emusonacid! legacy

hi,
got an e4xt ultra and just bought me two 16MB blank ROM's for it to permanently store samples on.
after installing them though, the unit doesn't boot, no power, but a short whining sound keeps coming from the power supply (looping in perfect time even). take out my new ROM chip (one or both) and boom, everything is fine again.
anyone got any advice?
i noticed there are four ROM slots, 0,1,2,3. i tried installing them in 0,1 and 2,3...assumed it was supposed to be 0 and 1 though.

i will admit a tiny fuck up on my part. each 16MB ROM comes w/ two sticks...one is the actual ROM, the other is to replace your Flash ROM (at the front of the unit) with. well, no direction reading me put all four of these sticks in the ROM slots 0-3 (and yes, i turned the power on)...then i read how the second stick is for the Flash ROM....wuuuups

maybe i fucked it up and I'm S.O.L.???? advice anyone?

damn, so no one out there has these blank ROM's? i'm starting to think i just threw $100 out the window...

i will add this for anyone else's future reference:

i talked w/ EMU who said me putting all four of these sticks in the four ROM slots shouldn't actually have done anything bad.
they said that the extra Flash ROM stick given w/ each kit (again, to replace your Flash ROM at the front of the unit) is no longer necessary with any current EOS version. so i shouldn't have fucked up anything i don't need anyway.

i will screw with it some more tonight and see

did anyone else ever get anywhere with this? dugawug?

I just bought three 32Mb flash roms & had to spend 45 minutes on the 'phone to "tech support" in california; this all ain't cheap from london, I can tell y'.
so far I'm out $1000 for the roms & the same again for the e5k I bought to do this job.
I just e-mailed emu the list of error messages I get when attempting to author the rom but basically the machine locks up w/ "flash program error" having corrupted the flash.
the machine won't reboot past "mounting IDE drive" unless the flash is removed. I have burned two out of the three flash roms I bought like this. my e4x writes presets to them fine, but can't return them to their "new" state for the e5000ultra.
bah.
duncan.

duncan,
i'm not anywhere with it. my problem is that my unit won't boot at all with one or both of these ROM sticks installed in any of the four ROM slots.
tech support seems to think the ROM's are shorted out and thus the lack of power when they're installed.

i'm just trying to find a way to test them before returning them and getting my money back.

anyhow, you bought three 32MB sticks? so each stick is just one 32MB? i heard the unit can only take a max of 64MB of ROM...four 16MB sticks....and i thought a 32MB kit just came w/ two 16MB sticks...i guess i'm wrong? although i do clearly remember (a rare event) an EMU tech support guy saying "yes, they can hold up to 64MB ROM total"...????

fuck man, your problem sounds crazy...and you bought these new from EMU? certainly you should get your money back, right?? wish i could help, but i can't get mine past a simple boot up!!

so let me ask you real quick, cuz i've never even used these and am not 100% sure how they work:
i can basically install these (in theory of course), and transfer, in my case, 32MB of sample data to them where future RAM presets can reference these ROM samples? or can RAM presets only use RAM samples? can you have ROM presets? and can ROM presets access only ROM samples? is there a limit to the # of ROM samples like there's a 1000 limit to the RAM samples?

sorry, some basic questions you think i would have known before buying these ROM's.

well, good luck bro

ho hum. dug, it looks like you & me both got shafted. I am in correspondence with emu "tech support" over this to the tune of several long e-mails & about $50/worth of 'phone-time.

has ANYONE EVER made this work???

yeah, basically the blank flash comes in two sizes for burning-&-using-in-a-proteus; 16Mb & 32Mb on a single stick.

ok, here goes. long post, this....

the idea is, you make a bank in y'r ultra & when you're done, you "author" it across to the blank flash-simm. the flash has to be in the right slot (rom 0) & you must have the regular ram only in slot b. this is all in the authoring guide on emu's site, btw, which lurks amongst the lit for the ultra machines, v4.10 or above.

you CAN have a blank & a factory rom onboard in the next slot (see later) & even clone the factory rom, or one you've made y'rself, onto the flash in slot 0 (hidden feature?), but not two blanks at once.

when (IF...) you succeed, the eos presets have turned into proteus instruments, & retain just the basic attributes- velocity & keyboard placements, tuning, pan & looping. any other eos preset stuff is ignored by the proteus, which has it's own corner of the flash into which it will eventually write proper proteus presets. (the synth architecture is quite different from the sampler).
but meanwhile the EOS preset data is there too. same rules apply as for a regular disc bank- you can think of the rom as being a hard-drive with one bank on it. same number of samples, presets, the works.
as to how this behaves in real-life... I don't know yet. I think the idea is that the ultra can wake up ready-to-play, with the rom bank "loading" instantly. but I don't know where this leaves you w.r.t. the ram bank....

but so anyway.
I have the exact same thing, & emu say "The speculation is that the rom chips are bad".

what I got was "flash program error" a few minutes after starting the process.
upon examining the flash in the disc browser, I could see a default folder, a default bank & a correct&complete listing of the samples I was burning. but only the first sample would audition, & it was corrupted.

I wrote all this to emu, along with all the data displays about the duff samples (they have negative durations & suchlike).
it's obvious to me, though, that the ultra is fucking up the directory it needs to find stuff on the flash- the sample headers, if you like, & that this prevents it booting because it gets stuck trying to read what's in it. EOS is notoriously intolerant of interruptions to it's routines.

one small difference- I managed to fuck up two of my three flash roms like this, so that the ultra no longer boots past "mounting IDE drive" with either of them present. but /before/ I rebooted the ultra with the third fucked-up flash in it, I went into diagnostics (1358) & dicked around with the flash menu items.... "checksum" tells me the flash is all good....

there's more... this menu has a duplicate-rom utility.... so....
attempting to duplicate the other (empty) rom slot onto my flash simm, I managed to undo whatever corruption was stopping the ultra from booting with this flash onboard.
you get the same "erasing flash (~9 min.)..." as during authoring, but then you get "copying progamming (~18 min.).." which aborts because there's nothing to copy.

**after this the ultra will boot ok with the blank still in it.** i.e. back to square one.

& so later I managed to "clone" my protozoa rom into the flash, & the ultra could read samples off of it! so the flash was probably all fine, is my point.

my pk6 & p2k still don't see anything when I put the flash into them... this suggests to me that the bit of flash that tells a /proteus/ how to address the samples is bad, or being written bad by the ultra.

y'see, duplicating a rom into flash using the copy routine in diagnostics will create a rom suitable for use in EOS, same as putting in a factory rom; the sample headers are being written to a different part of the flash, by a different bit of code (& all you can access is the raw samples- any presets you make out of them will have to live in ram & be stored on HD).

but somehow this process will also undo the damage created elsewhere by the authoring routine.

I am waiting for emu to get back to me, either for solution or refund. how did they leave things with you? they are taking me quite seriously at the moment, but only because I copied in their sales department & made noises about how much emu kit I have bought. they asked me where I got the flash from, like I might have bought it from pc-world or something!
I told them to ask lynne buck. this shit has cost me over a grand in flash simms that don't work, not to mention the money I spent on getting together the hardware so's I could do this.....

I'll keep y's all posted.

duncan.

oh & by the way, I just checked rob papen's website- no hardware samplers. he obviously doesn't have to use an ultra when he makes his custom soundsets for emu to sell. he probably just sends them a cd-r & they do the rest.

has ANYONE ever made this work?

deafening silence. just me & duga trying to do this then?

how I left it with emu last week before going off on a mini-tour /without my samples loaded into my proteus/ was that they were going to mail me a RMA for returning of the bad memories & then investigate whilst simultaneously sending me replacements to see if I could get any further.
well.
no e-mail from them. I called them last night ('nother 45 minutes transatlantic on me 'phone bill, but frankly this is my best bet since these are the guys closest to the mysterious designer of this shit, whose help they don't appear either able or willing to invoke for such a trivial matter as this....) & of course the support guy /just about/ remembered me. but he wants to help, & can I make sure that the chips go to california & not the new call centre in FLA. & so lynne says she'll "e-mail right away with a returns number" but so far nada.

well. when this is all over & done & I finally get to burn my own samples into proteus-friendly form, maybe I'll start wondering if this new desktop sampler thing is any good. like, how will live musicians be able to use it? quite apart from any reservations one might have about laptops & stage environments.... will eos-x be able to burn flash chips for the proteus?

no, come to think of it, that's a dumb question. the boxes that are supposed to be able to, they can't do it.... no way anything based on windows is going to manage it. arse.
arse arse arse arse arse.

well, i gave up...the two "new" 16MB ROM's i bought that wouldn't let my E4 boot up when installed, well, i sent them back. i bought them from a Ebay guy on the side (not a shady side deal, but i missed the real auction and noticed he had many for sale). so anyhow, i guess i get my money back, although he's "starting to question this" in regards to my problem.

i'm lost too...the way my E4 had problems after installing RFX, i'm not too sure if the ROM's are faulty or if it's some inherent problem in my E4 that would cause me to have to do the impossible task of parting with it for weeks upon weeks to have it fixed. it's strange though, the guy who sold the ROM's said "i've sold dozens of these and not one has had a problem" ... and now it so happens that BOTH of what I've got don't work????

Duncan, i'd be curious to see if it ends up being your ROM's or your E4. I'm sorry, which did you send in, just your ROM's?

dugadoug-
waiting, I am, for RMA to materialise in inbox. this number promised by lynne at emu (sales) & required before I commit my grand's-worth of duff-rom to fedex or whatever.
no way am I sending the sampler itself any place soon, unless it turns out that there's a decent tech for emu gear lurking in the UK somewhere. there's a guy in holland, apparently, & there's this guy mike barnes I talked to once ages ago when I bought my first esi32- he was good at the operational stuff.
but this isn't one of those problems- I am engineer, & I can tell when it's a real problem & not an op-fuck, by a mystical sixth sense us engineers have. also, I know that the so-called tech-support guys at emu hq are baffled by this. the guy I want to talk to is the guy who knows the lines of code in eos4.whatever, & therefore knows
a) that the machine has a message inside it like the one I've seen, &
b) knows exactly what provokes it.

dan lerner & his team, with the greatest of respect, are what we call "1st liners". I need to talk to a code jockey. or else get some roms that work.

the longer I wait for them to move on this, the more vitriol I store up & the more justification I have for screaming down the 'phone at them again.

my roms came from emu direct, in emu packaging, & don't work. the e5k ultra I bought to do this job is 2nd-hand, sure, but the kid I got it from had about 2Mb of samples on a 40Gb drive & hadn't even touched the screws. I version-upped to 4.61 in less time than it takes to get the lid off. the box sounds absolutely sweet & performs it's sampling tasks like a dream. & (if the emu guys had been paying attention, they'd know this) it drives it's rom slots just fine.
the only thing it can't do is write to the baby-flash part of the flash simms. it even copied a factory rom onto one of the flash simms for me. have a look at the flash authoring guide on emu's site, you'll see what I mean.

aaaagh god-dammit! it's not even about the money, it's about promising a technical feature & then not supporting it properly.
motherfucking god-damn!

i feel ya man....i'd stay up on Lynne...great people over there but it's almost guaranteed they'll forget something or another. i've had a lot of interaction with them and they know me by name, but that's all mostly b/c i've had so many problems that cause me to call back!!

good luck, i sent my ROM's back...much to my disappointment as I thought it would be sweet to have 32MB of my favorite samples there at all times

yeah.... I read a review of my band the other week where the guy was slightly disappointed not to see our real live mellotron on stage with us. seems to me that between all these tech problems & now this guy's little remark, maybe we should just get a bigger van & a roadie & ditch the idea of going solid-state with our favourite tape-sounds.

oh well. time to ring lynne again. there should be one of those little cartoon faces doing a great big yawn. will have to do for now.

keep y' posted.

d.

replacement chips have arrived, along with a floppy of eos4.7. the chips have been tested by emu; I'm told there's stuff still on them. I'll try frying one myself tonight & let the class know tomorrow.
there was all manner of complication attending the simple act of exchanging my three duff chips for three warranty replacements. for instance, emu had to bill my CC again for the three new ones, promising a refund for the duff ones when they get to oklahoma (!) & for my postage cost. also, the replacements got held up by fed-ex here in the UK despite having "warranty replacements" written on them. I fought & kicked to keep from having to pay import tax twice on the same deal, but it turns out that the import tax part is about ?15 (or about $100 at the moment....), but in order to import a spare part under warranty, UK customs&excise want ?51 please. fuck that shit. I paid the ?15 instead & cursed at the guy I was dealing with, telling him that fed-ex ought to know better.
anyway. tomorrow you'll all know if flash authoring is viable at all.
d.

seems not. SOL, as they say.
the three new flash roms were supposed to have been prepopulated by a tech at emu (tho' not any of the ones I've been talking to, for some reason...) & tested for the functionality I'm trying to get.
so- how come my pk6 doesn't see these roms when I install them? if the tech has actually followed the flash authoring guide to the letter, I should be able to read the flash simms in a proteus box. that, after all, is the whole idea.
& (of course) I still get "flash program error" in my ultra. I even copied the stuff off of one of the flashes so I'd have a "known good bank" to put back onto it instead of a bank of my own samples.
now I feel like torching the lot & switching to violin. I feel the red mist descending
duncan.

update- emu support in europe have offered to try authoring my banks.
what this means in real life is I have to send my scsi zip drive aswell as a cart with my banks on it, & the second lot of 3 flash-roms, to the guy in ireland who seems to be the sole supporter of emu hardware outside the US. if he succeeds, then it proves my e5k ultra is a crock. if he can't do it, however, then it proves what I suspected which is that no-one's ever done this. I can't believe that a whole forum of as many users as us has never succeeded in authoring-for-proteus on an ultra...
anyone...?
duncan.

Hi Guys,

just to clarify, we have fully blown EMU technical support in Europe, and have had for many years. We were based in Scotland, and have recently moved (about 14 months ago) to sunny Ireland. I've been doing technical support for over 7 years with EMU, so whilst we can't guarantee to have every answer off the top of our heads, if you have a problem, we will make every attempt to fix it.

I've been communicating with Duncan regarding his particular problem - but customers in Europe should please feel free to contact European Technical Support before calling the US directly!!!

The number for technical support in Europe is:

+353 1 433 3205

Also, you can submit emails directly to us from the "contact us" section at www.emu.com - just make sure you click 'Europe' for your region if you are in Europe.

And we have between 5-10 people staffing the lines here in Tech. Support, so I am by no means the "sole supporter". We are an international company - when you call us, you are calling EMU.

Just for the record...

thanks,

Dave