Posted by Greg Jones on July 01, 2001 at 00:10:25:
In Reply to: Re: QS serial connection problem posted by greg on June 30, 2001 at 19:31:11:
Greg, (nice name) I don't think changing drivers will resolve my problem, because up until the last day or so, the standard Alesis driver was working perfectly.
I'm thinking that this is a cable or port problem.
Has Alesis went out of business? I heard such a rumor. I'm wondering because it appears that standard computer stores don't carry the serial cable with the female DB9 to Round 9 pin cable required for the QS8. I purchased my original cable from Alesis.........
But I do find it strange that I can get my click track to work. I can even get my synth to play back preexisting midi files. I just can't sequence new ones........These symptoms sound like software problems to me.......
: : : I'm having a strange problem with the serial connection from my PC to my QS8.
: : : The QS8 is not responding to my PC. When I run the test i/o function for the Alesis serial driver, set at the slowest speed, it cannot detect the QS8. Upon rebooting my PC, the QS8 started acting like it was being flooded with a bunch of sustained notes. This flurry of notes went away whever I would disconnect the serial cable from the back of the QS8. If I would reconnect it the noise would start back again.
: : : I checked the serial connection on the PC, disconnected & reconnected the cable. Upon reboot, not only could the serial connection not detect the QS8, but the Cubase dongle was also not detected.
: : : Could this be some kind of PC problem?
: : : I'm running a PIII 1 Ghz, 256 MB, 32 MB video card. My system is relatively new and my motherboard has the Intel 815e chipset if it matters......
: : I forgot to mention something even stranger about my problem.
: : Even though the serial drive says it won't recognize the QS, I can get Cubase to playback my synth's click track. I just can't get any other midi tracks to play back. I've checked midi filters and didn't see any problems......The midi light on the transport bar doesn't respond when I play my synth.......
: Greg-
: A few things that I think may possibly be the problem (I'm no expert, so don't take my word for it):
: -It could be a bad cable, or a bad serial port. I don't know why, but the "noise" you described suggests to me that it might be the cable that is not transmitting the data correctly.
: - If nothing else works and you think it is a computer problem, try Roland's serial MIDI driver. I use it under windows 2000 and it works pretty well, it just doesn't do sysex messages quite right.
: -what is a click track? I've never heard that before.
: -greg