Analogue-sequencer

Hi Colin & All,

Well, I'm waiting for my Hammond case to be finished by Steve 
Thomas, but I couldn't wait to see if the boards worked.

Well, I've lashed the whole thing up over my workbench and for the 
last couple of nights, I've been playing around to make sure 
everything's working. The good news is that as far as I can tell, most 
of it seems to be OK :->)

Top Tip 1: when first powering up the unit; if the lcd backlight comes 
on but there's nothing on the display, don't worry. Turn up the preset 
for the contrast. There it is!

Top Tip 2: before soldering those leds, only to find you've put 'em in 
the wrong way round, Just wedge them in the boards first. They will 
fit and make good contact with just a push fit. That way you can tell 
that things are working (and see the pretty power on light show!), 
and you've found out which way to fit them. Then when you've got 
the case, you can solder them in place.

Now to the problem. I've got s/w version 3.7 which came shipped 
with the boards. Last night i tried to do a sysex dump to the 
computer via midiOX. No problem, that worked fine. When I tried to 
reload this back to the P3, however, I got the 'Bad Data' message. 
(Yes i did disconnect the Midi out back to the computer to avoid the 
loop through). Same thing when I tried to do a firmware upgrade to V 
3.78. I got the same 'Bad Data' message.

I did fiddle around with buffer delays and such, but to no avail. It got 
late and I gave up. Any advice??

All the best

Andy
---

Andy Wilson
http://www.techman.synth.net
andy@techman.synth.net

> Now to the problem. I've got s/w version 3.7 which came shipped 
> with the boards. Last night i tried to do a sysex dump to the 
> computer via midiOX. No problem, that worked fine. When I tried to 
> reload this back to the P3, however, I got the 'Bad Data' message. 
> (Yes i did disconnect the Midi out back to the computer to avoid the 
> loop through). Same thing when I tried to do a firmware upgrade to V 
> 3.78. I got the same 'Bad Data' message.
> 
> I did fiddle around with buffer delays and such, but to no 
> avail. It got 
> late and I gave up. Any advice??

First thing to check would be that the MIDI input is working OK.
Simplest way to do that is to run the P3 from an external MIDI clock
source.
You could also set the mthru channel to pass notes, and make sure they
pass through from input to output OK.
Try that, and let me know how you get on.

Cheers,
Colin f

Hi Colin,

I did connect up my FATcontroller sequencer to the input of the P3 
and the P3 would start and stop correctly.

Cheers

Andy

On 2 Oct 2003 at 12:05, Colin f wrote:

> > Now to the problem. I've got s/w version 3.7 which came shipped 
> > with the boards. Last night i tried to do a sysex dump to the 
> > computer via midiOX. No problem, that worked fine. When I tried 
to 
> > reload this back to the P3, however, I got the 'Bad Data' 
message. 
> > (Yes i did disconnect the Midi out back to the computer to avoid 
the 
> > loop through). Same thing when I tried to do a firmware upgrade 
to V 
> > 3.78. I got the same 'Bad Data' message.
> > 
> > I did fiddle around with buffer delays and such, but to no 
> > avail. It got 
> > late and I gave up. Any advice??
> 
> First thing to check would be that the MIDI input is working OK.
> Simplest way to do that is to run the P3 from an external MIDI 
clock
> source.
> You could also set the mthru channel to pass notes, and make 
sure they
> pass through from input to output OK.
> Try that, and let me know how you get on.
> 
> Cheers,
> Colin f
> 
> 
> 
> 
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> analogue-sequencer-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> 
>  
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to 
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 
> 


---

Andy Wilson
http://www.techman.synth.net
andy@techman.synth.net

> I did connect up my FATcontroller sequencer to the input of the P3 
> and the P3 would start and stop correctly.

OK, so the input isn't hurting the data...

Can you confirm you did a complete memory wipe at first power on ?
I haven't checked exhaustively, but a bulk dump of data could be screwed
up by inconsistent data that results from not having done a wipe at some
point.

I'm probably insulting your intelligence, but you are trying to upload
the firmware dump using the firmware update mode, rather than doing a
sysex 'recv' from the play mode ?
There are two different error messages - SysEx load in the firmware
updater gives a "BAD DATA !" error for a block that doesn't have the
correct structure, or a "BLK CHK Error !" error if the checksum is
wrong.

In bulk dump/receive, the errors are "Bad Block !" for the wrong
structure, or "ERROR !" for a bad checksum.

Cheers,
Colin f

Hi Colin,

> 
> Can you confirm you did a complete memory wipe at first power on 
?
> I haven't checked exhaustively, but a bulk dump of data could be 
screwed
> up by inconsistent data that results from not having done a wipe at 
some
> point.

I did, when i first powered up the unit. But I'll do it again anyway.
> 
> I'm probably insulting your intelligence, but you are trying to upload
> the firmware dump using the firmware update mode, rather than 
doing a
> sysex 'recv' from the play mode ?

:->)

Yep, it was in firmware update mode.

> There are two different error messages - SysEx load in the 
firmware
> updater gives a "BAD DATA !" error for a block that doesn't have 
the
> correct structure, or a "BLK CHK Error !" error if the checksum is
> wrong.

Right. Mine definitely came up with 'BAD DATA'
> 
> In bulk dump/receive, the errors are "Bad Block !" for the wrong
> structure, or "ERROR !" for a bad checksum.

I remember seeing the 'ERROR!', can't remember about 'BAD 
BLOCK' I'll check again tonight and report back.

Thanks

Andy
---

Andy Wilson
http://www.techman.synth.net
andy@techman.synth.net

And try upping the buffer size in MidiOx too....

Paul
---
Paul Nagle - SoftRoom Music - www.softroom.co.uk
          Bogus Focus Records - www.BogusFocus.com

> Right. Mine definitely came up with 'BAD DATA'

Assuming no screwing up of the data in the midi interface driver or
Midi-OX buffers, I wonder if the .syx file is corrupt ?
This might happen if your browser treats the mime type as text and
sticks linefeeds or something in there.
I'll re-post the latest update as a .zip of the .syx, in case this is
what's happening.

Cheers,
Colin f

Colin

> Assuming no screwing up of the data in the midi interface driver or
> Midi-OX buffers, I wonder if the .syx file is corrupt ?
> This might happen if your browser treats the mime type as text and
> sticks linefeeds or something in there.
> I'll re-post the latest update as a .zip of the .syx, in case this is
> what's happening.

Thanks for that, but that wouldn't explain why the midi dump from the 
P3 to the computer, which seemed to work OK, could not then be 
reloaded back in to the P3.

BTW. Thanks for the advice, Paul. I did try increasing the buffer size 
and the delay between blocks until the whole thing slowed to a crawl, 
but still no joy :->(

I think I'll stop now until I've got home and had another play. I'll report 
back tomorrow.

Cheers

Andy
---

Andy Wilson
http://www.techman.synth.net
andy@techman.synth.net

> Thanks for that, but that wouldn't explain why the midi dump from the 
> P3 to the computer, which seemed to work OK, could not then be 
> reloaded back in to the P3.

Rather than trying to solve two problems at the same time, let's see if
we can work out why the firmware update isn't working.
If you get that fixed and the bulk dump still doesn't work, I'll be
surprised.
The firmware update code and the P3 main program are completely
separate. The CPU config is quite different between them (polled midi
rx/tx in the FWU vs interrupt driven in the P3 code for example, FWU is
pure assembler, P3 is 99% C). Given this level of difference, and the
fact that the interface hardware seems to be OK, it strongly suggests a
common, external cause of sysex failure.

Here's a thought... you could mail me your pattern dump, and I'll check
it here. If it works for me, the problem will have to be in your
re-transmission of the data to P3.

Cheers,
Colin f