I recently acquired a Behringer BCF2000 midi controller, and wanted to use with Quartz Composer. A quick google turned up the quartz composer patches and sysex files that Steve Mokris (aka Softpixel) had produced for this device. Bonus thought I and downloaded the software from Behringer to apply the files. It didn't work and I left the project for another day…

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VJ, quartz composer, midi, mac, osx, windows xp, parallels, bcf2000

… some weeks later, I had a free evening and I decided to crack this particular nut! So first up, I used a friend‘s PC to update the firmware. No problems. Then I tried to load Steve’s new patch using Behringer's BC-Edit application; no chance! First up I just have to say that it is extremely unintuitive to use for such a simple application - I actually had to resort to reading the manual - ewww.

Once I figured out the process, I tried to upload my new settings to the BCF2000, and got :

`

Timeout Error:

While trying to send

“$rev F1”

We are currently working on “$rev F1”

`

Apparently a common occurrence! And one that has been around since at least this time last year - Behringer what are you playing at?

Back to the drawing board, with much googling and frustration. During this process, I found that, whether due to the FW update or the recent beta install of Parallels, that my copy of WinXP under Parallels could see the BCF2000 (it may have done before but I don‘t think so) - very handy. BTW forget using BC-Edit on the Mac - it doesn’t seem to like loading Sysex files?!?!

Eventually it turned out that if you have an old version of Java (JRE 1.4.2_05 or below), the error doesn't occur; Parallels to the rescue once again. Since my friend was not about to downgrade his PC, I simply set up the old version of Java under Parallels and the rest is history.

Now I can get down to seeing what this thing can do. SteamSHIFT out.