Members sizzlemeister Posted September 27, 2006 Members Share Posted September 27, 2006 If you try to move the ROM banks around, or delete them, you can't like you can anything on the hard drive. You can't overwrite anything in the ROM banks, either. Alesis notes in the upgrade PDF that both the OS and Sound ROM can be updated via Compact Flash so I'm assuming both reside in flash memory on the system. So anything outside of the system, user samples, user banks, Hollow Sun stuff, etc., anything that can be updated and saved I'm assuming is on the HD. As you noted earlier in the thread, it boots like a computer. Since user settings are most likely saved to the HD, when it boots it needs the data from the HD to initialize the system and load in the last mix and programs used. Hence the reason it takes the few seconds to start up that it does. However, this is nothing new, back in the day a lot of hybrid synths could take up to a few minutes to "start up" because they would have to go through their auto tune routines. Early samplers, like the Mirage, had to load up its OS from disk. The early '90s Roland ROMplers, not to mention some Roland effects (like the GX700 or the GP16) I've owned usually give you the "Please Wait" notice whilst booting. There are most likely countless cases where a piece of music technology takes time to "boot" or "start" - even tube amps require a warm-up period. So, the boot time for the Fusion is nothing new, or unusual, or odd. Unless you choose to see it that way despite the very long precedence in the musical instrument industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mildbill Posted September 27, 2006 Members Share Posted September 27, 2006 thanks. i think i get it. i'm just not used to thinking of rom that can be re-written. i haven't had to update the OS or the rom sounds yet. so basically, it's got rom that's always available (but can be rewritten by alesis). it's also got proprietary ram that loads in samples like other samplers can. but what's the 'flash ram' part? or is it really just standard ram? or is it 'flash rom'? - the part that can load in new rom sounds from alesis? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sizzlemeister Posted September 27, 2006 Members Share Posted September 27, 2006 The Electro's ROM can be "re-written", the OS on the Evolvers can be "re-written", the BIOS on your computer can be "re-written", hell, the OS on little digital cameras can be "re-written". It's absolutely normal and a standard among all sophisticated digital devices these days that they can have their OS's "re-written" - it's more commonly known as a "software upgrade", "firmware update", or any combination of those words. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mildbill Posted September 27, 2006 Members Share Posted September 27, 2006 Duh: i had a temporary brain short-circuit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mildbill Posted September 27, 2006 Members Share Posted September 27, 2006 not speaking of the OS now, but does anyone know if you can rewrite the rom sounds in the big 3 romplers/workstations? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sizzlemeister Posted September 27, 2006 Members Share Posted September 27, 2006 Flash memory is the functional equivalent to what stored the OS code on Sequential synths (or take your pick of old hybrid synths) - except they used EEPROMs. Flash memory is used in nearly EVERYTHING digital these days. It may not even be RAM chips, either, it could be the memory on PIC processors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members XorAxAx Posted September 27, 2006 Members Share Posted September 27, 2006 Originally posted by mildbill the fusion site says that it comes with 120 megs of waveforms in rom:...but are those really in ROM? The Fusion has the following storage media (AFAIK): RAM: OS data, currently active programs and samplesFlash ROM: OS, factory programs and samplesHard Drive: user programs and samples Originally posted by mildbill i mean i'm used to thinking of rom, like as used in the big 3 boards - you can't overwrite it and it doesn't need to be loaded on startup. The term ROM is a misnomer these days. Very few memories in modern devices are truly read-only. Most "ROMs" are actually flash or some other rewritable nonvolatile memory. I don't know if the Fusion runs ROM content directly from its ROM or if it first loads the ROM content into RAM. I would suspect the latter. Originally posted by mildbill my fusion looks like it's doing 'something' on startup, but i didn't think it was loading patches. It's booting up, initializing the OS, that sort of thing. I also think it loads patches, as I recall mine saying "Loading Holy Grail Grand Piano" in the startup messages. Originally posted by mildbill what do you think would happen if you took the hard drive out? I am not sure that it would work. Originally posted by mildbill would it still have sounds in rom like yamakorland? Yes, they'd still be there, but I think the thing may panic if the hard drive is not present. I'm not going to try it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sizzlemeister Posted September 27, 2006 Members Share Posted September 27, 2006 Originally posted by XorAxAx The term ROM is a misnomer these days. Very few memories in modern devices are truly read-only. Most "ROMs" are actually flash or some other rewritable nonvolatile memory. Totally. This is most likely where the confusion arises. It's like calling a program a "patch" which is just a term from the good ol' days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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