I've already investigated the floppy emulators :) But one of those gives a replacement for a floppy drive, not a cartridge; thus it applies to the VFX-SD, SD-1 and SD-1/32, but adds nothing to the plain VFX – that still has only the cartridge as an expansion mechanism.
Also, a cartridge does offer another separate bank of sounds & presets in addition to the INT and ROM banks, so allows 60 more sounds available to choose from at the touch of a a few buttons, which may be useful during a live performance.
Best wishes,
// Christian
On 30 October 2016 at 13:52, Hans Artmann hans.artmann@... [Ensoniq-VFX-SD] <Ensoniq-VFX-SD@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Interesting. But if it's not so much about having thousands of sounds available in real time you might remember this page:
http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/
which solves the unfamous 'my floppy drive died and I cannot find a Shugart drive' problem and provides plenty space for sounds.
Hans
Am 30.10.2016 14:15, schrieb Christian Brunschen christian@... [Ensoniq-VFX-SD]:
A writable multi-cartridge for a VFX would require an EEPROM compatible with but significantly larger than the 28C256, and I haven't had a huge amount of luck finding any that are more than 1 Mbit (such as the Atmel AT28C010) which would correspond to 4 plain cartridges - and thus not a huge advantage over 4 separate cartridges. With a buffering SRAM (that the VFX reads&writes) and a microcontroller that shuffles the data to&from a much larger Flash memory, things are not limited by existing EEPROM sizes, and that also allows using serial flash memory chips that are quite compact. Or it would allow creating a cartridge with an ESP microcontroller that would allow WiFi access to the cartridge (which would be rather cool actually, but even more over-the-top) :)
// Christian
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