SYNTH ZONE
Visit The Bar For Casual Discussion
Topic Options
#59470 - 07/18/03 05:07 AM Open software ?
waightkl Offline
Member

Registered: 10/04/01
Posts: 39
Loc: Swindon, UK
Does anyone know whether its possible to find out what the internal structure of the various floppy disk files are ?. My grand idea was to produce produce a piece of software that would allow a floppy user to list on a PC the Panel settings of all the Technics files on a floppy. I thought this may help building up a library of what is on which disk. The keyboard manufacturers in general seem to be very tight-lipped when it comes to details like this being made available. Now I can understand why they may not want to give this sort of information away for free, but I dont see where their commercial advantage is in not making this sort of information available under careful conditions. I'm a software engineer by profession and anyone whos followed the scrap between Microsoft and Linux would realise that making key parts of the operating software "Open" and available often encourages more sales of hardware.

Anyone got any thoughts on this topic ?.

Keith

Top
#59471 - 07/18/03 06:49 AM Re: Open software ?
larry gosmeyer Offline
Member

Registered: 01/23/02
Posts: 394
Loc: La Verne, CA USA
Being a software engineer, is it not possible for you to read in a floppy song file and then using your development software, to display the file structure so you can figure out the file format? This may be too time consuming though at this point.

Larry

Top
#59472 - 07/18/03 04:12 PM Re: Open software ?
Bill Norrie Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 01/16/02
Posts: 2330
Loc: North Yorkshire UK
I doubt if it would be very straightforward, since the files in KN6000,6500 and 7000 are in a compressed format, to enable more efficient use of storage space and provide quicker loading. So you would also have to know or figure out the compression algorithms.

------------------
Willum
_________________________
Willum

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is Music.
Aldous Huxley
( especially when the music is played on a KN7000....)

Top

Moderator:  Admin 



Help keep Synth Zone Online