Emax

Actually it is a R6500 CPU

Regards,
Ted

On Nov 5, 2008, at 8:48 PM, Julian wrote:


Is it a z-80 or a 6800?
I didn't bother to look when I had mine open.....

anyway - yes. knowing the processor, you can get a disassembler for it.

And chances are, given the age of the code, it would have been written
in assembler in the first place. So disassembling it will produce
something that has a chance of being made sense of.

but like ted said, you'd want to already be experienced at programming
in assembler if you wanted to be able to make sense of it. that would
make it a lot faster to decompose into standard functional blocks and
control statements.

On Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:23:43 -0000, "esynthesist"
<esynthesist@...> said:
 > But the 5 minutes load time may have been reality...
 >
 > This can explain why I don't know anyone and find no reference at all
 > of anyone who actually used this CD-ROM drive with the Emax. If this
 > 5 minutes load time is true, this must have resulted in a commercial
 > failure for OMI when they launched the Emax OMI cd disks... but they
 > probably released these disks also in Mac/SD format ?
 >
 > And yes, Emu has done strange things. E.g. the EII cdrom kit
 > supported a "folder" or "category" system: the banks on a disk could
 > be put in folders (like bank "piano" in folder "acoustic keyboards")
 > to make navigation much easier. This feature was not available on the
 > Emax and EIII harddisks. Maybe Emu considered this to be a feature of
 > OMI and not of Emu themselves, but they could have learned from
 > that...
 >
 > RS422 Communication with the Emulator was designed based on following
 > key principles:
 > - all communication, including request/reply for parameter changes,
 > occurs at 500 Kbaud
 > - a whole bank can be downloaded/loaded with one special designed
 > type of command (a command which actually directly reads/writes the
 > RAM memory segments in which the bank data is residing)
 > - bulk data load/unload occurs with data packets sized 256 bytes, of
 > which each byte represents 1 sample point (data is transferred in
 > compressed format)
 >
 > On the Emax, they seem to have decided that choosing for a *standard*
 > medium speed protocol was more important than choosing for a
 > *proprietary* high speed protocol. So they went for the MIDI
 > SYSES/MMA approach:
 > - all basic communication, including all commands/instructions,
 > occurs at 31.25 Kbaud, no matter if the DIN5 MIDI sockets or the DB9
 > RS422 port are being used.
 > - loading/unloading banks requires the full set of SYSEX commands.
 > Hence to simply download the parameters of just one voice of just one
 > preset, already multiple commands must be exchanged with the Emax.
 > This is due to the fact that in general only one parameter can be
 > transferred per command. And this must be done at the slow 31.25
 > Kbaud speed...mmmm...
 > - bulk data (sample) load/unload occurs with data packets sized only
 > 120 bytes (MMA standard). Moreover each sample point requires 12 bits
 > now instead of 8 bits on the EII since data is transferred in linear
 > format instead of compressed format.
 > As a consequence, loading/unloading banks is much slower than on the
 > EII. Of course, once they released the Emax-II, they would have faced
 > problems anyway. This machine could have up to 8MB banks and doesn't
 > use compression, so even at full 500 kbaud speed and using only one
 > command - which is impossible in reality - the Emax-II would require
 > at least 2.7 minutes for loading/unloading banks. Fortunately there
 > was something invented called SCSI :-)
 >
 > Nevertheless I will still do some experiments to find out if the Emax
 > OS doesn't have any "fast bank load" commands...
 > By the way: does anyone know whether the binary code of the Emax OS
 > can easily be de-compiled/disassembled in some way in order to get
 > some kind of source code ? Is a simple Z80 disassembler sufficient ?
 >
 > ///E-Synthesist
 >
 >
 > --- In emax@yahoogroups.com, tu@... wrote:
 > >
 > > That seems excessively slow, as the EII could load a similar sized
 > bank from the same CDROM
 > > drive in 12 seconds. Its hard to imagine Emu would not have
 > implemented a similar load time on
 > > the Emax if all it took was adding a software routine. But then
 > again, stranger things have
 > > happened...
 > >
 > > /Tristan
 > >
 > > Quoting John Silveria II <john@...>:
 > >
 > > > Somewhere, and I can't remember where, I read that the CD-Rom
 > drive
 > > > took
 > > > up to 5 minutes to load a bank. I wish I could remember where. So
 > > > indeed
 > > > it was not only as slow as typical SYSEX load, it could actually
 > take
 > > >
 > > > longer.
 > > >
 > > > --
 > > > Yahoo! Messenger: EmaxJS
 > > > The Silveria Family Website and Emax and Emax II User's Group
 > > > http://www.silveriafamily.com
 > > >
 > > >
 > >
 >
 >
 >
 > ------------------------------------
 >
 > Emax and Emax II User's Group Website
 >
 > http://www.silveriafamily.comYahoo! Groups Links
 >
 >
 >
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