emusonacid! legacy

Hi guys,

I just rescued an Emulator IV that was about to be thrown away. It apparently had been in a neighbours attic for several years, and had belonged to an ex partner of the lady of the house. I'm now wondering if the the good folks of this forum could provide me with some info that I've not managed to find anywhere else.

First, this is what I have managed to find out so far:

It's an original E4 (classic?), not an E4x
It has EOS 4.01b installed
40mb sample RAM
1mb CPU RAM
2mb flash RAM
Digital I/O
SCSI HD installed (2gb?)

The LCD backlight is very dim, but otherwise, it seems to all work, though when I first turned it on, I did get some error messages. Can't remember what they were.

I've already sourced a replacement backlight EL panel from a specialist supplier. I'm a bit nervous about fitting that, but I'll get around to it sometime. A quick search of this site reveals a thread on that already. I'm wondering though if anyone can definitive answers to the following:

1. What's the latest EOS version I can run on this hardware, and is there any way to get a newer version onto the device using a Mac with no builtin Floppy drive or SCSI interface?
2. Was a digital FX option board ever produced for this model, and is this still available anywhere? If I can get hold of an FX board, this baby is going to replace my ESI-2000- not bad for free!

Cheers guys,

a|x

Sorry, just rechecked. It's EOS 4.10b, not 4.01b

E4 for free ? Cool.

toneburst wrote:1. What's the latest EOS version I can run on this hardware..

EOS 4.62

toneburst wrote:..and is there any way to get a newer version onto the device using a Mac with no builtin Floppy drive or SCSI interface?

Mmh, I think not. There was the possibility to update EOS via so called E-loader (via MIDI), but if I got it right (I guess it was
from Chris = VDS on here) the Flash Prep Disk was not available as a .dli file. In that case you need someone to make
you both (classic) Flash prep and (classic) EOS 4.62 floppies, maybe forementioned Chris can join/help you out, he has both.

toneburst wrote:2. Was a digital FX option board ever produced for this model, and is this still available anywhere? If I can get hold of an FX board, this baby is going to replace my ESI-2000- not bad for free!

I had to make a research as my memory was vague, me speculating the very first EIV model was out of this option. So yes,
but really just my 2 cents this is not worth it, if you ever can get hold of one these days. In case you have ESI 2000 with turbo-board, you know what to expect.

Hi Rascal Revenge,

thanks very much for getting back to me.

Yeah, it was pretty cool getting an EIV for free. I've been dreaming about something like that happening since I moved to London, and this is the first time in more than 10 years. I think it only happened because the the woman's husband wanted rid of the stuff so badly- didn't want to be reminded of the ex, presumably. Now that people can look up stuff on eBay so easily, you don't often seem to get people throwing usable stuff away, or offering it for sale for well below market value. I guess I was just lucky. Actually, very lucky, because half an hour or so after I picked it up, it rained quite hard, so if I hadn't happened to walk past, it would have been wrecked. I also picked up an Akai S-1000 (that turned out to be broken), and an Ensoniq Mirage, which looked to be in a terrible state, but cleaned up nicely, and powers up. Can't test it properly without a boot floppy though.

Re. OS update; I'll drop Chris a note and see what he says. I'll have a poke around in the site first though, and see if I can find a list of the major new features of the latest OS version. I'm usually quite gung-ho about updating everything to the latest version, but when it comes to messing around with floppy disks, and potentially turning my prized hardware into a brick, I'm a bit more cautious. Having had an ESI-32 with a faulty FDD back in the 90s, I've had enough bad experiences with data-loss and unreliable floppies.

Re. the FX board. Yeah, the FX board on the ESI-2000 isn't all that great, I must admit. I thought the extra filters were pretty cool, but they're already available on the EIV anyway, I think. I don't have any external FX units now, but I'm likely to be running the EIV straight into the computer, anyway, so adding FX isn't really a problem, except if I want to add different FX to different sounds/channels, I'll very rapidly run out of available inputs on my MOTU 828. So is the FX board for the EIV not the same as the board that came pre-installed in the EIVx, then?

Cheers,

a|x

Hello!

If you are located in the UK, the easiest way to get the latest EOS is, buy the two floppies on EBAY UK:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EMU-EOS-Flash ... 3a6e3f57f6

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EMU-Operating ... 3a6e3f57f5

They have got copies of my files, and they have testest these on Emu Sampler of the CLASSIC Line like yours!
So these files should really works for your EIV

Something about the FX´s boards in EOS sampler:

The FX board is the typical standard FX Unit from E-mu which was built in "all" E-mu hardware products. For examples:
- ESI line (Turbos)
- Audity 2000 and the whole Proteus 2000 line.
- EOS Sampler, beginning with E4X and so on. Ended up with all types of the Ultra Line.

The FX board for the EIV is very, very rare! On ebay germany I had noticed it only once in the last years! It was about one month ago.

Another way to get FX for your EIV is, that there is the possibility to use external FX units with send/return cables of the 8 outputs of your EIV.
but please read the manual for further information about it.

Chris

Thanks for the info, Chris. I've ordered the disks you suggested. I'll keep an eye out for the FX card, but I'm not holding my breath, given what you've said about their rarity. They're not the same card as the ESI turbo board, are they, by any chance? If so, I could simply take one out of my ESI-2000. I've found on the ESI-2000 that the nice thing about having the FX card fitted is that you can have FX applied to various channels, and still only have a single stereo pair of outputs. I'd probably mute the FX when it came to actually recording from the sampler, but it's nice to have an idea during production what a little bit of reverb or delay would sound like, before tracking. I sold my mixer some time ago, and even with two MOTU 828s, analogue audio inputs are at a premium.

Cheers,

a|x

Hello!

It is the same FX "card". But I think in the way of the ESI it is a soldered one on the Turbo Board. And in the case of the EIV it is a chip which can easily installed by the user!
There must be a socket on the mainboard of your EIV for this FX chip. Please have a look at this!

So I think, there is no way to use the FX chip of an ESI Turbo Board.

Best Wishes!

Chris

Hi VDS.

Do you happen to have the part number for the EIV FX card? Still trying to track one down, but no luck so far.

a|x

Or anyone else...

a|x

I had to dig deep, but found in one of their Product Line ad/info-material,
so the partnumber is

6311 - Emulator IV FX Option.

Ah, thank you Rascal Revenge, you're a star! I looked everywhere for that product code, but couldn't find it anywhere!
Glad to have confirmation it exists!

Cheers,

a|x