Emax

Hey all
           I have been working with EMX now for about three weeks and 
I have met all the requirements of the software. I know how the 
software works and I am able to manage all the features.

What I can't do is get even one disc that I have made with the EMX 
software to BOOT the EMAX. I can however boot with a good factory 
disc and then load the banks from the bad discs. (so the bad discs 
have sample data but no OS data and wont boot)

I have tried everything I can think of nothing seems to work.

I am running win 3.11 with DOS ver 6.2.
I am running from the command line or DOS prompt.
I am using high quality DSDD floppy discs.
I have made sure the Emaxos.emx file is in the EMX dir.
I have replaced the OS emx file (thinking it was bad).
I have tried other Emax OS versions.
I have tried to copy the OS from the Emax to the bad discs.
I have used (P) EMX copy OS to disc AFTER FORMAT.
I have tried to format from the Emax then go to EMX for banks.
I have replaced the floppy drive in the Emax NEW
I have replaced the flopy drive in the PC NEW

If anyone has any suggestions that I am missing here please email me, 
but I think this software is crap and full of bugs so I have sent it 
out to a C+ geek friend to rewrite it. If we are able to rewrite the 
software it will run under win 95, 98, NT and 2000.

If anyone wants to copy me all of the ZD library I will reward them 
with a new floppy drive, cash or a case of 500 DSDD floppy discs. 
I will supply all the discs and cover all the shipping. I am located 
in Beloit Wisconsin
Richard

Hi,
You can only use EMX from DOS, not a DOS window or windows. You mus boot the
PC froma DOS diskette. Try running EMX from DOS directly and formatting new
DS/DD diskettes in the Emax first then using EMX. This works for me.
A rewrite is a nice idea, but the reason for DOS could well be so that the
PC drive can access sectors/tracks which are not normally available to
Windows. E-mu used UNIX computers in the early 80's, and the disk format
they used in their samplers is unique and maybe UNIX like. This is why its
hard to get EMX to run.

Regards
Rob
www.emulatorarchive.com


   Hey all
           I have been working with EMX now for about three weeks and
I have met all the requirements of the software. I know how the
software works and I am able to manage all the features.

What I can't do is get even one disc that I have made with the EMX
software to BOOT the EMAX. I can however boot with a good factory
disc and then load the banks from the bad discs. (so the bad discs
have sample data but no OS data and wont boot)

I have tried everything I can think of nothing seems to work.

I am running win 3.11 with DOS ver 6.2.
I am running from the command line or DOS prompt.
I am using high quality DSDD floppy discs.
I have made sure the Emaxos.emx file is in the EMX dir.
I have replaced the OS emx file (thinking it was bad).
I have tried other Emax OS versions.
I have tried to copy the OS from the Emax to the bad discs.
I have used (P) EMX copy OS to disc AFTER FORMAT.
I have tried to format from the Emax then go to EMX for banks.
I have replaced the floppy drive in the Emax NEW
I have replaced the flopy drive in the PC NEW

If anyone has any suggestions that I am missing here please email me,
but I think this software is crap and full of bugs so I have sent it
out to a C+ geek friend to rewrite it. If we are able to rewrite the
software it will run under win 95, 98, NT and 2000.

If anyone wants to copy me all of the ZD library I will reward them
with a new floppy drive, cash or a case of 500 DSDD floppy discs.
I will supply all the discs and cover all the shipping. I am located
in Beloit Wisconsin
Richard



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

> I am running win 3.11 with DOS ver 6.2.
No version of Windows will work

> I am running from the command line or DOS prompt.
You must only run it from DOS - don't even attempt to load any of the
drivers for Windows.  DOS only!

> I am using high quality DSDD floppy discs.
Always a good plan - there's a regular cycle of heat and light on
Mirage-Net about using HD floppies.  They work, but not for long.  Can
you format the floppies as 720k DOS floppies?

> I have made sure the Emaxos.emx file is in the EMX dir.
Handy, but not always necessary

> I have replaced the OS emx file (thinking it was bad).
Good idea, just to make sure.  Do the OS files have checksums?

> I have tried other Emax OS versions.
Fairynuff.  If you think it will help

> I have tried to format from the Emax then go to EMX for banks.
This works best for me


> If anyone has any suggestions that I am missing here please email me,
> but I think this software is crap and full of bugs so I have sent it
> out to a C+ geek friend to rewrite it. If we are able to rewrite the
> software it will run under win 95, 98, NT and 2000.

You're almost certainly wasting your time trying to rewrite it under
Windows.  Windows specifically does *not* allow you low-level access to
the floppy controller, which you will need to do this.  The rather
inflexible Windows API is designed for writing high-level applications,
and you're not expected to tamper with the hardware yourself.  You will
need to work on bare metal for this, and to do that you'll need to base
the system on either DOS or Unix.

A far better bet would be to look at using fdrawcmd and dd on one of the
many Unix-based operating systems out there.  These are two very handy
tools - fdrawcmd sends raw commands to the floppy drive controller (as
the name implies), and dd copies data between devices and files (recall
that Unix treats nearly *everything* as a file, including block
devices).  I haven't quite cracked what the Emax format is, but it
should be possible to extract at least an Emax II image saved as a
16-bit bank to a .wav file *fairly* easily.

Does anybody know what the .emx format is?  Is it compressed in some
way?  Can the original author be contacted?

Cheers,
  Gordon

> Does anybody know what the .emx format is?  Is it compressed in some
> way?  Can the original author be contacted?

BTW I have the source code for EMX.

the emx format is nothing more than an sector by sector image of the areas on the Emax 
floppies that contain data. I'm not a programmer in any way (unless you want some 
sprite graphice to run on your Commodore 64 :) But I do remember our threads about 
this back 9 years ago (OMG!!!) when Mike released what became the final version of 
EMX. Mike hasn't been among us for years and last I heard was not reposnding to 
emails about EMX. It's something he pieced together years ago for fellow users. I don't 
think he ever planned that this many people would have use or desire for it. Below is 
excerpts from the original Emax Manual wriiten by Mike:

This program was written on a HP Vectra 386/20. In addition to the bank and sample 
data, emx tacks a small header onto the front of saved disk files. This just identifies the 
emx version, and allows me to provide backwards compatibility should the need arise in 
the future. This adds 39 bytes to the size of the file, which is why 552999 is not a 
multiple of 2 or 512. 

emx is written using standard C, and compiled with Microsoft C v6.0. The source code is 
available 

Revision History: V1.0 First trial release. This uploaded the whole disc image, giving 
ginormous 819200 byte files for each disc image. V1.1 A little bird told me where the 
bank and sample data can be found on an Emax disc, so I was able to modify the 
program to only upload the relevant bits from the disc. This also helps out when 
downloading compressed banks created on an Emax II to an Emax I disc, as the 
operating system is no longer overwritten by emx. This release also added disc 
formatting to the emx menu, and the ability to upload/download just the operating system 
from an Emax disc.


**************************John Silveria II****************************
                   AIM & Yahoo! Messenger: EmaxJS
                        MSN: emaxjs@...
The Silveria Family Website & Emax and Emax II User's Group
------------------ http://www.silveriafamily.com ----------------------

I thought by the time they got to the Emax, E-mu was using primarily Mac computers. If I 
remember right one of the many conversations I had back when I use to visit E-mu a lot 
was about how the Emax used mainly Mac components since they were so common. 
hence the floppy drive not being a standard PC drive. I also remember them telling me 
that the only way to unlock an Installation disk was to actually log in to an old Mac 
Classic because the encryption key was hardwired into it and there were very few 
people left at E-mu that even knew how to get on it and get an unlock code.

Once again let me state that my phrasing and description might not be 100% on, I am 
not technical.

On 15 Feb 2003 at 22:37, Rob Keeble spoke unto me:

> Hi,
> You can only use EMX from DOS, not a DOS window or windows. You mus
> boot the PC froma DOS diskette. Try running EMX from DOS directly and
> formatting new DS/DD diskettes in the Emax first then using EMX. This
> works for me. A rewrite is a nice idea, but the reason for DOS could
> well be so that the PC drive can access sectors/tracks which are not
> normally available to Windows. E-mu used UNIX computers in the early
> 80's, and the disk format they used in their samplers is unique and
> maybe UNIX like. This is why its hard to get EMX to run.
> 
> Regards
> Rob
> www.emulatorarchive.com
> 
> 
>    Hey all
>            I have been working with EMX now for about three weeks and
> I have met all the requirements of the software. I know how the
> software works and I am able to manage all the features.
> 
> What I can't do is get even one disc that I have made with the EMX
> software to BOOT the EMAX. I can however boot with a good factory disc
> and then load the banks from the bad discs. (so the bad discs have
> sample data but no OS data and wont boot)
> 
> I have tried everything I can think of nothing seems to work.
> 
> I am running win 3.11 with DOS ver 6.2.
> I am running from the command line or DOS prompt.
> I am using high quality DSDD floppy discs.
> I have made sure the Emaxos.emx file is in the EMX dir.
> I have replaced the OS emx file (thinking it was bad).
> I have tried other Emax OS versions.
> I have tried to copy the OS from the Emax to the bad discs.
> I have used (P) EMX copy OS to disc AFTER FORMAT.
> I have tried to format from the Emax then go to EMX for banks.
> I have replaced the floppy drive in the Emax NEW
> I have replaced the flopy drive in the PC NEW
> 
> If anyone has any suggestions that I am missing here please email me,
> but I think this software is crap and full of bugs so I have sent it
> out to a C+ geek friend to rewrite it. If we are able to rewrite the
> software it will run under win 95, 98, NT and 2000.
> 
> If anyone wants to copy me all of the ZD library I will reward them
> with a new floppy drive, cash or a case of 500 DSDD floppy discs. I
> will supply all the discs and cover all the shipping. I am located in
> Beloit Wisconsin Richard
> 
> 
> 
>       Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
>             ADVERTISEMENT
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Emax and Emax II User's Group Website
> 
> http://www.silveriafamily.com
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
> 
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> 
> 
> Emax and Emax II User's Group Website
> 
> http://www.silveriafamily.com 
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 
> 
> 



**************************John Silveria II****************************
                   AIM & Yahoo! Messenger: EmaxJS
                        MSN: emaxjs@...
The Silveria Family Website & Emax and Emax II User's Group
------------------ http://www.silveriafamily.com ----------------------

On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 03:16, John Silveria wrote:
> I thought by the time they got to the Emax, E-mu was using primarily Mac computers. If I 
> remember right one of the many conversations I had back when I use to visit E-mu a lot 
> was about how the Emax used mainly Mac components since they were so common. 
> hence the floppy drive not being a standard PC drive. I also remember them telling me 
> that the only way to unlock an Installation disk was to actually log in to an old Mac 
> Classic because the encryption key was hardwired into it and there were very few 

Cool.  I have a couple of these, and the ROMs and mainboards for a few
more.  Is this how you get the magic diagnostic code for pratting about
with the EEPROM?  The other thing I thought of was to look at the code
around the "protection" bits and see if they can be disabled, very much
like the way you get "No CD" cracks for games.  I *used* to be able to
do this, back in the days of ZX Spectrums and Atari STs...

> people left at E-mu that even knew how to get on it and get an unlock code.
> 
> Once again let me state that my phrasing and description might not be 100% on, I am 
> not technical.
>

On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 03:11, John Silveria wrote:
> > Does anybody know what the .emx format is?  Is it compressed in some
> > way?  Can the original author be contacted?
> 
> BTW I have the source code for EMX.

Ooooh.  Would it be possible to get a copy?  Or at least a description
of the Emax disk format?  I'm trying to work out how to write a disk
utility for copying Emax banks across under Unix, because it's a pain in
the backside having to copy them to a floppy, put them on the hard disk
of my old 386, and write the images from there.

Thanks,
  Gordon

On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 12:00, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 03:11, John Silveria wrote:
> > > Does anybody know what the .emx format is?  Is it compressed in some
> > > way?  Can the original author be contacted?
> > 
> > BTW I have the source code for EMX.
> 
> Ooooh.  Would it be possible to get a copy?  Or at least a description
> of the Emax disk format?  I'm trying to work out how to write a disk
> utility for copying Emax banks across under Unix, because it's a pain in
> the backside having to copy them to a floppy, put them on the hard disk
> of my old 386, and write the images from there.
> 
> Thanks,
>   Gordon

D'oh.  Just as I posted this (literally two seconds after I clicked
"Send") <scrunchyscrunchyscrunchy> from the mailserver hard disk, and
there's the Yahoo Groups "New File uploaded" message.  Thanks, and once
again, d'oh!