Vintage midi with vintage macintosh

P

pip2012!

Member
Equipment:-
1989 Macintosh SE/30
Cubase lite 1.0
Midiman serial to midi interface box
Roland SC88vl general midi sound canvas module
Roland ED-PC300 keyboard controller

Hi all,
I’ve had a hankering for sometime to setup my 33 year old apple macintosh SE/30 as a vintage recording studio using cubase or some other type of software from the period.
I am though a complete novice to recording studio software and Midi. Probably bitten off more than i can chew but would like to get it working and attempt to use it.
Problem is getting the midi to work, i can now play midi tracks from the computer through the sound canvas midi module but having problems getting the keyboard to work and show up on the computer. Maybe i’ve wired it wrong or misunderstand how cubase works so any help would be appreciated.
Obviously running such old equipment and software there’s limited online resource so hoping someone may have used something similar in the 80/90s.

Regards

Neal
 
How have you got the sound canvas wired? You are presumably driving the Midiman interface from the computer and have the midi out from the interface going into the sound canvas midi in? The keyboard would normally just connect to the Midiman midi in, then in cubase, there is a menu to direct it back out to the midi out. This is how we did our very first cubase lite setup in the college I worked at. That was a very unusual version of Cubase aimed at schools and colleges so it had the usual cubase midi features with the score editor, and you worked mostly with notes on a stave. It was a bit rotten at notation that was not played to the metronome very well, and it looked a real mess.

How is yours wired at the moment?
 
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the quick reply.
I have the keyboard going into the in of the midiman box with the serial in/out through modem and printer of the mac, then output of the midiman into the roland sound canvas. I have sound coming and can see the flashing lights for input and output of the midiman. So maybe i’m not selecting the right part of cubase
 
I wasn’t sure if I should have wired the controller straight to the roland, then output that to the input of the midimac but by the sound of it i’ve wired it correctly just need to look at cubase
 
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Yes - your current wiring is the norm. Macs are often driverless, but as the MIDIMAN pretends to be an RS232 device, there's a good chance the Mac thinks it's a printer.

It's been a while since cubase lite - but I think the input device if the Mac knows it's there should appear in the inspector, screen left, in a drop down in the input section. If it's not there you will need to find a driver.
 
Hi Rob, thanks again. I have the oms midi driver installed and i have configured the modem & printer serial pass through so it does recognize midi at 1mhz in the output but doesn’t seem to accept the input, maybe i should manually put it at the same 1mhz and give it a try.

Oh and switched apples proprietary networking off so it doesn’t interfere. I have a separate networking card anyway in the pds slot

Neal
 

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I still have somewhere the version of that Roland with a built in keyboard and some of those sounds are really good. I was a fan of both Yamaha's XG and Roland's GS extension to GM, but only recently have I found the software instrument version on one computer and going through the sounds, so many totally hold up today.

I fear you will have to tinker with the settings. I'm not certain if this is your input problem. It could be a mismatch that a different MIDI interface might fix, but fiddling with the parameters could suddenly fix it. Cubase lite was designed to do so much setup automatically, and didn't offer that many deeper options in the settings department. The strange thing is that on my latest Cubase Pro, the score looks so similar to Cubase Lite. Steinberg never seemed to put much effort into sorting it out!
 
Thanks guys! I agree rob, i knew the reality of trying to get a 35 year old computer to work as a midi studio would in itself be a challenge. For me I always wanted to try my hand at making dance tracks but life got in the way so after fixing up the old computer in lockdown i thought now what, what do you do with it so several ebay purchases of bits and pieces to turn it into a retro home studio seems like the perfect use to do something I’ve always wanted to try, have a use for the old gear plus i thought the more simple/basic software would be easier to a complete novice to learn and practice on. Seemed like a win win really. I’m sure once i get it working that will be just the start of my journey with even more questions to follow lol.

Would either of you have any cubase instruction manual by any chance? Older the better

Neal
 
pip2012! said:
Thanks guys! I agree rob, i knew the reality of trying to get a 35 year old computer to work as a midi studio would in itself be a challenge. For me I always wanted to try my hand at making dance tracks but life got in the way so after fixing up the old computer in lockdown i thought now what, what do you do with it so several ebay purchases of bits and pieces to turn it into a retro home studio seems like the perfect use to do something I’ve always wanted to try, have a use for the old gear plus i thought the more simple/basic software would be easier to a complete novice to learn and practice on. Seemed like a win win really. I’m sure once i get it working that will be just the start of my journey with even more questions to follow lol.

Would either of you have any cubase instruction manual by any chance? Older the better

Neal
Click to expand...
I will check and see if I still have the CDs, they may have been diskettes, I don't remember. There may be a help manual on them?
 
dogooder said:
I will check and see if I still have the CDs, they may have been diskettes, I don't remember. There may be a help manual on them?
Click to expand...
Thanks dogooder. I’m a complete novice so anything to help me with my studio journey especially on a 35 year mac on cubase 1.0 lite lol 😂
 
I have six CDS related to Cubase. I probably still have the dongle around somewhere. Some of them are wavelab plugins.
This is what it says on the discs, Renaissance compressor, free filter equalizer, Cubase VST Music System. Cubase VST 3.6,
cubase 3.7 update, Wavelab 2.0. Some are for windows 95, some say Mac OS on them. You could fire up the ones for windows
on another pc to see if there are any manuals?
 
pip2012! said:
Thanks dogooder. I’m a complete novice so anything to help me with my studio journey especially on a 35 year mac on cubase 1.0 lite lol 😂
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I can send them to you if you like. I really have no idea what is on them. All the codes are on them.
 
I may have more. I thought I had diskettes also? This stuff has been kicking around a long time.
 
When/if you get chance to look at them by all means send me the pdf but really i don’t want you wasting your time. :)
 
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