Midi Code Generator

36 EE April 1988 In line with this month"s theme, electrophonics, we present a handy, versatile and inexpensive to build tool that helps tracing down and resolving incompatibility problems encountered in setting up relatively complex configurations of MIDI instruments. The acronym MIDI (MUSICAL INSTRU- MENT DIGITAL INTERFACE) is nowadays known to virtually every user of elec- tronic instruments and associated equip- ment. Since its introduction in 1983, the MIDI standard has gained wide accept- ance, and has proved relatively simple to implement thanks to the use of a serial transmission standard for data exchange between compatible instruments in a network. Experienced users of MIDI equipment are, however, also aware of the system"s limitations. One of the best known problems associated with the MIDI standard is that it becomes more difficult to manage with increasing com- plexity of the equipment configuration: the more instruments, the more instrument-specific codes, and the gr...