Hi.

On the subject of MIDI. Since I'm a fairly new to the intel world, can anyone tell me which port a midi interface is using?

A standard PC-MIDI interface uses port 330, but that can be changed. Many (most) soundcards have a MIDI-interface build-in through the Joystick-port.

2. how would I configure my linux box to talk with such interface

a) through some mysterious connection between the sound card and said port, b) manually in /dev/something.

You can add a MIDI-device when compiling the kernel, either as a part of the Kernel, or as a module. The drivercode is normally a part of OSS/free, which is included in most Linux distributions (those who make you sound card work).

The in/out ports of the device will automaticly be created in /dev/ as /dev/midi00 (actually midi0x if you have more than one interface, i think), and a /dev/sequencer will automaticly be created for playing MIDI-files. (As far as i know, anybody correct me if I am wrong)

You shouldn't worry much about this, because PD (usually) finds and assigns the correct ports when you start it.

3. anyone aware of possibility of hacking a serial cable

to adapt to my serial port in my pc and possibly using a serial MIDI interface.

You should check out the this link:

http://crystal.apana.org.au/ghansper/MidiAxis.html

I have NOT tried it, though, so I don't know if it will work.

And on another note (pd) As I started finally playing with pd a little more seriously I found that it'd be cool to have some documentation polished up and updated. I even started doing a little HTML version of it. It's just a beginning but I'm willing to continue if there are chances someone will find it useful. Now or in the future. Any pros,cons? Hints and ideas are more than welcome.

This will be great.

For more information and software on Linux/sound try out http://sound.lovebead.com/ http://www.xdt.com/ar/linux-snd/

Soeren Bovbjerg