First post, by Paar
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You know how cool those MIDI boards are from Serdaco and even though they are rather pricey, the quality is there and after all they are still much cheaper than second hand boards. Too bad that some of interesting MIDI boards are still basically unobtainable. Then I got an idea...
I have looked thorugh my ISA sound cards collection and found these four that have a MIDI module integrated into the board.
If you compare them to the actual existing MIDI boards, you'll notice that the chips are basically the same (if not the same). Got me thinking that it would probably be pretty cool if those MIDI parts could be reused for a DIY MIDI daughterboard. It wouldn't be too hard I think, most of them are very integrated and you need two or three chips + some caps and crystals. I could try to start with the ESS board as it looks as the easiest to work with, it's just two chips.
I am an engineering noob and would certainly need help from others. Maybe I could create a Github page dedicated to this so anyone can contribute. Than we would have a nice open design for MIDI daughterboards so anyone could make himself/herself a one and enjoy some nice MIDI music on his/her favourite sound card. The best thing is that if correctly modified, the original card would be still usable and you would be able to connect the resulting MIDI board to it's wavetable header. Truly great idea!
But we don't live in an ideal world and after some more thinking I started to worry about scalpers and what effects that could have on already twisted overpriced MIDI boards market. Would this result in a massive buyout of sound cards with wavetable chips? Would that even worsen the entire situation? That's something I would not want to cause of course and at the same time, you cannot rule out this possibility. What is your opinion on this?