Xref: utzoo comp.sys.amiga:1294 comp.sys.atari.st:6339
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: MIDIMAZE/other uses..was RE: Amiga and MIDI
Message-ID: <36294@sun.uucp>
Date: 11 Dec 87 22:56:18 GMT
References: <4694@well.UUCP> <10620@oliveb.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 28

In article <10620@oliveb.UUCP> dragon@oliveb.UUCP writes:
>> 	Sounds like all you need for this is a vanilla serial port.  Am I
>> wrong about this?
>
>                    ..But if you stuck a midi interface on any serial port
>that could accept one, it would be pretty much the same.  The advantage to
>a serial port would be a higher speed possible, though, say, 115K baud.

First off, if you are using the Amiga serial port there would not be any
reason to stick to MIDI data rates for your network, the medium (MIDI 
current loop) could conceivably support data rates above 100K bauds.
The advantage to using MIDI ports is that the cables are a) Easy to find/build
and b) useful for something other than playing Mazewars. 

Now I realize that the Atari folks don't care about the above because
they already have a MIDI port, however let me ask this. Has anyone 
considered putting a MIDI adapter on the ST serial port and then 
running the 'network' in the other direction? Then you could have 
a counter rotating ring network that would make each host no more 
than 8 hops away. Just pick the appropriate direction with :

DIRECTION = ((dstnode - srcnode) & 0x8) ? DOWNSTREAM : UPSTREAM ;

This could give added performance to time critical games.

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.