Is everyone sick?

[Martin Naef]

Hi Jay

Jay Vaughan wrote:
>>> I wonder if anyone will ever write a driver to revitalize the AMT8?
>> That was Jay's suggestion. Not quite sure I want to invest the time -
>> after all, I have some more interesting projects on the plate that are
>> in need of finishing for ages now...
> 
> the thing is martin, the midi driver scene for windows should be, by  
> now, like this: just grok the driver template from demo code, drop in  
> some knowledge about the hardware obtained from a quick read of the  
> linux sources, compile it, bundle it, test it.  if i had a properly  
> configured win_BLAH machine and its so-called developer tools (i  
> don't, btw, or i'd be an expert on it), and if Microsoft had the  
> driver support everyone says they do, this bit of cut 'n paste coding  
> should take, max, an evening of work .. ?

Erm, I somewhat doubt that it's that easy - debugging drivers sounds 
like a nightmare... But incidentally, I have access to pretty much all 
the MS developer tools, and the Windows Driver Kit is just a 2.5GB 
download, so sample code is available (according to the docs, there's an 
MPU-401 driver (anyone remember that one?) and a few other related 
samples in there.

Now, Google didn't turn up any proper specs for the AMT8 - if you have 
the necessary source and docs lying around somewhere, I'm happy to have 
a look.

> windows, then its still crap.  putting new hardware on linux, if the  
> hardware is really good hardware, regardless of the branding, is very  
> easy.

The big question is: Is the AMT8 well-behaved hardware? The Win2k driver 
consists of two parts: A USB driver that I assume installs a "serial" 
port to the hardware, and the actual MIDI driver.

> a question: can you boot that system with a linux boot CD, like  
> pure:dyne, and use the interface?

Never tried...

> maybe your next jam session needs to involve ditching your windows  
> world, and having a quick look at what linux thinks about all your  
> music hardware ..

Erm, no. I like the tools I have. And as far as I'm aware, there's still 
no drivers for the MOTU PCI-424 system, so it's going to be an awfully 
quiet session...

Martin