EPS 16+ Floppy Saving Woes

[efunc]

Hopefully Garth or someone else doing this successfully can help me out with this because I've hit a bit of a wall...

I've downloaded Translator Free which I've installed on my PC running XP. A native Floppy Drive is installed along with the Omniflop driver. I'm wishing to save exact images of 300 or so EPS16+ floppy disks to the PC, or at least individual folders containing the contents of each of my floppies, be it instruments, sequences, FX, banks or any other objects on there. I don't want any 'translating' done as this is purely to archive and use with my EPSs and ASRs. I'll later take these images and transfer them to Zip, CD or CF.

So far I've been able to view the contents of the floppies in the 'Object List' OK, including Instruments and Banks. I can 'select all' and then Translate which seems to copy all the objects to my Hard Drive OK. However this can be laborious and often fails causing me to have to choose each Object individually and translate them one by one from each floppy avoiding the objects causing failures. The things that have caused the process to fail are some simple instruments which are greeted with the warning:

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"cannot support multiple files at this time"

I have no idea what this means or why these instruments are failing. Also some other objects fail and throw up a dialogue:

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a non-fatal error has occured during your operation

Error #9
DLL Error #9
Description: subscript out of range
Source: ReadSCSIBlocks

I've also noticed that Banks are mis-spelled once saved and the first letter is missing.


As an alternative I've found a 'Bulk Floppy Read' command in the Tools > Special menu. This seems to offer some promise, but I can't get this to work. Once I select this option the program asks me to select a destination directory, which I do. It then askes for a Filename string which it will increment with each disk in the format %[amount of digits]. I'm guessing it can't just read the 'Disk Label' the the floppy already has then, because that's invaluable to me for identifying all my hundreds of disks and linking them to various projects? Nonetheless, is this the correct way to set up this naming convention? disk%[3].efe to generate disk001, disk002, disk003, etc through to disk300?

I haven't got any further with this to find out however as all my attempts to feed in my disks is met with the following dialogue:

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"An error has occured reading this drive; Error 9. Do you want to continue?"

This despite the fact that the same disks read and 'Translate' fine when using the first method I describe. Any clues?

Many thanks! I think I'm very close to getting this to work, I just need some help over the last hurdle..

[garth]

I'm doing a project just like this now for a client, only I have hundreds of floppies of different formats. Most are Akai and I think I have it sorted out.

Use the Tools->Special->Bulk Floppy Read function. The purpose of this is to get all your floppies as disk images, just to get the floppy mess out of the way. The syntax of that "filename" dialog may be confusing, what you want to do is put in something like this:

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DW05 %4.ede

The %4 means that the ascending numerical digit, at that place int he name, will have 4 characters. IN this example, the names would be

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DW05 0001.ede
DW05 0002.ede
DW05 0003.ede
...


THe problem with disk labels is: what happens when you have a identical disk label? The Bulk Floppy Read function wasn't thinking of disk labels when we wrote it, but I can put an opcode for disk label in if you want, so the input dialog you would put in something like this: [label] %3.ede, where you'd get ESD0001.ede, EDD0001.ede, DISK0001 001.ede, DISK0001 002.ede, etc. Let me know if disk labels are important to you.

So, starting with the first floppy, just mindlessly for hours put your floppies in. After that, you are free to view those disk images as Virtual Drives (register them using Tools-Register-Virtual Drives) and pull the .efe files. Again, you mentioned that this was simply for archival purposes.

[efunc]

Thanks Garth, that's really helpful. Believe it or not i'm kinda looking forward to the mindless task of feeding in disks; it'll feel like a minor achievement watching all these files stacking up in the hard drive. Any idea why I'm getting the "Error 9" thing though?

I'll try it with the new naming convention and see if it works better. So .ede is the correct suffix for these?

Oh, and good point about two floppies sharing the same Disk Label, however in practice I'd imagine when one of these is encountered Windows would warn you it is about to overwrite an existing file and ask you what you want to do. At which point you could modify the name of the new disk image somehow I suppose. In any case, I would really like to see this feature as it would be a real asset.

Thanks again for the advice.

[efunc]

OK, so I'm just progressing a little bit in this task. I followed your advice using 'bulk floppy read' and used your naming convention, which is getting me a bit further. That still generates the "An error has occured reading this drive; Error 9. Do you want to continue?" message for each disk, but I continue anyway and it seems to save the image files as expected.

Where I'm now stuck is knowing what to do with the images. I went into Tools -> Register items -> Virtual Drives -> Search and Register, and I can then see the individual images appear within my 'Ensoniq' Virtual Drives directory. However clicking on any of them doesn't reveal anything further. The Object List is empty. I'm guessing the image is being created in the PC, but no instruments are actually being read from the disks. Is this to do with the Error 9 thing?

[garth]

What are you putting in, in that naming dialog?

Are you using DS/DD diskettes, ones that you used with your EPS 16-Plus?

[efunc]

What are you putting in, in that naming dialog?

I tried DISK %3.ede and also TEST %4.ede. Both work fine and generate corresponding image files on my hard drive.

Are you using DS/DD diskettes, ones that you used with your EPS 16-Plus?

Yes, all my original DS/DD diskettes. As I say, they (mostly) work fine if I translate them using the drag and drop method. It's just bulk floppy read that has issues.

Is there any specific config stuff or licensing I need to do with the Omniflop driver before hand? I notice that when I start Translator it doesn't see my floppy as a ATAPI/SCSI device at first. I have to quit, go to Omniflop, test driver, then relaunch Translator each time before the correct floppy drive appears. Is this usual?

[garth]

I would Tools-Erase References-Virtual Drives, and then take one image and register it, and see if that Error 9 goes away.

If not, send me the image in question at http://www.chickensys.com/translator/bugreports

I don't have to involve the OmniFlop wizard, no, that shouldn't be necessary.

[efunc]

The "An error has occured reading this drive; Error 9. Do you want to continue?" message occurs at the scanning process when 'bulk floppy read' is reading the diskette to create an image. A separate progress dialogue box behind this then says '100% Completed...' and '3 sectors of 3 sectors copied [100%]'. The resulting .ede images however all appear to be empty. I can send you one of these if you wish, but I think the error is in reading the floppies in the first place. It's just curious how I can get the data off the floppy disks by using the standard method or selecting the contents in the object list and 'translating' them.

I might troubleshoot this by finding some other means of creating image files (omniflop?) and see if they can be registered OK in Translator.

[garth]

Like I said before, please send us one of the images at www.chickensys.com/translator/bugreports

[efunc]

OK Garth, I will do, thanks.

Just to let you know also, that since my last post I went ahead and used the Omniflop wizard to read one of my EPS16+ diskettes, and it read it without problem automatically recognising the format as 'Ensoniq EPS 16+/Classic DD'. It then prompts to save the file as an image, but Omniflop at this stage only offers a bunch of formats for the image such as Akai, Atari, Roland, DOS, etc, but no Ensoniq curiously. I've been forced to save as 'Standard disk image [.img]' which is fairly generic I guess. I'm not sure if this image format is important but the images seem to open fine in Translator afterwards! I can register the image as a virtual drive, view all the contents, and audition the samples. So a degree of success I would say! (Admittedly, Translator quit on me whilst I was auditioning, but that's acceptable for the time being). Being able to do all of this as a semi-automated task without having to leave Translator would be the icing on the cake.

I'll send you two image files I created of the same floppy; one with Translator, and one with Omniflop if it helps.

[garth]

Do not use the OmniFlop wizard, you'll be sorry for it later. It does not write proper images and even if it does they are non-standard.

Please send the image like I asked. Also, what version of the OmniFlop driver are you using?

[efunc]

Version 2.2.4.2000 of the Omniflop driver.

I just sent the bug report. not sure if it went through though as I stated that I'm using Translator Free 2.9 125 and the web-form said I should update it first. There doesn't seem to be an 'Update' option in the Help menu on my copy, and it actually is the latest version.

If you didn't get it let me know and I'll just email the image file directly.

[garth]

Sorry for the delay; I think I found the bug anyway. I would have found it sooner, but I was using our test machine to run these 500 floppies in Akai format. Once I got to the Ensoniq format, I experienced the Error 9 bug and yes, it inhibits floppy reading in Bulk. I'll have a fix up later today and will report it being up here.

[efunc]

Superb!

[efunc]

Just checking; any progress on this yet? is it available to d/l? thanks!