There's another reason it wouldn't work; the MIDI interface is powered
off the USB bus, and takes pretty much the full 500 ma current draw
that the port supplies (if you can read the printout I sent last
message, the draw and supply are listed.) Add in the 100 ma for the
wireless mouse receiver and 250 ma for the keyboard itself, and the
poor USB bus would be completely overloaded. I've heard about expensive
repairs involving this, so I won't experiment. I was also warned to
plug it directly into the computer, not into an external hub, unless
the hub was separately powered.
While thinking about this, I came to the hypothesis that one of the
first replies here (David, was that you?) was correct; that the MIDI
may be time stamped, but the keyboard input is not; it is just read in
the order that the keys are pressed and held in a buffer until such
time as it can be taken and applied. So if my computer gets
bottle-necked on some housekeeping task (like redrawing the screen)
then it just forgets about the carefully time-stamped MIDI input that
happened eons ago (in its mind) and goes on with the "Important" tasks
fed into it by the QWERTY keyboard, completely uncoordinated with the
MIDI.
(On the same subject, my first computer, an 8 mHz Atari ST with 1 meg
of RAM had FLAWLESS MIDI timing as a result of MIDI being built into
the OS as well as being built in to the computer itself. My present
computer has a clock speed 100 times faster and computational power far
beyond even that, but not as steady on the MIDI. Go figure!)
This may also be related to the general slowdowns reported by some on
Mac, when the computer has been running for a long time, especially if
some apps have memory leaks, like Safari is reported to have. Like I
said at the beginning, I don't ALWAYS outrun my computer when Speedy
entering; only sometimes, and those times may very well be when I have
a lot going on at once, and Safari has been running for a week or so,
and I haven't rebooted recently, etc., you get the idea. I just never
thought to look for that before. Now I will look for it.
Christopher
On Jul 14, 2005, at 9:25 PM, Darcy James Argue wrote:
Hi David,
That probably wouldn't work. IIRC, the USB port on the Apple keyboard
is only designed to take 1.5 Mb/s devices (like a mouse).
- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brooklyn, NY
On 14 Jul 2005, at 8:59 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 14 Jul 2005 at 14:31, Christopher Smith wrote:
I don't have a hub. All I have (right now) is my MIDI interface
plugged into one of the two available USB ports in the back of the
Mac
G4, and my keyboard plugged into the USB port for that purpose on the
back of my Apple Cinema Display. There are two USB ports on the
keyboard; my mouse is plugged into one of them. The keyboard USB
cable
is too short to plug into the computer directly without an extension,
unless the computer is on the table beside me (crappy design, IMHO).
Have you tried plugging the MIDI adaptor into the keyboard hub? I'm
assuming there's more than one port on it (you're already using one
for the mouse).
That would mean that both signals would be coming from the same
device, over the same cord.
If you've got an unsed port on the keyboard, it might be worth a try!
--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc
All non-quoted content (c) David W. Fenton, all rights reserved
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