CompuServe Messages

Whoa Don, hold on right there… you're a bit confused (no slam intended), and we'd better get you straightened out before you make ANY purchase decisions. There is ONLY ONE SERIAL PORT on the Amiga 1000. That connector on the back of the floppy drive is for chaining another drive. So, you're back to having only one serial port. Sorry. 8) The passthrough isn't "an extra serial port on the interface", it's a PASSTHROUGH. There will be a switch somewhere on the box, and you can select MIDI or RS232 operation. You CANNOT use both at the same time. Okay, with that out of the way, if you want/need a serial passthrough you've just restricted yourself to two interfaces. The ECE R&D MIDI Interface gives you one each IN, OUT, and THRU, and a serial passthrough with a front-panel switch. Last time I checked it retailed right at $60.00. The Amazing MIDI interface is a very simple do-it-yourself project which ran in Amazing Computing V2N2. The design as published has two switchable INs, one THRU, two switchable THRU/OUTs, and a serial passthrough with a front-panel switch. You can put this one together for about $20. Since you've included in your "want list" just about every audio product available for the Amiga, I'll save discussion on the rest of it for our continuing conversation, which I imagine will run on for awhile. 8) I would suggest, though, that you pick up some back issues of Amazing Computing… and subscribe. We have a monthly column which deals with audio on the Amiga, and which has reviewed most of the products in which you are interested. I'm writing up Dr. T's librarian/editors right now. (Disclaimer: as an editor for AC, I am biased in my recommendation). Improving the built-in speech synthesis? Have you tried building your sounds from phonemes instead of relying on the translator.device? The latter works remarkably well, but generates crude sounds at times. There's no easy way to add stereo to the 1084. Much easier to pipe your output to an external stereo amp.