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Custom Flash ROMs

Custom Flash ROMs

2016-01-13 by Sean Wilhelmsen

I started a new thread, and this a question for George. Since I think I missed most of the original thread, please explain to me exactly what you want to do and why.

Sean
Formerly of emu and the creator of the command stations.

Re: [xl7] Custom Flash ROMs

2016-01-13 by Brian Grassfield

Hello Sean, nice to meet you. I'm one from the absolute CS lovers, I'm using it extensively, sometimes it gives me inspiration and other times just simply complements my other stuff or just programming it for fun. I am curious about the onboard pattern store flash rom. How many times a sector can be rewritten and is it use any data loss prevention in case of attempting to write in a died sector? And if a flash rom dies, how it could be replaced? So, shall I buy other gears to be a donor later? :)
Thanks,Barna
 

    On Wednesday, January 13, 2016 1:40 AM, "Sean Wilhelmsen sean.wilhelmsen@yahoo.com [xl7]" <xl7@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 

     
| I started a new thread, and this a question for George. Since I think I missed most of the original thread, please explain to me exactly what you want to do and why.

Sean
 Formerly of emu and the creator of the command stations.  |

Re: [xl7] Custom Flash ROMs

2016-01-13 by George G

Hello Sean,

Thanks for your kindly email, a pleasure to have you here :)

I am a professional dj and producer of electronic music and my all favorite piece of gear is an EMU MP7 with a XL7 rom that I use in the studio but also live. Also some of my producers friends have Proteus modules and Command stations.

I love EMU and the history of the gear was made, the music I love was done with a lot of EMU equipment! Too bad the company didnt continued the legacy...

Amazing that we have in herr the designer of Command stations cause from a few years there is a discution on this XL7 yahoo group regarding the making of a custom flash rom for our command stations and emu modules (ex Orbit 3), so we can load our own samples and midi phrases, eventually in a easy manner with usb connected to our computers.

So the problem was that flash roms need it to be setup and write in a EMU sampler, also a big problem is there are no flash roms left in the market and when appear on ebay they are so expensive… you see maybe 1-2 every year...
  
Actually one of the yahoo group users worked a little bit in this direction and he started to emulate the board, you have a pictures attached with his try. His name is Jack Pratt, I will forward also the original threat.
 
As you see attached his rom is similar to the original but the problem is he was stucked in the process of learning the pcb characteristics and the software logics of the roms. He got the ideea to make somehow a computer editor and write the flash roms with our own samples and then move them thru usb in the devices.

The group has more that 2000 members, most of them requested this every month and they will be amazed and will buy those things, also a lot of guys on gearslutz and also a lot of DJs and producers friends of mine will be on the buyer list so surely will be a lot of customers for something like this with a lot of financial potential 😊 Those synths are still used in studios and make them open to new custom wav sounds and midi will made them used many years from now! The synth engine and those filters are the best in a digital device! 

So in behalf of the yahoo group and of all the owners of this devices I ask you if you want to join this idea and help us creating those flash roms so we can keep the legacy of those amazing machines alive 😊 Maybe the solution for you is much easier 😊

Thanks you so much

George
Show quoted textHide quoted text
> On 13 ian. 2016, at 02:40, Sean Wilhelmsen sean.wilhelmsen@... [xl7] <xl7@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> I started a new thread, and this a question for George. Since I think I missed most of the original thread, please explain to me exactly what you want to do and why.
> 
> Sean
> Formerly of emu and the creator of the command stations.
>

Attachments

Re: [xl7] Custom Flash ROMs [1 Attachment]

2016-01-14 by Sean Wilhelmsen

George,
Oh wow, so much excitment and euthisasim, if we only had 25,000 of you ten years ago. The custom flash feature was only intended to be used by the way emu offered for end users. E4 ultra, emu custom flash. The command station is really a closed ended system, and any real access to its synth engine would be an infringement of its US pattons and copy written software. Obviously those are not being used now, but the owners, Creative. May at some point find some use for them.
I can't help feel that though your plan is really a waste of time. With the exception of a fun side project. The effort and expertise that goes into creating a ROM sample set is huge, especially if you would like to sale it . Plus, if everyone on this list bought it you would still not regain your costs. Sorry, I hate being a bare of band news. And again if we had 25,000 more of you 10 years ago we would be talking about 2nd and 3rd generations of the command stations on this forum . You will not get any support from any other company as well, frankly they are all struggling on there own projects and can't afford to dedicate any time towards dicontinued products. The only use to them would be your help at understanding the market size and potential for a new product. Marco's reply was sweet, but that's the most you will ever get from him. I use several command stations with a laptop and Emulator X3, custom samples with as close to the command station synth in software, in many ways better. The command stations were designed to be awesome controllers as well so using them together as one other user mentioned he does is just feakin awesome. A rout I would suggest for you. As a note, new musical instrument companies at some point were inspired by some type of legacy product in effort to make a better version. In a computer synth software driven market maybe our continued use of the CS line will inspire a new line of hardware synth/sequencers. One of the products that inspired me was how the Alesis MMT-8 hardware sequencer was being used by an ambundance of electronic musicians simply because of its track mute buttons.
Also, I want to caution all at communicating or promoting any type of reverse engineering with out the written consent from the company who owns those copyrights. I don't think there's much risk unless you plan to sale, but just be careful.

Lastly, George, i wish i could gove you a hug,and once again sorry about being negative about the custom flash ROM.

Sean

Show quoted textHide quoted text
From: George G pluto_ro@... [xl7] ;
To: ;
Subject: Re: [xl7] Custom Flash ROMs [1 Attachment]
Sent: Wed, Jan 13, 2016 1:49:48 PM

[Attachment(s) from George G included below]

Hello Sean,

Thanks for your kindly email, a pleasure to have you here :)

I am a professional dj and producer of electronic music and my all favorite piece of gear is an EMU MP7 with a XL7 rom that I use in the studio but also live. Also some of my producers friends have Proteus modules and Command stations.

I love EMU and the history of the gear was made, the music I love was done with a lot of EMU equipment! Too bad the company didnt continued the legacy...

Amazing that we have in herr the designer of Command stations cause from a few years there is a discution on this XL7 yahoo group regarding the making of a custom flash rom for our command stations and emu modules (ex Orbit 3), so we can load our own samples and midi phrases, eventually in a easy manner with usb connected to our computers.

So the problem was that flash roms need it to be setup and write in a EMU sampler, also a big problem is there are no flash roms left in the market and when appear on ebay they are so expensive… you see maybe 1-2 every year...
Actually one of the yahoo group users worked a little bit in this direction and he started to emulate the board, you have a pictures attached with his try. His name is Jack Pratt, I will forward also the original threat.
As you see attached his rom is similar to the original but the problem is he was stucked in the process of learning the pcb characteristics and the software logics of the roms. He got the ideea to make somehow a computer editor and write the flash roms with our own samples and then move them thru usb in the devices.

The group has more that 2000 members, most of them requested this every month and they will be amazed and will buy those things, also a lot of guys on gearslutz and also a lot of DJs and producers friends of mine will be on the buyer list so surely will be a lot of customers for something like this with a lot of financial potential 😊 Those synths are still used in studios and make them open to new custom wav sounds and midi will made them used many years from now! The synth engine and those filters are the best in a digital device!

So in behalf of the yahoo group and of all the owners of this devices I ask you if you want to join this idea and help us creating those flash roms so we can keep the legacy of those amazing machines alive 😊 Maybe the solution for you is much easier 😊

Thanks you so much

George


On 13 ian. 2016, at 02:40, Sean Wilhelmsen sean.wilhelmsen@... [xl7] <xl7@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I started a new thread, and this a question for George. Since I think I missed most of the original thread, please explain to me exactly what you want to do and why.

Sean
Formerly of emu and the creator of the command stations.

Attachments

  • Re: [xl7] Custom Flash ROMs [1 Attachment]

Re: [xl7] Custom Flash ROMs

2016-01-14 by Sean Wilhelmsen

Barna,
There is code written to protect against defective sectors, if needed you may be asked to reintialize the flash, you can also do it yourself by entering the dignosttics page, I forget how to get there, button its some combo of button pushes when booting up.. It that case you will have the chance to save your patterns via the eloader software that was included with you CS. You can do this via USB or MIDI. Keep in mind all OS may not be supported and USB drivers may not be available, in that case the MIDI option will work.
In case of hardware failure, having a back up unit is not a bad idea, I think you can pick up a used CS cheap. Emu and Creative only have to support a product for 7 years after its official end of life, so getting parts will start becoming extremely difficult.

Sean

Show quoted textHide quoted text
From: Brian Grassfield brian.grassfield@yahoo.com [xl7] ;
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com ;
Subject: Re: [xl7] Custom Flash ROMs
Sent: Wed, Jan 13, 2016 10:54:59 AM

Hello Sean, nice to meet you. I'm one from the absolute CS lovers, I'm using it extensively, sometimes it gives me inspiration and other times just simply complements my other stuff or just programming it for fun. I am curious about the onboard pattern store flash rom. How many times a sector can be rewritten and is it use any data loss prevention in case of attempting to write in a died sector? And if a flash rom dies, how it could be replaced? So, shall I buy other gears to be a donor later? :)

Thanks,
Barna



On Wednesday, January 13, 2016 1:40 AM, "Sean Wilhelmsen sean.wilhelmsen@... [xl7]" wrote:


I started a new thread, and this a question for George. Since I think I missed most of the original thread, please explain to me exactly what you want to do and why.

Sean
Formerly of emu and the creator of the command stations.


Re: [xl7] Custom Flash ROMs

2016-01-14 by Bruno

Hi Sean,

thanks for your detailed explanation. While we are at the topic of Flash ROM - what is the reason, that after initialiazing it, without saving anything in a Command Station, only 70% of the memory is available? Even though there are 8 banks for patterns, most likely it would be impossible to fill all of them, even when using one bar long patterns.

I'm not complaining by any means - CS is an amazing piece of hardware (I own two, and my collaborator has two as well), and it's aging really well, at least in terms of proving its usefulness after 15 years from its release. It's obvious, that every project like this comes with some trade-offs and quirks. I only hope you won't get tired by our questions, because I'm afraid there would be more.

Actually, I already have another one! Have you considered using the "busy/variation" mechanism for patterns (not only the audition riffs), and if so, why wasn't it implemented?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

Bruno

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