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Esi-32 with OSX 10.4.11 Meet'n'Greet

PostPosted: Wed Mar 25, 2009 11:13 am
by Kippekiller
Hello,

my Name is Mathias i'm from Saarland in Germany and I recently got myself an old EMU Esi-32 Sampler (OS-version 2.10)

Seems like the internal floppy drive is broken, can't either format floppies nor save banks, could't test loading as I don't have any samples on suitable discs.
I was lucky to get a new drive which will arrive in a couple of days.
Then I will see if it was the drive or something else broken inside the Esi-32.

The rest all works fine. Sampling, effects, filters, MIDI, do work properly.
I just can't save anything...

Now I'm looking for some way to connect the Esi-32 to whether my G4 PPC or my MacbookPro Late2008, for that I could at least save the current Bank I'm working on.
It's a bit annoying having to start from scratch every time I want to use the Esi.
I have a 3,5" USB floppy drive on my PPC, but as far as I found out it won't work with Chickensys, allthough Translator didn't work at all with me yet (loads of error messages every time I let it come up).

All I want is one Bank on a 3,5" Floppy to load on starting up the Esi.
Is there a way to create such floppies on my Mac(s) without having SCSI or an internal floppy drive (just that USB thing)?
At least it should contain two or three short Samples (Kickdrum, Snare, Hihat) and some crude configurations.

All further sampling would be done via ad-conversion of the sampling inputs.
But it would be nice to be able to save the work afterwards, if the floppy drive worked it would take a while but it'll do, but what if it won't work with a new floppy either?

As the Sampler works and sounds fine except of the saving issue it would be a shame not to use it.

Hope I made myself understood, as I'm no native english speaker.

Thanks in advance, great Forum by the way, glad to have found it.

Regards Mathias

PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 8:37 pm
by kalide
[updated below]

PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 8:44 pm
by kalide
try here

http://www.milton.arachsys.com/nj71/ind ... u=3&page=1

most posts on this site are for the Emu E4/Ultras.

SCSI should work for SMIDI transfers. Ensure you have termination set properly. I had an ESI in the past and used Zip drives - cheap on ebay (SCSI ones).

Floppies are too restrictive - too tiny.

You can also find 32 pin SIMMS to put in 32M of memory - not a lot but enough to be really useful.

OS 2.10 is also a bit clumsy - and 3.02 (you *may* be lucky and find it around) is far better - 17 filter types.

However if you are spending money, invest in a second hand ultra instead....better bang for buck.

Floppy drive info and ESI info here:

http://www.emulatorarchive.com/Samplers ... rades.html

Also - a tutorial on the ESI:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Dec01/a ... emuesi.asp

M