Disklavier

Good evening, everyone.

In a message dated 4/14/02 6:12:26 PM, slickfix@... writes:

<< I have downloaded music from  Yamaha musicsoft and you must download
the installer program in order to download the file. Its not just 
downloading a midi file, as the program formats and then does a floppy
disk write to the disk, Not the HD. SO if there is not an installer
program for the MAC that is the problem.

Also I believe the disk when written is in Yamaha disklavier ESEQ
format so you cannot even read the disk unless you have a disklavier
or a special drive conversion program, as the first sector of the 
floppy is wiped. >>

Good thing that I said, "Nearly everything that you might want to do from a 
computer with a Disklavier 
is possible using a Macintosh," in my earlier post.

You are correct. Due to the copy-protection scheme that Yamaha has chosen to 
use for its software download procedure, it is either impossible for the same 
results to be achieved on a Macintosh or Yamaha chose not to go to the exp
ense of programming such a solution for the Mac.

On a related subject, some years ago I spoke with Gary Geibler about the way 
in which his conversion program reads Yamaha's older DD Disklavier disks. He 
said that he was able to write a DOS program to do this because he could use 
the computer's BIOS to access the floppy drive hardware directly. The Mac OS 
did not give him a similar way to do this, therefore his program would not do 
the same under emmulation on the Mac.

It would be interesting to try VirtualPC on the Mac with this downloader 
program from YamahaMusicSoft. I doubt that it will run under emulation for 
similar reasons.

Regards,
PianoBench