What do you mean by MIDI transfer? The Yamaha MDF2 can both record and playback MIDI files from a floppy drive.

Any MIDI file player on the PC does pretty much the same thing as playback when you route it to an external MIDI interface. And there are many software utilities that can record MIDI input.

What are you trying to do?

I would like to use my PC for MDR-based transfers to connected MIDI devices, similar to how MDF2 is used.

Here is the relevant page from MDF2 manual.

Because I only have MIDI out of my legacy gameport, the software I am looking for would be for DOS or Windows 9x.

Gotcha, this appear to be a proprietary Yamaha function to dump a device's memory to then back it up to a file on a MDF2/3.

However, from reading it appears Yamaha just sends this data over via MIDI SysEx messages which is how various other synths support upload patches. It appears that any software that can capture SysEx message should work. https://faq.yamaha.com/usa/s/article/U0002260

MIDI OX on the PC side or other SysEx compatible software should work. https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles … x-on-pc-or-mac/

Thanks, for having a look. I gave MDF2 manual a read, and it appears that what is receives and transmits in MDR mode is MIDI type 0 file with one or more SysEx block, not actual song data, that one could then, say, play or load into a DAW. Which is a shame, since I wanted to use some software to send MIDI songs to a QY8. I guess this will likely not work, and songs should be in QY8/QY10 proprietary format.
So, probably possible to use any software for SysEx transfers, as you recommend, and that would mirror the "backup/restore" function MDF2 offered for these small machines.

You still haven't listed what hardware you have, and what exactly you are trying to accomplish creating an X/Y problem. https://xyproblem.info/

You just suddenly mentioned the proprietary QY8/10 format. The QY8 can be used as a synth with standard MIDI input, and playback standard MIDI to a generic MIDI synth so it could be played back via a DAW on a PC. That's just normal MIDI data that should work with everything.

It has has the ability to connect a MIDI keyboard and record playback in to a single part of a track.

The only thing I'm not sure of would be loading a pre "recorded" song back into the device to then edit it further. You have the ability to export one or all song at a time via MDF2 which you can record. You could try playing that back to the device and see what happens if that's what you are trying to accomplish. Or maybe the realtime record lets you grab all of the parts at once.

But you really should just state what your end goal is, and what specific devices you are trying to use. There very well could be a completely different solution that does exactly when you want, but using a different path.

Oh, my bad. I simply have a QY8, and I though it might be a good thing to figure out how one goes about saving those 20 songs it has by default before one goes about entering more. That's basically it.

At the same time I thought, it might be nice to send MIDI songs to a QY8, since it's able to offload its own, so that it could be used as a battery MIDI player of sorts. But that does not seem to work.

Sorry for all the ruckus.

That makes much more sense.

I recommend testing the MDF file save with a MIDI program that will capture SYSEX messages, and then try playing back the commands to the QY8 to see if you can get it to restore.

To save a file to play in a DAW, you just need to have the QY8's MIDI OUT connected to a MIDI IN. Then playback a song on the QY8 and capture the MIDI signals send and it will be a normal *.mid file you can use with whatever you want. Or it could be piped directly to a DAW if you just want to heard and not record.

From the manual it looks like the QY8's recording it limited to a single part at a time. But you could still test this yourself by playing back a MIDI file from your computer while recording on the QY8.