Legacy MIDI Xpress XT Coonection to USB

[lnegro]

Hi

...been a long long time since I posted BUT....here goes. Among my MOTU arsenal I dusted off an older MIDI Xpress XT (you know, the one with parallel and rs422 connections). I want to use it as an interfaqce to a laptop for sequencing and of course it predates the USB revolution. I was thinking of trying an adapter, either parallel to usb or rs422 to usb. Would it work? and do I need to use both rs422 connections a and b for in and out or is one sufficient?

The manual is long gone and probably wouldn't help anyway since there are no references to usb. Hopefully the forum will help, and thank you for that.

Regards,
Larry Negro
larryn@comcast.net
215 880 4960

[CSprague]

The rs422 would be a better choice as there are readly available adapters for 232 to usb, the problem may be the drivers. Would a motu driver ment for the usb reconize the MIDI xt connected through an adapter. I use the MOTU XT usb version and MidiOx software to make all my cross-connects. The cost of the adapter is pretty low so it might be worth a shot, just use a reliable source for the adapter so you can return it should it not work.

[lnegro]

Thanks for the response. So you think the RS422 would be better?
I see adapters for par to usb and 422 to usb out there. I always thought Parallel was faster than Serial. When I did have this connected to a PC, iused parallel in the bi-directional mode.

[CSprague]

The drivers might be the biggest issue/. Either adapter to usb is still serial in the end (Universal Serial Bus). Doesn't your laptop support par? so why not direct connect.

[lnegro]

Newer laptop....nothing but USB and FW conections although it does have a PCMCIA slot but that seems ugly. I guess I'm headed for a USB MIDI box even though it seems a waste to not be able to use the MIDI Xpress and all those connections. Thanks for the reponse.

Lar

[Dwetmaster]

I would definitely go for a used MOTU XT USB.

EDIT:
Sorry for that...