Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

guys- I sincerely hope one of you has the patience to deal with a
couple quickie questions. 
I am an experienced user of midi hardware sequencers & controllers
(doepfer maq & schaltwerk, notron, alesis mmt8, sequentix p3, mobius,
peavey pc1600, drehbank & so on..) & I have a lot of emu gear (audity,
PE, P2k, virtuoso, pk6, six samplers & I make my own flash roms), but
my recently acquired XL-7 is the first time I've had the two main
disciplines in one box. apart from a qy70 :-)

so. my XL-7 is running v2.0. 1.0X
I'm in pattern mode. I want to transpose one track up an octave (using
the page in "pattern edit") without muting any of the other tracks or
stopping the box. what am I doing wrong?
(I have searched "pattern edit" on the archived mails to no avail).

I also have trouble getting the sequencer to start at 1.1 when using
an external clock, & the arpeggiators won't run in time with the
external clock- they run at the right tempo, but off-the-beat.
in fact, sometimes with an external clock, the first thing the XL-7
does sounds like a drumkit being thrown down stairs.

I wish there was a way to have one track be 32 bars (say) of chords,
with a bassline of 1 bar looping around in another track. this would
make the grid editor more user-friendly for quick changes to a short
pattern while the chord sequence continues unaltered.

I like the box a lot, but if I can't sort this out, I can't use it
live & I'll be going back to the p3/proteus 2000/drehbank combo.
is this another case of a product being abandoned just as a user
community was starting to thrash out the wish-list?

duncan/r.m.i.