You may still be able to get a floppy to work a good thing to use. I realize if may be the economical way to go especially on an old
inexpensive keyboard. You can get plug-in direct replacements for the floppy in the form of memory card readers that not only increase
the amount of memory but transfer speed as well. It\u2019s an option to consider if you want to invest a bit into your keyboard. I have done this
with Kurzweils and the difference is staggering. Floppy\u2019s are obsolete \u201cby today\u2019s standards but if you need to add one to a newer machine
if you use an old computer it will be cheaper albeit slower and more cumbersome. \u2026.just an option you might consider to modernize your keyboard.
Cheers,
Gary
From: Ensoniq-VFX-SD@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Ensoniq-VFX-SD@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of Christian Brunschen
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2012 5:36 AM
To: Ensoniq-VFX-SD@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Ensoniq-VFX-SD] .SYX on Floppy?
On Jul 31, 2012, at 6:16 PM, Mark Wiens wrote:
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.
Well, programs like OmniFlop and possibly TotalCommander manage work around that, since the actual floppy controllers used are still very much standard. Indeed, if you want to enable low-level access for your own programs, you can use something like the fdrawcmd driver, http://simonowen.com/fdrawcmd/ , which gives access to those floppy controllers even on modern Windows versions including the latest (Vista, 7 and 8) as long as your PC includes a floppy controller. You can even get a small program from the same developer that lets you create and manage floppy images in various forms, see http://simonowen.com/samdisk/ .
Either way, as long as you're using a floppy drive connected to a controller on the motherboard of your PC, the software mentioned should allow you to access things as you'd expect even though Windows itself doesn't include drivers.
Mark
Best wishes,
// Christian
On Jul 31, 2012, at 9:55 AM, Christian Brunschen <cb@df.lth.se> 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:
And to access the contents of the filesystem on the floppy, there's the EnsoniqFS plugin for TotalCommander:
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
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