Will there be a 64 bit version of the driver?
Yes. Actually you can get it here.

Will your driver work with a USB to parallel conversion cable?
No. These cables are meant for connecting printers. They are missing crucial features of real parallel ports that make them unsuitable.

What does the 'Inverted IRQ' option in the configuration utility do exactly?
An inverted IRQ line is something you will very rarely find with onboard parallel ports. However, with parallel ports that come on add-on PCI or PCI-express cards it seems to be quite common. The Midi Translator can work with these kind of ports but it needs to know about it. That is why there is this option on the configuration utility.
Very important thing to remember is that the Midi Translator itself also needs to be modified. You must set the internal jumper to 'docked' operation if the Midi Translator needs to work with an inverted IRQ.
If you have daisy-chained Midi Translators, then only the first device (the one connected to the computer) needs to adapted to inverted operation. The other devices remain unchanged (those are already in 'docked' mode).

What do you mean by 'daisy-chained devices' and 'docked operation'?
This is a feature of the Midi Translator where you can connect several (up to 4) Midi Translators together to create one big device with up to 8 inputs and 8 outputs.
See this page from the original manual.

It is very hard to find a motherboard with parallel port nowadays. What are the alternatives?
As mentioned in the answer above, USB to parallel converters do not work with the driver.
The alternative is to buy a PCI/PCIexpress card (or PMCIA/Express card equivalent) with a parallel port expansion. These come in many varieties, some with additional serial ports or sometimes two extra parallel ports.
However most of them use one of a small number of dedicated chips. MOSChip is a manufacturer that produces a lot of these chips. Of course it is impossible for me to test all these chips. I myself have used a PCMIA card using the MSC9805 successfully. I recommend that you find a product that uses this chip.
One thing to remember is that this chip has an inverted IRQ line. After installation of the driver you will need to check the option 'Inverted IRQ' in the configuration utility. Also you might have to tweak the latency setting a bit. This is also an option in the configuration utility dialog box. If it works with the default latency of 1, great! Else you may have to set it little higher.
I investigated a problem one of my customers reported where a MSC9865 was involved. After carefull analysis of the problem I came to the conclusion that the chip itself was to blame. I contacted the manufacturer's support but unfortunately they have been unwilling to help me solve the situation. Even though eventually I could get the driver to work with this chip it never felt really stable. As mentioned above I had to check the 'Inverted IRQ' option and set the latency fairly high (about 35).

Unfortunately I have no data about other chips. If you have experience with other chips, whether good or bad, please let me know. To the benefit of all.

I purchased your driver and received a download link and password but when I try to download I get an error?
First make sure that your browser has Javascript enabled.
Next copy and paste the password from the email notification into your web-browser to avoid any mistakes.
If you still can not get it to work, please contact me and I will make sure you get your software.

During installation I am required to fill in my user name and registration number. Where can I find this information?
This information is contained in a file called 'Registration Data.txt' which is one of the files in the driver package zip file you downloaded.
I recommend that you copy and paste the information from this file, to avoid errors.

I have a license for the 32 bit driver. Is there an upgrade option to the 64 bit version?
No. You will need to purchase a new license for the 64 bit driver.
A lot of time and effort has gone into the development of the 64 bit driver. I feel that a small fee is justified.

Do you have a driver for .... (fill in the blanks)?
No. I developed this driver purely for my own satisfaction. Maybe in the future I will take on another of such project but as of yet I have no plans in that direction.

Can I get support for the Midi Translator PC or other Opcode product through you?
No. I have no connection whatsoever with Opcode. If you have a malfunctioning Midi Translator don't come to me. I have no expertise in those matters, sorry.

Do you know where I can buy a Midi Translator?
I'm afraid not. It went out of production a long time ago. Maybe you can find them secondhand somewhere if you look around.

Does your driver support daisy chained devices?
Yes, it does! However, each device will need its own power supply. Only the first device can draw its power from the parallel port itself.

The driver seems to stop working after ten minutes or so. I have to reboot to get it working again.
You are using the demo version of the driver. You can get a full working version here or got to www.shareit.com and order productid 194226.

I'm using your driver with Cubase SX and it shows up as 'emulated'. What's the deal?
Cubase SX uses DirectMusic to access MIDI devices. DirectMusic is part of the DirectX libraries that were developed by Microsoft to enable applications to access hardware in a more direct way. As of this moment the Midi Translator driver is not a DirectMusic driver. That's why it shows up as emulated. Don't worry about this. I get excellent MIDI response using the driver in emulated mode. If there is a performance benefit to be had from using a DirectMusic driver it's probably not that big. Nevertheless I'm planning to develop a DirectMusic version of the driver in the near future.

Just for the record, Cubase SX is the only application that I know of that makes use of DirectMusic to access MIDI devices at this moment. But there may be more in the future.

No matter what I do I can't get the Midi Translator working with your driver. What is wrong?
First make sure that you followed the installation instructions carefully. You could try to uninstall the driver and go through the setup process again.

Next check that you have a working parallel port on your system. The parallel port may be disabled in the BIOS setup. Check the manual of your motherboard if you're not sure about this. You can check if there is a parallel port on your system by going to the device manager. The section Ports (COM&LPT) should list at least one printer port. Also the port should be configured as standard (uni-directional) port. Usually this is configured through the BIOS setup as well. Again check the manual that came with your motherboard.

A good test to check whether your system is setup allright is to see if the Midi Translator works on Windows 98 with the original Opcode driver. If it works with that it should work with my driver as well.

There is a possibility that your printer port is incompatible with the Midi Translator. I experienced this with one system on which I tested the driver. Again a definite test is to try it on Windows 98. That's how I found out that the parallel port on that motherboard simply refused to work with the Midi Translator.

If you find that the parallel port is faulty you can buy a parallel port extension card for little money.
If the parallel port is OK and you've carefully followed the installation instructions and still no luck then you can send me an email asking for support. Please describe the problems you're experiencing as precisely as you can. If you get error messages please copy them to your support request. Also add your system setup, describing motherboard, processor, operating system and anything else that may be helpful. The more information you give me the easier it will be for me to investigate the problem.

When I unzip the zip file that was sent to me I get the error: 'Unexpected end of file!'
The zip files that are created by my mailing engine seem to be incompatible with some applications that claim to handle zip files. Apparently a problem exists with the files in sub-folders. The zip utiltity that is part of Windows XP is one of the applications that are unable to handle these files.
The solution is to use a different application to unzip the files. All versions of WinZip can extract the files without any problems. A trial version of WinZip 8.1 can be downloaded from www.winzip.com.


It is unknown to me whether the error lies in my zip packages or that the extracting utilities are at fault. Future distributions of the driver will no longer suffer from this problem.

When I use the demo driver my system sometimes freezes completely.
This is a bug in the old version of the demo driver. There is a new version (1.1.0.244) you can download that will fix this issue.
The problem occurs when you are running the driver on Windows XP. If you open an input while the driver is active, the system will freeze if the input receives MIDI data after the time-limit has elapsed. You have to reset the computer to bring it back to life.
The problem occurs only with the demo driver (versions lower than 1.1.0.244) and only if you run it on Windows XP.

I am experiencing problems that could be related to Nsynas32 service?
If you are running software protected by a Syncrosoft protection key you might run into this problem. Such a device, commonly referred to as 'dongle', comes with Cubase for instance. Nowadays they come in the form of a USB stick, in the older days they used to be connected to the parallel port. I myself had some trouble with apparently an old version of the protection device driver. It seemed it still did some things to the parallel port, even though I have a USB dongle. It was quickly solved by disabling the Nsynas32 service. It is probably always best to install the latest drivers of these devices.

Does your driver support multiple devices?
Unfortunately not. You can use it with only one Midi-Translator connected to your computer, unless you daisy-chain them (see above).
However you can use the same port from multiple applications (multi-client), but that is a different matter.

Do you know anything about/have a driver for Mac OS/Linux/Other operating system?
I do not, sorry. I only have knowledge of Windows and that keeps me sufficiently busy already.