I have a rack-mounted Viscount MF-01 "Song Worker" MIDI Player and wish to know if your floppy emulator will work with this unit.
The installed floppy drive is either a Panasonic JU-257A525P or a JU-257A427P according to a Viscount service tech I asked. It supposedly supports both DD and HD floppies in Atari ST format.
The MF-01 reads MIDI files (.mid) from the disk while the unit is playing - in other words, the disk is constantly being accessed while the song is playing. Would the HxC be able to do this and to read the .mid files from the SD card? This would be very different than it would be for a synth or sampler that loads a complete file and then plays it after loading.
I also have another unit which works in a similar way (accessing the disk while playing MIDI files) - it is an SD-35 MIDI Player from Roland. I would like to know if the HxC might work with this unit as well.
jringmrath wrote:The only question I have is this:
The MF-01 reads MIDI files (.mid) from the disk while the unit is playing - in other words, the disk is constantly being accessed while the song is playing. Would the HxC be able to do this and to read the .mid files from the SD card? This would be very different than it would be for a synth or sampler that loads a complete file and then plays it after loading.
Yes, no problem at all.
jringmrath wrote:
I also have another unit which works in a similar way (accessing the disk while playing MIDI files) - it is an SD-35 MIDI Player from Roland. I would like to know if the HxC might work with this unit as well.
Ok, so I just got my HxC Rev F and have attempted to install it in the Viscount MF-01.
I set the jumper to ID0-A and plugged everything in, formatted the SD card for 32-bit FAT and used the Mac beta software to convert an MF-01 floppy into an .hfe file (I don't own a PC).
So far, the instrument doesn't respond at all to the emulator. I am assuming that the ribbon cable is plugged in correctly (see photo). It has a blue stripe on one edge, not red. Does it need to be reversed?
My only thought is that with the original floppy drive, when you power on the instrument, the floppy drive immediately accesses and looks for a disk - you have to put a disk in for the instrument to "see" a sequence to play. It doesn't need to load an operating system, but it needs to somehow register that a disk is in the drive for it to be useable.
Do I need to change the configuration of the HxC so that the instrument "sees" a disk when it starts up? The emulator shows a red light (see photo) once it is powered on.
Just change the jumper setting to ID2 and force the interface mode to PC 1.44MB into the embedded menu (press the middle button without sdcard to access it).
More details please. Is the HxC reacting to something?
jringmrath wrote:
I looked closely at the original floppy drive that I removed from the unit and the PC board has a number of small switches on it set to the following:
SW1 set to RY
SW2 set to NC OUT
SW3 set to D1
SW4 Not present
SW5 set to SE
SW6 set to MO
Does this give you any clues as to how I need to configure the Hxc?
A picture please.
(by the way try the ID1 position on the HxC)
The HxC looks like it does in the photo I uploaded previously. The left red light stays on but the instrument is not recognizing the emulator.
Here is a photo of the PC board of the original floppy drive which was in the unit: you can see the small switches on the board which are used to configure the floppy (I indicated the settings in my previous post).
Question : How was plugged the floppy cable on the original floppy disk drive ?
According to the drive setting here is the right HxC configuration :
-> Set the jumper to the ID1-A position.
-> Set the interface mode to the SHUGART mode (set it from the embedded menu : press select button with sdcard in the drive).
The floppy cable was plugged in the same as you see in the picture on the HxC (with the blue stripe on the ribbon to the left as you are looking down and towards the rear of the drive).
I tried the ID-A jumper and Shugart settings but still no response.