Hi.. Just tuned in to find that you guys mentioned about an X1 operating system upgrade so I went to the associated web site and got the file.. or should I say files!

In the KETRONFTP directory, theres several files to download.. but the most obvious ones to me are the 2 files which have a date of 21st Feb 2000, one being prog31a.exe file and the other being 31ck71c3.zip.

theres no documentation on how to install this, but from past upgrades, i assumed that you double click on the .exe file it will extract to floppy.. This worked fine and then I installed it on the X1..

but where the hell does the other file go? When I unziped 31ck71c3.zip, i get 31ck71c3.bin.

my guess would be that I copy this file to a seperate disk and then install this single file on the keyboard in the same way, but I dont want to break anything in the process.

has anybody tried to install this file in this way or should i be doing it another way or should I be doing anything at all with this file as it could be a red-herring???

DannyUK

Hi all once again..

Dont bother to answer my last post as I shall be reverting back to the previous version I had, which was 3.0a. Immediately after installing 3.1a, there were a few things missing from the previous system, the major one for me was that I could no longer play LOWER+BASS together, even though it was still selectable (F4 then F5) there was no bass sound coming through. I was immediately in a panic and was then able to restore back to as it was thank God.

I think its pretty bad of Solton not to warn of any losses of features in any upgrade. I was lucky I spotted it early, as the feature I used all the time had gone.. I wonder what else would of been missing. I take it that each upgrade replaces features rather than adds to them. If this is the case, I dont think I will ever trust an upgrade again unless its fully documented and guarentees no changes or any removal of previous features.

I hope that nobody else has had a bad experience in their upgrades.

DannyUK

Danny,

I made three disks:

one with just that one small zipped file that unzipped to a single bin file. We'll call this one disk 1.

one with prog31a unzipped to lots of bin files. We'll call this one disk two.

and

one with the contents of both disk 1 and 2.
We'll call that one disk 3.

Disk 3 with the single bin file and all the others would not update. I had to use disk 2. I have no idea what disk 1 is for. I'm going to ignore it until I do.

I feel that it is poor practice to put the update files out there with no documentation as to what they do. George Kaye seems to have the inside dope on what the upgrade does. The rest of us have to depend on George. Thankfully George is there for us.

If the number of X1 features is a finite number already attained, and old features must be removed to make room for the new ones, then the abilty to upgrade by software alone is not really a true claim.

I love the X1. I feel that the quality and engineering are tops. Communication by Ketron and their US distributor leaves something to be desired.

I emailed the US distributor for X1 information including the location of the nearest dealer and got no response. I emailed Ketron and offered to write the next english users manual, no response.

Ketron should make George marketing vice president. With his dedication to customer information and service they would be number 1.

Tom

Tom,

Yea i understand your points with regards to Upgrades and documentation, but if its not official then theres bound to be some loop holes.. from what i have seen, this latest upgrade was only found by luck, as its not advertised anywhere and not even mentioned on the Ketron site itself that its was available as its still advising of the old upgrade and the instructions cater for that only and not for V3.1a. This may even mean its unfinished or has bugs.

from what i have experienced, each upgrade is risky, but every time i tried it, its worked out fine for me, until this latest upgrade came to light. I took the risk and installed it, but then found to have older features missing. This seems to me that Solton do not exactly know what the customer wants to keep in the upgrades. You get accustomed to some features and if they get taken away then its like losing a keyboard or starting again with a new keyboard.

i was very relieved when I was able to restore my X1 back to V3.0a otherwise I would of been probably looking to sell it IF features that I used had been permenantely taken away.

And dont forget that upgrading the X1 is very much a risk because unlike GEM or KORG, no restore disk came with the X1 so its prone to this type of thing. I would be very careful in future with any X1 upgrade. Solton was very careless not to include any backup or restore disks of their BASIC operating system with the machine. I mean for the price we paid, we deserve something like that....and a decent manual, and some free samples & demos just what I got with my GEM WK8. What an awesome binder manual the WK8 has.

DannyUK