PC-98 – MIDI « modelrail.otenko

11Jun/236

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.

Filed under: Retro Leave a comment

Comments (6) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

bnj
July 27th, 2024 - 02:05

I’m having a blast(from the past) with these PC-98 posts!
Did you have to use any drivers for the midi interface/adapter? I’m looking for a similar trinket to use my SC88 with a a 98note . . .

( REPLY )
- stevenh
  July 27th, 2024 - 12:36
  
  It’s great fun hooking all these old contraptions together!
  No drivers were required as the applications had RS-232 output as a configuration option.
  
  ( REPLY )
  - bnj
    August 6th, 2024 - 00:26
    
    Well, I just tested this after sourcing another adapter similar to yours (‘Kuwatec Miditail’) . . . It works! I can finally enjoy tinkering with my SC88 and 98notes. Thanks~
    
    ( REPLY )
incrediblehark
October 19th, 2024 - 14:15

Really enjoy reading these – its been a good resource for PC-98 in english! I have a roland MPU-PC98 card knock off and a window accelerator card GA-1024. Which one of these do you think would be get more use in a system with only 3 C-Bus slots? the other two are being populated with a PC-9801-86 and a PC-FXGA that I’d prefer to keep in.

( REPLY )
- stevenh
  October 19th, 2024 - 21:22
  
  incrediblehark,
  This is a tough call! I’m having the same issue between MIDI/SOUND/LAN/SCSI/ACCEL on my systems.
  if I’m running Windows games (Like Gadget in Win 3.1!) then I’ll go for MIDI+SOUND+SCSI. If I need more resolution then I’ll swap out something for the Window Accelerator.
  Your best bet is to have IDE + CF (or SCSI2SD) so you can have quick and easy HDD swaps to match your C-BUS Combos!
  Steven.
  
  ( REPLY )
  - incrediblehark
    October 21st, 2024 - 20:18
    
    Thanks for the insight! After all my back and forth I decided to reinstall my GA-1024, only to realize the card is defective! Guess that makes my decision a lot easier, and maybe I’ll source a different accelerator (or attempt a repair) some day.
    
    ( REPLY )