Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

Just so you know, you could still use the FLASH SIMM in an ultra, but you probably wouldn't be able to write anything to it (without ;using the programming adapter).

 

 

In any case, I'm considering modifying the design to place a micro on board with a USB interface. This would allow the FLASH to be programmed while in situ and not actually require the programming board to use. It would be more expensive and more complex, and I need to consider how the interface will work - not really keen on writing a USB driver for multiple platforms. Perhaps just a MSD for one image (32+4MB) and when you disconnect the USB it does the 'write'. However that requires a relatively large amount of storage (SDRAM) for a single image.

 

This solution is FLASH but with an on-SIMM USB write interface. Unfortunately the interface would be full speed (12Mb/sec) so 32+4MB would take 40 to 45 seconds to transfer.

 

This is how it would work:

When you power on you have access to the contents of the FLASH as previously programmed.

If you want to change the contents you would plug the USB into a PC, and copy a image to the "drive" that shows up on your desktop.

When you un-plug the USB interface the micro checks whether there's an image file written and then writes the contents to the FLASH.

While the USB is connected and up until the time the programming is complete the FLASH SIMM will be 'disabled' as far as the proteus module is concerned - once a change has occurred you'll have to reset the module to use the changed anyway.

 

Not sure how to expose the USB connector externally - might need some home metal work.

 

If you want to create your own images you could :-

1. get the programming hardware and read a SIMM you already have [eg an E-MU FLASH SIMM] - I still need to make the programming hardware to be able to read existing SIMMs to learn about the storage format for wave and preset memory.

2. once someone gets around to writing the application(s) :-

   A. pack waves into an image & transfer to the SIMM

   B. generate presets in the user banks

   C. dump the user presets as sysex

   D. pack the waves and presets into an image & transfer to the SIMM

 

The applications (to be written) would pack the waves & sysex into an image once the format of these is detemined.