emusonacid! legacy

i've just got my mits on a e5000 ultra.
its running eos 4.61

is worth upgrading to 4.7?

I heard from my friend that 4.7 is a bit buggy (that was a while ago)

what are the main advantages for upgrading to 4.7?

cheers

billy

OK. Here goes...

PRO -- 4.7 allows you to read/write FAT32 formatted hard drives. This makes it a hell of a lot easier to swap ZIP disks between your sampler and computer. You can burn FAT32 CD-ROMs under Windows or OS X and your sampler can read them from a SCSI CD drive (rather than having to mess around with that proprietary E-mu CD format). Also means you can do maintenance on the hard drive by hooking it up to your computer. And, as an added bonus, FAT32 formatted drives aren't restricted to just 18GB (the EOS file system can only address a maximum of 18GB, but with the FAT32 you can put in larger drives... I'm running a 40GB Western Digital in my E6400-Ultra).

CON -- You can't have FAT32 formatted SCSI drives on the same chain as your sampler AND your computer. SCSI FAT32 drive connected to sampler only is fine, connected to computer only is fine... but if they're on the same chain when both devices are on, they could cause the hard drive to freak out. You can connect your sampler to your computer, and the computer will be able to access any SCSI internal drive, without a problem because of the way the EOS deals with SCSI... but not with an external drive. Oh, and the internal IDE bus isn't shareable, so you can't read a sampler's internal IDE drive through a SCSI connection to your computer (but you can still remove it from the sampler, carry it over and put it in your computer, and work with it there just fine).

PRO -- 4.7 has a new multi-setup screen that allows you to save your setups in the sampler's CPU Flash RAM.

CON -- If you have the RFX-32 32-bit effects card installed, 4.7 will cause it to kak it's pants... Uh, I mean, malfunction with random bursts of noise.

CON -- 4.7 is only officially "beta". It never got the full polish it should have from E-mu, which is why the RFX-32 issues were a huge burden. (OK, if you're not too picky, and you don't have the RFX anyway, this isn't really much of a CON after all)

Or, the short version: If you have RFX-32 installed, don't go above version 4.61 (or 4.62?) If you want features like FAT32 disc access and being able to save your multi setups, then definitely upgrade to 4.7

Okay, thanks for the reply vermis_rex!
i like the way you broke it down for me.

The short version. I dont have the RFX card installed.

EOS 4.7 is the one then.
Welcome to FAT32 land.

Nice.

One last thing. What happens to my internal hard drive when i upgraded to
4.7? do i loose my samples that are on it?

Also, my computer is connected to the sampler via scsi.. i use soundforge to dump samples into the emu. Is there a better way to do this?

Upgrading to EOS 4.7 won't do anything to the sampler's internal hard drive. It will still be exactly the same, as the sampler still reads the proprietary EOS file system. And you can back up an EOS drive to a FAT32 drive and vice versa (*special note* there is one tiny issue, to do with the number of folders that can reside on the drive... read the EOS FAT32 addendum, available on the E-mu web site... buried with the other "legacy" hardware support... if you have trouble finding it, let me know and I'll try to provide more explicit directions to it).

The way you've connected your sampler to your computer is good. Soundforge is good (or so I've been told... Sony generally have very good support for their products). I can think of no better way to do it. The only other ways to transfer samples would be either MIDI sample dump standard (much, MUCH slower than SCSI) or the floppy-and-sneakers approach (put sample on floppy, walk floppy over to sampler... again, MUCH slower than SCSI... but the exercise is probably good

For those who have responded to this that have indeed been able to back up their EOS HDD drives to a fat32 drive, is there some place that explains how one might do this? I would like to replace the drive in my emu eventually (it is quite noisy) and so I would like to be able to back up to a fat32 drive as its replacement. But since I have just upgraded to 4.7, my existing drive in the EMU is in the EOS format.

I backed up my EOS format drive in my E6400-Classic to a brand new FAT32 formatted drive in my E6400-Ultra. With both units connected via SCSI, I used the Ultra as the master. Went into the disk menu, and both the FAT32 drive and the EOS format drive showed up (the Classic could not see the FAT32 drive at all, because it was connected to the IDE bus on the Ultra, which can't be shared over SCSI). Selecting the EOS formatted drive, select utils>backup. Then I set the FAT32 formatted drive as the destination, told it back up everything on the EOS drive, and let it do it's thing. Everything went smoothly.