Disklavier

Actually, I wouldn't worry too much about the usefullness of older 
Disklaviers.  They have been around for twenty years now; still working and 
still possible to buy music and parts!  You can even buy 720k disks over the 
internet for $4.50 for a box of 11 from www.shoplet.com

The DSR1 upgrade is available new for about $1000 U.S. This new control box 
uses the more common High Density floppy disks and has the XG tone generator 
built into it.  It also has a memory disk equal to one floppy disk.

Although new laptops are coming out with no serial port, you can still buy a 
MIDI interface and two MIDI cables for less than $100.  MIDI interfaces can 
use a parallel, USB or joystick port depending upon which one you buy.  You 
need to chose what port you are going to use before you buy  MIDI interface.

Remember that Yamaha does not produce the utility software that allows us to 
adjust the volume, convert files or copy the disks.  This is all third party 
stuff. Just save those old computers.  I have one laptop that runs Windows 
3.1 in black and white, and has an 85 megabyte hard drive that works great 
with this software.

My understanding is that Windows XP is a supposed improvement on Windows 98 
and runs virtual DOS.  Windows 2000 is a version of Windows NT that never 
did DOS or plug and pray.

The biggest thing for users of older DKVs is being able to convert ESEQ 
files to MIDI to use in play lists; play MIDI files at all by converting 
them to ESEQ format, and formatting a 720k floppy disk.  At this time, these 
things are still possible to do.

I bought my Dad a new laptop for Christmas that runs XP Home.  I haven't 
wrapped it yet because everyone else in this household has been coveting and 
playing with it!  I guess maybe I'll take a turn before I give it to him and 
see what it will do for the Disklavier!  It is a Compaq Presario and does 
not have a serial port.


Carol Beigel
crbrpt@...





>From: "Danny" <simpsond@...>
>Reply-To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
>To: <disklavier@yahoogroups.com>
>Subject: Re: [disklavier] computer geeks here? firewire, USB-2?
>Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 08:21:28 -0500
>
>From: "Carol Beigel" <carolrpt@...>
>
><snip>
>
> > The two utilities I use the most to copy DKV disks or adjust the volume 
>of
> > the data both use DOS.  The dkvutil and Giebler software both need real
>time
> > DOS, not DOS windows, to work.  New laptops come with Windows XP or
>Windows
> > 2000; neither of which have DOS. (Hopefully some Windows XP users will
> > correct me if these utilities work on XP systems!)
>
><snip>
>
>Hi Carol,
>
>re: Windows XP:
>
>On my desktop, 'dkvcopy' and XP Home seem to work just fine...
>
>'dkvcopy' does appear to be to try to work on my Dell Latitude 500 Mhz with
>XP laptop with one exception: it of course wants immediately to have access
>to a floppy drive which my laptop does not have. I use ethernet to have my
>laptop 'communicate' with all other drives and devices.
>
>BTW, one thing, the main problem that older Yamaha disklaviers seem to have
>is they do not have a fairly priced upgrade path from Yamaha to more
>'modern' type technology. Many here still have to find the older 720K 
>disks,
>(which are becoming increasingly difficult to find), if you do not have a
>MIDI interface you need to use the serial port where according to your 
>post,
>the newer PCs do not work with, etc. (a USB interface would be great, much
>more flexible than the serial port which is going away.)
>
>This is pretty scarey stuff. You go out and invest anywhere from $10K to
>$50K or so for a disklavier which may be literally unusable in the
>mid-to-long term future. Are they going to address this?
>
>(And this makes a used disklavier worth much less if the buyer cannot use
>the dislavier facilities in it. In which case, we may get 'stuck' with them
>at some point in time...)
>
>
>Danny
>


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