Patches and discussion for Ensoniq VFX family

Keep in mind that Microsoft, in their great wisdom decided it was not necessary to low level floppy support, including 720k floppy creation in their operating systems after Windows 98.

Mark

On Jul 31, 2012, at 9:55 AM, Christian Brunschen <cb@...> wrote:

> 
> 
> Sounds are encoded very simply in a .SYX fie; they contain a short header, then a nybble-encoded dump of the sound data as it is stored in memory and indeed as it is stored on floppy; and a brief trailer. So unpacking them should be doable. The details are in the VFX-SD Musicians Manual, http://soundprogramming.net/manuals/Ensoniq_VFX-SD_Manual.pdf in Appendix A.
> 
> Once the .SYX files have been unpacked to 'raw' sound program files, they need to be put on a floppy. 
> 
> To access the floppies themselves, to read or write the bare contents of a floppy, there is OmniFlop:
> 
>   http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm
> 
> And to access the contents of the filesystem on the floppy, there's the EnsoniqFS plugin for TotalCommander:
> 
>   http://thoralt.ehecht.com/content-en/Projects/Eintrage/2007/7/30_ensoniqfs_-_a_filesystem_plugin_for_TotalCommander.html
>   http://sourceforge.net/projects/ensoniqfs/
> 
>   http://www.ghisler.com
> 
> Together these should allow full access to read and I think write to Ensoniq-formatted floppies, including VFX-SD ones. So all in all it should be possible to take the .SYX files and put them onto a floppy.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> // Christian Brunschen
> 
> 
> On Jul 31, 2012, at 5:43 PM, Daniel Forró wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> Jammie,
>> 
>> SMF is used not only for songs, of course also for SysEx memory bulk dump... It differs from SYX format just in small details in header.
>> 
>> Daniel 
>> 
>> On Aug 1, 2012, at 1:28 AM, jammie wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> it only does midi song data not sysex data
>>>  
>>> as i have the soft on a win98 pc and it needs to use the msdos
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: Daniel Forró
>>> To: Ensoniq-VFX-SD@yahoogroups.com
>>> Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 3:57 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [Ensoniq-VFX-SD] .SYX on Floppy?
>>> 
>>> This software works with SMF, not SysEx format, and it's MS-DOS 
>>> software.
>>> 
>>> Daniel Forro
>>> 
>>> On Jul 31, 2012, at 11:31 PM, <tomlinson6050@...> <tomlinson6050@... 
>>> > wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Hi. Go to www.giebler.com
>>> > He sells software that can write sysex data on disks with the 
>>> > correct Ensoniq format.
>>> > Only problem is you will need an older computer running Windows 95 
>>> > or 98.
>>> > Bill
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
>