[sdiy] Coupla Things - OT

[Metrophage]

--- Pete Niedermayr <pniedermayr at yahoo.com> wrote:


>    Is anybody on the list doing midi over Ethernet? Any advice?

Yes, get companies to build ethernet into instruments! I have used
MidiShare to get computers to share MIDI via ethernet connection, but
this was more of a lark than anything else. If my synths had ethernet,
I'd be all over it. Like USB there can be timing issues with the
packetization of data, but it seemed good to me. One can also use
ethernet for OSC, but it's the same deal - lack of support in dedicated
hardware. MIDI and OSC between two computers? I don't have much need.
Stuff to think about for when I build better hardware, I suppose!

>    I’m resurrecting some old synths (80’s vintage). I’m thinking, I
> should replace the lithium batteries in them as long as I’m dealing
> with them. Do I have to worry about lost data when doing this? By
> lost data, I mean, not patches and such,but the synth OS. 

Best bet would be to read up on how the firmware is stored for your
synths. No point to using anything volatile, so it's always on an EPROM
or EEPROM in my experience. Especially '80's vintage, it's almost
certainly going to be a 27XXX type EPROM. You'll probably see one or
more while looking for the battery, hopefully with labelled stickers
over the quartz erasure window. Then you can read what software version
you have been using, if you didn't know before. If you want to be
really cautious, you can dump the EPROM image into a computer with a
burner in case you need backups.

The only thing you might lose by changing the battery is data in
volatile memory, such as various types of RAM. That would basically
mean you could lose patches and settings, so you might want to dump
those ahead of time. If there is still some memory though, capacitors
might keep it in RAM for a minute or so.

CJ



	
		
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