Hi All!
As I got citated I´d like to give you some answers directly :)
-) No MIDI recently at the FireBee. We are still debugging the interface itselve. It seems that the FPGA needs improved timings and some more attention. So the main question is answered here at this point, for MIDI get an Falcon right now.
-) We are planning to get some of the killerapps up and running, but there is no timeline for that. But I think we can give this summer Notator a try. No promise of course as we are all working for free in our spare time.
-) But before taht MIDI has to be debugged, and one of the more GEM-near Sequencers has to work. (Recently no Sequencer is running without problems)
-) The idea about an ST inside the FPGA is an idea and nothing else. Nothing has been done in this direction. It can be done, but nobody tried it. Recently there are 3 "compatibility layers" possible.
1. cf68klib from MicroAPL inside FireTOS
2. Didiers Purce-C patcher, catching some Pure-C specific stuff
Both of them are inside TOS and you don´t have to deal with them. If an application does not work, you can try:
3. Vincents soft CPU 68kemu. Thats a CPU Emulation, while the System itselve stays ColdFire. That one is used by renaming ".PRG" to ".68k" so the application is loaded by the SoftCPU.
None of that helps with all the hardware near Sequencers. For example we had to create a Black&White Screenmode for mordern displays as well. Gladly that one is now working with the latest FireTOS from February. So the MIDI stuff is one agaenda of the project, but it will not happen the upcoming months, as it is still much much work.
Whoever would like to support us (especially FPGA developers) is highly welcome to reach our goarl faster and improve the FireBee functionality.