Emax

its ok saying they should of been able to do it but floppy drives was cutting edge technology in 1984 it was a quick way to save and load user sounds and os

i mean the 5.25" floppy was standard on every thing fairlight used that format was not until version3 that they added scsi

i mean the fairlight did not even have multisampling it was a 1 sample only at a time

and they were small samples 8bits i know as i owned one and a fairlight 3

----- Original Message ----- uced

From: Windrum Scoggin

To: emax@...m

Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2014 1:02 AM

Subject: Re: [emax] RE: Resurrecting an Emax HD rack - Issues keep mounting

I don't know, Jammie, that all sounds plausible but by the time my E5000 and the ESI's came out SIMMS were still pricey....In 1992 -1998 maybe things got cheaper but for the list price of a new EMulator II or EMAX they could have budgeted for flash ROM so all they had to do was just load the floppy, update the EPROM then the machine would boot off that EPROM without the disk in the future. for what EMU was charging for their machines, its the least they could do. I wonder if the fairlight and the synclavier had to have THEIR floppies loaded into the machine to get it to boot and operate? I don't know cause I never owned or used one...anyone here on the forum know is a $125,000 dollar Fairlight needed a floppy to boot itself up?

Perhaps the fact that we need an OS disk to get the machine to boot is what has kept the second hadn used market prices so low on them for people that are NOT synth and particularly, EMU enthusiasts: They just don't know what to do witht he machine when it rolls in without an OS disk and it won't work. So, they sell it to people like us for chump change.

Perhpas that makes us very lucky, or very cursed, depending on how you look at these machines. I tend to think it very lucky of me to find them. I love the way they sound.

Ian, find a used PCD60b SCSI card reader and your worries will be gone.

(save for unless you need to trouble shoot again like Ted said but if you are like most of us, you will send it to a repair shop if things have to get THAT; deep, anyway)

Cheers\

Greg

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 11:15 AM, jammie <jammie.emma@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

its not stupid they did it for a reason if back then you had a machine that had the os on rom

if any updates you had to remove roms and add new ones

with os loaded by floppy any new os implimentation it just had to be written to floppy as extra code and it would load the new set

when emu went onto upgrading to se and hd bigger roms were needed and why you have to remove and put in the bigger chip

;

memory and roms weere expensive so if you could get away with a rom with an instruction set that the os pointed to you could use smaller roms cheaper and use floppy disks very cheap to impliment new features

it ok by todays standards as memory is cheap

and if they had cf cards and usb back then they would of used it like new synths do today

but we are talking about 1986/7 and why machines had tiny ram it was so expensive

a 4mb simm back then for a mac was £300 they are pennies now nut back then it was expensive

kurzweil introduced the k2000 in 1990 and it had fixed roms when you upgraded it cost £100 each time there were many rom upgrades you had to send in your own roms and they would send you back used roms with os on updated to latest spec

many years later they did the k2500 and the later models allowed you to use the floppy to upgrade the os by flashing flashrom

but most samplers i have use a flioppy for loading the os from disk if not a hd connected

most sampler types today are hybrid romplers and batched on sampler players so require rom os

----- Original Message -----

From: Windrum Scoggin

To: emax@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2014 6:48 PM

Subject: Re: [emax] RE: Resurrecting an Emax HD rack - Issues keep mounting

Problem with people getting rid of their spare hard drives is the fact that the Emax tries to boot off it first and if it doesn't see the FDD and is a SCSI HD model will then go to look for the SCSI HD. If neither or present, it won't boot. If it is a NON SCSI HD model it has to have an FDD or it just won't boot. Its a moot point but I have no idea why EMU NEVER opted to have the OS on flash rom so the damned machine would load off the internal Flash ROM like all their later units did. Ensoniq did the same stupid thing. No FDD with OS on it, NO Load. Machine useless. Stupid.

Anyway, that's neither hear nor there. If I were you, I would go HxC Floppy emulator then use your laptop running EMXP and load your stuff onto an SD card via EMXP and screw the the FDD. I am eventually going to do the same. Plus, you are in Europe and the HxC is made there by Lotharek, who is in Poland. Check out this youtube link and I am sure our buddy RetroSound could steer you the rest of the way in making this happen. I certainly am going this route, even if I keep SCSI HD and PCD-50B's in my Emax cause I am just sick of the FDD nightmare on these machines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ-bdwX-DyA

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 9:50 AM, <picabostreets@...> wrote:

I got it to boot again and it successfully sampled and played back via midi... then it eventually failed again, prompting me to insert a disk. The OS will sometimes load successfully on start up, but it will work for a given period, then suddenly the HD's access to the OS will fail. When it is loaded, it seems to have full functionality.

So it sounds like Ted is right... both the HD and floppy drive have to be replaced. If I understand correctly, I have 3 options... 1) install a replacement HD that is formatted with the emax hd pre-se 1.1 OS and not replace the floppy... 2) install a floppy drive replacement and slim floppy and load the OS from there, 3) replace both. I'm on a student budget so money is a concern...

Would anybody out there have a spare hard drive they could sell me? Or for that matter, a spare floppy drive? I'm located in London (Canada), but I'm near the US border and could pick up there...

Again, any tips or advice is greatly appreciated. I don't want the emax to sit in my closet anymore...

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--
Le Sociere Des Oscillateurs Mystere

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2014.0.4259 / Virus Database: 3684/7065 - Release Date: 02/05/14