Midi problem

Does someone know how to set up midi, I tried to set it up with a AD1985 onboard card
but also with a AudioPCI128 , with or without alsa on boot it is not possible to play midi
files, not with playmidi or xmms, I tried on a harddisk install and tried it with and without
alsaconfig. I have sound and can use aplications like audacity but only when I don't activate
soundsystem in the configurationcenter when I do that and start Audacity it returns with
an host error can't initialise i/o layer no recording or playback options, same with Hydrogen.
The system sound is working then, but the test midi button remains silence.
I tried knoppix 3.3 and 3.4 and tried to set up alsa myself with kpackage but it refuses
to do things mainly I guess because off alsa-base but it seems it can't be removed without errors.
I tried to install applications like muse qsynth timidity xzynaddsubfx kmidi but none
off these will work properly.
I read almost all forums for a solution so because I can't find these I hope someone who
is been able to set up midi or a proper working alsa will post his results or suggestions.
The cards I tried AD1985 soundonboard and Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI seems to be supported
ordening to the ALSA SOUND MATRIX, so my question is how can set this up?

Wim, may be a long shot but are you sure you have a patchset? When you try for instance kmidi, it should give an error... what is happening when it doesn't work?

I had no trouble setting up midi before alsa, with alsa it was a bit more of a pain but kmidi worked fine when I got all its dependencies including timidity and its patchset.

I can't try kmidi because now I installed Knoppix 3.4 2.6.6 kernel , when trying to install it gives the warning:
kmidi:
Vereisten:kdelibs3 but is not going to be installed
Vereisten:libarts(>=4:2.2.2-1) of
libarts-alsa but it is not going to be installed

So it seems kmidi is not even be possible to install in this version when I try to install
kdelibs3 itself it wants to remove more than 40 packages but evenwhen try this I get the above message.
So I installed kmid I get the warning:
:~$ kmid
KMid 2.0 Copyright (C) 1997,98,99,2000,01 Antonio Larrosa Jimenez. Malaga (Spai
n)
KMid comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details view file COPYING
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions
kdecore (KIconLoader): WARNING: Icon directory /usr/share/icons/hicolor/ group
16x16/stock/chart not valid. (etc etc)

It starts anyway but when opening a .mid file it doesn't seem to do anything.

Ah ofcourse here some information off some output:
xxxxxx@box:~$ lsmod | grep midi
snd_seq_midi_event 10624 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 54128 4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_rawmidi 23552 1 snd_ens1371
snd_seq_device 10756 3 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi
snd 49540 11 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq,snd_pcm_oss ,snd_mixer_oss,snd_ens1371,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_dev ice,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_ac97_codec

cat /dev/sequencer: Unknown device

cat: /dev/sndstat: Unknown device

Ok, I guess this soundcard isn't really wearth to set up, I would be happy already if someone
can tell for what soundcard I should look for so if anyone has good experience with a soundcard please tell me what kind off card it is.

I got midi working with a midiman usb interface under 3.8 which has the complete alsa library installed (which wasnt the case with 3.4 at least).

If you need more info, let me know, since I see this is an old post.

To get around the Midi problem you describe, I installed a Windows midi-wave player, Timidity++. This runs under
the WINE, which is already installed as part of the Knoppix distribution. You can get Timidity++ from:

http://timidity.s11.xrea.com/index.en.html

This well-done sw converts Midi file data into wave data in real time. The wave data can be played in real time through your soundcard, or stored in a variety of formats. The sw has a number of nice features and works without problems. It uses Gravis Ultrasound-compatible patch files and/or SoundFont Banks to generate digital audio data from general MIDI files.

Good luck!

SoundMan