Bob Lang, creator of Mandolane (/edit TK: previously called Plumstone), has update the Mandolane MIDI drivers for Java 1.5 and this will hopefully allow Mac users who are running Java 1.5 to run MIOS Studio.
Not being a Mac user myself, I haven’t been able to test this. However, Bob has succesfully gotten MIOS Studio to run on Tiger by using Java 1.5 and his new version of Plumstone. Although untested, he has updated Plumstone in a way that should be backwards compatible with Java 1.4 and I have updated MIOS Studio to also be backwards compatible - therefore anyone running older versions of OS X and Java 1.4 are encouraged to also test this out. The latest beta version of MIOS Studio is available here, please note that some features such as the SysEx Upload and Memory Read/Write are not fully implemented yet.
If any Mac users can try this out and report their findings it’d be a great help. Also, please keep checking Bob’s Mandolane site for any updates and/or official releases.
Update 2009-09-03: mmj has been discontinued, it doesn’t work with 64bit Java, and it doesn’t work under Snow Leopard (even when 32bit JRE is selected)
Please use Mandolane again
Somebody had problems with the program upload directly after power-on. The core already sent out an upload request, but the voltage hasn’t reached the required range before MIOS Studio started to upload the first block. For some reasons, something went wrong and the core crashed (ramp-up phase is always mysterious)
The upload procedure could be made more stable - either
o by adding a < 2s delay after an upload request, before the first block will be sent
o or (this is what I would prefer) by sending a known “bad” block (e.g. a write block with 0 bytes content), and to wait for the expected error response. This would reset the timeout value, so that the core is ready for receiving again under relaxed conditions (MIOS Studio has 3 seconds to send the first “good” block)
The easiest way to do it is to add the delay before it begins uploading. Did you mean < 2 seconds (you put < 2mS)? I have added a delay of 1.5 seconds before uploading and this works fine. I’ll add it to the TODO list to try and get the second method to work.
Thanks! Yes, I meant seconds (statement corrected for forum search function)
I just had another idea: an even more secure way to upload new code is the following:
1) send a “bad” block and wait for error response
2a) if MIOS is uploaded (code starts at 0x0000), upload a dummy block which contains two “reset” instructions, located at 0x0000
2b) if the .hex file contains some code which is located in between 0x100-0xffff (0xffff because of PIC18F4620), upload a dummy block which contains one “reset”, located at 0x3300
2c) in all other cases (no code between 0x0000-0xffff) just upload the data and ignore this algorithm
3) don’t continue if this dummy block hasn’t been uploaded correctly, because it should ensure, that no code is executed until the complete .hex file has been uploaded successfully
4) upload all blocks execept for the block which contains the “reset” instruction(s)
5) at the end, overwrite the block which contains the “reset” instruction(s)
This algorithm ensures, that uncomplete code will never be executed, if something unexpected happened during the upload phase (e.g. low power, disconnected MIDI cables, MIDI interface driver crash or whatever)
If required, I could try to implement this into MIOS Studio by myself (in this case, please send me the most recent source code)
I am cleaning up the class structure and a lot of the code in MIOS Studio, once I am happier with it I will send it to you so you can try and implement this new feature.
Hower, the problem was, that I haven’t read the release notes. :-X
Once you have downloaded and installed Java5, it isn’t automatically used by MIOS Studio. There should be a program resided in /Applications/Utilities/Java/J2SE 5.0/
Sorry if this has been answered already but I couldnt find anything about it anywhere else. How can you use the MIOS studio with mac os 9.1 ? I downloaded the MJR but it wont open the jar file. There does not seem to be any other java downloads from apple for older OS’es. Is there a method or an alternative? Perhaps I have missed something!
