Thinkpads Forum

I want to now use my 760ED for Midi seeing as it has the dedicated Midi/Joystick port.

I have as yet had only limited success running Cubase 5 VST under W98SE, or even an old version of Evolution Pro. I don't want to run VST instruments as the spec won't handle that, just the Midi sequencing and inparticular with Cubase as I want to migrate away from my still successful but more limiting reliance on my trusty Atari Stf that has been doing this job so well for 20 years! I have many Cubase created .sng files on the earlier Steinberg Pro 24 and Atari Cubase.

I would also like to reduce the space given over to the ST setup, with a handy A4 footprint laptop, but even with 104Mb and 2Mb Vram and a 133Mhz as opposed to 16Mhz/4Mb ram, Thinkpad struggles!

So far I can get Cubase running and connected to a Midi chain of Roland instruments - Alpha Juno keyboard, JV-1080 module and an MT32 module, but I can't get the keyboard to playback the midi it can record to Cubase! The modules don't show up in this chain either, except if I swap out the keyboard and replace with either module, then the midi recored data is played back... But no good for recording with now!

So if any others have used their legacy Thinkpads to Midi with, please explain your setup.

Cheers

I have used my Thinkpad 310ED under Windows 98 SE and Puppy Linux for MIDI with all sorts of different DAW formats (for example, Windows stuff like Cakewalk and n-Track and Linux stuff like Rosegarden and Muse). I can even use some low-CPU VST instruments. I have no joystick port so I use an old Midiman Portman PC/P (parallel port) and a Midiman Portman PC/S (serial port) as MIDI interfaces. Unfortunately, I am not a Cubase user so I have no idea how to configure your setup under that program. Have you tried contacting Cubase support? I found getting my old legacy laptop to work with stuff like Cakewalk took some work and non-standard thinking just to get the MIDI setup to work. I am not sure if Cubase support can help but it may save you a lot of frustration and swearing.

Interesting that you too have a Midiman Parallel port interface. I bought one off eBay only to find from the manual that you need a dedicated Centonics (not printer) cable... all mine don't seem to work with it!

That's why I then opted for the 760ED as it has its midi port on the back...

Did you have issues with your Centronics cable??

Cheers for any feedback.

Dedicated Centronics cable? Never tried one. I use standard printer cables (usually a low-quality one that came with a very cheap printer) without any problems. Which PC/P parallel port model do you have, the one with the LED or the earlier one without it? I have the LED model which I got off Ebay last year for an extremely cheap price. It did not come with a working drivers diskette so I downloaded the drivers for free which are still available on the M-Audio website. Worked fine with both Windows 95 and Windows 98. I then bought the PC/S serial port model this past summer for use with Linux because the parallel port model did not have a Linux driver available. That works fine as well after some work getting the Linux driver working.