The OS and sample utilities reside on the same disk Although it's been a while since I used an S-50, just assuming it's like the S-550 There should be a way to turn off the mouse function when you turn on the unit, by holding a combo of keys as you power on. I don't remember what they are now. You will need a monitor though, it'll help a whole bunch! Anything with a composite input will do, an old TV through a VHS recorder or modern LCD TV with such an input, a PC TV card also works Any MSX mouse should work as stated a few days ago here, a few on EBay right now -----Original Message----- From: sgroup-bounces+coolcolj=optusnet.com.au(a)sgroup.ca [mailto:sgroup-bounces+coolcolj=optusnet.com.au@sgroup.ca] On Behalf Of Robbie Dude Sent: Saturday, 12 March 2011 12:09 PM To: sgroup(a)sgroup.ca Subject: [sgroup] Some luck Ok, went out and got some new media. Put it into my XP box ran the sdiskw prog and loaded up some system software on it. Got a monitor and hooked that up as well. Fired it up, popped in the disk and it seems to be working. Now... if I can just figure out how to sample on the thing. Looking at the manual it's in the utility section (utility button) question... will I have to load up the utility disk to do this? (I'm thinking yes) Also, it's not seeing any of my samples disks I have for the S-50. I woulds assume I have to use the convert function first. Will this convert the disk? or will it just copy it over to a new disk? Also, seems like it wants to use the mouse. Thought I saw in the manual that I can switch that off. (looking around right now for a mouse on the web) So it looks like I'm taking baby steps here. But... hopefully I'll be walking soon.. then running. Thanks for your help. Rob _______________________________________________ Sent by the sgroup mailing list sgroup(a)sgroup.ca For subscribe/unsubscribe: http://www.sgroup.ca/mailman/listinfo/sgroup See http://www.generalconcepts.com/sgroup/ for more information.

a couple of old roland sampling tips: after a lot of testing, i ended up not using the s550 sampling function that much. i got much better results sampling at a higher rate in an external app (lots of options for free out there) and downsampling and transferring the sample to the s550. (not as easy to do now, but still possible. i believe stefano daino still has dsp-quattro going on the mac that handles roland samples.) there's a well know trick to maximizing your sample memory: since the roland system breaks the samples into chunks of memory, to most efficiently use the memory you can chain samples together to fill the chunk and then use sample pointers to access the individual samples. i know this sounds confusing - i'm not explaining it well and it's been about 15 years since i last did it - but think of it like this: you've got 20 samples of a piano, instead of twenty different samples you have one long sample with twenty notes strung together one after the other. the roland allows you to use sample start and end pointers when you're mapping, so you can "point" the notemap to just that section of the sample. if you read the manual you'll see the memory allocation limitations i mentioned. i was able to significantly increase my sample set using this trick. cheers b On Mar 11, 2011, at 8:08 PM, Robbie Dude wrote: