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seq v2.4d


JMS

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yo!  i'm in the process of putting together a mbseq v2.4d-vintage (since i only had a 2x16 lcd) to run this sampler i just bought without my computer crashing in the middle of a song...

Question:  can i change the values of all steps independently with only 1 pot or do i need like 16 (or 64) of them?  or should i be looking into the data wheel/encoder route for this?  or is none of this even possible with a 2.4d seq and i should just break down and buy 2 2x40 lcds and build the v3 seq?

the deal is i have it all mounted inside a stripped out dvd player case and there is not room here for 64 pots, so, i was hoping i could change all note/length/gate values with only one pot.  i can fit all the buttons needed on the front... i already planned that out.

below is a few shots of the progress so far... one shot of the front, one shot of how i re-used the already in place front switches/buttons and one view of the inside as of a few days ago... it's already in a much nicer state than the pictures show as i've done a bit of work on it since, so don't laugh too much at it... (it's a work in progress)

EDIT:  the PLAY and STOP buttons do what they are labled to do... the fast forward and rewind buttons move through the menus... pause is the menu button, open/close is the button to switch what i am editing in the menus.   i still need to mount the 16 GP buttons and the rest... (above and around the lcd maybe)

4590_midibox-dvd-case_009-small_jpgd5a7e

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4590_midibox-dvd-case_009-small_jpgd5a7e

4592_midibox-dvd-case_011-small_jpgb1d78

4594_midibox-dvd-case_004-small_jpg3055a

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whoooaaaa!! thats what I call "Ghetto!"

It's the sequencer Mad Max would have used....  :)

Awesome!

i'm taking that as a compliment... ghetto and the madmax are both positive in my book!

I answered all my questions from above by looking through the code with determination to make this thing work the way i want it to.

-- NO! i don't need any pots! (sweet, i'll use the AINx4 ala proto-board that i built for another project)

It has 7 buttons(possibility of 8, one is not connected), plus 16  GP buttons and 1 data wheel (via an old mouse scroll wheel and encoder contraption i rigged up).  There is also a 16x2 LCD, MIDI-IN, MIDI OUT... everything i need to sequence the akai s2000!!!!

with a combination of the scroll/data wheel and the 16 GP buttons i can edit all notes and values... as soon as i add a DINx1 to my dinx4 proto- board to add buttons for the layers... plus 4 extra, to be used some other time.

eventually i think DOUTS will be installed so i can see what's going on... until then it's fine to look through the different display screens to find what's going on inside.

i'll be taking more pics once i get it all cleaned up and more presentable, it is truly in a mad-max state as it stands right now, lol.

thanks to everyone again who helped with info and tips to get me to this point!

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heck yeah, so far the code is exactly the same except for the setup.asm and the makefile.orig

i swapped up the shift registers, moved pins i don't need to an imaginary SR, set-up the datawheel#0 on pins 3,4 and added my custom setup.asm to the makefile so it would still build the rest, should i need them someday.

attached is the two files, drop them in the seqv2.4(e?) dir, remove the ".txt" from the end or makefile.orig and make!

EDIT:  it's not finished, i need to add the 5th DIN for 3 layers... and 4 tracks, realized i DO need at least those.

Makefile.orig.txt

setup_mbseq_chr0n1c.asm

Makefile.orig.txt

setup_mbseq_chr0n1c.asm

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the s2000 got here this morning... i brought it home at lunchtime and plugged it in... NO LUCK!  i had to rip it apart and replace the 3.5 floppy drive before i could even use it including extending the power cable  by two inches to reach the new drives power plug (standard pc floppy drive, FYI)  after all that i had to spend about 3 hours figuring out hot to get samples onto it through midi, then saving them to disk.  (TIP, for anyone else: use "Wav_Akai").  then i spent another two hours figuring out how to assign each sample to a keyzone. (getting close!)  so now we have an 808 drumkit saved to the floppy, a kick, snare and hit-hat are mapped to C_2, C#2 and D_2... and we have liftoff!  the seqv2.4 is running a 16 step pattern and sequencing the sounds of the s2000! w00t!

now... how does the song mode work on this old seq? or how do i chain 4 - 16 step patterns together?

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Do yourself a favour, get a SCSI card and a copy of millenium (not MESA) to edit and upload samples. That whole exercise would have been a few mouse clicks ;) A SCSI drive (zip is handy) is also a wise move. Join the mailing list at yahoo too, or at least read it.

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word. i got the scsi card and mesa installed though i have no cable yet, i'm half tempted to look up the pinout and make my own.  believe it or not, i don't think the midi sample transfer is all that bad, but, editing keyzones is a bit tedious on the front panel. the s2000 has an awesome two part datawheel to make up for it. ;)  i was thinking of contacting the name of jsynthlib.  is he a midiboxer? because that program looks very slick... and i don't know how easy or hard it would be to add the s2000...

i do appreciate any tips on the both of them (s2000 and seq2.4)  thanks!

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, editing keyzones is a bit tedious on the front panel.

...welcome to the world of hardware samplers...

You should try doing keysplits/zones on a Prophet2000 sampler or, an Ensoniq Mirage... talk about fun. Thank god they sound so good to make up for their arse of a interface..

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kgedit.gif

Yeh it's pretty hard on an s2k ;)

BTW that is automatically generated by selecting a group of wavs and a total keyrange, and the files are uploaded if necessary. The edits are done by sysex over SCSI so it all takes a matter of a few seconds.

When I recommend nonfree software, you can be sure it's really good ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

mmmmm'kay... i've now at this point used BOTH Millennium AND Mesa II... i'm pretty sure they are VERY CLOSELY related...  i'm thinking maybe Akai bought thr rights to Millenium or something and called it MESA II.  i've never used MESA I, so i can't comment on that.

while playing around with  both software packages... i have determined MESA II to be a more rounded (less buggy) tool.  therefore i am going to strongly disagree and reccomend anyone who is using or going to be using an akai s2000 hardware sampler use MESA II instead!

NOW... back to my sequencer project...

this thing will let me program in a song like a1->a2, a2->a3, a3->a1... everything is fine until i hit PLAY and then it reboots everytime.

(i tried 352 times, lol)

what am i doing wrong?  i can't figure it out... the rest of the functions on this box work flawless so i'm pretty sure i got it all wired and programmed correctly.

thanks for reading this... and thanks ahead of time for any advice on what may be the cause of my reboots...

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MESA II? I'd never heard of it prior to this post :D I'm curious!

I grabbed a copy and although I can't try it out for real right now, I checked the manual and while I see that it's taken on several of the improvements that millennium brought, I didn't see any mention of the automatic keymappings (especially useful for drums and multisampled acoustic instruments) ... is it there?

Actually now that I think of it... I have a feeling that MESA II was the version I originally had, and we just dropped the version number when discussing it. this page hints at the same, and straight out says that while the new MESA is better than the old one, millenium is the less-buggy better featured tool...

Perhaps you copped a dodgy crack of millennium or something, and/or didn't get the updated exe...cause I never managed to break it... And most guys who've used MESA will tell you that it's hard to imagine any software being more buggy... it used to crash a *lot*... Damn I'm curious now!

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prototype datawheel picture before it was all mounted in the box... scroll wheel and the encoder from an old mouse i had laying around, the encoder acts as a hub on one side, a small LED acts as the hub on the other side which in turn is able to light the whole deal up... i mounted a switch that was salvaged from the same mouse under the LED "hub" which is mounted in a way to allow it to travel enough to trigger the switch without breaking the legs after repeated use.   it's working awesome!  as far as looks go, remember i said PROTOTYPE in the first sentence of this post!

mouse parts, super glue and bits of plastic = encoder/datawheel!

midi,_s2000,_random_0040.jpg

midi,_s2000,_random_0040.jpg

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