I just bought an X1. I have a Mac G3, an MTP AV midi interface which
>allows me 8 midi in and out, and as a sequencer I have Performer from
>Mark of Unicorn.
>I am trying to connect the X1 to my computer in order to gain full
>communication. My goal is to be able to recall any X1 sound (bank 1 and

>2) from my computer, and to have a midi set-up in a way that my
computer
>can perfectly read any style I play (fills and intros and all the other

>functions included), any song from the internal hard disk or from
floppy
>disk.
>The manual is very short on his explanations on midi and generally is
>very short and unfriendly in explanations of any type (I think that a
>$3000 keyboard should have a much richer and better explained manual).
>Do you have any suggestion?

Do you know of any better manual for the Solton X1 or any kind of
literature and tech support?
>
>Thank you
>
>Marco

Hi Marco,

Solton claims to have an interface cable and
software to link the X1 with a PC. So far, I
haven't found any dealer that sell this 'so called' cable and software. As you know, the
X1 has a computer connector on its' rear panel. If you find out where one can purchase this combination, please advise.

Ron

Hello Marco and everyone else.
I might be wrong here, but I carry the Yamaha to host to 9 pin seriel connector cable. I have sold many of these to Solton X1 customers and none of them have reported any problems. I think the software you are talking about would be nothing more than a mididriver for the computer. I own a music store but I don't use a PC computer, only a MAC and I don't do computer music. The Yamaha cable sells for $20.00 and I have them in stock. I've been told many times that computer store and most chain stores do not carry this kind of cable. Let me know if you need one.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, Ca.

Dave,

There is no official way that I know of to dump or backup Solton X1 hard disk to computer yet since Solton has not issued any software for it. The Yamaha MIDI driver works with Yamaha equipment, unless Solton uses the same wiring for the To Host port as with Yamaha's. Unless someone write a program to backup Solton X1 through MIDI, backing up the X1 requires using floppies for copying data from its hard disk. MIDI is serial communication and MIDI backup is as slow as backing up to floppies.

However, if you have a laptop PC like Dell Inspiron 7500 which can be configured to have 2 hard disks (using either the DVD drive bay or the battery bay), you can take out the Solton X1 hard disk and fit it in the extra laptop PC hard disk enclosure and use software like "Ghost" to backup all the contents of Solton X1 hard disk into a disk image (a snapshot of the whole disk) and store the file in the other hard disk. Then from the disk image, you can build as many Solton X1 hard disk as you want. This facility is perhaps best for music store owners like George to help his customers load up arranger hard disks. The only problem is to go through the pain of taking out the 2.5" hard disk from the arranger keyboard for the initial dump of disk image, and also putting the cloned disks back into the arranger keyboards. This method of cloning is very fast, about 15 minutes to clone a hard disk (at about 60 KB/S or better depending on the speed of your disks) when compared to manual loading of styles and songs for almost a week. Lately laptop storage upgrade packages with a PCMCIA card and an external hard disk enclosure for seond hard disk for duplicating the disk image of original laptop hard disk into the seond one is very popular and is also a viable alternative for clone existing disks.

Paul Ip
from Texas

Dave, Paul, and Marco,
According to the product Manager at Yamaha's pro keyboard division, the only thing that is on the "Yamaha" driver is exactly what is on the Roland and Korg driver. It is some kind of format of the origianal roland mpu 401 protocal. I might be wrong or maybe I misunderstood my friend at Yamaha, but he has always told me to tell my customers that they can go to Yamaha, Roland or anyone's website and download anyone's version of the midi driver. Have any of you tried this, because I don't use my keyboards in the store with computers. I sold a cable to Mario Escovar in New Jersey several months ago. Mario, if you are reading this post, please let us all know if it worked for you. Dave, Paul Ip knows his stuff! You can't use midi or a to host port to transfer data. It need SCSSI do do this.
George Kaye