Am I the only one eager waiting for some Equinox OS update? Are there any plans for it? If there is anyone reading this and wanting to trade nice Equinox sounds, I have some very nice ones. joost.merema(AT)hccnet.nl

greetz 2 y'all

Joost

Hi Joost, No, i dont think that you are the only one eagerly awaiting an update! But i think that the chances of any further updates for the Equinox series are very unlikely to say the least.

Quite a shame, as with a reliable operating system this could be something extra special.

I have owned my (new) equinox 61 for just over a year now and it has been collecting dust in the spare room for around 9 months as it is just so unreliable and temperamental to take out on the road.

Not one of my wisest of purchases.

Mick.

Hi Joost,

At least I am also still hoping there will be a new release, fixing all the bugs....

Maybe we should ask GEM to release the sources and the development environment for the Equinox Operating System - so we can fix it ourselves.
I would like that - it seems that Yamaha has done a similar thing before.

Regards,

Equinox61_User

I think GEM devep's are too much busy with the new instruments OSes, so your idea is very good. Let us try to make the Equinox OS better.

Equinox goes opensource! Let's work on that!

This is an edited quote from the head of Generalmusic Professional Dept for the USA. "The Equinox OS of 11/10/00 is the final. The Equinox is no more. There are numerous workarounds for the Equinox, and when used properly it is stable. Ringling Bros. Circus uses them on tour to do circus music hooked up to a Mac laptop. I use one and have had only one bad crash, and that was because of bad RAM. The Equinox is a twin engine box that defies the logic of every other workstation you ever used, which unfortunately, as a simple wavetable lookup device is the most powerful unit around (not to be confused with the K2600 which is sonically the best unit if you have enough RAM). Roland, Korg, Yamaha, are all behind the Equinox. There are plenty of workarounds on my site. Also, everyone who owns an Equinox shold upgrade to the 8mb BBDRAM, which helps the stability, and they should turn off the "undo" feature because they crash when the buffer reaches critical mass. Besides, with 8mb you can load the cool Pro1/2 piano sounds." The site he was referring to is http:/home.att.net/~philgeneralmusic

Hope this helps.

Hi Paul,

Of course - I know that GEM will not release a new OS for the Equinox.
But they might consider releasing the source - in my opinion, such a move would make the products of GEM more popular.

We have to be realistic - even when GEM would release the sources, setting up the complete development environment with Cross compiler for the MC68360 will be a tough job.

Currently I am looking for possibilities to hack in the unzipped binary of the OS - there are some funny possibilities there, but not much and esp. not where it comes to
fixing bugs. Look at http://www.geocities.com/antheau/Equinox.html

Below there is a link to info about unzipping/zipping the OS.

Regards,

Equinox61_User

[This message has been edited by Equinox61_User (edited 02-14-2003).]

This statement is not that of Generalmusic. I would think that a lot of our current instruments are derived from this operating system and would be giving away too much of GEM knowledge to newcomers to the keyboard industry. The market is tough enough when competing with our competition, needless to say we don't need to compete with ourselves.

I believe hacking an O.S. is in breach of copyright laws.

PaulID,

Is the code based on MC68360? That is interesting. You can hire me since I have the strongest experience in real-time embeddied systems. I can work as a contractor for GEM.

SK880 user; maybe you can convince GEM of your capabilities by making a new Equinox OS. There is an old topic of me with some requests And about the 'plenty of workarounds'... That's not the way to communicate

Let's do it!
Joost

PS I thought GEM was Italian? So how come Paul and Phil Huston know for sure about GEM policies? Moreover, why isn't here anybody from GEM Italian who can spread the policies regarding Equinox OS updates.

PS2 No Flame intended, I can imagine that resources for making ProX and Genysis OS are limited.

You are absolutely correct, Generalmusic is an Italian company. Mr. Phil Huston and myself work for Generalmusic US, which is Generalmusic Italy. Mr. Phil Huston is the North American Professional Products Manager for Generalmusic. I am the DSM for the West. I make no policies for Generalmusic regarding these issues. Mr. Phil Huston on the other hand does. My message about the work around, were to help, not to flame.

The Equinox has been discontinued for sometime, and there are no plans to update the O.S.. This is from Generalmusic US, Italy. Generalmusic position is that this is a finish product, and when used properly it works correctly.

That being said, I am more than happy to try and help get things to work correctly for you, and any owners. I would need to know exact step by step problem or issues in detail.