27 Jul
2006
27 Jul
'06
9:51 a.m.
James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
Renich Bon Ćirić wrote:
Is the kit totally necesary? Can we build an emulator out of the service
manual? An emulator would be a natural step, i think. In any case, I
have some questions about a post a friend of mine made to the forum
where it all started. You can check it for yourself at:
http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=54825&start=60 but I will
paste it here. Can anybody comment on it?
Well, everybody's telling me that Akai's
OS is something else.
Realtime stuff and 2 or 3 engines and DSPs to manage. Besides, we
have to support akai's native file formats, like PROGRAM, MULTI and
Sequence.
I really don't know why... I'm just hearing what everybody says. You
think it shouldn't be that hard to port Linux and develop the effects
and stuff, and to support Akai's native format? Would you give me
some arguments and reasons?
Thanks for the input!
The datasheet you posted it nice a detailed. We would need
documentation regarding the file formats, so we could implement
support for them.
I think the biggest problem you will come up against will be getting
the equipment and the open source developers together.
Unless you donate the kit to each developer, nothing will happen. The
kit is far too expensive for a developer to purchase out of good will.
James
Guys,
Linux as it is ordinarily distributed is not a small-footprint
real-time operating system. You will notice that your cell phone does
not run Linux. There is a reason for that. There is also a reason that
the MPC4000 is a zero-latency device whereas a PC, even one running
Linux, is not a zero-latency device; it requires audio buffering and
latency compensation and all that sh*t that drives people to work on
an MPC in the first place.
If you haven't designed a real-time embedded application before --
e.g., the software that controls a piece of machinery or electronics
-- then you are not in a good position to offer advice about how best
to do this.
There are public-domain RTOSes available that are suitable for this
task. To those, you can add drivers for USB and FAT32. Without an RTOS
to give you hard real-time scheduling, you have no chance to achieve
the rock-steady timing that the MPC currently has.
-illiac