Using The Flashrom As A Fast Hard Disk - Akai S3000XL User Manual

APPENDIX 4

USING THE FLASHROM AS A FAST HARD DISK

Although the time it takes to save data to the FlashROM is about the same as to disk, the
load time is, of course, very much faster due to the fact that only the programs need to be
loaded. If you prefer (or as well as), you can use the FlashROM as a small hard disk or as
a 'scratchpad' to save to.
Here's a practical example. Imagine you are working on a song. The typical procedure
would be to load in an assortment of sounds you want to use from various volumes on
your hard disk and/or CD-ROM. Once you have a selection of sounds in memory, you
would then use the MULTI mode to assemble a multi-timbral assortment of programs. Of
course, some of the sounds may not be exactly to your requirements so you may make a
few tweaks to the programs so that they're just right. Once you're happy with everything
and the song is sounding good, you will no doubt want to save them so that you can
come back to this song the next day to continue work on it. Of course, you could save the
whole thing to an empty volume on your hard disk using SAVE MULTI so that the multi's
settings and all the programs and their associated samples (and effects if the optional
effects board is fitted) are saved. Each time you want to come back to the song, you
would load this volume from disk into the sampler's internal RAM.
Alternatively, you could save the whole thing to the FlashROM. The process will take
around the same length of time. You could save it to one of the AUTOLOAD volumes so
that all you need to do is switch on the S3000XL and the whole setup is automatically
loaded in a just a few seconds. If you prefer, you could save it to one of the FLASHROM
volumes so that you can load it manually as and when you like. The advantage to saving
your song to FlashROM is, of course, that the load time will be just a few seconds when
you choose to come back to it. Once you have loaded sounds from FlashROM into the
sampler, you can continue to load other sounds into RAM from disk/CD-ROM as normal
and these may be used together.
However....
You should bear in mind that if you have a lot of RAM installed in the S3000XL, it could
be that the amount of data you have loaded into RAM exceeds the 8Mbyte capacity of
the FlashROM you have installed and so you won't be able to save all of the sounds you
have loaded to FlashROM. Even if two FMX008s are installed, it is still possible to have
more RAM than FlashROM. As long as you bear this in mind, however, you should be
alright, though. If you have less RAM than FlashROM, you shouldn't have problems
working this way.
Similarly, if you have previously saved some data to the FlashROM, it could be that you
may not be able to save the current contents of the RAM to FlashROM. For example,
imagine you have already saved 4Mbytes of sounds to the FlashROM, if you then load in
8Mbytes of sounds into RAM and try to save it all to FlashROM, only half of it will be
saved and you will be prompted that the FlashROM is full. In this case, you will need to
delete some items from the FlashROM to accommodate the newer material you want to
save (deleting from FlashROM is exactly the same as deleting items from disk and is done
in the SAVE mode).
Page 292 S3000XL Operator's Manual