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PC-98 – MIDI

During the most recent trip to Japan, I managed to pick up an SC-55 Roland Sound Canvas. Once back in Australia, and once I had the PC-9801NS/A up and running, it was time to get it outputting MIDI signals. The SC-55 has a serial port, and it turns out that many games can support MIDI over RS-232.

Many moons back, during a trip to Japan that I've nearly forgotten about, I actually managed to pick up this unit.

It's the COME ON MUSIC MA01.

I had originally thought it was for PC or Amiga, but, this time around, whilst searching for RS-232 MIDI options, a photo of this unit appeared! I quickly dug through the boxes to find it.

Of course, the serial port on the PC-9801NS/A isn't a standard DB-9...

It's a mini-centronics something-something and it'd need a serial converter cable to get it to connect to the MA01 above. Fortunately, here's one I prepared earlier... hilariously also found at the Hard-Off in Okayama where I got the PCMCIA SCSI card.

Not feeling like finding the right game from the initial list above, I instead searched for a DOS MIDI player that supported RS-232. vector.co.jp had a great list of software to choose from and Fu-Music Player 1.03 mentioned RS-232 compatibility in the description!

A standard DIN-5 MIDI cable was used between the MA01 and SC-55 and.. the rest is history... and CANYON.MID.