Emax

The bad formatting by EMX and EMXP for EMAX-I disks is probably 
caused by calibration & tolerance differences between the drives used 
in EMAX-I and the drives used in most EMAX-II and PC's.

This seemed like an unsolvable problem, but I have had contact with 
J. Watton of sherlock consulting software. He makes free software 
(OmniFlop) to read/write almost any kind of floppy disk. He 
investigated the EMAX-I disk image I sent him and has tried to make 
his OmniFlop software EMAX-I compatible. This version is released a 
week ago (version 2.01i). I didn't have time to do intensive testing, 
but the first disk I formatted with OmniFlop worked fine on my EMAX-
SE sampler while the disks formatted by EMX and EMXP almost always 
failed (3-ticks).

Note however that although OmniFlop can also read/write these disks 
(besides formatting them), it needs the full 800K image to do that. 
Most files on the internet are either the 540K EMX sound images or 
the 260K operating system images, but not the merged 800K images.

I'll make EMXP compatible with the OmniFlop driver in the summer, but 
in the meantime you'll have to:
- format the floppy disk on Windows XP with OmniFlop
- write the OS and sound banks on DOS with the original EMX software 
(on the disks formatted by OmniFlop).
Of course you only have to do this once - after you made the first 
disk this way you can format the other disks on your EMAX sampler 
itself and use either EMX or EMXP to write OS and sound data to them.

You can download OmniFlop here:
http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm

To be able to use the rather new EMAX support of this software, 
you'll need a free license. But you get it almost immediately and it 
works fine...

Again, I only did some small (but successful) tests with it, but of 
course there's no guarantee that the OmniFlop-formatted disks work on 
all EMAX samplers...

Hope this helps. 

///E-Synthesist

--- In emax@yahoogroups.com, "elmacaco" <elmacaco@...> wrote:
>
> I get the 3 ticks and stop when I have a bad disk, I suspect that's 
the problem, when I make OS disks in EMX that happens, but when I 
make copies of the OS disks I have it works fine.  Try and get an OS 
disk from another local emax user and see if that loads.
> 
> 
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: oh3nlp 
>   To: emax@yahoogroups.com 
>   Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 3:06 PM
>   Subject: [emax] Re: ALMOST perfect Emax. It's broken, you know.
> 
> 
>   --- In emax@yahoogroups.com, "brainztain" <digitailslide@> wrote:
>   >
>   > Hey, I know this thread is old, but I just wanted to ask you if 
I 
>   > should try this on my emax hd. I've tried various floppy disk 
>   drives 
>   > on it but they all hang on the "loading software" screen while 
the 
>   > floppy drive led stays on forever... and yes, it does three 
little 
>   > ticks and then stops, but the light stays on.
>   > 
>   > Let me know if you have any recommendations.
>   > 
>   > Thanks
>   > 
>   > 
>   > 
>   >>
> 
>   Hello
> 
>   Have you solved the problem?
>   I have same thing. I've made several 3.2-bootdisks and changed 
the 
>   disk drive also. All the same. EMAX starts to load and then stops 
>   (after these 3 "ticks"). I made short searching with google to 
found 
>   this controller chip mentioned before, but i didn't found 
anything 
>   data about it. 
>   So, i have no idea, is the problem disk or drive controller.
> 
>   It's strange that how it could made even these 3 ticks, if 
>   controller is broke down. 
>   In other hand, i have made these bootdisks with working 720k-
floppy 
>   drive, which i also use to make some disks to my ensoniq eps-16+. 
>   I've tried 2 different drives in my EMAX. same function with 
both: 3 
>   ticks, then stop.
> 
>   Any ideas? Anyone?
> 
>   Best Regards,
>   Jukka
> 
> 
> 
>    
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>