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Getting Started
You can use the interface with either hardware, or using a suitable emulator:
- SEGA Mega Drive or Genesis (PAL or NTSC)
There are three main options:
1. EverDrive USB
- Mega EverDrive X7 or PRO flash cart
- USB cable from cart to PC
2. Controller Port Serial Connection
- Any flash cart (EverDrive PRO, X7, X5, X3, clone etc)
- Serial cable to controller port (port 2) based on these specifications
3. MegaWiFi
- MegaWiFi cartridge
- Apple MIDI / RTP-MIDI setup on macOS or compatible
Whilst connectivity via the controller port might be fine for simple use cases, the controller port's relatively slow speed makes it unsuitable for playback of busy MIDI sequences. MegaWiFi support is relatively new and not throughly tested. EverDrive PRO works but requires a special build of the Hairless MIDI<->Serial Bridge due to the USB interface that it uses.
You'll need a MIDI to Serial virtual device:
- serialmidi (Windows, macOS & Linux). You may also need a MIDI loop device (so software running on the same PC as the USB connection can use the MIDI interface). In macOS this is possible via the use of a "IAC Device Bus" creatable from the Audio MIDI Setup utility.
- ttymidi (Linux)
- Hairless MIDI<->Serial Bridge (Windows, macOS & Linux). Similar to serialmidi, but older and with a GUI. It is no longer in development.
This method requires data to be sent to the EverDrive in a specific format so that it can be received by the interface. There are again a few options depending on your OS:
- Fork of serialmidi that supports the use of an "EverDrive PRO mode" (Windows, macOS & Linux)
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Fork of ttymidi (thanks jaffa225!). Use the
-mor--megaeverdriveprooption to support the Mega EverDrive PRO header format. - Fork of Hairless MIDI<->Serial Bridge that supports the use of an "EverDrive PRO mode" (Windows, Intel macOS & Linux). macOS build is available with other operating systems requiring building from source.
This repo contains a number of scripts to help automate configuration of the Mega Drive MIDI interface. Check out the Utilities page for more info.
Unfortunately I do not own a MegaWiFi cartridge so cannot test this. I implemented support for MegaWiFi primarily as a way to run the interface locally in an emulator. If you own a MegaWiFi cartridge, I imagine you probably know what you are doing as so much as how to setup WiFI connectivity. To actually send MIDI data to the ROM, follow the instructions for using BlastEm's MegaWiFi support and replace the localhost IP address with the device's actual IP accordingly. It might work! 🤞 (and I'd be very interested to know either way!)
You can download pre-built ROMs from releases.
- BlastEm nightly build (or a version later than 0.6.2). Unfortunately the current release does not support UDP over MegaWiFi which the interface requires so you'll need to use a nightly build. I've tested against the Windows & macOS nightly builds. If you're using Linux/macOS, the Windows version also seems to work fine in Wine.
- Apple MIDI / RTP-MIDI setup on macOS or compatible (rtpMIDI works for Windows)
Check the guide for more information.
From v1.12 upwards there is a demo mode which can be activated by pressing A whilst the interface is awaiting MIDI input. In this mode, the interface will play a note repeatedly until the console is reset.
Controls (controller 1):
- Up = Raise the pitch one semitone
- Down = Lower the pitch one semitone
- Left = Decrement the MIDI program number
- Right = Increment the MIDI program number