Commodore Amiga MIDI Driver explained

Commodore Amiga MIDI Driver (CAMD) is a shared library for AmigaOS which provides a general device driver for MIDI data, so that applications can share MIDI data with each other in real-time, and interface to MIDI hardware in a device-independent way.

History

Commodore announced work on Commodore Amiga MIDI driver (CAMD) during the January 1990 NAMM Show. Driver should allow multiple MIDI applications to work together in the Amiga multitasking environment, with timing as a crucial issue (working with realtime data streams). ARexx support was also planned.[1] The software was originally created at the Carnegie Mellon University and later adopted by Commodore.[2] According to software developer Daniel S. Riley, several people worked on the driver (starting with Roger B. Dannenberg and Jean-Christophe Dhellemmes at the Carnegie-Mellon university). Commodore finally gave this task to David Joiner (author of Deluxe Music) and synchronisation services were separated in realtime.library.[3] Deluxe Music 2.0 introduced support for both camd.library and realtime.library[4] and was for many years the only commercial music package using CAMD. Amiga Format article about MIDI noticed in 1999 still many bugs, some compatibility issues and lack of application support.[2]

Commodore's version of CAMD also included a built-in driver for the Amiga serial port. The Poseidon USB stack contains the camdusbmidi.class.

AROS port and later development

In part due to above mentioned problems, the CAMD library was rewritten (reverse engineered by Kjetil S. Matheussen) as part of the AROS project in 2001[5] and later in 2005 ported to AmigaOS 4.[6] In 2012, Lyle Hazelwood released updated AmigaOS 4 version,[7] which was then distributed as part of AmigaOS starting with the 4.1 Update 5.[8] Since MorphOS 3.10 CAMD is officially part of this system.[9]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Krutz. Jamie. July 1990 . Amiga Headed for Musical Nirvana. INFO. INFO Publications. 08975868. 31. 61.
  2. Goodwin. Simon. March 1999 . Rombler MIDI, CAMD Software. Amiga Format . Future Publishing. 0957-4867. 121. 57.
  3. Riley . Daniel S. . Re: camd.library? (was Re: DMCS Upgrade) . 12 February 1993. comp.sys.amiga.audio . 1lgkqrINNd9q@lns596.TN.CORNELL.EDU. 26 March 2019.
  4. Rutter. Daniel. January 1994 . Deluxe Music 2, MIDI Support. Australian Commodore and Amiga Review. Saturday Magazine. 1034-3806. 11. 1. 30.
  5. Web site: Midi: camd.library V40, CamdBnp-Tools. Amiga-News.de. 22 July 2001. 26 March 2019.
  6. Web site: AmigaOS 4: CAMD- und emu10kx-MIDI-Treiber. Amiga-News.de. German. 17 April 2005. 26 March 2019.
  7. Web site: AmigaOS 4: Several MIDI-libraries and tools. Amiga-News.de. 12 June 2012. 26 March 2019.
  8. Web site: AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5 published. Amiga-News.de. 16 August 2012. 26 March 2019.
  9. https://www.morphos-team.net/releasenotes/3.10 MorphOS 3.10 Disk Changes