From nic@carrot.com.au Wed Nov  5 17:02:00 1997
Subject: sgroup sdisk FAQ/update
To: sgroup@lotus.uwaterloo.ca (Roland Samplers)
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 16:49:31 -0500
From: nic@carrot.com.au (Nic Grant)
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  Hello sgroupers,

  Since there have been a few postings on sdisk and how it does/doesn't
  work, inadequate documentation and so on I thought I would post the
  following to the sgroup list in the hope that it helps someone. Now that
  Roland are shipping their OS' for lots of equipment and telling people to
  use sdisk, as you can imagine I have had a stream of emails and it got to
  the point wher I was answering the same questions again and again about a
  little program I wrote in 1993 for sgroup! Needless to say I get bored
  answering the same questions and the number of emails is increasing, so I
  now send out a form reply to most sdisk related emails...and it is
  attached. If anyone using sdisk thinks of anything I should add to this,
  be sure to tell me ;-)

  Regards,
  Nic.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

 ** This is a form message **

 Due to the number of requests I receive about sdisk each day, I can no
 longer reply to each email about sdisk individually. However, attached is
 some further information, including some detailed instructions on how to
 use sdisk step by step, which may help you. Considering sdisk was written
 in 1993 and that it is a free program, I am only prepared to support it to
 this extent. If this document does not have enough information to get it
 working for you, then I'm sorry, but you will either need to persevere with
 it (try joining the sgroup mailing list!) or find another way to do what
 you need to.

 Hope you understand.

 Nic Grant
 Carrot Top Music

 SDISK 

 This document consists of updated information on sdisk. It assumes the
 following:

 1. You have sucessfully unzipped the sdisk.zip package
 2. You have read the sdisk.doc file supplied with the sdisk zip file

 sdisk works with diskette images for the Roland series samplers. It takes a
 sampler diskette and saves the entire contents to a file for emailing or
 uploading. It does not interpret the actual data on the sampler diskete in
 any way. It also takes sampler diskette image (*.out or *.sdk) files
 created with sdisk (or smac for the Mac, which is NOT written by me) and
 writes them to a diskette which can be later used in a sampler. Roland and
 other sites make available diskette image files for sample sets and
 operating system updates. sdisk can be used to 'reconstitute' these files
 onto a diskette.

 sdisk cannot convert samples from a diskette to WAV or any such format. I
 am led to believe that there exists a utility called 'convert' which can do
 this, but have never tried this first hand. For the record, I have
 converted samples from my S750 to WAV, using SDS over MIDI and a commercial
 product called 'SampleVision' and then used GoldWave or Sound Forge to
 convert the SampleVision .SMP file to .WAV. I have had only marginal
 success going the other way with this method (loop points in the data file
 are not preserved and I got clicks and pops). As I have hardly any need to
 convert from my Roland to WAV I have not pursued this any further.

 Now, an examination of common problems (in order of frequency)

 USING SDISK UNDER WINDOWS 95 or WINDOWS NT

 Sadly, sdisk does NOT work under win95 or win NT. This is because sdisk was
 written years before these two systems and because the necessary BIOS calls
 that sdisk makes to do its work are not honoured by the 95/NT system. You
 will need to boot with a version of DOS 6 or below in order to use sdisk.
 This is commonly done by booting from a bootable iskette with DOS 6 or
 below on it.

 The error messages that sdisk generates are varied when attempting to run
 under win95/NT and don't appear to make any sense.


 DISK SIZES

 sdisk sometimes generates the message 'Diskette too small/large for file'
 when you attempt to write a sample image file to a diskette. This is because
 the file you are trying to write to the diskette is indeed the wrong size
 for the diskette. A sample image diskette can be of one of two sizes only
 and each size requires a different diskette type (use DIR to see the size of
 the file):

 File Size      Common File Type          Diskette Needed
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 737280         S50/550/W30 images        Double Sided/Double Density (DS/DD)
                OS Updates from Roland

 1474560        S7XX sample images        Double Sided/High Density (DS/HD)

 Make sure you use the correct diskette type for the file size listed.

 If the file size is not either of those shown above, then it may need to be
 uncompressed or it may not be complete. If the file you downloaded for use
 with sdisk has a .zip extension, you will need to use an unzip package
 (PKZIP, WinZIP) to uncompress the file before attempting to use it.


 PATHNAME BUG

 The first version of sdisk has a bug in it where if you specify too long a
 pathname for the sample image file it will generate spurious error messages
 and abort the read/write. The lastest version of sdisk is V1.1 which is
 available from http://www.carrot.com.au . I believe Roland is still shipping
 V1.0 which has this bug. If you're not using long pathnames you will
 probably never notice this bug.


 W30

 I have had many reports that the W30 OS upgrades shipped by Roland from
 their site do not work once placed into the W30. I cannot confirm this as I
 do not have a W30 myself and I have never heard from anyone using a W30 who
 has reported problems to me whether they ever got it working or not. In
 short, I don't know, but either the W30 images at Roland are corrupt, or
 the W30 diskette format is not compatible with sdisk (ie. a proprietary
 diskette sectoring scheme only known to Roland)


 OK, common problems out of the way, here are step by step instructions for
 both reading and writing a diskete image. These steps assume:

 1. In the case of writing a diskette image, the file size of the file to be
 written is as described above under 'DISK SIZES'.

 2. You are using DOS and not win95/NT

 3. Your 3.5" diskete drive is the A: drive

 I also recommend making a separate directory on your hard disk and storing
 sdisk.exe and any sample files you may wish to use in the one directory.
 I'm going to assume this is C:\SDISK but of course you can use any
 directory you like. I'm also assuming the current directory is set to this
 directory. Under DOS, the command 'CD \SDISK' would do that.


 WRITING A DISKETTE IMAGE

 You need to to follow the steps below to write a diskette image. Generally
 you want to write when you have downloaded or received a sample image file
 and wish to use it in your sampler, say an OS update or a sample set. For
 the sake of these instructions, let's assume the sample file is called
 SAMPLE.OUT and is in the same directory as sdisk.

 1. Insert the correct size diskette in the diskette drive on the PC.
 2. Change to the directory with sdisk.exe and sample.out
 3. Run sdisk
 4. Press the 'D' key to set the file details
 5. Type 'SAMPLE.OUT' and press RETURN
 6. Press the 'A' key (or if your 3.5" floppy is B:, press the 'B' key)
 7. Press the 'W' key and the image file sample.out will be written
    onto the diskette
 8. When finished, remove the diskette from the PC and put it in your
    sampler. If an OS disk, try to boot with it or if a sample disk, see
    if you can read it. If you can, then all is well. If not...


 READING A DISKETTE IMAGE

 You need to to follow the steps below to read a diskette image to a file.
 Generally you want to read when you wish to make a sample image file from
 a sampler diskette for sending to someone or maybe just as a backup on your
 PC. For the sake of these instructions, let's assume you have a diskette
 with some string samples that you want to send to a friend and will call
 the image file STRINGS.OUT

 1. Insert the sampler diskette in the drive of the PC
 2. Change to the directory with sdisk.exe and where the sample image
    file will be stored.
 3. Run sdisk
 4. Press the 'D' key to set the file details
 5. Type 'STRINGS.OUT' and press RETURN
 6. Press the 'A' key (or if your 3.5" floppy is B:, press the 'B' key)
 7. Press the 'R' key and the image file strings.out will be written
    into the directory.
 8. When finished, you can email this file or do whatever you like with it.
    In order to make the file into a sampler readable diskette you (or someone
    else) will need to take the file and use sdisk to write the file to
    a diskette, as described above.


 TROUBLESHOOTING

 Got this far, but still no luck? Well I suggest you try as a test taking a
 known good sampler diskette (works in the sampler fine) and try reading it
 to a file and then writing the file back to a different diskette. If the
 sampler doesn't recognise the copy (or the PC doesn't recognise the
 original) you may have drive alignment problems on either the PC or the
 sampler (most likely the sampler) and may need to get it serviced.

 If the test above did work, then maybe the files you are working with are
 corrupt, incomplete or downloaded without the 'BINARY' setting if they were
 FTP'ed from an Internet site.


 EPILOG

 That is it, I'm afraid. If with all of the above, you still cannot get it
 working, then you may need to give up on the idea or get what you need
 through traditional Roland support channels (or your local dealer).

 If you can get it working, then great and I hope sdisk is useful for you.

 Regards,
 Nic Grant
 Carrot Top Music

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