[linux-audio-user] Using .PAT files with Jack, and drawbars

[Rob]

I just got an Edirol PCR-30 for my birthday, so I've dug out my 
10 years worth of GUS patches and have been playing them through 
Timidity.  Unfortunately, the Intel chipset on my laptop doesn't 
seem to want to give ALSA more than one pcm client, so I can't 
use Timidity and Jack at the same time.  I can kill Timidity 
when I want to switch over to, for example, ams, but this seems 
to make Rosegarden (and sometimes ALSA Patch Bay) unstable and 
will be a huge pain if I ever want fake analog synth and fake 
piano in the same song.  

So.... Is there an easy way to do one of the following in free 
software:

(a) make Timidity use Jack,
(b) make Fluidsynth use .PAT files, or 
(c) losslessly and automatically convert a couple hundred .PAT 
files to soundfonts?

I did just spend about an hour googling for any of the above 
solutions but to no avail.  There was a widely-pirated sound 
format converter I remember under Windows, Awave maybe? 
but I don't know of a Linux equivalent whether free or not.  Any 
ideas would be appreciated.

Oh yeah, and the PCR-30 has eight sliders right on the front of 
it (plus a bunch of knobs and buttons.)  I know they're sent 
over MIDI because one of the sliders affects the filter cutoff 
in one of the ams examples.  This makes me think of drawbars.  
Any suggestions for a drawbar organ simulator that lets you 
assign MIDI controllers to each of the drawbars and then move 
them in realtime?

Rob