MIDI that 5 pin mystery
As I was writing in my Alesis HR16:B article, I discovered MIDI
What is MIDI?
MIDI is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related music and audio devices. A single MIDI link can carry up to sixteen channels of information, each of which can be routed to a separate device.
But in 'doze dayz' we did not have wikipedia, so we had to think a little harder.
I also had a Commodore C64 and my friend's big brother had a stack of C64 magazines. And it just happened to be that just in that period I happened to notice that there was an article about building a MIDI interface... My friends brother had already tinkered with the Power and Final cartridge. And build some external stuff for a flight simulator, so how hard could it be to build that MIDI interface? well... Harder then you might think.
The computer magazine (I think it was 64'er or CHiP) was written in f-ing German and spoke about stuff like 'Akustikkoppler' where other magazines used the term 'Datenklo' for the same f-ing device.
Enough about that, I had to make a MIDI 'something'
So what did I need?
I destroyed some kitchen ware, made some nasty stains on the garage floor.
A disaster, but it was fun.
I actually managed to fab 6 pcb's (5 miserable fails) and one that was 'good enough' for me.
But then I needed to drill tiiiny little holes... So back to the EE shop...
O boy, I needed to start an entire industry... So that's where that journey stranded (for now at least)
I learned some valuable things, but the MIDI interface never became a reality.
However, this episode got me into electronics. But MIDI had to wait for a while...
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