The modern woes of using the MIDI Timepiece AV USB on Windows

[coca]

So here's a preface. I have a bit of an unusual music production/MIDI sequencing setup that involves two computers: A laptop running Windows 10, and a Power Mac G4 running Mac OS 9. The W10 laptop is my primary MIDI sequencer, and the G4 mostly handles audio via Pro Tools, but I occasionally use it for MIDI sequencing as well. Previously, I had a USB interface for both computers and had them connected over standard MIDI cables, and it worked nicely.

A while back I discovered the MOTU MIDI Timepiece AV USB. I didn't pay much heed to it until I found out that it can connect and pass MIDI over both USB and Mac serial. This would allow me to connect my laptop, my Mac, and my external MIDI synth gear all to a single interface. That sounded like a fantastic proposition to me, and today I finally have one in my possession, for a pretty good price too.

But problems immediately arose. The select and value knobs don't work at all. I can scroll through all the menus and submenus, but I can't edit any of the parameters. I unscrewed the unit, opened it up and found that the pot knobs for both were either completely broken off or heavily bent. This will most likely be a time consuming and costly repair that I can't deal with right now.

From here, I looked to a software control solution. ClockWorks installed with the MOTU MIDI driver I installed on my laptop, so I got the MTP connected and loaded the program. CW recognized the MTP immediately, but as I began playing around I found that none of the changes I made in CW transferred over to the MTP. The routing page was also completely blank and unconfigurable, which is a known issue with Windows users who have this interface. This exact scenario has been reported multiple times online.

So I did some digging and ended up in a small rabbit hole of forum posts. Turns out, even though I have the latest firmware version for the MTP (2.01) there's a chip contained inside called AVUSB that needs to be version 1.32 in order for the MTP to function as intended on Windows computers. The other common version, 1.31, only works on Macs. I didn't catch this detail when I initially opened the device to check the data knobs, so I opened it again to verify. Sure enough, the sticker on the chip said 1.31.

I did a bit more digging because I wanted to get to the bottom of this. In the end, what I've found is that it seems my only options to get this thing working properly on Windows are to either wait until a preflashed 1.32 chip appears for sale online somewhere, or to flash the 1.32 EPROM onto the chip myself, using a file that doesn't seem to exist anywhere on the internet. ...Or to wait for a MTP that's confirmed to have the 1.32 chip show up for a decent price. If someone could help me obtain the 1.32 file, or perhaps help me with the entire flashing process (I don't own a device that's capable of accomplishing that task), or could sell me a 1.32 chip, or point me to someone who's selling these chips, I would greatly appreciate that.

I've also seen a few users suggest that they've previously used this interface with a Mac running OS 9. One person even mentioned using ClockWorks on an OS 9 Mac. From what I can assume, at some point in time there existed drivers and software for the MTP AV USB that were made for PowerPC Macs running OS 9. It appears that for getting the device recognized on OS 9, that can be done with MOTU FreeMIDI. OMS can most likely do this too, but I haven't yet tested it. However, the OS 9 version of ClockWorks doesn't seem to exist anywhere on the internet.

To get back on topic, my initial idea was to connect the USB cable to the Windows laptop and make necessary changes from there, but in the case that this interface is useable and configurable from the OS 9 Mac (where it would then be plugged back into the laptop for MIDI sequencing), I would be satisfied with that for now. But until someone can help me get the necessary drivers and software for that, I'm seemingly stuck.

One person managed to fix their situation that was very similar to mine by replacing the internal battery. I have yet to do this, but I have my doubts about this fixing my issue. My MTP doesn't display any clear signs as to whether the battery is dead or not, and I can't properly confirm this since I can't edit anything with the select and value knobs being broken.

[coca]

I have an update. Things are going in a positive direction.

All the software I need to configure my MTP comes with the latest version of FreeMIDI for OS 9. It even works in tandem with OMS. After getting everything installed and setup, I tried out the OS 9 ClockWorks. Thankfully, this version of ClockWorks well..... works! The routing options are all present, every feature of the MTP is configurable (even patches and modifiers), and the changes I make in CW actually get reflected on the MTP interface as soon as I make them. Sadly, the changes seem to have been lost after I shut off and rebooted the MTP, so either I didn't save it correctly or the battery really is dead. Although I'd still prefer to do these things from my Windows laptop, if I can figure the saving issue out, then I'll take this workaround for now.

In my initial post, I didn't make it clear how I intend to use my ideal setup. The USB would be connected to Windows and the NET serial connected to Mac. According to the manual, both the USB and the NET ports should have access to all 16 MIDI I/O simultaneously. My G4 doesn't actually have a serial port, but I'm going to acquire an accessory that has one in the future. This is exactly how I would like to be able to use the MTP, but I'm not sure how I'm supposed to setup FreeMIDI and OMS to make this the case. The manual says "MIDI software can run on both computers at the same time, and both programs can send and receive MIDI data to the MIDI Timepiece at the same time" but it's not clear from this text if I'd still be able to edit the MTP configuration from the Mac over the NET port. If I can't then I'd have to reconnect the USB to the Mac to make changes.

Aside from that, this pretty much ended up being a "you just answered your own question". Ultimately though, I hope this thread can help others who have ended up in the same situation as I did, and give anyone with an interest in this interface a buyers beware.

[mikehalloran]

You are delving into some ancient history for many of us. I don’t remember much from those days.

The last Mac I remember that had the serial port was the Beige G3. It ran OS 9 and 10.2. Mine had a USB 1.1 card as well. BTW, the MTP AV USB protocol is 1.1 — USB 2 is backward compatible. Apparently, someone still has a card that willl work in a G4.

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=6634.0