Hi,

I've tried to get my midi keyboard (Roland PC180A) working with SuSE 9 and SB
Audigy 2 zs platinum pro sound card for a long long time now and there has
been no success so far.

Seems like the Midi In in my sound card just doesn't work with alsa... or I
don't know how to make it work.

I've installed the newest alsa drivers and tools and loaded soundfonts, so all
the midi files play perfectly. I've tried the keyboard with many sequencers
(rosegarden for example) and used aconnect to connect the ports, but no....
no success. If i connect a virtual keyboard to rosegarden with aconnect, it
plays perfectly. The midi in just doesn't work no matter what i do.

Any ideas? This is quite important, 'cause I really would NOT like to go back
using the shitty windows......

I've never tried to connect an external midi device to linux, so don't really have any insight into your problem. Note there is an another Creative-specific open source driver at

http://sourceforge.net/projects/emu10k1

which might be worth a try. Or maybe the forums there have some useful info.

You could also try a 2.6 series kernel, which has ALSA built-in, but again I have no actual evidence that would fix anything.

If you are really stuck linux also has a usb-midi driver, and Roland make (made?) usb to midi adapters. Still, what a pain.