VOGONS


First post, by SillyMe

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Hi: i am a complete know-nothing here so please forgive. I have some saved songs on about 10 floppies recorded as sysex dumps on an alesis data disk back in the early 90s. The songs were created on an ensoniq SQ2 which I no longer have. I have an imac now, a keyboard, and a Scarlett interface. I use GarageBand. I am curious about those old files and would like to convert them to midi files that I can open in GarageBand. I am told this borders on impossible but a man named Giebler has software for old PCs running DOS or early Windows to convert them to midi files that are readable by a Mac. Since I’m just puttering, I really I dont want to buy a vintage PC as I suspect that I will not be able to do this even if I do have an old PC —I am not at all savvy about these things.
Do you know of a way to rent old PCs or find someone with an old PC that might do this for me if I buy the software and pay for his/her time? I live in the pacific northwest.

Reply 1 of 3, by Babasha

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You can use emulator of old PC and old PC operating system to install software and convert your song. All you need is USB floppy drive to read your diskettes.

Need help? Begin with photo and model of your hardware 😉

Reply 2 of 3, by SillyMe

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Thanks Babasha
I was told by the writer of the software that converts old Ensoniq files -- the only software that will do this, the following:
"You would need access to an old IBM-PC compatible computer with an internal floppy disk drive for the conversion process. Additionally, that PC would have to be running either MS-DOS or a very old version of Windows such as Windows 98 SE. USB floppy disk drives do not allow reading non MS-DOS disk formats which is why you need the internal floppy disk drive."
So, I think the antique PC is still necessary.

Reply 3 of 3, by DaveDDS

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There might be someone who reads these forums who's close enough to help... but we really need to know where you are?
(I'm in Canada - but I've corresponded with Vogons from all over the world)

What do you have for a PC - in particular i'm wondering it it's old enough to have a floppy controller with an internal connector for it.
If that's the case, you might only need to find a floppy drive and cable.

This is not entirely unlike problems people have running my ImageDisk tool on "modern" PCs.
ImageDisk has to run under DOS with an internal floppy because it accesses it directly (not through the OS) and in somewhat non-standard ways.

So what I've done for those people is made a stand-alone PC-DOS boot diskette which has a RamDisk (for working storage), limited USB drive & network support (to get images on/off).

Someone without a DOS PC can boot this disk (they do have to have a floppy - which is pretty much guaranteed with ImageDisk as it's purpose is archiving and restoring floppy disks), run ImageDisk make images then put them on USB drives of transfer them to another system over the network.

I could probably set you up with something similar - as long as you can get a floppy drive on your system.

https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ; "Daves Old Computers" ; SW dev addict best known:
ImageDisk: rd/wr ANY floppy PChw can ; Micro-C: compiler for DOS+ManySmallCPU ; DDLINK: simple/small filecopy(w/o netSW)via Lan/Lpt/Com