I use two Macman Macintosh Midi interfaces.

1. One simple midi interface with one position
for one midi device. It's connected with the Power Macintosh G3 Minitower and the Roland CM500.

2. One midi interface with more positions. There, i have connected my Macintosh Performa 6116CD with the Roland MT32 and the Roland Sound Canvas SC88. It has one more position and probably i will connect also the CM500 via a Mindburner switch.

The Mindburner switch that I have has three positions. Position"C" is the one where you connect the Roland/General Midi device. On position "A" you connect the one computer with its midi interface and on position "B" you connect the other computer with its midi interface. With this i will have the CM500 connected with two computers, Performa and G3. If the Performa is connected on position "A" on the switch, then i choose this (there's a little lever where you pull it to the position you want) in order to use it. "B" will be used with the Power Macintosh G3 Minitower.

I use also one more Mindburner switch where I have the Roland MT32 connected on the Performa and the Dos PC.

Nice, my MacMans might be the same, I have one that is just serial and one midi in/out, then another that has 3 outputs and a interface/thru switch to be used as a thru box (midi splitter basically).

Here is the USB interface I have:

It looks like the USB drivers are here:
https://c1.zzounds.com/media/productmedia/fit … 4653333a57b.jpg

I may dig out the Pismo later and see what I can do 😁

skate323k137 wrote on 2022-02-02, 15:20:

Here is the USB interface I have: https://c1.zzounds.com/media/productmedia/fit,600by600/quality,85/quattro-eae8bad58325214d54a5 […]
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Here is the USB interface I have:

It looks like the USB drivers are here:
https://c1.zzounds.com/media/productmedia/fit … 4653333a57b.jpg

I may dig out the Pismo later and see what I can do 😁

This is very nice. Hope it will work with the Pismo. Pismo has great technical characteristics. Suitable for lots of 90s games.

Dimitris1980 wrote on 2022-02-02, 16:19:

This is very nice. Hope it will work with the Pismo. Pismo has great technical characteristics. Suitable for lots of 90s games.

The Pismo is definitely my "swiss army knife" for that era, second only maybe to the upgraded 7500's. I still need to replace the "spinny disk" in the pismo with something like CF but it works, so it's very low priority. My main 7500 has a v6 SCSI2SD which works wonderfully.

Anyway I think I will try Gabriel Knight first, I have not played that one and the art looks very interesting. I grew up primarily on Lucas Arts adventure games but Sierra definitely had a place in the home too.

Offtopic again, not sure if you looked at my other videos, but this is probably my favorite thing I have done with a Sound Canvas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kr2QENo5co

So far no victory, but progress.

I have the M Audio device recognized by OMS

When I changed quicktime to general midi for music, it froze the machine. I have installed the M Audio drivers and OMS support, so I hope to figure out why it's giving me headaches.

Edit; I am afraid this individual interface might not work, I was able to set OMS and other programs to use it but I get no midi recognized by my SC-55. I think my M audio unit is faulty, but I believe it came to me in a parts lot and I never tested past power LED coming on at the time.

I connected the M Audio to a modern mac, and it was recognized as a sound card. But when I play audio, I get straight noise, as if no DAC is happening and I'm just blasted with snow. Unfortunate. I will have to either break out the 7500 to get a serial connection, or find another suitable OS9 USB midi interface 😒 (unless there is a way to use usb to serial to use an old macman?).

Double edit: there should be an OS9 driver for my UM ONE roland interface. Why I didn't look for that earlier I don't know.

Update: Nope, The driver is for the UM-1, not the UM-ONE / UM-ONE MK2. I was able to get a driver for the UM-2 though, and found one of those reasonably priced. This might work out better, as using non-roland USB interfaces in the past has left me with hanging notes on MT-32/SC-55 some times.

I hope you find a solution. I want to take my iMac G3 from the basement to connect it with a Roland but i don't have space because i have two kids and everything is full. In the meantime I am trying to think why some games don't use the Canvas. One example is Under A Killing Moon which has a directory with mid files for the music. These files run perfectly via qmidi with the Canvas and the CM500 which I connected yesterday but unfortunately when I run the game the music comes from the computer system. The quality of the music is lot better with the canvas.

Thank you for the encouragement. I am certain I'll find a way, I'm quite motivated to make this work on the Pismo for space reasons (the Pismo is my main OS9 machine for space reasons alone). Also though if I get it working on USB, I too have a G3 CRT iMac with USB and OS9 that comes out sometimes.

I have a good feeling about the UM-2 as roland still had a .sit for the drivers on their official site.

While awaiting a working USB interface for my Pismo, I could not resist trying to get some sound out of my Mac SE / MT-32. It was a pain and I honestly don't recommend it to anyone, but nonetheless it does work 🤣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CgKx0-ZkLY

skate323k137 wrote on 2022-02-07, 17:48:

While awaiting a working USB interface for my Pismo, I could not resist trying to get some sound out of my Mac SE / MT-32. It was a pain and I honestly don't recommend it to anyone, but nonetheless it does work 🤣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CgKx0-ZkLY

Very nice 👍. I like seeing such retro computers with Roland MT32. Thexder's theme is very beautiful. Can you also test sometime the following games?

Hoyle Official Book of Games Volume 1
Hoyle Official Book of Games Volume 2

I suppose they run on your Mac. My Performa 6116CD and LC475 deny to run these games.

Thanks 👍😌

Hoyle has given me some problems, but, I found the SE did not like my 4 port macman (works fine on iigs). The Macman mini worked though. Perhaps that would help with hoyle

The copy of Volume 1 on Macintosh Repository came with the drivers, but the installer application does not find them like the Thexder installer did.

If I get the motivation to mess with them again now that I know the whole hardware chain works, I will most certainly update here.

Do you know if Mac's midi music runs through another program beyond quicktime? I am trying to think if there's a way to play Under a Killing Moon using my canvas. There's a directory with the midi files and they play perfectly when I use a midi player like qmidi or midigraphy but in the game the music plays through computer's system.

Simon the Sorcerer 2: It's a pity that this game doesn't have music at all in the game. But it's more pity that there's also a directory with midi files which run perfectly with a midi player.

The quality of the music of the above two mentioned games is a lot better with the canvas.

In this case I am on system 6 and I don't even believe quicktime was made for anything before system 7 / MacOS 7.

Sierra has its own MT-32 driver, there are driver files present with the game. In addition to the normal extensions for apple midi support, During installation you select the MT-32 option, and then select modem or printer port. It finishes setup and then the game (should) use the new driver. Given the SE is very old with no accelerator board and 4MB RAM, I can only get a couple of games which support this stuff to load at the moment. While I give it a fighting chance with an internal SCSI2SD (which does help a ton), My luck with my 7500 would probably be much better but I have no space for that at the moment.

There is certainly a way for programs to communicate with the serial midi interfaces without quicktime, as I mentioned my macman works on a IIGS (w/SynthLab), and the mini macman on the SE. However, trying to use that possibility for another game is beyond my capabilities at the moment. Unless the game itself has an installer file which lets you configure a driver like the Sierra games.

I am using a quicktime addon/startup for my system6 on my LC otherwise some software does not run. https://youtu.be/YicfqCx5m-k

dr.zeissler wrote on 2022-02-08, 11:17:

I am using a quicktime addon/startup for my system6 on my LC otherwise some software does not run. https://youtu.be/YicfqCx5m-k

Oh wow, I learned something today! That's awesome, I'll probably reference that video a lot.

I really need to find something like an LC to fill in my collection, I have a gap between the Mac SE, and my next machine up is the powermac 7500. A newer 68k machine would be nice. Perhaps a laptop if I could find one that fits the bill.

Dimitris1980 wrote on 2020-03-25, 06:23:

The following games run also with Roland Sound Canvas via Quicktime: […]
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The following games run also with Roland Sound Canvas via Quicktime:

Capitalism
Dark Seed II
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

I need some more information / help here.

I now have 2 of the pictured M audio interfaces on hand. With the drivers installed I can get sound out of them now! But, no MIDI output from either.

Do OMS and setting general midi for quicktime conflict? For setting up quick time do you just change the default synth to general midi? And if so are you using a USB interface of some kind?

skate323k137 wrote on 2022-02-09, 22:33:

I need some more information / help here. […]
Show full quote

Dimitris1980 wrote on 2020-03-25, 06:23:

The following games run also with Roland Sound Canvas via Quicktime: […]
Show full quote

The following games run also with Roland Sound Canvas via Quicktime:

Capitalism
Dark Seed II
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

I need some more information / help here.

I now have 2 of the pictured M audio interfaces on hand. With the drivers installed I can get sound out of them now! But, no MIDI output from either.

Do OMS and setting general midi for quicktime conflict? For setting up quick time do you just change the default synth to general midi? And if so are you using a USB interface of some kind?

As I remember the quicktime music settings appear as an extra option my OMS setup (which I think i have named it as SC88 setup) when I add device. I will check it tomorrow because now it's late in Greece and every computer is turned off. So, firstly i make and save an OMS setup with the canvas connected and then I go to quicktime music settings. Until now I have used only Macman Macintosh serial midi interface. On my Macintosh Performa 6116 everything works great. On my Power Macintosh G3 Minitower i don't have music in some games. For instance on Doom 2, Final Doom, Heretic. I would like to use and test all this process on my iMac G3 but i don't have space because I have two kids and the office is full. I had bought years before a usb midi interface like the M-AUDIO MIDISPORT UNO MIDI INTERFACE ΜΕ USB. I am talking about 10-12 years before 😀 . Back then i tried to run with my Roland MT32 Sierra online games that support it but i didn't manage to do it. It was different because back then i started learning about Macs and Roland. I bought the MT32 without psu, cables etc. I just knew that it needs a midi interface for the connection. It was very difficult for me to find out how you connect it and what equipment you need.

The best is from Sierra. The only company that supported Roland on some Macintosh games where the only thing to do is to copy the Apple midi drivers in system's folder.

Yes, surely serial is better supported at least for Sierra it seems.

I have found the owners manual for the M Audio, which describes the exact order of what to install. I will try it one more time, but, as you talked to, we will have to look at Sierra. I tried the configuration app for Leisure Luit Larry 6, but the game iself freezes. Before I gave up for the night today I had OMS chosen to the M Audio, but then MIDI players froze at launch. I have to have not done the driver right the 1st time.

Regardless of that my last effort for USB here will be with a Roland/ Edirol USB. I have a better hope that will work, and even if the M Audio works, the roland is probably ideal.

These are my settings.

Very nice, Thank you!

To clear up any past mistakes I might have made, I started with a fresh OS9 install.

The Roland / Edirol UM-2 Worked first try. I did follow the instructions -very carefully- from the manual.

After I had a working OMS profile for that, I installed the M-Audio drivers again. After getting a better understanding of OMS, while setting up M Audio it shows 2 devices, one with the icon of a MIDI port, the other a keyboard with a question mark over it. You must pick the keyboard with the quesiton mark, NOT the one with the MIDI port Icon. Also, you should re name it! Otherwise both are called the same thing in other menus with no icons.

The Roland seems much easier and straightforward, but this M Audio interface will be fun for me in other ways I'm sure.

So, Now I have both of them able to out put to a SC-55 or whatever module I plug them into. I have only tested with midi file players to now, since I just got it working. Now, I must try to get some games working!