Hi,

Does anyone happen to have a data sheet or programming guide for the MIDI Saurus? Also do you know any applications that uses the MIDI Saurus?

Here is a demo version of the 4TRAX MIDI Replayer, which plays MBM files over MIDI. You choose between severl MIDI interfaces, MIDISaurus being one of them.

Although I used to be member of 4TRAX, I did not participate in the development of this program and don't have access to the sources The authors have since long lost interest in MSX -- I even lost contact to all of them. Feel free to reverse engineer It'll be a bit of a bitch, though, since the program was created with MCBC -- an MSX BASIC compiler.

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Oh, the demo version of the program is only restricted in that sense that it will only load the provided MBM and MBK. -- the disk functions won't work. But you can just throw any other MBM/MBK on the disk, as long as the names remain as they are: ALF.MBM and 4TRAXKIT.MBK
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omg what a n00b-protection ^__^

The only application that used the MIDI Saurus interface to it's full potential was the software shipped with the cartridge (although it did contain a few very serious bugs).
By reverse engineering (back in the days) I was able to send raw MIDI data to output 1. I never got to the part of using the built in RAM and Z80 CPU. Actually the MIDI Saurus cartridge is a complete computer (Z80 CPU, Z80 PIO, own memory,...). As far as I can remember you have to program the thing via port 70 and 71 (hex).
With the PIO datasheets you should be able to get it to work.

http://www.datasheetcatalog.net/cgi-bin/helo.pl?field=Nume&type=C&text=Z80&producedby=&action=Search&dela=91

Thanks for the info. It would be cool to emulate the entire CPU but that may be hard with limited info. Would be nice to at least get the midi working. Do you think that the MIDI Saurus cart does something with the Z80 except midi?