers !!

What you are asking for would be fantastical and I would be into it as well. ha. But as for using the armada as a module, I have never come across anything in my travels/research that makes it capable to do so. 

But the 1700 has a serial or a parallel port right? Because you can get a 1in/1out midi device like MIDISPORT or something. I have done that on my armada, used a parallel midi device, and was able to access midi in and midi out with IMPULSE TRACKER. So i know those sound cards are capable of doing that at least. It has some sort of MPU401 emulation or on board mpu or something on the card itself. With impulse, when you switch the sound card to MPU401, it lets you use the internal general midi sounds inside the tracker too...

But I dont think AT2 has that midi feature yet? I remember talking the creator about it, and he said MIDI would be out of the question and he is done with the program, unless someone else takes over AT2 and codes it all to be midi capable. And most likely, it would just be note on , note off... Unless someone wants to sit there and code all the OPL3 parameters that AT2 can access to CC numbers.. Ok go right ahead !!!

Well, I kinda made this

The TODO list for this thing is long as fuck, and I usually don't like to release stuff I think could be improved, but seeing as a new version of this would probably mean a complete rewrite (I don't even like the source code structure anymore), and you'd like to use MIDI with OPL2/3, I might just as well release this, if you'd like. :]

The program was primarily intended for live playing on a keyboard, but then I thought it might be neat to be able to control it via MIDI, later adding a "MIDI exclusive mode" that acts as a 16-channel synthesizer. I was just about to implement instrument patches, they even work in keyboard mode, but as of now, everything is controlled with CCs.
Also no 4op mode, not even planning on doing that. Would probably require a proper channel management.

So, here it is:
http://software.kvee.cz/opl_plr/opl_plr_r00.7z

Consider this a very informal release, as I said, I'd rather rewrite this before releasing it, but I know myself and I'm certain that would take an insane amount of waiting, perhaps I'd never actually do it. So here is my current "WIP" version, it's usable and I didn't really encounter any problems with it.
Bug reports are welcome (PM me).

If there's gonna be a new version, it's most likely be said total rewrite, as the codebase could really use it. Anything else is just adding more stuff on top of this very big single .C file.

The "license" is: if you make a tune with this, let me hear it :]

No idea where you'd get one in 2013, but I had one of these lying around my house forever and apparently they work pretty well! I think I threw it out during a spring clean, otherwise I'd let you have it for the cost of shipping (or less haha).

This sort of gear is well before my time though and I never had any first hand experience with it.

Last edited by Victory Road (Mar 5, 2013 1:05 pm)

Check my other stickied post yo about MS-DOS music making... Some of us have the Portman PC/S or PC/P (parallel), they seem to be the ones that are easier to find.