From: JROSSI@EAGLE.AAMRL.WPAFB.AF.MIL
Newsgroups: rec.music.synth
Subject: MOTU Apparently Now hiring ex Radio Shack Employees for Tech Support
Date: 9 Apr 92 16:14:00 GMT


With the risk off offending everyone involved with Mark of the Unicorn, Macs
and MIDI, and the MTP especially, I would like to recount my latest experience
in the world of MIDI-madness...

Recently, I made the decision to acquire a Mac for my MIDI studio.  I did this
for one reason, and one reason only (i.e., to run MOTU's Performer sequencer
with 2 MOTU MTPs).  I have been patiently awaiting the Cakewalk Windows port
and all the other great Windows programs which will eventually support the
MTP, I finally got bored and decided on the MAC/Performer approach.  This was,
unquestionably, the stupidest thing I have done with my studio, ever.  The
problem which seems to be incredibly prevalent these days .. Macus
Techonologicus Ignoramus.  Yep, it seems that by and large, peoplke affiliated
with the Mac platform are technologically ignorant.  This is not to say that
Mac users can't use their systems, or that Mac software writers are not
standouts of the industry, or that there is anything wrong with Macs or their
users, specifically.  The problem, I think, is that the interface (and the
whole platform, for that matter) is so incredibly well conceived from a human
factors standpoint, that nobody ever questions how the things work.  Now, I
know that the whole concept of the Mac was to introduce a computer which could
get the job done with little user knowledge of computers (esp hardware) as
possible.  Unfortunately, Steve Jobs did such a good job, apparently even
the engineers and system developers have suddenly become amnesic as to how
Macs actually function.  Let me digress one further layer here before firing
my main salvo at MOTU...

I am a product of the beloved 'hacker days of personal computing'.  Those were
the days in the mid-70s when being a hacker meant that you built at least one
Altair, probably had a KIM-1 lying around connected to some Teletype, etc.
Sixteen KB was an obscene amount of memory, and Microsoft actually supported
a full feature BASIC interpreter which ran in 8 Kb on an 8080 CPU.  As the 70s
progressed, I developed parallel interests in Intel and MOS-technology
processors.  Although I never got on the Motorola Bus (sic), I had my fair
share of experience knocking off a color image analysis system based on a
SouthWest Technical Products 6800 box.  At any rate, in the early days I never
really had a preferred microprocessor.  I learned to equate Intel boxes with
'real world applications' such as BASIC programming, word processing, and
spread sheets, whereas the MOS-Technology stuff was equated with process
controll applications (my dissertation experiments, for example, were 
controlled with a collection of KIMs, SYMs and AIMs).  As the 70s became the
80s and Intel boxes were equated with Zilog boxes and CP/M was the OS of the
day, I guess I got totally indotrinated into the CP/M tradition of OSs and
naturally migrated to MS-DOS on a clone in 1983.  What continued to fuel each
of my progressions was the cost of the technology and how much a leap it
represented.  For example, my first 'real' computer was a PolyMorphics Poly-88
which I built around 1977.  It had 16 Kb of memory (2 8k Static RAM boards
which cost about $400 each), a processor board and a cassette interface.
The original system cost me about $1300.  I later added the North Star MDS 
when it was released.  This gave my system an astounding 80 Kb of on line
floppy disk storage for a meer $900.  It is no wonder, therefore, that I
considered a 256K 8088 with a 10 MB hard disk and 2 360K floppies a great
deal for $1700 in 1983.  Of course, 1893 (maybe 1984, it was) was when Apple
released LISA as being the 'next greatest thing'.  The Mac soon followed and
the rest is history...

Anyway, here we are in 1992.  I decided (back to r.m.s. relevancy) that my
studio is a mess of MIDI cables with constant patching and re-patching in
order to use the 2 computers (386 running 64-track PC, Atari running Notator)
with all the synths and effects.  It seemed clear to me that the only logical
thing to do was to get a couple of MTPs (16 INs, 16 OUTs) and let them solve
my MIDI patching problems.  Since I have always considred Performer to be
'the best sequencer available (except maybe for 64-Track PC)' the only thing
which stopped me from buying it was the cost of a Mac itself.  Well, about
3 weeks ago, I learned that Macs are now priced so 'the rest of us' can
actually afford one (this is where the long introduction concerning technology/
pricing comes in) so I set out to determine exactly how much Mac I should
buy.  It was at that point when I should have realized I was making a big
mistake.  I mean, has any PC user out there ever actually asked 'how much
PC should I buy?'.  I mean, the question may come up if we are talking about
CAD/CAM or some other 1024x1025x24 bit video application where there are
substantial gains in using a 486 over a 386.  But, I mean, we are talking
MIDI here.  Were talking 325 asychronous Kbits/sec per MIDI cable.  How
much computer do we need to cope with 31.25 Kbits/sec, come on.  Granted,
serial streams make it hard to judge exactly how mych processing horsepower
you actually need to eliminate timing glitches.  Everyone knows that the
original 401 interfaces could not operate at high time-stamp resolutions on
a 4.77 MHz 8088.  Robert Keller, however, demonstrated that you can run
8 401-like interfaces in the dumb mode at 720 ppq timing resolution on an
8 Mhz ISA bus powered by a 16 Mhz 80286 with no timing problems at all.  So,
in a day when your minimum Mac comes standad with a 68030 processor, to need
to ask the question 'How much Mac do I need?' sounds a little absurd.  But
I asked the question, albeit from a 'I need to know some technical things'
about the systems standpoint, anyway...

My first set of questions concerned the differences in Mac architectures.
I mean, all Macs now have a 68030 (except the Quadras).  It seemed odd to
me that the 030 is a true 32 bit processor yet the Classic-II and the new
LC-II can be expanded in 16-bit memory block increments.  I tried to get
information on why/how this was?  If this meant that the 2 'lesser' Macs
actually were using a 16 bit memory bus, and what performance considerations
this enabled.  Well, the technical support people at Apple were of some help.
The guy I spopke to read me a couple paragraphs from some technical publication
which sounded more like a 'See Dick run' story than a technical description.
It was clear to him that the device worked and that I 'shouldn't worry about
it, because it works well.'.  Hey, I'm not sure what planet those people in
Cupertino (SP?) are on but that's the last time I'll call Apple for any
technical information.  Anyway, the other Mac users of Team-Metlay kind of
hand held me through a purchacing decision which culminated in my acquisition
of a IIci with 5 Mb, a 105 Mb Quantum drive, and a Monochrome monitor.  Hell,
I wasn't exactly sure why I needed it but Nick, Adam, Carl, Joe, and Erikeur
convinced me that it was the Mac to choose.  Of course, Performer/MTPs were
what I was really buying, so I even called MOTU to get their opinion
(Marc LoCascio, if you are scanning this to see where I finally start to
equate your technical support staff with brain-dead Radio Shack salespeople,
this isn't it... read on).  I talked to a rather pleasant female type person
who explained that Performer/MTP would work well with any of the new Macs
but that If I wanted to implement the FAST mode on the MTPs (which Performer
obviously supports), I should go with an IIsi as a minimum and with a IIci
if I thought I would ever need the expansion capability.  So, I boy\ught the
IIci ($3500) and 2 MTPs + Performer ($1050).  Total (for those Mac types
who don't remember how to do math without a mouse and software calculator)
= $4510.  Now, considering that the 386, the Atari, and all the MIDI software
currently in the studio purchase price did not add up to this amount, I figured
I must have been buying the almost perfect MIDI controller ... NOT!!!

Now that I have the thing installed I find that the Mac MIDI interface (I'm
not refering to the interface box, but the actual interface between the Mac
and the box) is rediculous.  Anybody contemplating 'upgrading' a PC, Amiga,
or even an Atari to a Mac MIDI platform should pay close attention here.
First let me say that.. yes, Performer is one hell of a software product and
as far as sequencers go it is probably the best available' and ... yes, the
MTPs are fine hardware and I'm sure do everything which MOTU claims they will.
Unfortunately, the problem is not with Performer and not with the MTPs (or
any other Mac interface, including the Opcode Studio-5 box which suffers from
the same problem as all the others) it is with the incomprehensible way the
interface boxes talk to the Mac!!!  (Marc LoCascio, this is where I start
insulting MOTU's 'technical' support staff!!!)...

Ok, let me simmer down a bit... Well, when I wa getting ready to 'configure'
my system I was reading the MTP manual.  As I was perusing a discussion of
the FAST/1x mode, I noticed something that made my skin crawl.  There it was,
as big as life itself, the standard data rate accross a Mac serial line
is 35 KHz!!!!, this is what you get when you operate an interface at the
standard 1 MHz rate.  Of course, the FAST/1x rate allows the computer to send 
the data at up to 4 times that rate (140 KHz MAX).  For the permenantly
acid impaired, what this troubling news suggested is that, no matter what
MOTU was suggesting, there was no way that the Mac could handle 32 independent
MIDI streams.  For that matter, considering overhead, the dam interface is
capable of only handling 4 MIDI data streams.  Now, let me explain what I
mean.. If one MIDI cable has an aschryonous data rate of 31.25 Kbits/sec
then 32 independent streams would require about 1 MHz headroom or 1000 Kbits/
sec input rate.  Now if even in the fast mode the Mac is capable of supplying
data to the MTPs at 140Khz, something has got to give somewhere.  I decided
to call the MOTU technical support people to find out what I could do to
minimize this absurd situation.  What I had in mind was enquiring as to whether
or not if the configuration of an MTP to each of the two (modem and printer)
ports would actually double the throughput rate to the MTPs (i.e., if each
MTP could be supplied data at a maximum of 140 Khz, thus doubling the ability
of a Mac to communicate with the MTPs).  Well, I called...

The male type person who answered the telephone at MOTU cheerfully greeted
me with 'Mark of the Unicorn..Technical support, how can I help you?'.  I
proceeded to try to explain the situation to him.  After going through the
logic above a couple of times he informed me that I could attach an MTP to
each of the serial ports, but he didn't see why I would want or need to.
He proceeded to tell me that a lot of studios use 4 MTPs and they work fine.
At that point I was having a deja vu to my conversation with Apple technical
support.  I started to get frustrated with his continual answering of my
questions with assurances that I had nothing to worry about, that all was
fine, and that MOTU would not lie to me.  At one time in the conversation
I said that when I called a technical support number, I expected technical
support.  He replied "You don't expect me to know about this, do you".  If
you can imagine me politely suggsting that someone who answers a technical
support telephone should, at least, have accesss to some technical information,
please do so.  I mean, most Radio Shack sales employees are more on the
technical ball than this guy was.  The sad thing is that the Radio Shack
sales droids don't pass themselves off as 'Technical support specialists'.
Here I was, calling a technical support number with a technical question and
the tech support guy tells me that he is incapable of rendering technical
support, but it is OK because MOTU would not lie to me.  So, to say that
my opinion of MOTU has dropped a considerable amount would be somewhat of an
understatement.  While behavior such as that might be commonly tolerated in the
Mac world (which is suggested by my discussion with their tech support people),
people with concerns about actually knowing how thier systems are functioning
will not put up with it.  I felt I had a simple question.  I am a Mac novice.
This is support?

Now on to my contention that because of the idiocy involved with using the
serial ports for communication with the MIDI interfaces, the Mac is the
least suitable computer for complex MIDI applications.  The ISA bus in any
standard 286/386/486 PC runs at 8 MHz.  Therefore, if you connect any number
of SIO devices in parallel on the bus, if the processor can talk fast enough,
the 8 MHz bus speed should provide no bottleneck impediment as long as you
keep fewer than 256 MIDI streams goiong at once (that would be 64 separate
4 SIO bus devices).  Clearly, in a PC the Processor speed is the limiting
factor in being able to address nMIDI cables.  A similar situation exists
with Amigas where, again, you have a Data bus and the serial adaptor
cards are placed on the bus.  Each adaptor card has full acess to the bus
and can recieve information at bus speeds.  Again, the only limitation is
imposed by the speed of the processor.  Even the Atari, with the availability
of the 'game port' is capable of interacting with a MIDI interface at bus
speeds.  Why, the Mac world is 'serial port driven' is beyond me.  I did my
bes to try to get some information, or at least some satisfactory explanations.
What I ended up with was rhetoric and emotional support.

Now, NuBUS is clearly one hell of a sophisticated bus.  It has incredible
potential for providing throughput for handling hundreds of MTPs.  It is very
unfortunate that the Mac MIDI standard is so badly compromised by its
reliance on serial ports which have a normal throughput only slightly better
than MIDI itself.

John

P.S.  If anyone would care to enlighten me I'd be more than interested.