Hi,  This is in response to Andrew Springman's post about the recent
upsurge of interest in the iPod ittyMIDI Player [041210 MMDigest,
MIDI & Mechanical Music Instruments].

I am not familiar with the iPod device.  I have used a SD35 Roland
MIDI player for my automatic glockenspiel with great results.  The only
problem is that 800 kbyte floppy diskettes are not easily available and
are not read by the newer computers.  What I would love to see is
a player with the following characteristics:

1. Upon power on, the unit should be immediately in the MIDI operation
mode.  It then plays MIDI files one at a time in sequence and then
repeats after the last file.

2. The unit operate with remote pushbuttons: play, stop, next song,
repeat after last file.

3. The unit has a way of transferring MIDI file data from a PC and/or
a Macintosh.  (I do all of my arranging on a sequencing program such
as Master Tracks.)

There may be other requirements but I can not think of them right now.
So, the player should be a device that is easy to operate and not
simply a miniature PC and all the button pushing required to start
up a PC.  That's my 2 cents worth.  Hope it helps.

I still am quite fuzzy about how an iPod works and its uses.  Is
it just a mini PC?

Andy LaTorre

 [ Master Tracks (Passport Designs, Foster City, Calif.) for the
 [ Macintosh and Master Tracks Pro for the PC are very similar.
 [ Both versions work well for me for editing music roll data in
 [ MIDI file format.  I installed "MacDrive 98" (www.media4.com)
 [ on the Windows PC to read & write Macintosh disks and diskettes.
 [ -- Robbie