Possible alternate hardware (pc)

[arjepsen]

Hey guys.
In my attempts at getting rid of the cpu unit, and putting the pc parts in a smaller pc enclosure, I asked the IT guy at my school if he had an old cabinet lying around.
He gave me an old DELL optiplex GX240.
When I opened it up, I saw that it had an old ati agp card in there.
The processor is a pentium 4 2ghz.
Out of curiosity, I connected the CF card from my d8b, just confirm that it wouldn't load on this hardware.
At first it simply halted before the normal loading screen. But then for fun, I put in the ati card that was in my d8b.

NOW IT BOOTED ALL THE WAY TO THE GUI!!!

I got a dsp error, of course, since I hadn't connected the desk.
But the fact that it booted, suggests, that this might be used as an alternative for Ye Olde Motherboard in the cpu.
There is some caveats though:
There's only pci slots on this motherboard - no ISA, so I'm certain that midi isn't gonna be working. (there are no drivers for other midi boards)
Also, while there are two serial ports, the are hardwired connectors on the backplate, so I'll need to get a kind of dual db9 to single db25 cable, to be able to see if I can make it communicate with the desk.

[lnegro]

I like it! Let us know how the dual db9 works out. I have some old mobos around that have both pci and isa slots .......gonna try that.

Larry

[Y-my-R]

That is fascinating, arjepsen!

I also have an old Dell Pentium 4 lying around (Dimension 3000 Series), and thought I'd try booting with the video card and hard drive from my Parts-d8b.

It also fully booted, giving the expected error message, that you'd also get if you boot the 'real' d8b brain without the desk connected:

"Error: DSP Control Card not ready. Last Known State:Reset"

Maybe there's still hope for a larger replacement hardware pool!

My Dell isn't really useful as a replacement at all, though, since it only has one Serial Port and the Console of course needs two to interface with the computer. Besides, I also don't have ISA slots on that board...

Still... I'll look out for other old PIII and PIV boards to try. ISA boards are hard to come by, though. At least I had a hard time finding one on the cheap when I wanted to build a system to use some old ISA soundcards I still have lying around (and ended up using one of the d8b brains for that for a while, installing Windows 98 on it).

For what it's worth... I first tried an old Radeon Series PCI video card, that I usually keep in my MDR for troubleshooting, and it works fine for that. The d8b drive wouldn't boot with that video card in the Dell, though, but said "no signal" after saying "Loading Mackie OS..." So, I guess the d8b OS is REALLY picky about the video card... or the MDR/HDR just use a different model/driver in general (I wouldn't know).

Maybe I can bring my parts-d8b back as a 3rd unit, if I find a P3/P4 mainboard that works

[arjepsen]

Short update.
The Dell optiplex gx240 that I got, actually has a “riser” expansion slot that currently contains some pci ports. Dell also made a riser with an isa slot, but I haven´t been able to track one of those down.
I´ve also tried some other old machines without much luck. But I did start to wonder:
Some of these had an onboard “game” port, that also could do midi. I wonder if the mackieos is simply using some address and irq for the midi communication. But to test it out, I´d need to find a motherboard with both two serial ports AND the gam port.
And on a sidenote, I think I some new motherboards WITH an isa slot, available on aliexpress.

[Y-my-R]

What I'll say is pure speculation... but I think you're on to something, when it comes to a built-in "standard" game port interface potentially being recognized by the Mackie OS.

I'm thinking this, because in the early PC gaming days, hardware support under DOS was extremely limited. Most sound cards that didn't provide their own specific DOS drivers for these games (in Windows 3.1 and Win 95 times, most games required that you restarted your computer in DOS mode), were able to run in "SoundBlaster 16" emulation mode - and I never had a case, where this emulation wouldn't work with the game port on other manufacturer's ISA sound cards (allbeit with a Joy-Stick... not with MIDI).

What you did always have to do in those games before you could play, was to select what the IRQ and Address-Range should be for that game port. And with early ISA sound cards, this had to be configured via Jumpers on the card. The "Opcode PC MIDI" ISA card has exactly these jumpers to set the IRQ and Address Range.

Also, I think that this Opcode PC MIDI card, is kind of the mother of all MIDI cards, so I suspect that this is the same technology that was probably used on the most basic soundcards like the Creative Labs SoundBlaster 8 or 16.

As long as modern built-in game ports are still created for downward compatibility with such DOS emulations, I think you have a good chance that this is also the type of hardware the drivers in the Mackie OS are looking for.

Long story short - all of this is wild guesswork, but I agree with you that there is a good chance that a built-in gameport will be directly supported by the Mackie OS, as long as the PC hardware is old enough to run DOS directly.

...lots of words, to essentially say "might work - good idea to try when you get a chance", hahaha

I looked and found a couple of new motherboards that still have ISA, but they were PRICEY!! Hundreds of dollars... I think then I'd rather find another broken d8b on the cheap, and hope that the board works