Valixi & Vimana Eprom

richie wrote:@MPC-Tutor all that you will need is an eprom burner to read and write the images. It only gets a bit more complicated when the person burning the images attempts to protect it by certain fuse settings to prevent others from getting a clean read - however that protection can be circumvented as well as long as you know what you're doing.

So in order for that image to be made available for public download in the first place, someone, somewhere, is going to need the equipment and technical know-how to first extract that image successfully and then be happy to upload it in the knowledge that ultimately distributing the image could potentially lead to legal issues.

Then for someone else to actually use that image, they'll need the equipment and know-how to burn that image to a chip?

I think it's clear why end-users are happy to just buy the eproms off those guys on Ebay, it's just easier for them to ultimately get what they want, i.e. Valixi running on their MPC3000. Even if someone went to the cost and effort of creating and uploading the eprom image, the end users still need the equipment and know-how to make their own ROMs, so there is always going to be a market for a service that just does it all for you, hassle-free.

I don't like those guys on Ebay, especially as they lied here about the 'new' OS they had 'developed', and I still feel uncomfortable with the idea that people somehow feel it's okay to help themselves to Valixi because the developer no longer makes it publicly available (if Rohan is dead, copyright is passed on to his heirs for the next 50 or 70 years), but in the end the Ebay guys are the only ones who have done anything about it and the price reflects this, regardless of the moral and legal issues surrounding it.

The best resolution is for Rohan (assuming he's still around) to either make it available again, either by officially licensing it or by open sourcing it. I also wonder if Rohan was perhaps already licensing the underlying OS code from Roger Linn, so perhaps Rohan doesn't even have the right to open source Valixi.

@MPC-Tutor - The cost involved to be able to read and write eprom images is quite reasonable actually. $45-60 USD for a base USB capable eprom reader [The costs can go up to $150 usd depending on the amount of extra socket adapters you decide to purchase to burn other kinds of chips however not required for the kinds of eproms used on samplers of the era in question]. Blank eprom chips are quite cheap as well. The chance of it getting somewhat "complicated" only arises is if by chance the eprom source in question had an attempted protection applied - which I do not think is all that likely but I cannot say for certain as I need to purchase a new eprom burner and have the eproms in front of me to say.

And you're completely right about the eBay guys - I think it's dishonest to lead the buyers on to believe they're purchasing an eprom with the notion of possible future support. So much so that they hex edit the eprom images with fake serial numbers and personalized names (I've seen some sellers even charge extra to have your name inserted which is hilarious), or edit the revision name to make their version look newer. To the average user, they don't know any better so they're less likely to file a paypal claim or reverse payment. On a side note - I found it extremely funny to see some eBay sellers getting bad feedback for refusing to sell Valixi to other eprom sellers, deeming them as "competition"

I'm not quite sure of the legal issues involved as the eBay sellers have been getting away with selling eproms with impunity. The only possible foreseeable issue I can fathom is the technicalities of who is "entitled" to what based on the amount of Linn 3.10 source code was used for Valixi but isn't likely in my opinion. Even if Rohan suddenly appeared, he'd have to rectify the monetary losses from members who purchased and didn't get anything - and even then, any weight into trusting that he would follow through in the future isn't likely. I have no qualms with paying for the work of the actual creator but I'm not interested in paying retail prices to a bootlegger.

The main purpose of this topic, beyond stating my opinion is to make some aware that there are other alternatives than paying a bootlegger for something you can do yourself. There are many online forums that have eprom images for other samplers and taking the time to learn about it will give you far better control over repairing and upgrading your gear for quite low cost.

Were the original 3.5 ROMs even above-board in the first place? If so, why wouldn't Roger sell them on his site himself? Or is this just a case of (essentially) pirates pirating other pirates?

Veering slightly OT, I don't even understand the extreme lust over these. Sure, 3.50 has some cool features, but I dunno... the 3000 worked fine without them for over a decade.

further developing on the 3000 OS would be very nice. Especially the Track Mute and Next Sequence page would be a great enhancement to the 3000.

OS3.5 provides me with nice features. The Hybrid Partitions are a time saver.

If one wants to go the cheap way, that is fine offcoarse, called I believe DIY, but then if one has no knowledge about the part that's needed to be modified..... Expect days (so not if weeks) of research, that eventually lead up to a 50$ save.. Time over cash,, and how much one needs it..
I think an 100$ is a bit pricey, 80$ all-in is fair I guess. Worldshipping etc etc..

SEMS wrote:Were the original 3.5 ROMs even above-board in the first place?

I believe they had full Roger Linn approval. Mansell-labs was a legit business, and then something happened, no one knows what, perhaps Rohan died, it would certainly explain a lot of things. This is the problem of running a one-man business, what the hell happens to the business when you die, do your heirs know what needs to be done to keep things going?

Fact is, a product that many people want is no longer available, it stopped being made by the creator. People still want it and that's understandable and clearly it's frustrating, especially if you are happy to pay the full price to the developer. But it is what it is, you can't always have everything you want - or at least not without tapping into murky moral and legal areas. The choice is ultimately up to the individual - accept and move on, buy 2nd hand, buy from the profiteering pirates, become a (non-profit?) pirate yourself, or see if there's a legitimate way of bringing the product back to market (e.g. see if Roger Linn can do anything).

Or maybe develop your own MPC3000 OS

It might be fair to assume Rohan had passed on. I've been searching Google for info and haven't found anything. I can't see any reason why Rohan would take anyone's money and not ship out Valixi. He was making good money and there's been a good demand for the OS. He also had a good reputation with Roger Linn as well as the rest of the community, so it would make no sense to rip anyone off. As for the site going down and back up a while ago, I believe it's possible that someone else who knows him may have been involved with that and possibly taking funds that were coming in to his account from sales of the OS. So I suspect it was a friend or relative who may have got greedy and saw an opportunity to grab the money if they were able to. I can't draw any other conclusion, and I feel it would be wrong for his legacy to be tarnished if he's really dead.

and let's not forget that if you have a lot of EPROM based OSs on old machines... having an eprom burner is not too bad of an idea just for backup purposes...

it doesn't seem common for chips to get **** up, but it does actually happen. many people for example in the NEO GEO community for example often would back up their bios and even games... or people into burning fan translations or hacks on SNES/famicom games etc... and let's not forget people who want to change the sounds in their drumulator.

MPC-Tutor wrote:

SEMS wrote:Were the original 3.5 ROMs even above-board in the first place?

I believe they had full Roger Linn approval. Mansell-labs was a legit business, and then something happened, no one knows what, perhaps Rohan died, it would certainly explain a lot of things.

Thanks man, was never sure about the legitimacy of these. Still wonder tho, if that's the case, why doesn't Roger sell them himself? Surely the 3.50 EPROMs are far more profitable than the MPC60 ones he sells.