Emax

According to the Emulator Archive, the same CDS3 CDROM drive was initially used with the Emax 
as with the EII. 

http://www.emulatorarchive.com/Archives/Samplers/EmaxOverview/EmaxCDROM/emaxcdrom.htm
l
For this to work, the remote control on the CDS3 drive is used to initiate and load the bank into the 
Emax. As you have stated, it is of course possible that this is done by the CDROM drive itself, with 
separate loading of sample data and setup of the preset parameters with MIDI sysex commands. 
But is it possible to load sequences that may be included in the bank via MIDI sysex?  

The later ProCDP CDROM drive provided both RS422 and SCSI interfaces and presumably had no 
remote control. That suggests that the Emux must have been able to initiate the loading of the 
banks from this CDROM drive via RS422. 

Does anyone on the list own one of these CDROM drives or have experience using one? It is 
possible the protocol used by the Emax to load banks via RS422 is similar to or even the same as 
for the EII. If someone had a working CDROM drive then it would be possible to monitor the RS422 
communications between the sampler and the CDROM drive to determine the protocol. 

I only have access to the Emax OS V3.0 MIDI/RS422 spec. But according to the Emulator Archive, 
CDROM support was actually added in OS V3.2. 

http://www.emulatorarchive.com/Archives/Samplers/EmaxOverview/EmaxOS/emaxos.html

So it may be that additional MIDI/RS422 sysex commands are defined in in the later software 
version. Does anyone have the MIDI specifications for the later Emax software versions?  

/Tristan

Thursday, October 30, 2008, 4:54:21 AM, you wrote:

>
For my project I assume that the Emax indeed has no bulk load/unload 
command. But that's not necessarily a problem because it has a SYSEX 
implementation which covers (almost) all parameters available in a 
bank. So it is possible to use a set of these commands to simulate 
the load/unload of a full bank. The only question will be whether the 
large amount of SYSEX instructions will be acceptable from an end-to-
end response time point of view... That's subject of the experiment :-
)

It's interesting though to think about how the CDS3 cdrom drive 
communicated with the Emax. If the Emax behaves like the Emulator II, 
i.e. if the Emax acts as a slave of the device connected to the 
serial port, then they must have encountered exactly the same 
problem: either the computer in the cdrom drive could send a bulk 
load command to the Emax (which means that the Emax OS is equipped 
with this command), or it had to send individual SYSEX commands.
But if the Emax OS contains logic which can operate the CDROM drive 
as a slave device (the opposite), then the Emax may have instructed 
the CDROM drive in the same way as it did through SCSI.

As far as I know the CDS3 drives had a computer onboard so that they 
could instruct the Emulator II to execute commands. In fact these 
drives can be considered to be "very small computers including a 
cdrom drive" fitted in a handy box with numeric keyboard and running 
a small operating system in order to communicate with the num 
keyboard, the Emulator and the cdrom drive. 
Are these the very same drives that also could be used on the Emax ? 

///E-Synthesist

--- In emax@yahoogroups.com, John Silveria II <john@...> wrote:
>
> Yes, the Universe of Sounds collection (I believe that was the name 
more 
> info on my website) came with a CD-Rom drive that used the RS-422 
port. 
> But that's not the same as having the Emax execute a receive/send 
bulk 
> dump command via Sysex through the port. Once again I stress this 
is if 
> understand all that I've read and been told over the last 20 years.
> 
> tu@... wrote:
> > Didn't the Emax originally use the RS422 port to load banks from 
a (pre SCSI) CDROM drive? 
> >
> > /Tristan
> >
> >
> > Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 11:54:39 AM, you wrote:
> >
> > 
> > I am certainly no expert in this field but I remember a guy an E-
mu 
> > telling me the Emax and Emax II were missing a key bit of Sysex, 
> > primarily they never assigned a string for sending/receiving full 
banks. 
> > That is why no software ever implemented that function. If only 
they 
> > would release the code for the Emax OS so someone could update it.
> >
> > esynthesist wrote:
> > 
> >> EMXP, I could add some features which are not available in any 
Mac 
> >> software. E.g. sending/receiving full banks at once.
> >>
> >>
> >> 
> >
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Yahoo! Messenger: EmaxJS
> The Silveria Family Website and Emax and Emax II User's Group
> http://www.silveriafamily.com
>