MOTM

Analog control woes notwithstanding, the main reason I view MIDI with
some considerable criticism is that for a networking protocol, it *blows*.
I never will understand why they didn't go with some Manchester scheme to
provide collision and drop error handling.  It is not that difficult to
implement: the Apple Desktop Bus used on Macs to this day (and nearly as
old as MIDI) achieve it.

  These days, (starting in 1990 or so) plenty of sources of cheap MII
transcevier chips to fashion ethernet connections exist: it would cost
next to nothing to cram one in a keyboard and use a *real* network
protocol like TCP/IP to run the show.  You don't even have to abandon the
MIDI message structure--just encapsulate it in the IP packets.

  I hope that one day a true network physical layer like ethernet makes it
into new instruments.  And for the millions of old instruments--an
ethernet to MIDI-hardware adapter (which are cheap and easy to make, look
at the dinky little thing from www.picoweb.net!) is no problem.


  --Crow, dreaming of the day they put real LAN hardware into the gear

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