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weird issue with EMU sound ROMs

PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:10 pm
by override
hi all,

i have an odd issue with my sampler. here's some background (sorry, it is a bit of a story)..

using an emu e4x 'hollywood gold' sampler. as far as i know this is an 'ultra' sampler, as the only info i could find on it (in this forum) had some guy saying he worked for emu and all of them were ultra's although not labeled as such. i'm not really sure if there is any way to check conclusively (perhaps the mainboards?) but i'd need someone to tell me what i'm supposed to be looking for. anyway, it has eos 4.61 installed, 2mb cpu flash, 128mb ram, 18gb hd, floppy drive, aes/ebu option, extra midi option.. etc

i also have a proteus 2k that has maxed out its expansion slots. it had the composer rom, beatgarden rom, holy grail rom and xl-7 rom installed. i found an halo qrom for 90 bucks and bought that. i wanted to throw the beat garden rom in the sampler because it seems a logical place to put a bunch of drum samples and replace it with the qrom. i removed all of the roms, cracked open the e4x and installed the beat garden rom.

this is where things get weird. the beat garden rom is not detected by the sampler (and i did ensure to enable the sound rom was enabled in the master menu). most ultras have 4 rom slots but since mine is some hybrid ultra (or not an ultra at all?) it only has 2 rom slots. i tested the rom in both slots and it would not get detected.

i then tested all of my roms to see if any were detected. here's the results

beat garden rom - not detected
xl7 rom - detected
composer rom - detected
holy grail rom - detected
halo qrom - not detected
also i have an audity 2k and its 16mb sound rom was tested and detected

i noticed that some of the roms look different than others. the two roms that are not detected both have similar chip configurations, while the other ones seem to be different (not all of them the same, but varying). specifically, there is a yellow chip or ic (?) at the top left side of both of the roms that are not detected.. i'm wondering the following, (if anyone has the answer!)

1. do i have an ultra? (as far as i know, only ultras can read the new roms.. mine can read some but not all.. weird)
2. is there something specific about those roms (chip config or what-have-you) that prevents them from being read?
3. has anyone had any luck getting the beat garden rom, or qrom detected in their emu sampler?
4. could this be because i'm not running os 4.7? (somehow i doubt it.. but could be possible)

i'd be happy to provide pictures of the inside of my sampler, and the individual roms if that helps.

thanks!

Re: weird issue with EMU sound ROMs

PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 4:38 am
by override
so here's a little update in case anyone is interested in hearing about it..

i checked the roms a little closer and the two roms that could not be read by my sampler have "32 MB SOUND ROM" printed on them while the roms that can be read have "32 MB SOUND FLASH ROM" printed on them. the only exception is the xl-7 rom. it says "32 MB SOUND ROM with 2mb FLASH"

i saw this post from 2008 http://www.emusonacid.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1800&start=0

i'm wondering if it is possible that i to have a few flash roms? it doesn't look like the user in the post above had too much luck, and i don't want to risk rendering the rom unusable by messing with it, but if anyone has any info, or has one of the original flash roms and could send me a picture of it so i can compare, that would be nice.

edit: the other thing worth mentioning would be the difference between the emu e4x hollywood gold and the emu e4xt ultra. after more research it appears the e4xt ultras have 4 rom slots, two which are for flash roms and two which are for normal, non writable, sound roms. as i said in the first post the hollywood gold sampler only has 2 rom slots. it appears based on my testing that the e4x hollywood gold edition rom slots only read flash roms, not normal sound roms.