I was just thinking how great it would be if there was a combination of HW and SW to be able to have a bankstick reader for the PC, connected up with USB or serial which would allow you to put in your fav bankstick in whatever form you use it ie mine connects up with a 9pin dsub and to be able to extract its contents and do something useful with them. It would be great to access and visually manipulate midibox stored data on a PC, without the limitation of it needing to fit within midi…
Examples would be able to convert midibox sequencer patterns and songs to midi files which you could edit in your favorite sequencer application, or to have a vitrual midibox to visually interact with your bankstick data ie sequencer application emulator on the PC with a more cubase looking layout where you can see your songs laid out visually and edit them and save the song back to the bankstick etc (as an alternative to using the UI on the midibox itself, not a replacement!). Not that the seq, or any midibox is lacking in control, but this would be a handy feature for some people with a cut back CS, or no CS, or who wanted to visualise their song layouts etc.
Im sure some application could be useful for the SID and other midiboxes too. I know there are tools to do this via midi to some degree, but the output files are not able to be used on the PC, only stored except the midibox controller editor, which is great!! Im just imagining the ease of editing a song on the pc and then loading the output up on a little black box with a play button at a gig…
I guess it would be a big task, but may be one worth thinking of for any developers out there!! I guess that all of this could be done by just recording the midi events out of the sequencer, but you cant put that whole song back in when you have played with it
Im trying to get away from using the PC/Mac with music any more, but if I had to use them, this would be a good way.
somewhere on the net I have seen a page from a guy who uses Banksticks instead of Q-Cards for storing sounds for his Waldorf Q. As far as I know, the Q-Cards are “normal” flash cards with a pinout identical to those telephone or health insurance cards we have in large parts of Europe. So maybe if you use one of those card readers you can read a Bankstick?
Would it be possible to connect up the current banksticks to the PC somehow and read (convert) the sequences and songs from then to be edited in cubase etc, then exported back to the bankstick? I dont really want a different kind of bankstick, just the ability to read its contents on the PC and do something useful with it
Philips did a parallel port to I2C design, that used a few reistors and one TTL chip.
The link below is to one on the ‘Elektor’ site - I know it works: I’ve got one, though I think you might need the hardware driver DLL under Windows 2000 or XP - I’ve not checked out the software for a while. I think it’s the same as the Philips with a few add ons.
Hiya, im very interested in that. Is there a way to make use of the data extracted from them? I want to be able to take midi files from them if possible??? Guess a sequencer emulator might be needed?
