UNIX Driver for Roland MPU-401-IPC

[timothy.j.thompson]

>From article <1990Apr11.112224.13861 at nebulus.UUCP>, by root at nebulus.UUCP (Dennis S. Breckenridge):
> In article <1400 at otc.otca.oz> ronb at otc.otca.oz.au (Ron Barrett) writes:
> Contact the AT&T Toolchest folks at 1-201-522-6900. There is a package
> called "keynote" that supports the MPU401 and provides a "AWK" like 
> language for MIDI programming. It's not a perfect world, the timing 
> does go awry after 6 or 7 bars. Apparently there will be a correction
> for SVr4 (the kernel has a better timekeeper).

What kind of system were you running it on?  On a 20Mhz 386 it keeps pretty
good time for an arbitrarily long time, as long as the system has sufficient
memory to prevent paging and is otherwise idle (e.g. uucico doesn't start up).
There's no guarantees, though, so it's not a system to be used on stage.
I have also seen it work well on a 16Mhz 386, although I think that may start
to get marginal.  As you say, SVR4 has hooks to guarantee better realtime
control, although I have yet to try them out (or even get details on exactly
what they are).

    ...Tim Thompson...AT&T Bell Labs/Holmdel/NJ...tjt at twitch.att.com...