Contents
Supported hardware
Creative Music System
Very old and rare synthesizer.
See cms(4).
PC speaker
It has one-voice polyphony and sounds just awful. Useful only for testing MIDI input devices.
See pcppi(4).
Roland MPU-401
MIDI interface by Roland. It became popular thanks to excessive cloning.
Supported on many ISA cards, and following PCI cards:
- C-Media CMI8738 - cmpci(4) - support broken in NetBSD 4.0?
- ESS Solo-1 - eso(4)
- ForteMedia FM801 - fms(4)
- Yamaha DS-1 - yds(4)
Usually MPU interfaces are conncted to MIDI/Joystick port on sound cards. You won't be able to play/receive anything unless you connect some external MIDI device to such port. Though, in some rare cases MPU interface is connected to on-board/daughterboard WaveTable MIDI engine.
See mpu(4)
Simple MIDI interfaces
Simple MIDI interfaces are supported on many ISA cards, and following PCI cards:
- Cirrus Logic CS4280 - clcs(4)
- Creative Labs SoundBlaster PCI (Ensoniq AudioPCI based) - eap(4)
- Trident 4DWAVE and compatibles - autri(4)
Usually simple MIDI interfaces are connected to MIDI/Joystick port on sound cards. You won't be able to play/receive anything unless you connect some external MIDI device to such port.
Note: MIDI port and synth on SoundBlaster Live! and newer cards by Creative is unsupported.
USB MIDI devices
Many USB MIDI devices are supported. Synth modules, keyboards and MIDI interfaces are handled well.
See umidi(4)
Yamaha OPL2 and OPL3
Popular single-chip FM synthesizer. Almost all ISA cards come with such chip.
Some of the newer cards have compatbile FM engine too. PCI cards based on following chipsets have it:
- C-Media CMI8738 - cmpci(4) - opl support broken in NetBSD 4.0?
- ESS Solo-1 - eso(4)
- ForteMedia FM801 - fms(4)
- S3 SonicVibes - sv(4)
- Yamaha DS-1 - yds(4)
NetBSD opl driver has built-in General MIDI instrument definitions, so your system is ready to play without additional configuration.
Note: New PCI cards by Creative Labs do not have this chip.
See opl(4)
Identifying MIDI devices
You can easily discover what kind of MIDI devices are available - try grepping dmesg:
dmesg | grep midi
Sample output:
midi0 at pcppi1: PC speaker (CPU-intensive output)
midi1 at opl0: Yamaha OPL3 (CPU-intensive output)
umidi0 at uhub1 port 2 configuration 1 interface 1
umidi0: Evolution Electronics Ltd. USB Keystation 61es, rev 1.00/1.13, addr 2
umidi0: (genuine USB-MIDI)
umidi0: out=1, in=1
midi2 at umidi0: <0 >0 on umidi0
In this case three MIDI devices are detected - PC speaker, Yamaha OPL3 and USB MIDI device (Keystation 61es keyboard in this case).
Connecting MIDI devices
Connecting MIDI devices is very simple. For example if you want to drive OPL3 using USB MIDI keyboard try:
cat /dev/rmidi2 > /dev/rmidi1
You can now play :).
MIDI software for NetBSD
Utility called midiplay(1) comes with NetBSD.