Patches and discussion for Ensoniq VFX family

Thank you for the message.  Unfortunately, the oldest OS that I have is Windows XP.  Additionally, the only floppy I have is a USB floppy and according to the information in our Files section of the group, they will not work.  I suppose that I could sysex each set of sequences and sounds to my Yamaha MDF-II MIDI File Player and save them as Sysex dumps from the VFX-SD.

November will be a time that I am coming into extra $$ so I will likely be getting another VFX-SD for backup (like I said before, I foolishly sold my other VFX-SD).  I will probably also be looking to replace the floppy drive in the VFX-SD I have now, just to be on the safe side. 

I plan to use the VFX-SD (along with my SQ2/32 and my rackmount stuff) on my solo gigs.  I have added a cooling fan to the heatsink on the VFX-SD so that it stays cool inside.

I have also seen the operation for putting a fan in the bottom and am intrigued by that.

I will also probably replace the battery.  I see that many people are replacing the batteries with the flat round 3.3v one and battery holder instead of the barrel one that I see inside my VFX-SD.  Are there any problems in doing this with the voltage or anything?

I have also downloaded the SoundLIB program and put it on my Windows XP machine (Dell Netbook from about 5 years ago with the USB MIDI cable deal), and need to set it up yet so it can talk to the VFX.  I've not had luck just yet, but have not installed the driver for the USB cable, even though the machine recognizes it...

Grace, 
Harry

--- In Ensoniq-VFX-SD@yahoogroups.com, Christian Brunschen <cb@...> wrote:
>
> On Sep 18, 2013, at 4:31 AM, "musicwithharry" <musicwithharry@...> wrote:
> 
> > I've been going through the posts about the floppy emulator for the VFX-SD and wonder how it really works on the initial data transfers.  
> 
> Usually, people would create images of their floppies on a PC with a floppy drive, and put those images onto the storage medium (SD card or similar) that goes in the floppy emulator.
> 
> > Is there a way to hook both up at the same time so that you can load in the stuff via floppy into the VFX-SD and then save it to the emulator?
> 
> I think in theory, if you were to effectively disconnect the floppy drive and reconnect the emulator, and vice versa, you would do that, but it would be tricky at best. For this sort of question in general, you might be better off asking in the forum about the floppy emulator – for the HxC one, that would be <http://torlus.com/floppy/forum> .
> 
> > As I have posted before, I use the sequencer extensively for my shows and would like to have everything on one form of media (one bug drive for everything).  
> > 
> > Can someone explain to me how it would work?
> 
> The easiest way would be to find a PC with a floppy drive, buy a copy of Gary Giebler's Ensoniq Disk Manager (EDM), <http://www.midifile.com/#edm> (or even the package that also includes the software to convert VFX-SD sequences to/from standard MIDI files, http://www.midifile.com/#vfx) and use that to dump your floppies to floppy images in the 'EDV' format. Note that the Giebler tools require DOS or Windows 95/98 to run, and IIRC Windows 95/98 to install.
> 
> Alternatively if you have a PC with a floppy drive that runs Linux, you can use the 'fdutils' package to configure your floppy drive to Ensoniq format: double-sided, double-density, 10 sectors per track, first sector number is 0 (using "setfdprm /dev/fd0u800 ds dd sect=10 zerobased"), and then dump the image by just reading it to a raw image file ("dd if=/dev/fd0u800 of=floppy.img bs=512 count=1600").
> 
> Or easier still, find someone to dump them for you – I have a Linux PC with a floppy so I can dump floppies to raw images for you if you need.
> 
> > Grace, 
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> > Harry
> 
> // Christian
> 
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