I remember when I owned a GEM Genesys for 3 months about 5 years ago, I bitched to the rep (Dave McD?) about certain shortcomings of the OS on such an expensive unit. When I finally told him I was going to trade it back to the dealer, he angrily told me that they had been working on a custom OS for me, but since i was being so disloyal,screw me. I don't know if he was full of crap or sincere, but the idea they could create a custom OS for me was mind-boggling.

As i recall that incident now (why now? frustration with mfrs as I research alternatives to my E60) I'm thinking: well, if it's possible for a company to create a custom OS it can't be that expensive or Dave wouldn't have offered it (if it was true)

And if a mfr can do it, can an independent programmer do it? Can somebody take my E60 OS
and reprogram it so the existing buttons and
dials function in more useful ways for me?
And if so, what would they charge? And maybe
there are others out there who would take advantage of this and maybe this could be a nice little business for someone with the know-how to accomplish this....?????

------------------
Miami Mo

if the source code of a software product is open a good programmer can do everything, if not is very very very difficult to do and sometimes impossible.

can you explain to a layman what a source code is and how one would determine if their kbd
has an open source code? If my E60 code is open I want somebody to reprogram it NOW!

Here you go, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code and NO, you cant access your boards source code.

Bill

so it seems only Roland could reprogram OS.
would they? i doubt it.

in your case. I'm afraid so.

it is a bad point of closed arranger and closed source for O.S and other software.

I "think" the salesman migh have been bending the truth a little. Maybe they had listened to your suggestions and would include changes in a bug fix or update, but I would imagine the R&D time in developing a custom OS would far outweigh the benefits for a manufacturer.

yeah, i think you're right tonewheel dude.
they may have had other complaints re some obviously stupid stuff on a hi-end kbd and were working on some fixes, not a custom os for me, and he used that as a pretext.

Roland (and Korg and Ketron, and even Yamaha occasionally) actually DO alter their source code from time to time. They are called UPGRADES..!

Now yes, you aren't ever going to get a customized OS just for you. But if what you want is something that generally hugely improves the product, there's a good chance that it might be incorporated into the next OS release. Thing is, a) you've got to let them know your suggestions (post at Roland-arranger.com, send emails to technical support, try sending directly to the R&D division if you can), and b) you've got to try to work out IF what you want done can be, especially in mind of the fact that closed OS's can only get up to a certain size, only address so much memory, etc., etc..

Dom at Lionstracs is probably BY FAR the most responsive developer likely to incorporate a good feature quickly into the OS, followed probably by Ketron, but Y, K & R, not so much. You get what you get, when they give it to you...

But don't let that stop you from at least TRYING.

I actually asked yamaha almost 10years ago now if they could somehow find it in their heart to increase the pathetically small 32available custom voices slots on my PSR9000 up to perhaps 64banks for me. They said(still have the email too) that it would take much to many man hours to do it. I then asked how much if i were rediculously rich and they said "probably around the $10thousand dollar mark"..so to this day i still remain disgruntled!

[This message has been edited by mr9000 (edited 05-06-2010).]