[LAU] Ensoniq ASR-10 Boot Disk Required [update]

[Nick Copeland]

Let me thank everybody who put in advice on where to go with this. I went through a few cycles:
a. picked up an old ZIP100 parallel SCSI (20 euroes).b. found a utility called EPSLIN (with source) that writes to the floppy or HDD and cangenerate the proprietary formats. This does not work with USB FDD since it has to use some kernel calls that control the programming of the uC765 floppy controllerchip. With USB attached floppies this chip, or similar, is actually on the externalfloppy so the kernel calls have no access.c. Found bipolarisation.com who put the OS and factory disks on-line (have to thankthem too).d. Formatted a ZIP100 SCSI (24 euroes for a pair of disks)e. Copied the OS over.f. Linked it up to the ASR.g. Nothing. This is a pretty stupid ZIP drive - no options to terminate the SCSI or to select the device ID. Incompatible. Will sell it again.....
h. Got back online and got hold of a Dell floppy (15 Euroes)i. Picked up some floppy disks (4 euroes for a box of 10).j. Let's just make this one short - did not work in any of my 4 Dell laptops. It wasfrom the Latitude C series.
k. Got down to CashConverters, picked up an old Compaq desktop for 60 Euroes.l. Put together a liveboot USB (quicker than downloading a live DVD)m. Put a 32bit version of epslin on to the stick, put the ARS OS and the 8factory disk images.n. Formatted onto a really floppy disk drive.o. copied the OS to it.p. put the disk into the ASR10.
MAN, IT NOW BOOTS!
Working with floppies would normally be painful but until I can get hold ofan even older ZIP drive or some other parallel SCSI device it will do - I amnot going to be loading (m)any sounds, I just want the OS there spittingmidi out into bristol for the PolyPressure stuff.
Again, thanks for all the advice.

Am going to put out a bristol 0.60.11 which just fixes some build erratausing patches contributed to the project, then some time later I want to get the CS-80 emulator working as a 0.70 or similar. I will add options tohave PolyPressure track ChannelPressure as I know there are not manykeyboards out there with poly capabilities (also from this thread).
Regards, nick
"at the end of the day its nil nil at half time”.
Trevor Brooking


> Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2013 22:07:30 -1000
> From: gnome at hawaii.rr.com
> To: linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
> Subject: Re: [LAU] Ensoniq ASR-10 Boot Disk Required
> 
> On 01/06/2013 01:24 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 11:28 AM, david wrote:
> >
> >> I think his concern with USB floppy drives was that it might not be possible
> >> to write non-standard floppy formats over USB, since some of the
> >> non-standard formats require changing settings in the floppy drive
> >> controller itself.
> >
> > Hmmm, that's clearly beyond my expertise :)
> 
> Mine, too. I remember alternative disk-at-once ways of writing 1.8 or 
> 2MB to a 1.44MB floppy ... we thought that was a height of geekness, 
> squeezing in those extra kilobytes ... guess I'm old or something.
> 
> >> I don't know how much they cost now.
> >
> > There are $12 units, there are $180 units. Depends on the brand.
> 
> Probably the same basic hardware beneath them all. I think the Sony 
> external drive we have added about $100 to the total price of her old 
> system. ;-)
> 
> -- 
> David
> gnome at hawaii.rr.com
> authenticity, honesty, community
> http://clanjones.org/david/
> http://dancing-treefrog.deviantart.com/
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