Accu-Tuner Midi

[harvey]

Bill, after the MIDI feature was introduced, I asked Doc Sanderson why he
chose MIDI as the transfer protocol instead of, say, a serial interface
(common as dirt). At that time, I was anticipating an upgrade, and MIDI on
the Intel platform wasn't as common as it is now. MIDI was still primarily
the domain of Mac's and Atari's, and I wasn't about to buy either for that
one function.

I regret that I don't recall his response. Perhaps it had to do with port
speed, perhaps the amount of per-note information being transferred at a
given moment in time (causing serial connects to be too slow), or simply
that MIDI was the "now" thing to do. I'm pretty sure the real answer is in
there somewhere. I believe Doc does/did develop his firmware code on the
Mac platform, so that may have contributed to the reasoning!

Having no immediate need for the function, and limited knowledge of the
MIDI data structure, this is both a response and a question. My dedicated
MIDI card for the Intel platform was very inexpensive when I bought it
several years ago -- maybe $50~60. Notwithstanding quality (and lack of
noise) specs, I would suspect the clone cards are in the $10 range by now.
So, can I assume the interface is not the problem, rather the software
"front-end" to port the SAT-specific data back and forth? Sorry if that's
what you are asking in the first place... I'm tired!

At 08:18 PM 9/26/99 -0500, you wrote:
>There does not presently seem to be a good solution to using midi with
>an Accu-Tuner.   I don't want to purchase Cybertuner software to use
>with the SAT.  I would like to see a low-cost or no-cost software
>solution to allow sending and receiving data from the SAT II.  I am
>working on my own solution to this problem, but maybe someone has an
>idea.  I would even settle for running Atari ST software under an
>emulator.  It is easy to send and receive data between computers,
>calculators and blood sugar meters.  It should be just as easy and
>inexpensive to communicate with an SAT.  
>
>Bill Bussell