drkzrg/ensoniqfs

This is the origial README file from the project located at SourceForge. The project is currently being upgraded to work with 64 bit versions of TotalCommander.

What is EnsoniqFS?

EnsoniqFS is a file system plugin for the file manager Total Commander created by Christian Ghisler (http://www.ghisler.com).

With EnsoniqFS you can mount the following Ensoniq file systems:

• SCSI & IDE harddisks
• SCSI & IDE removable disks (i. e. ZIP drives)
• SCSI & IDE CDROMs
• floppy disks (direct file access using driver OmniFlop, see below)
• image files ISO, IMG, Mode1CDROM (BIN), GKH, EDE, EDA, EDT, EDV

Once mounted, you can do the following with Total Commander:

• read, write, copy, move, rename, delete files on Ensoniq media
• copy, move files from/to Windows drives
• create, rename, copy, move whole directories

CDROMs and BIN (Mode1 CDROM images)/GKH/EDE/EDA/EDT/EDV files are read only, writing is not supported (write support for the image files could be implemented in the future). Full write support is available for ISO images.

With the above, you get a complete file manager for Ensoniq disks.

Where to get it

All the project related stuff is located at SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ensoniqfs/

There you can download EnsoniqFS and related tools. If you're interested, you can check out the source codes as well.

Installation

EnsoniqFS

To use EnsoniqFS, you first need to have Total Commander installed. Download your copy from http://www.ghisler.com. Installation is straightforward, there shouldn't be any problems. Be sure to get the latest version (6.5 minimum).

Install EnsoniqFS (which you should have downloaded from SourceForge) by opening the ZIP file from within Total Commander. This is also the preferred method for updates, since Total Commander handles all the files automatically.

OmniFlop driver

To be able to access Ensoniq formatted floppy disks you need to have a special disk driver. If you do not plan using floppies, then you can leave out this step. The EnsoniqFS plugin will also work without this driver (you're then limited to the usage of image files and SCSI disks).

First, get the driver from here (be sure you get the latest version, 2.01m minimum): http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm

The driver package comes with detailed installation instructions. Be sure to read them and follow them closely.

############################################################################### TODO: Licensing of omniflop? ###############################################################################

Now you're just one step far from being able to use the driver. You need a license to use it with EnsoniqFS. Don't be afraid - the license is free and it is available via instant online registration. Here's how you get the license:

From the OmniFlop package, start OmniFlop.exe. The "OmniFlop Wizard" opens. Click "Next", choose "Get a license" and click "Next" again. Then a warning appears that you normally do not need a license, but trust me - in this case you do - so click "OK" and from the next dialog choose "TotalCommander EnsoniqFS plugin" and click "Finish". The registration dialog will open. Click "Register on-line" and a browser window will be opened with the appropriate values already filled in. Enter your email address and submit the form. A new license will be emailed to you instantly. Copy the license key you got via mail and paste it into the OmniFlop registration window. Click OK and you are done!

Using EnsoniqFS

EnsoniqFS

If you successfully mastered the installation, the plugin is available through your network neighbourhood inside Total Commander. Hit Alt+F1 (or Alt+F2) or click on the drive combo box and choose "network neighbourhood". The directory listing should then contain "Ensoniq filesystems". If not, something is really wrong (try to re-download and re-install the file).

If you then enter the "Ensoniq filesystems" folder, EnsoniqFS tries to detect all your drives. This may take a few seconds (a progress dialog will be shown). After that, you'll see three folders: "CDROMs", "Image files" and "Physical disks".

Along with that, you should see entries "Options", "Rescan devices" and "Run Ensoniq Filesystem Tools" (see below for an explanation).

How does EnsoniqFS deal with multi-disk files?

Simply put, a multi-disk file is an instrument, which doesn't fit on one floppy disk. The Ensoniq samplers automatically split a large instrument while saving, so it fills the disk to their maximum. When loading, the sampler asks for all disks sequentially and loads the instrument from it parts.

Multi-disk file parts all reside in the root directory of a disk. Although it is possible to put these parts into subdirectories with EnsoniqFS, your sampler will most likely have problems with that. Ensoniq samplers put multi-disk files into the root directory, and so should you.

When you copy multi-disk files, three cases are possible:

(a) Copy multi-disk from Ensoniq media to Windows media

If you copy the first part of a multi-disk file from Ensoniq media to a Windows drive, EnsoniqFS will ask you whether to enter multi-disk mode or to copy the file as single part. If you choose multi-disk, after the first part you will be asked to provide the location of the next part (which can be on the same disk or another one; you can also exchange disks, if necessary). EnsoniqFS automatically merges all parts into one single file.

You can also choose to copy only one single part of a multi-disk file. This way EnsoniqFS will not ask for the next part and will not try to merge all parts together.

(b) Copy multi-disk parts to Ensoniq media

(c) split large instruments into multi-disk files

############################################################################### TODO: Explain file naming [xx] ASR audio tracks EnsoniqUnpackerEFE ###############################################################################

############################################################################### TODO: Vista/Windows 7: Run TC with Admin rights ###############################################################################

CDROMs

If you insert an Ensoniq formatted CDROM into any of your CDROM drives or if you use an appropriate image file together with a CDROM emulation driver, you will see these CDROMs inside the CDROM folder. You can than browse them the same way as you do with Windows files and folders.

Image files

Initially, the image folder is empty. To add and remove image files, go one level up to the main directory of EnsoniqFS and call the "Options" dialog (see Options).

Once an image is mounted, it will show up in the "Image files" folder. You can browse it with Total Commander the same way as you do with other folders and files.

Note: Having many images mounted can be a real memory eater. For each image file a cache and lots of other data structures are created. So be sure to unmount unused image files.

Physical disks

In this folder, all harddisks, floppy disks and other removable media which were found during the detection process will be shown. Enter this folder to browse them.

Options

If you hit "Enter" on the "Options" entry (or if you double click it), an options dialog is shown. Here you can modify EnsoniqFS's behaviour.

[ ] Enable floppy disk access Activate this checkbox to allow EnsoniqFS to use your floppy disk drives.

[ ] Enable CDROM access Activate this checkbox to allow EnsoniqFS to use your CDROM drives.

[ ] Enable removable/fixed disk access Activate this checkbox to allow EnsoniqFS to use your SCSI and IDE harddisks and removable disks (e. g. ZIP drives should show up there).

[ ] Enable image file support Activate this checkbox to allow EnsoniqFS to use image files. EnsoniqFS supports ISO (read/write) and BIN, GKH, EDE, EDA, EDT, EDV (read only).

If you uncheck any of the above options, EnsoniqFS doesn't scan the associated drives or files. This can speed up the detection process.

[ ] Re-scan device list everytime the \\Ensoniq filesystems folder is entered Normally, EnsoniqFS updates the device list every time you enter the "Root" directory of EnsoniqFS. This causes a delay, a progress dialog will be shown. If you do not want EnsoniqFS to rescan that often, you should disable this checkbox. You can update the device list manually (see below).

[ ] Enable logging to C:\EnsoniqFS-LOG.txt If you activate this option, the EnsoniqFS plugin will create a log file at your C: drive. EnsoniqFS will then write extensive logging information to this file. This logging information can come handy for the developer if you've found some bug. Note: activating this option slows down EnsoniqFS, and the log file can grow quite fast to megabytes.

Group "Bank file adaption" The three parameters in this group are related to the optional adaption of bank files during copy / move operations. See section 4.3 for a detailed description of this feature.

[ ] Automatically adapt references in banks If you activate this option, bank files are automatically adapted when performing a copy / move operation. The following two parameters are only relevant when this option is active.

Adapt source device references from [Combobox] Select here which entries in a bank file should be adapted. You can either adapt all entries regardless of the device of the bank entry or select a specific device. In the second case, only bank entries are adapted that are pointing to a file on the selected device. The device is either the floppy drive or any of the eight possible SCSI devices. Note that your Ensoniq is assigned to SCSI ID 3. It is unlikely that you have bank entries pointing to this device (only software errors could have caused such entries), so you won't need this value normally.

Target device for adapted references [Combobox] Select a device for all bank entries that are adapted during the adaption process. In order to have working bank files the target medium must be visible for your Ensoniq under this device. Since the Ensoniq is assigned to SCSI ID 3 this value is not available.

If you select an image file from the dropdown box at the bottom of the options dialog, you can click on the "Unmount selected image" button to remove that image file from the list. With "Mount new image..." you can add new image files to the list.

Rescan devices

In case you disabled the automatic device detection, you can issue a new detection by hitting "Enter" on "Rescan devices" (or by double clicking it). EnsoniqFS will then scan all available devices for EnsoniqMedia.

You should do this if either your configuration changed (maybe you plugged in another SCSI disk or ZIP drive) or if you inserted new removable media into one of your devices.

Run Ensoniq Filesystem Tools

Hit "Enter" on that item to start ETools, the Ensoniq Filesystem backup/ restore/format/check/repair tool (see below for a description).

Ensoniq Filesystem Tools (ETools)

ETools is a piece of software which can do the following things for you:

• completely backup an Ensoniq drive to an ISO file
• restore ISO file to drive
• format drive (at the moment, only QuickFormat is supported
• check Ensoniq file systems for errors and fix these errors if possible

To operate on a drive, first select it from the dropdown list on top of the application. Then choose either to backup, restore, check or format this drive.

For backup, at the moment two methods are supported: Full backup and partition backup (the third option, file backup, is not implemented yet). If you choose partition backup, only the space which is allocated by the Ensoniq file system will be written to an ISO file. This could be useful if you formatted a big drive to a lower capacity and don't want to have a huge full drive backup.

Automatic adaption of bank files during copy / move

Introduction to Ensoniq bank files

The Ensoniq bank files store references for up to eight instrument files and an optional reference to a song file. When you create a bank file on your Ensoniq, you normally follow the procedure described in the Ensoniq manual:

In the first step, you save all the instruments (and the song, if used) to the desired location(s). In the second step, you save the bank file.

During the first step, the Ensoniq records internally, which file has gone where i.e. it stores all information in order to load the instrument or the song later. In the second step, this information is stored in the bank file.

The reference to a file includes the device type (floppy, SCSI drive including SCSI ID 0 up to 7), the disk label (only EPS16+ and ASR-10) and a list of pointers to the file. The pointer list is simply the chain of file numbers that lead to the file on the specified disk. The list starts in the root directory and the numbers are the file numbers you see when you browse through the directory in LOAD mode on your Ensoniq. The last pointer in the list always points to a file, the other pointers are always directories.

The bank file itself can be moved without breaking the references. The only restriction applies for the EPS: the bank file and the referenced files must reside on the same disk.

A detailed technical description of the contents inside the bank files can be found in Thoralt Franz's document "The Ensoniq EPS/EPS16+/ASR-10 Bank Format" (http://www.thoralt.de/download/The_Ensoniq_Bank_Format.pdf).

Problems with handling bank files

Due to this concept used for the banks, some problems arouse:

1. instruments and songs cannot be moved without invalidating the bank files which point to these instruments/songs.
2. the SCSI ID of a disk or the disk label cannot be changed (again invalidates the references used in the banks).
3. even when copying / moving banks together with the referenced files while keeping the directory structure and using the same device type and disk label, the references can get broken: this can happen when files are saved in a different order to the target directory. E.g. the source directory contains two instruments and a bank, which references the two instruments:

• File 1: Instrument1
• File 2: Instrument2
• File 3: Bank

Now you copy these three files to a new directory in a different order:

• File 1: Instrument2
• File 2: Instrument1
• File 3: Bank

Since the bank works only with the file numbers, it will load the instruments to the wrong tracks. Especially copying with TotalCommander will certainly change the order since it processes the files in alphabetical order.

The Ensoniq does not give any information when loading a bank where references are broken. If a file cannot be found, it skips it silently and goes on to the next entry. There is no chance to query why a file could not be loaded and where it would have been expected.

As a consequence of the design of the bank files, almost all operations in Total Commander which involve copying or moving files will break the references in bank files. This is where the automatic adaption of the bank files come into play.

Automatic adaption of bank files

The basic idea of adaption of the bank files is to change the references inside bank files in order that they point to the correct file locations. The only way to make this possible is to collect the necessary information during a copy / move operation in Total Commander. We refer here to a single copy / move operation regardless how many files or directories you have selected for the operation.

The adaption process of the banks works only when you select a group of files and directories that contain the bank files and the referenced instrument / song files. This restriction becomes clearer when you see, what is done behind the scenes:

• you have turned on in the options of the ensoniqfs plugin the automatic adaption of the bank files.

• you select a collection of files / directories from one Ensoniq media (a floppy disk, an attached SCSI device or an image file) and start a copy / move action to another Ensoniq media by pressing e.g. the F5-key (copy).

• Total Commander performs the copy / move action.

• during the processing of each single file, the ensoniqfs plugin stores its old and its new location as a pair in a translation table. In addition, the location of all bank files are recorded in a second table.

• when the copy / move operation has been completed, the ensoniqfs plugin looks into its table with bank files. Each bank file is processed by checking every reference inside. For each reference:

  • It is first checked, if the device matches the parameter "source device".
  • If it matches, the file pointer list of the bank reference is searched in the translation table.
  • If an entry is found, the file pointer list is updated with the new location of the referenced file. If no entry is found the processing skips to the next bank entry.
  • Finally, the device is set to the value given by the parameter "target device" and the disk label entry is set equal to the disk label of the target disk.

• when the adaption of all banks has been completed, the translation table and the list of banks for processing is cleared. A new copy / move action can be performed.

As you can see, the ensoniqfs plugin can only gather information during the processing of the copy / move action and use this information after the last file has been copied / moved.

Some recommendations / typical scenarios

Just a note before starting: always work on copies of your disks, especially for the disks / media you are writing to. The most flexible way is using image files. After compiling your target medium write it once to the target device (floppy disk, hard disk, MO cartridge, CF card) and test the result with your Ensoniq.

1. Copying single floppy disks to a larger media e.g. to a dedicated directory of a SCSI disk.

It is assumed that the bank file(s) on the floppy disk only references instruments / songs on the same floppy disk (excluding multi disk files). Select all files on the top level of the source disk and copy them in a single action to the target directory. Thus the bank file(s) get adapted to the new location on the target disk. You can leave the parameter "source device" either to "all devices" or set to the device which is represented by the source media. When in doubt use the setting "all devices". Set the parameter "target device" to the device under which the target media is later used by the Ensoniq.

2. Copying larger collections of instruments/banks/songs e.g. an Ensoniq Sound Collection CD-ROM to some kind of other media.

Normally these media contain banks that reference only files on the same disk. This is similar to the first case: select all files on the top level of the source disk and copy them in a single action to the target directory. Please note that depending on the bank format used, only six entries are allowed in each file pointer list. This means that files can reside in maximum inside five directory levels (the first five file pointers can be used for the directory hierarchy, the last file pointer is for the file itself). The Ensoniq CD-ROM CDR-1 e.g. uses itself already four directory levels. Thus when planning to copy it to the target media where e.g. you want to join several CD-ROMs, you can use at most one directory on the root level which can be the target for the whole CD-ROM content. My CompactFlash card e.g. for all my sound libraries contains on the top level a directory "CDR-1" which contains the content of the CD-ROM.

3. Bank files that reference files from different devices

The EPS16+ and the ASR-10 allow banks to reference instruments / songs from different devices. Although this is convenient its a nightmare to update these banks when the referenced files move. Since the concept of Total Commander includes only one source and one target device for the copy / move actions you can only adapt those bank entries that are located on the same device as the bank file itself. The parameter "source device" allows you to restrict the adaption only on the bank entries which point to the specified device.

There is currently no easy way to determine the device for the entries of a bank. Either you have designed the bank yourself so you know which file is loaded from where or you can load the bank from the original medium and observe what is happening. If you happen to have some software tools (Ensoniq Disk Tools or similar) for displaying the information inside the bank file, you are better off.

To summarize: restrict the parameter "source device" to a specific device only when you are sure that the greater amount of mixed bank entries use this device, otherwise use the setting "all devices". All remaining bank entries that could not be processed remain unchanged. You have to edit them manually using either a software tool or loading, correcting and resaving with your Ensoniq.

4. Adapting bank files located on other media

As we have seen, the automatic adaption of bank files can only be performed when the banks and referenced files are processed within the same copy / move action. Now we have the following scenario, a real life situation from my sound library:

• a CD-ROM with instruments / songs
• an extra floppy disks full of bank files which are referencing files on the CD-ROM. I made the floppy disk once in order to easily change the banks (volumes, effects) for all my performances. My intention is to have all this files together on a new medium, a Compact Flash card. Step 1: Create an image of the CD-ROM. Step 2: Mount the image in Total Commander. Step 3: Copy the bank files from floppy disk to the image. They can be copied to an extra directory (note that changing the location of a bank file itself does not invalidates its content). Important: make sure to turn off the option "Automatically adapt references in banks"! Step 4: Now you have banks and the referenced files together on a single medium. Turn on the automatic adaption of the banks. Copy now all files at once to the target medium. Step 5: Now you have working banks together with your referenced data.

Bugs and contact

If you find any bugs, please don't hesitate to tell me! To keep the best overview, I ask you to file a bug report on the SourceForge page of this project if you find something odd. You can also directly send a mail to ensoniqfs/at/thoralt.de (substitute /at/ with @ to get a valid email address, this is to prevent spam bots from collecting this address).

License

The project is published under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE (GPL) v2. Please read the LICENSE file for further information.

Disclaimer

Although being constantly under test and development, this software might contain bugs which, in worst case, do damage to your data. Please keep backups every time (use ETools for easy backup)!

The next two paragraphs were copied from the GPL (see also the LICENSE file):

NO WARRANTY

BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY
FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.  EXCEPT WHEN
OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  THE ENTIRE RISK AS
TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU.  SHOULD THE
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING,
REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING
OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED
TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY
YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER
PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Please keep that in mind when using this software.