Floppy Disk Midi Player from Italy - The Viscount RD800 "Active Data Filer"
0Hello Friends, there are a few floppy disk midi players around from Roland and others, but a player utilizing "normal" MS-DOS formated 1.44MB disks and processing generic midi file format? I don't think there aren't many of them - so I was happy to get this one for little money. It was hard to get any informations on this, very few informations on the web but enough for me to give it a try.
I did some research and found out that Viscount is an Italian company for pro audio equipment, and they are still in business today. As I didn't find a manual for the unit but wanted to know how to reset it to factory default, I wrote them anemail and I was very happy to get a kind reply soon, with the manual as pdf I asked for. (this isn't common for 25 yrs old legacy hardware for sure)
Setup is quite easy, you just have to connect it via midi cale to any GM-compilant rompler- I chose the SC55 for this demonstration - insert a floppy with some of your favorite midi files - and push the play button.
The unit is also capable of recording incoming midi directly on floppy or an internal rom (1MB), but I havent tried this feature yet.
For meI I like the possiility to playback midi music on my modules without the need of a PC, and I like floppys in general - as well as the Idea of having my prefered game music on a storage media of the same era.
But what do you think about a device like this?
Comments welcome down below.
Playlist:
00:01 Descent Track 22 (Level 17)
03:22 Doom Track 11
06:00 Descent Track 13
Cheers,
Ernie,
PC-SOUND-LEGACY