NAS4Free on Iomega NAS 200D

I got an Iomega NAS200D which is basically a 3 Disk NAS unit which normally runs Windows Storage Server 2003.
With no disks the unit has no operating system, support on the web is almost non existent and so odds of getting the restore disks are not good.

The internal workings are basically a PC - you've got 2 PCI slots, standard memory DIMMS (266MHZ) and a Celeron 2.5 GHZ.

It's got everything to run linux or similar so I thought I would get something like FreeNAS running.

FreeNAS is now 64 bit so I wanted a simpler NAS , NAS4Free runs 32 or 64 bit so I downloaded this.

The Motherboard didn't seem to be the worlds greatest booting from a USB pen drive so I burnt a CD, mounted a CD into a USB adapter and it booted OK from that.

10 minutes later and NAS4Free is installed.

Before it got to the reboot prompt it even told me what settings to use to mount the drive once I got the system booted and running stand alone.

The Nas200D has a VGA output, 1Gig network and USB front and rear so while setting I was installing it was easy as any PC to go into the BIOS, set boot order and get the NAS4Free Operating system installed.

The only issue I had which took any brain power was when I set a mount point (I'm the only user on this NAS) I set a mount point as Nas200D, forgetting that this would effectively move the mount point from /mnt to /mnt/Nas200D - so when I set my user mount point as /mnt/kevin I was effectively outside the mount point - DOH !

A quick change of the mount point (for user kevin) as /mnt/Nas200D/kevin and everythings working.
It zips along really well, the system has 2 fans so it runs really quiet - I've only one disk in at the moment (2TB) but I'm really impressed.

Effectively NAS4Free has given life to a unit that would sit there unless someone has the recovery disks - I'm very impressed with the simplicity of the software.

It has settings for everything, produces graphs, has a graphical file manager and more.

Yamaha PSR-S970 - Use FC7 pedal to control Wah Wah

This took some working out - I saw Yamaha do it in a Demo video but could I get it to work - No was the simple answer.

However, I now know how to do it, if you want to listen to a video using it for Right hand Guitar Voice here's my version of Le Freak .

Please excuse the quality of the pictures, I used my phone to capture them.
There are two steps to setting this up, first you set up the DSP then you set the pedal.

To set the DSP - Select a Wah Guitar then underneath the display select "Effect Type", Set DSP 4 to Right 1 to modulate the Right 1 instrument.
Then select MODULATION as the Category, and PEDAL WAH as the type




If you press EXIT at this point you can set up the parameters on the Amp emulation



I saved my setting to a preset (Press button G - SAVE)

Now, set up the pedal, press FUNCTION and button D - CONTROLLER



 In this case I have an FC5 footswitch as Pedal 1 and an FC7 as pedal 2, select FC7 pedal with Button A or B, Scroll down to PEDAL CONTROL (WAH).

DONE !

You can add a 2nd Right instrument, just make sure you edit the DSP4 to say RIGHT 2 as the assignment , there are several Wah options such as VCM Pedal Wah Disco.




Have FUN !

Yamaha PSR-S970 - Creating custom PPI pack with Yamaha Expansion Manager (Ubuntu)

I've got the Expansion manager running great using WINE so it was time to work out how to merge more than one pack together, my previous keyboard (PSR-S650) could have one Expansion pack installed at any time, the S970 has 512Mb of memory so can have more packs installed at once (if they are merged into one).

I also wanted to see if I could bring in some of the style tracks from my old S650 packs.

Importing packs is easy enough, you just click on the +, locate your Pack Project File .ppf and it's imported.

I also found I could locate my old S650 packs which are .YEP format.

Some instruments could not be imported as they were using a different format but that was OK.

The question now is how to export these out in a file format that I can load into the S970.

The sparse Expansion Manager  user guide mentions loading your instrument info file.
I found this is located in the System / Owner screen.

Just OK the question and save to USB , this will save a file with the correct .n27 suffix file (your instrument info file)

Launch the Expansion Manager, on the left select the + next to install Target , then select the "import instrument info".

Locate your .n27 file

This will be imported into the Expansion Manager.

The Install target will show your instrument name, after a few seconds this will colour in a purple colour.

You now have the instrument programmed into the Expansion Manager.

To import expansion packs remember to select MY PACKS at the top left, this gives you the option to click + and import etc.
You can save files and custom pack settings in MY PACKS but can't use them in the instrument.

To do this click the PSR-S970 on the left, you now have the option to select multiple packs (Green tick), or deselect them. You can also highlight files within the packs and exclude/include.

You now select "Save as Pack Install File"

When you save the pack you need to add the ".ppi" on the end, otherwise you can't load it in the keyboard so just check it's there before you transfer the file to the USB pen drive.

Insert the drive, Press the Function button, select the pack, in this case I've added several of my S650 packs so there are 14 packs merged into one.

Once installed the keyboard will restart.

Voices and Styles are there - I wouldn't expect everything to work, after all I've imported some files from an older keyboard but they are there, it's just a case of keeping note if anything does not work, then you can customize the pack a little more in the Expansion Manager and load it on the keyboard which will remove the items which you don't like or don't work.