OS 6.1 New Operating System

[RJH_MUSIC]

Wow. That was a fabulous explanation and I actually understood it thank you. After reading this I'm afraid everything I just bought on the Internet to use the Internet to make or transfer or transfer all the contents of the CPU to an DPU to a new to wreck unit may not work. In another thread just below this on the power supply I did succeed on the power supply I did successfully build an external power supply in a one rack is eternal power supply an 1 rack unit for the console which I'm getting ready to test. I also purchased a bunch of low profile cards cards to try to transfer the try to transfer the CPU into a new 2 rack unit such as a modem car such as a modem card Mini card and video card and video card and I also purchased an AGP just an AGP video card. From what you just described as doubtful the stuff will work but who knows maybe it will work but who knows maybe it will the middy card in the modem card middy card and the modem card are pretty basic. The trick is gonna be the video card.

[Y-my-R]

Yeah, my expectation would be, that the MackieOS would only recognize computer hardware that is either exactly what was used in the rack computers that came with the D8B, or possibly also components from the same product family, that may have small differences, but use the same main chip and driver.

So, for example, if no AGP video card was ever used by the MackieOS, then the probability of that working with the MackieOS is very low.

I think there were reports of other video cards working in the MackieOS (that had a card from the same family coming with some iteration of the D8B hardware), but most of the units I have, have a Cirrus Logic video chip on them, and were always "PCI" (not PCIe or PCI-X, etc. Just ancient "PCI").

I think I heard that some ATI chips (on PCI video cards) may also work. I have a few of them that I tried some years back, when messing around with building up a D8B computer, and none of these worked out of the box.
So, it's more "miss" than "hit" if you're trying different video cards for the D8B.

...and I think that's also where I'm currently at with the "Virtual Machine" approach.

I can boot a "Virtual Machine" with a virtual clone of a MackieOS harddrive up to the point where it displays this:

Loading MackieOS, Please wait... *

I think that's where the GUI usually starts loading, and where the video card chip and driver combination need to be correct, in order for it to be able to continue.

I tried this in Oracle's VirtualBox first, but then read that WMWare actually emulates the Intel 440BX chipset by default, that some of the AMPTRON motherboards that were used in the D8B are using.

I tried the same thing with WMWare, but also just got to the "Loading MackieOS, Please Wait..." message.

I want to pull a fresh clone from a working system (...I'm not sure if the drive I cloned for the virtual version was still booting up completely when I pulled it out of a D8B), and if I'm still stuck at the same message, will then need to figure out how I can make the Virtual Machine emulate the right Cirrus Logic chip for this virtual D8B machine.

Long story short... I didn't make any real progress, but am also not ready to give up, yet.

However, I've been incredibly busy, lately, so, what should maybe take a few evenings, is likely to take a few months to get to the bottom if the Virtual Machine approach is viable or not.

...of course a power supply would always still be needed, even if the rest of the "rack unit computer" would function as a virtual machine. So, you're pretty much working on the hardware replacement side of things right now, while I'm working on the software-replacement side (plus the needed serial adapter) right now

Hopefully we'll be able to put together a future-proof system with this together, to keep the D8B console hardware running indefinitely

(...and sorry to read about the setback with the PSU in the other thread. I'm sure you'll figure it out... that's not my area of expertise, though, so I won't comment on that thread and leave it to those more experienced with the actual electronics).

[Y-my-R]

Another quick update:

I tried with a virtual clone of the physical drive in my "daily driver" D8B unit, and the results were the same as with the clone of the drive I tried earlier (i.e. only gets to "Loading MackieOS, Please Wait... *").

WMWare doesn't seem to give a lot of virtualizations for different video hardware. I think "QEMU" might be a better fit, so I'll try that next (they seem to support the Intel 440 chipset, and also a Cirrus Logic video chip from a similar "family" as the one used in the D8B).

I can't continue right now, though and the next chance I'll have to play with this again, will likely not come before next weekend.
I never tried QEMU before, and at a first glance, it seems to be command line based, so this will be a bit more of a pain to experiment with, than GUI driven VM apps like VirtualBox or VMWare.

Anyway... I'll keep trying whenever I get a chance.

[arjepsen]

I did play around with virtual machines a while back - IIRC the problem I couldn't solve was, that during the boot process, the os checks the graphics card for "write combining". I didn't find a way to get the VM to simulate this.
I think the best revival chance, is to extensively map out the communication between the desk and the pc, and write a new interface, using this information. It's a piece of work, but shouldn't be completely impossible for someone who's experienced in writing user interfaces.

[RJH_MUSIC]

Yes I am deep into the hardware piece. Having a lot of setbacks, but that is just making me determined. So posted another setback on the power supply thread, but that just made me sfift gears a little bit. I mounted everything that was in the original d8b remote into the 2 RU case and booted the computer. Video no go until I plugged in original video card. Then I got all the way to the mixer screen in the absence of the console. So I am waiting for a ribbon cable riser to arrive that will allow me to mount original vga card in sideways. In the meantime I've turned my attention to the Villeman kit. Seems to me that the perfect kit is already in the d8b. The linear power supply, and there is room for it in the case. It just means I will have to use the original transformer, but at least I can use a new + 5 power supply to replace the LPS-152 original. That is the puppy that keeps failing. Also going to add 3 small fans to the front of the case to bring more air flow through it. And lastly, going to extend the BFC cable to 40 feet. In the end, will wind up with a shorter 2 RU instead of 3 and nice and cool. Posti g a couple of pics for inspiratio can't wait to meet in the middle.

[RJH_MUSIC]

Sorry for huge pics I forgot to shrink them down.

[Y-my-R]

@arjepsen: Very interesting about "write combining" for something that the emulated video card needs to support and is checked for. I didn't have a chance to continue experimenting with this, yet, and am not that far along, yet.
From some of your posts, I get the impression that you are more knowledgeable about these things than I am, so let's see if I even get THAT far, haha.
Which VM software did you use for this, though? Did you emulate a Cirrus Logic video chip, or a different one? You don't happen to have a backup of your virtual machine from back then, that I could experiment with, by any chance?

I have no real coding experience, but managed to get MacOS to run on various PC components. I think I built at least 5 different "Hackintosh" computers, which required numerous tweaks to how the hardware is initialized by the OS (especially back around MacOS 10.4 times, when there were no ready-made installers for this, like today. Nowadays, with tools like what's available from TonyMac x86 etc., it's almost fool-proof).
I'm hoping that my experience with that, will help me with getting the D8B to work on a virtual machine. It's kind of a similar situation, IMO.

FWIW, when Munkustrap created the ProBox, he already had to map out all of the (mostly SysEx) MIDI messages that the D8B sends (...and receives, when it comes to the meters, or to control/position the motor faders from the DAW, etc.), and convert them to the HUI and MCU protocols (and back). If you want to try that route, he might be able to jump-start you with his translation tables from the HUI and MCU protocols. At least for the controls, he should already have mapped everything out.
I'm sure there's a lot more data the D8B sends, that isn't part of the HUI/MCU operation (e.g. the data that is sent, when tweaking the D8B's built-in/DSP effects from the D8B hardware). Not sure to what degree Ralph might already have logged that. But I know that he's only using the D8B with the ProBox as a controller nowadays, and no longer as a mixer (he sold me a few of his Tape I/O cards and I think a clock card, a few years ago). So, I think his goal was never really to log all of the data "mixer operation" generates/receives.

Going back to the question I asked a while back, though, for the case that I will need to try to get the MackieOS.exe to run in Wine, instead of working with a Mackie OS drive-clone:
Does anybody know which specific Windows version Mackie licensed for the D8B? I think someone said it was the "latest/greatest" at the time... but since Windows came out with a different flavor of the OS all the time back then, it's kinda hard to pin down. Could still be Win95 (if the development started early and they didn't switch to something else... I think Microsoft killed VXD drivers after Win95...?), Win98, Win98SE, WinME (weird in-between driver standard, if I recall right) or Win2000 (rather different drivers from Win98/SE, again), IMO.
So, too many choices to try with all of them, since extensive mods are likely necessary and I don't want to re-do them again and again to try with all of these (...I expect the mods to need to be rather different for each of these OS'es, since MS changed the driver standards a lot during those years)... thanks in advance, if anybody can give a clue (the exact version with build-number and everything would be awesome, of course).

[Y-my-R]

Also, @RJH_MUSIC:

Is that the original video card that came with your D8B, or is this a different one you were hoping to use, instead?

If it's the original one, does it say what exact model this is? I think older ATI cards usually have a sticker on the back, that has the model name/number on it.

Actually, since I'm asking this... is there a list of "known good" video cards for the D8B, by any chance? If I had that, I could try if there's virtualizations that work better, for the one or the other video card model/chip.

Thanks again!

[captainamerica]

Wow...go luck RJH ! as for the "And lastly, going to extend the BFC cable to 40 feet"....Y-my-R found me one last year (~50feet) and it's been working great. Keep us posted on how things progress

[arjepsen]

@arjepsen: Very interesting about "write combining" for something that the emulated video card needs to support and is checked for. I didn't have a chance to continue experimenting with this, yet, and am not that far along, yet.
From some of your posts, I get the impression that you are more knowledgeable about these things than I am, so let's see if I even get THAT far, haha.
Which VM software did you use for this, though? Did you emulate a Cirrus Logic video chip, or a different one? You don't happen to have a backup of your virtual machine from back then, that I could experiment with, by any chance?

I tried various VM's (vmware, qemu, virtualbox IIRC). I think what I learned, was that the virtual machines don't emulate the specific graphics cards hardware - unfortunately. As you've probably read, MackieOS is extremely slimmed down, and only has drivers for the specific hardware it was made to run on. (At a point I tried running it on a slightly newer platform running a pentium4, and it seemed to work to a degree - but I could not get any communication running - again because MackieOS only has drivers for a specific serial I/O chip.)
I don't know if I'm really that much more knowledgeable than anyone else here - what I might have in computer-knowledge I certainly lack in mixing-skills

I do have a probox from munkustrap - and yes, it might be a starting point talking over the communication with him.
But for my part, it's gone on hold for now - I've quit my job as a teacher, and are now studying electrical engineering. Might be that I know much more about how to make an updated interface when I'm done in 2½ years - but I do have another project that might come first (want to redo the controller in my beer-brewing machine....)