If the OS development is slow... make it Open Source!

i have communicated through bug reports. i suggest ideas, and they get implemented.

Murahachibu has talked to them. however, i don't think they'll be wanting to take on this project until they're done with the 1000/2500.

BUT here's the hopeful part. my THEORY is that they are exakai who had the code and bettered it. i DONT think that they reverse engineered it, i think they just patched up code from 2.1 and made it better. reason why is because the Timestretching and downtuning algorhythms sound the same to me - and because the os's are almost identical to a point - the JJ's has a ton more features.

now if this is the case, there's a funny little chance that the JJ has the mpc4000 os too. which would mean that it's already in the capable hands of someone who knows what is up.

here's the deal - you should see how much you could offer him. would you pay 100 bones for a new os? consider making some kind of offer. that's what i recently did for my idea above.

Wihtout knowing anything about them, that was my theory too, that they must have had inside information.

That's not exactly a reason to be hopeful. I fear the very worst, namely that they may be in posession of intellectual property belonging to Akai and that it is for this reason that they won't reveal their sources or documentation. If this is so then while they might take on the MPC4000 it is unlikely they will involve others in the effort, or share the information that would make that possible.

-illiac

who knows, who knows...all you can do really is follow all leads.
best of luck

Most of Akai Japan`s staff was canned last November so you guys may be right about it. Ex-employees slingin O.S`s.

Now I`m speculating so don`t take it seriously and start going plum O.S. crazy on the board.

I don`t know this JJ guy and its not an official Akai OS. Something goes wrong there is no warranty.


Play at your own risk.

I don`t know this JJ guy and its not an official Akai OS. Something goes wrong there is no warranty.

will do

the whole reaction against 3rd party os's as "not official akai releases" kind of makes me chuckle...i mean these guys obviously know what they're doing, they are testing it themselves, use much of the same code as the akai 2.1 format, etc etc

however, coding a new os for the 4000 could be scary due to potential damage. someone would have to know a LOT.

Antonym wrote:the whole reaction against 3rd party os's as "not official akai releases" kind of makes me chuckle

Considering Akais involment in the 4000 OS it makes me chuckle too. Warranty? How about completing the damn OS

LOL

I see we have similar POVs. The official OS is not that secure or stable. I have lost my hours of work due to an OS crash caused by loading a simple sample.

The point of developing an OS from scratch is to make it Bug Free. This is our primary goal. Hey, there are a million good reasons to develop an OS from scratch. I would like to add some cool features, and you guys would like that too.

Imagine all the features and plugins... it would be awesome!

In any case, this JJ is into the 2500, right? We could start somehow. Linux is very close to become officially RTOS (kernel 2.6.22 as it seems) and this will help us with this. if Linux is not an option, well, we'll find a way.

Please check this manual and see if it helps... And, by the way, Akai gave it to me voluntarily... or however that is spelled!

Documentation:
http://woralelandia.com/openmpc/service_manual

Yes, this has a lot of valuable information.

p20 has a map of the general-purpose I/Os of the StongARM. For example, which pins are used to receive what kind of interrupts (see the pins labeled GP...).

There are headers that bring out the JTAG chain -- see pins 26-29 on J5 p.42.

With a lot of study you can figure out many of the hardware interfaces through these drawings.

With this in hand, and with an oscilloscope and a machine-level debugger attached to the processor, you could reverse engineer the firmware layer of the system, i.e., the boot sequence, the DMA protocols, the interface to the FPGA and CPLD, etc.

Yow.

-illiac

there's a lot of drama with this issue.....it's all suspenseful and stuff...

Will Akai do it?.....Or will they scoff at the would be OS code programmer people? Stay tuned......

LOL, you need to upgrade your cable TV package.

-illiac

Well, I'm back after a few concerts and some work.

Actually, I have almost given up on asking Akai to open the source. But I came up with some new idea for the aproach.

I think the issue here is that maybe Akai needs a bit of feedback where they can consult and stuff.

How about if we use a forum or something to list bugs/feature requests and maybe they can benefit from it?

I also had the idea of localizing the documentation for the time. Most of you might not care, but I'm from México and I speak spanish! Maybe a spanish version of the manual would be cool.

I'm down with some additions to the current o.s. it makes no sense that some of the newer features on the 1k, 25k, have cought up with the 4k still no comparison but some of these features are cool and would definatly keep me away from my computer, which is why I purchased it in the first place, now as far as bugs I haven't run into any as of yet, but a better method of direct record wolud be nice, auto chop nice and a few other features, So I would sign the petetion and kick in some loot help with this whole movement, and say a prayer, and maybe we can get some new goodies on this machine but until then mine is working fine.

Well, I agree.

Mine works fine too, but still, I have run over a few bugs and so have some other guys. All I'm saying is that I can post a webpage with a bug tracking system, or a wiki... or a blog... or all of it togheather, so Akai can benefit from it and maybe they start lending some ears.

Question who is your Akai contact??

I think a phone call would be more direct and an faster answer?

That is a question for Illiac. He made the contact. He posted something on page 11... i think

In any case, we can show them the stuff first instead of contacting only. Besides, there should be a public bug database so we are aware of what not to do... no?