Using EMXP and the EMuSer with an Emulator II and an Emax

Here's a demo of EMXP using the EMuSer USB-RS422 adapter, connected to an Emulator II sampler and an Emax sampler.
The EMuSer adapter allows for high speed synchonous data communication with vintage sampler Emu samplers.
The device uses a Teensy board containing an Atmel AVR processor. The firmware is based on the LUFA library.

The EMXP software for Windows XP (or higher) can use this device and currently supports:
- Bank transfers with the Emulator II (unload and upload)
- Bank transfers with the Emax-I (compressed 512K banks only, unload and upload)
- Sample transfers with the Emax-I and Emax-II (unload and upload)

For more information: http://www.emxp.net
///E-Synthesist

Many thanks and credits to:
- Julian Higginson, who made the very first prototype of an AVR based USB-RS422 adapter
- PJRC (www.pjrc.com) for making available the great Teensy boards
- Dean Camera (www.fourwalledcubicle.com) for making available the LUFA library

Category:

Music

Tags:

• EmulatorII
• Emax
• EII
• EMXP
• EmuComBox
• EMuSer
• RS422

[Oberharzer]

is there a solution for using EMuSer USB-RS422 with an emulator II that has only an rs232 installed. My serial on the device is 770 ;( ... is it possible to use a converter rs232-Rs422?

[esynthesist]

@Oberharzer

No, as far as I know the RS232 port was not supported by the Emulator II operating system for up- and downloading samples and banks; when Mac software was made available, everyone had to upgrade to RS422 in their Emulator-II. I will try to find out in the technical manual how the original RS232 was implemented, and whether it's possible and/or safe to try the EmuSer with that port from a technical point of view.

[SynthfactoryCH]

Can you use the EMXP software and the Emuser also with the emulator 1?

[esynthesist]

@SynthfactoryCH

Not yet. EMXP v3.00 will support Emulator 1 sound banks, but not via serial communications. It will be able to read/write files that can be transferred to the HxC floppy emulator or from/to(in future) floppy disks with Kryoflux.

I'm not sure if the RS232 port of the Emulator 1 will ever be supported by EMXP (e.g. via EMuSer), because it seems that the Emulator I operating system (even the special computer interface OS disk) does simply not support transfers of sound data.

[ultragrid]

AWESOME! I will build one "inside" my emax1! Do you think it will work with a small Netbook to? I am actually a mac user and would buy a cheap one for EMXP...

[esynthesist]

@ultragrid . It should work on a Netbook too.. I even used the previous version of the EmuSer on one of the slowest and oldest netbooks ever (Packard Bell XS).

So you will build it *into* the Emax ? I.e. in fact adding a USB port to the the Emax ? That's a cool idea too :-)

[jordanpassmore]

Very nice.  Does this work with the Emulator III?

[Cinematicals]

This is a very nice little DIY project for all users of older E-mu samplers!

Has anyone experience of it working with a Mac and BootCamp or similar?

Well done!

[esynthesist]

@vannin666

- Bank transfers on Emax-II are only supported for compressed banks (=original Emax-I banks) and only from PC to Emax-II. This limitation is due to the E-Mu OS in the Emax-II, which doesn't fully support bank transfers.

- Sample transfers are fully supported on Emax-II in both directions; it's a WAV file (16-bit, max 2 channels) which is used.

Note however that some Emax-II samplers have trouble with sample transfer communication via RS422 while others don't. It's unclear why...