What is HyperMIDI?

The HyperMIDI Toolkit is a collection of routines (XCMDs and XFNCs) for MIDI programming in HyperTalk, the language of HyperCard. These routines include utilities for transmitting and receiving data over MIDI, and for implementing active MIDI controls.

 

HyperMIDI is well suited for:

 

Ugly little one-time tasks:

A real-life situation: Yesterday I got around to looking at the MIDI implementation manual for my Roland D-50. The manual is not the most lucid I've seen, abounding with grammatical atrocities (an obvious translation from Japanese). In the dump format, the checksum is described as the sum of "address, size, and that checksum" being zero (modulo 128). Since size is not otherwise mentioned, I wonder if they mean address + data + checksum, address + size of record + data + checksum, etc. So, I do a bulk dump from the D-50 front panel, read it into a text field with RxMIDI, edit out all but one block by mouse selection, and write a 6 line script to add the 259 address and data bytes up and see what I get. Less than 5 minutes to do all of the above, a job which would otherwise would have been a pain even for an experienced programmer.

 

Orphaned MIDI instruments:

Have we seen these before?

 

Custom solutions:

We don't always like the way XYZ, Inc's patch editor for the XDD750+ synth is laid out in certain respects (you can't please everybody). Well, from MultiFinder you can run their patch editor, and switch to HyperMIDI when you want to use your custom oscillator/filter/envelope panel WITH RANDOM PATCH CAPABILITIES, etc.

 

Experimental:

Explore the Wonderful World of MIDI (hey, we'll get Marlin Perkins to host...).

 

MIDI Macros:

Set up your MIDI system from HyperMIDI, switch back to your megabuck sequencer program.

 

Become a professional MIDI programmer:

Programs using the HyperMIDI Toolkit routines may be distributed freely in free or shareware products (contact me about commercial applications), as long as you are a registered owner and adhere to any restrictions in the licensing agreement.

Download HyperMIDI for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

Compatibility notes

HyperMIDI requires a standard Macintosh MIDI interface, as available from a number of sources, and HyperCard, which has it's own requirements of memory, ROMs, disk storage. I test HyperMIDI on a 1Megabyte Mac Plus on single floppy and on hard disk, and on a 5Meg Mac II with hard disk, running MultiFinder. A design goal is to have HyperMIDI run well on a minimal memory, floppy disk system. To this end, the HyperMIDI Toolkit is written entirely in MC68000 assembly language.

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac