MIDI-80 for the TRS-80

DOWNPOLY played a LIVE GIG at the Vintage Computer Festival Southwest (Dallas) 2026 https://www.vcfsw.org/ and gave YouTuber MONROE WORLD https://www.youtube.com/@darkuni an interview and tour of his TRS-80 rig: 

"While out at the convention in Dallas/Fort Worth, I had the absolute pleasure of catching up with Joel, better known as Downpoly. What he has going on is absolutely crazy—he is bridging the gap between retro computing and modern electronic music using vintage TRS-80 microcomputers.

Joel walks us through his incredible setup, utilizing Michael Wessel's MIDI-80 interface and George Phillips' Orchestra 90 organ software to push these classic machines to their absolute limits. We dive into the production of his albums, how he uses a Tandy 2000 running Windows 1.0 to generate his album artwork, and his complex pedal and synthesizer chain.

As a massive advocate for physical media, I was especially thrilled to see his custom colored vinyl pressings and CD releases for his albums. It is an amazing mixture of digital and physical art that lines up perfectly with what we do here on the channel.

Be sure to check out his music and support his physical media releases using the links below!

Support Downpoly:
Website & Merch: https://downpoly.com

Listen At:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7oj8N..."

I absolutely LOVE the MIDI/80 + TRACKER rig Joel has created:

Joel Hilliard aka DOWNPOLY released his new album, TETHER_:

Unlike his previous album where MIDI/80 and TRACKER were mainly used for drums (it couldn't do more back then!), he is now increasingly utilizing it for full backing tracks on his songs (for bass, melodies, chords, ...). By now, TRACKER is a full-fledged 6channel multi-timbral MIDI sequencer (organized into 26 pages which can be flexibly sequenced in song mode). More MIDI channels can be realized by synchronizing multiple TRACKERs running on dedicated TRS-80s via the parallel port sync cable (see below). Joel is tpyically using 2 to 3 synchronized TRACKERs for his work. See below for more details.

Please support his work on Spotify if you like his songs on YouTube (also see here.)

I have created a new 512 KB bank-switched memory expansion for the Model I - with it, and a slightly updated MIDI player program that can make use of the extra memory, I am finally able to play back large MIDI files. Demo video: 

Really appreciate it, Hackday - thanks much! 

https://hackaday.com/2025/06/01/its-midi-for-the-trs-80/

I have uploaded a short Tracker tutorial (Version 1.98 at the time of this writing) to YouTube; a recent customer asked for some form of documentation, as I currently don't have anything about the Tracker program in the Github repo. Here you go, hope it helps!

Here is the latest creation from DOWNPOLY, who is by now using MIDI/80 Tracker 1.98 and its parallel-port clock synchronization mechanism in order to synchronize multiple MIDI/80 Tracker machines:

It is now possible to synchronize multiple Trackers running on different machines:

Here is a demo video.

The latest version of the Tracker, Version 1.96 (tracker5/cmd on the disk images) is now sending an external clock signal over the parallel port, on Data 0. Another TRS-80 Tracker can then be configured to latch on to this external clock by setting it into external clock mode with the ' key. The receiving TRS-80 Tracker is called the secondary, and the clock generating Tracker the primary. Enable the external clock mode on the secondary with the ' key. Then start playback as usual, in pattern (P) or song playback mode (!). As usual, you can always refer to the help page for key bindings (H). The secondary Tracker is frozen until it starts receiving the clock signal from the primary Tracker via the parallel port cable; the tempo setting of the secondary will be disregarded, as the tempo is determined by the external clock from the primary. External clock can be en- and disabled using the ' at any time; also, with the exception of the tempo setting, recording and all the other Tracker operations and settings work identical as if the internal clock was used.

To make the cable, simply connect the Centronic ports of the two machines as follows: GND to GND (e.g., Centronics pin 2; note that there are multiple options for GND), and the Data 0 output (Centronics pin 3) of the primary to the BUSY input (Centronics pin 21) of the secondary. And easy way to construct the cable is to cut two TRS-80 printer cables in half, and solder the wires together:

... celebrating the newest member of the TRS-80 MIDI Studio: the Behringer Wave, a clone / recreation of the legendary iconic PPG Wave 2.3 from 1982! Created by Wolfgang Palm, the inventor of Wave Table Synthesis, in my birth-town Hamburg, Germany. 

It's mind boggling how much he achieved with so little, back in the day. All of the PPG software was programmed in bare-metal 6809 assembly language, no C-compiler, no libraries, nothing.

Thank you, Behringer, for bringing this legend back to life, and for making it affordable! Now everybody can experience the magic that radiates from the legendary instrument. The build quality and sound is amazing!

Just getting my feet wet, but here is first demo using the latest MIDI/80 Tracker 1.95 and the S2 for drums. Enjoy!

Finally, the Tracker software is becoming more feature complete. By now, I have

• multiple patterns (A-Z)
• pattern chaining = song mode (a song is a sequence of patterns, and can be looped)
• load & save
• MIDI real time tracking via MIDI IN socket from a MIDI keyboard
• real time tracking from the TRS-80 keyboard
• quantization
• some pattern tools (e.g., the ability to copy patterns)
• etc.