Jon Wilder
Active Member
Hi all. New to the forum. I've got 20 years electronics experience under my belt which is mostly all analog/vacuum tube technology stuff (been building guitar amps for 13 years).
I've recently decided to take the leap into the digital world as my goal is to learn how to build MIDI decoder circuitry, which requires some sort of uC with onboard hardware UART/USART. I know some guys have been successful in emulating a UART through software "bit banging" but I figure why do that when there are plenty of uC's available with on chip hardware UARTs?
I'm full and aware of what I need to know about the MIDI specification. What I'm seeking to learn is how exactly to implement these criteria in the software and programming of the uC. I'm starting out with simple programming of the 16F84 on a circuit board with LEDs on the Port B pins just to get a feel for assembly, but I plan to order up some 16F628s pretty soon and experiment with those, then eventually move up to the 8031/80C31 uC as most MIDI devices use this uC for MIDI functions. I know the 8031 is just a ROM-less 8051 so I assume most companies prefer to have the ROM off chip for easy repurposing via software revision and just swapping in a different ROM chip.
Anyway I'm sure I'll have lots of questions along the way. Lookin' forward to speaking with you all!
I've recently decided to take the leap into the digital world as my goal is to learn how to build MIDI decoder circuitry, which requires some sort of uC with onboard hardware UART/USART. I know some guys have been successful in emulating a UART through software "bit banging" but I figure why do that when there are plenty of uC's available with on chip hardware UARTs?
I'm full and aware of what I need to know about the MIDI specification. What I'm seeking to learn is how exactly to implement these criteria in the software and programming of the uC. I'm starting out with simple programming of the 16F84 on a circuit board with LEDs on the Port B pins just to get a feel for assembly, but I plan to order up some 16F628s pretty soon and experiment with those, then eventually move up to the 8031/80C31 uC as most MIDI devices use this uC for MIDI functions. I know the 8031 is just a ROM-less 8051 so I assume most companies prefer to have the ROM off chip for easy repurposing via software revision and just swapping in a different ROM chip.
Anyway I'm sure I'll have lots of questions along the way. Lookin' forward to speaking with you all!