Storage Mode

Storage Mode Page

Chapter 13

Storage Mode

Storage mode lets you use xD memory cards to load, save, back up, and copy files between the

PC3 and the outside world.

Storage mode in the PC3 allows flexibility to organize files and their contents. Its features can save you time by allowing you to select and organize files and directories.

Here’s a summary of Storage mode functionality:

• One xD slot

• MS-DOS file system compatibility

• Support for song files (sequences) in MIDI Type 0 and Type 1 format

Storage Mode Page

To enter Storage mode, press the Storage button, and the Storage mode page will appear:

In the center of the page is a line indicating the currently selected storage device. There two selectable storage destinations: Card and USB. Next to each destination is the name of the attached card or device (if any). In the top right-hand corner of the page is displayed the currently selected storage destination.

The currently selected device will be read from or written to when you load, save, rename, or delete files. Use the soft buttons to start any of these operations. Here is a brief description of each of Storage mode’s soft button:

Store

Load

Save objects or banks of objects as a PC3 file on the current device.

Load selected file(s) or object(s) from the current device into PC3 memory.

Utils

Check the free space, find files, and view directory organization and sizes.

Format

Format the currently loaded xD card.

USBDrv

Select the USB drive.

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Storage Mode

Directories

Using xD Cards

You can use xD cards for all your backup and storage requirements. xD cards are sold in a variety of sizes; the PC3 will work with any size, so long as it’s 32MB – 256MB, Type S or no type stated, and formatted as FAT16.

The xD card slot is on the back panel of the PC3, but it is easily accessible from the front of the instrument – just run your hand along the back panel at the right end (as viewed from the front); the blue light of the card slot will reflect off your hand. The gold contacts on the card must be facing up when you insert it into the PC3. You can remove an xD card anytime the blue “Storage

Active” LED on the front panel is unlit.

Caution

: Do not remove an xD card while the blue LED is lit; this can cause data corruption.

Directories

A directory lets you group files together as you might separate documents using folders in a file cabinet. You can create directories on xD cards. You can even create subdirectories within directories. Directories appear in the normal file list with the indicator <dir> to the right of the directory name.

Directories are handy for organizing your song, and program files. The PC3 provides many operations for setting up and managing directories and the files within them.

Path

Formatting an xD Card

xD cards come formatted and ready to use with the PC3. If you ever need to format a card, however, insert the xD card (with gold contacts up) into the PC3’s xD slot, or in the xD slot of any computer with xD formatting capability. Make sure the card does not have a writeprotection sticker attached.

Press the Storage button to enter Storage mode. Press the soft button labeled Format. The PC3 will ask you if you want to format, and a pair of Yes/No soft buttons will appear. Press the Yes soft button when you are ready to begin.

The PC3 will remind you that formatting will erase the xD card, and will give you two more chances to cancel the formatting procedure—we want to make sure you don’t accidentally erase any cards. Press the Yes soft button to continue formatting. When formatting begins, the display will tell you that the card is being formatted. The blue xD LED will light.

The Path field shows the current directory on the current device. This field is displayed upon returning to the Storage mode page after you have pressed one of the Storage mode soft buttons and viewed the file contents. It stays visible on the Storage mode page until you power down or do a soft reset.

The PC3 always starts at the root (top-level) directory when you power it up, or when you change the value of the CurrentDisk parameter. When you use the disk functions to view other directories, the Path field updates the current directory value to track your movements.

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Storage Mode

Common Dialogues

The root directory is displayed as a backslash:

Path:\

If you press the Load button and load a file from a subdirectory called SOUNDS, the Path field will appear as

Path:\SOUNDS\

The backslash character is a directory separator, as in the following Path:

Path: \NEWTUNE\SAMPLES\DOGS\

This represents the directory DOGS, which is a subdirectory of the SAMPLES directory, which is a subdirectory of the NEWTUNE directory in the root directory. If the path is too long to fit on the top line of the display, it gets abbreviated. The maximum length of a path in the PC3 is

64 characters (including the backslash characters).

Disk Drive Information

For xD cards, the manufacturer and card size are displayed.

Common Dialogues

These are dialogues that the PC3 calls up when about to perform certain storage functions.

The Select Directory Dialogue

When storing an object—or group of objects—the PC3 prompt’s you to select a directory in which to save that object or group.

There are three navigating soft buttons on the left side of the bottom of the page:

NewDir

Create new directory. Calls up the New Directory dialogue (see the following section)

Open

Parent

Opens the highlighted directory.

Moves you up one level in the directory hierarchy. If the display is already at the root directory, this button has no effect.

When you have chosen your directory, press the OK soft button to call up the File Name dialogue (see the following section) and completes the storing process.

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Storage Mode

The STORE Page

The File Name/New Directory/Rename Dialogue

When you create a new file in Storage mode, create a new directory, or rename a file or directory, the PC3 prompts you to enter the object’s name. This File Name dialogue appears as shown below, although both the New Directory and Rename appear and function similarly to the File

Name dialogue:

New file names will default to either FILENAME (after a powerup), or the name will be that of the most recent file saved or loaded. New directory names will default to either DIRNAME

(after a powerup), or the name will be that of the most recent file saved or loaded. Once you choose a name to start with (or the default), you can edit the name using the Left and Right cursor buttons, the Delete and Insert soft buttons, and the << and >> soft buttons.

Pressed OK soft button saves the object in the current directory.

The display shows that the PC3 has created or renamed the object, then the Storage mode page reappears.

The STORE Page

Pressing the STORE soft button calls up the Store page, where you can select objects from RAM to store in the current storage device. The page appears as shown below:

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Storage Mode

The STORE Page

At the top right of the page, the display shows how much memory is available in the current storage device. Along the bottom of the page are the Store page’s six soft buttons. Below is a description of the function of each soft button:

Select

Select the highlighted Object/Type or Range/Bank. An asterix (*) appears to the left of selected entries.

Clear

SetRng

Clear all selections in the current field. Note that if you press the Clear soft button while in the Range/Bank field, only selected Range/Bank entries are cleared; however, if press the Clear soft button while in the Object Type field, all selected entries in both fields are cleared.

Set range. Note in the Range/Bank field that the second-to-last entry is Range with a range of numbers next to it. You can set this range in the Set Range dialogue by pressing the SetRng button. If you try to set an invalid range—such as 102–23— then the PC3 will inform you that the range is invalid.

Advnce

Call up Store Advanced page (see below).

Store

Store the selected objects to the current storage device. Pressing this soft button calls up the Select Directory dialogue.

Cancel

Exits the Store page and returns you to the Storage mode page.

In the main body of the page are two fields: Object Type and Range/Bank. To select objects for storage, firstly, select an Object Type. If there are any user-defined objects of the selected type, the symbol (u) will appear to the right of the Range/Bank entry in which they fall. These are the ranges whose objects you can store.

You can store an entire bank of objects, or by pressing the Advnce soft button, select individual

objects to be saved (see The Store Advanced Page). If you choose to store using the bank method,

all RAM objects within that bank will be saved. (You cannot store ROM objects. If you wish to store a ROM object, such as a program, you must first save it internally as a RAM program.) If any objects within the selected bank have dependent RAM objects that exist in a different bank, you will be asked if you want to save dependent objects.

Use one of the data-entry methods to select a bank to be store. If you press the Cancel soft button, you’ll return to the Storage mode page. After you’ve selected the bank, press Store, and the File Name dialogue will appear. Name the file, and press OK. When the file is saved, the PC3 adds an extension (.PC3) to the filename. This enables the PC3 to recognize it as a Kurzweil file when it examines the directory. Note that although .PC3 files are “collections” of objects, you

can load individual objects if you want to. See Loading Individual Objects on page 13-6.

Saving Master Files

Among your choices in the Bank dialog are Master files. Master files consist primarily of the items on the two Master mode pages and the three MIDI mode pages. Saving Master files (or dumping them via SysEx) is a good way to configure your PC3 (or another PC3) to your performance or sequencing needs. For example, you might save different Master files with every sequence you create using an external sequencer. Then, when you load the Master file, you would have all the correct programs assigned to the appropriate MIDI channels.

The Store Advanced Page

Pressing the Advnce soft button calls up the Store Advanced page, on which every user-defined object—as well as its object type—on the PC3 is displayed and selectable for storage. On this page, you can select and store objects individually, rather than by range. The objects are organized by numerical ID and object type.

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Storage Mode

The LOAD Page

There are five soft buttons on the Store Advanced page:

Select

Select the highlighted object. An asterix (*) appears between the ID and object type of selected objects.

Next

Scroll to next entry. Same function as pressing the Down or + buttons, or turning the

Alpha Wheel one click clockwise.

Type

Store

Cancel

Jump to next object type.

Store the selected objects to the current storage device. Pressing this soft button calls up the Select Directory dialogue.

Exits the Store Advanced page and returns you to the Store page.

Shortcuts when Storing Individual Objects

Selecting or deselecting all of the objects at once can be done with the following double-presses

(two front-panel buttons simultaneously pressed):

•

Left/Righ

t cursor double-press: Select All Objects

•

Up/Down

cursor double-press: Clear All Selections

If you want to store most but not all of the items from a file (for example, if there are some songs in RAM that you don’t want to be stored in the file), it may be fastest to first select all objects using the Left/Right double-press, and then manually deselect any unwanted items.

The LOAD Page

Pressing the LOAD soft button calls up the LOAD page, where you can load .PC3 files or individual objects from the current storage device. Along the bottom of the Load page, there are four soft buttons. Below are descriptions of their functions:

Parent

Open

OK

Cancel

Moves you up one level in the directory hierarchy. If the display is already at the root directory, this button has no effect.

Open selected file or directory. See below for instructions on opening files to view objects.

Load selected file. See below for instructions on using the Load dialogue.

Exits the Load page and returns you to the Storage mode page.

Loading Individual Objects

Since files can contain over 3000 objects, it is often useful to load only a subset of the information contained in a .PC3 file. Sometimes, this capability is necessary even to be able to load certain files, if the size of the file’s data is greater than the PC3’s internal RAM size.

You can select individual objects or groups of objects (programs, effects, songs) for loading from within a single .PC3 file. The Load Object feature is accessible from the LOAD page. To activate it, scroll the file list until you have highlighted the file that you wish to load objects from.

Press Open to begin the Load Object dialog. (Note: The file must be in .PC3 format in order to load individual objects from it.) The PC3 then scans the file contents in order to present a list of all of the objects in the file. Sometimes this procedure can take a few moments, depending on how many objects are in the file.

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Storage Mode

The LOAD Page

The objects in the list are usually grouped by type (program, setup, etc.). The list can be scrolled using the Alpha wheel or the Up or Down cursors. Each line in the scrollable list represents one object, and displays the object’s type, ID, and name. The ID numbers are the same numbers that were used to reference the objects when the file was last saved by the PC3. These numbers will usually be different after the objects are loaded, depending upon the bank (for example,

128...255) and mode that is specified for loading.

As with the file list, entering in a number from the alphanumeric buttonpad will jump to the indexed entry, and typing in a large number like 9999 will go to the end of the list.

The soft buttons on this page are used for multiple selection of the objects in the list as well as for moving around the list when there are many items selected or listed. This same dialog is also used for many other functions in the PC3, namely for saving selected objects and for several object utility functions that are described later.

Here is a brief description of each button’s function:

Select

Select or deselect an object.

Next

Type

Jump to the next selected object.

Jump to the next object of a different type.

OK

Tell PC3 to proceed to load the selected objects.

Cancel

Exit back to the File List Dialog.

Press the Select button to choose the highlighted object for loading. An asterisk (*) is placed to the left of the object index for any items that are selected. Deselect a selected object by pressing

Select

again. The asterisk will disappear. The easiest way to choose objects for loading is to scroll the list and individually press Select on each object you want to load.

The Next button will cause the index into the list to jump to the next selected object, forward in the list. When the end of the list is reached, the search will wrap around from the beginning. If you have more than one object selected, then if you repeatedly press Next you can easily cycle through all selected items. If there are no items selected, then this button doesn’t do anything.

The Type button jumps to the next object of a different type from the one that is currently highlighted. This is a convenient way to find a particular type of object in the list.

When you are all done selecting objects to load, press OK. As stated above, if only one object is to be loaded, it is implicitly selected if it is the currently highlighted object and there are no other selected objects in the list.

Cancel

returns to the file list dialog, highlighting the file you just opened. You can load the entire file after pressing Cancel by pressing OK when you return to the file list.

Select All/Deselect All

Selecting or deselecting all of the objects at once can be done with the same double-presses as described for the file list dialog, namely:

•

Left/Righ

t cursor double-press: Select All Objects

•

Up/Down

cursor double-press: Clear All Selections

If you want to load most but not all of the items from a file (for example, if there happens to be a

Master table in the file that you don’t want to load), it may be fastest to first select all objects using the Left/Right double-press, and then manually deselect any unwanted items.

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Storage Mode

The LOAD Page

Loading Methods

Once you have pressed OK to decide on what bank to use, you will see this dialog:

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The soft buttons control the mode for loading and renumbering of objects from the file. Here’s how they work:

OvFill

First deletes all RAM objects in the selected bank, and then loads objects using consecutive numbering.

Overwrt

First deletes all RAM objects in the selected bank, and then loads objects using the object ID numbers stored in the file.

Merge

Preserve the object ID numbers stored in the file for the objects to be loaded, overwrite objects already in memory if necessary.

Append

Try to use the object ID numbers stored in the file for the objects to be loaded. If an

ID number is already in use, increment the ID number until a free slot is found.

Fill

Ignore the object ID numbers stored in the file. Try to use consecutive numbering from the beginning of the selected bank. If an ID number is already in use, increment the ID number until a free slot is found.

Cancel

Cancel the mode selection, and go back to choosing a bank. Scrolling to a different bank value will have the same effect as Cancel.

Typically, you will just want to use the Fill method. Append, Merge, and Overwrt try to preserve the numbers stored with the objects in the file, but this should only really be necessary if you depend on program numbers or effect numbers to be at a certain MIDI program change number. OvFill is like Fill except the selected bank (or Everything) is cleared out before loading.

Overwrt

and OvFill operate in different ways after a selected bank has been filled up for a given object type (for example, after you have loaded more than 128 programs into a bank). Overwrt will continue to preserve the objectIDs stored in the file, and will individually overwrite objects in the bank following the just filled bank. OvFill does not overwrite past the end of the selected bank; it instead skips over object IDs that are in use, loading only into unused IDs. Because of this difference, it can sometimes be faster to load a file using OvFill rather than Overwrt.

However, this applies only if the objects to be loaded would extend past the end of a selected bank.

Note that when loading into a specific bank (as opposed to loading as “Everything”), the object

IDs in the file are used as follows: The “bank” digit is ignored, and the remainder of the number is used when the PC3 rebanks the object ID into the bank that you specify. For example, if you save Program 453 into a file, and load it back into the 129...256 bank, the PC3 will use the

Storage Mode

The LOAD Page

number 69 (its bank-specific ID in the 385...512 bank) when deciding upon a new object ID. If the

129...256 bank was previously empty, and the load mode is Append, then the program will end up with ID 197 (128 + 69).

For loading as “Everything,” the ID number for an object stored in a file is taken literally, and not rebanked (except if Fill or OvFill mode is chosen).

The following example shows how each different loading methods affect how four programs load into a bank that already contains programs.

Example: Starting with the following objects already stored in the PC3 internal RAM:

Program ID

129

133

134

139

140

Program Name

Piano Stack

Ole Upright 1

WestCoastPno&Pad

The Ancient

DancePnoEchplex

Suppose you were to load a file containing the following objects into the Base2 (129...256) bank:

Program ID

260

261

264

265

Program Name

Brighter CP

TouchRezSynthCP

Inside Out CP

Pianet Classic

The following table shows the IDs that each program end up with when you load the programs from the Classic Keys bank (255...384) into the Base2 bank:

Original

Program

ID

129

133

134

139

140

260

261

264

265

Program Name

Piano Stack

Ole Upright 1

WestCoastPno&Pad

The Ancient

DancePnoEchplex

Brighter CP

TouchRezSynthCP

Inside Out CP

Pianet Classic

Program IDs After Loading

OvFill

Deleted

Deleted

Deleted

Deleted

Deleted

129

130

131

132

Overwrt

Deleted

Deleted

Deleted

Deleted

Deleted

260

261

264

265

Merge

140

133

134

137

138

129

Deleted

Deleted

139

Append

140

135

136

137

138

129

133

134

139

Fill

140

130

131

132

135

129

133

134

139

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Storage Mode

The Utilities (UTILS) Page

The Utilities (UTILS) Page

Pressing the UTILS soft button calls up the Utilities page, where the PC3 displays the contents of the current directory, in an alphabetized scrolling list. If the current directory cannot be located (for example, if you’ve changed cards), the PC3 displays the current device’s root directory.

The display shows the 3-character extension of all files in the directory (except directories themselves). Extensions are created when the file is saved by the PC3. You cannot modify the extensions on the PC3. This is because the PC3 uses the extensions to tell it what kind of data the files contain.

Directories created by the PC3 have up to 8-character names, with no extension. A directory can have an extension if it is created on an external computer (more on this later).

The .MID extension is used by the PC3 for MIDI Type 0 or Type 1 sequence files.

When loading files, the PC3 will try to find out the type of file if it doesn’t recognize the extension.

Soft Buttons on the Utilities Page

NewDir

Create a new directory.

Delete

Delete files from the current device.

Rename

Change the filename of a file.

Copy

Open

Single or multiple file copy between devices.

Opens the highlighted directory.

Parent

Moves you up one level in the directory hierarchy. If the display is already at the root directory, this button has no effect.

When you first open a directory for viewing, the index is 1 (the first file in the list). The PC3 remembers the index of the previous directory you were in before you pressed Open, so if you return to that directory by pressing Parent, the index changes accordingly. This index is remembered for one level down, and therefore is useful when stepping through a list of subdirectories from a single directory level.

In the Load function, pressing Open for a standard file will start the Load Object feature. This allows selected individual objects from the file to be loaded into the PC3. For example, pressing

Open while in the Delete function will display the objects within the file in a scrollable list, however no delete action will be possible on the individual objects.

Pressing the OK soft button will cause the PC3 to proceed with the selected function. After pressing OK, there may be further dialogs such as bank specification (for the Load function), confirmation (for Delete), or name entry (for Rename). One exception to this is in the Load function; when a directory is highlighted, pressing OK is the same as pressing Open (it displays the contents of the highlighted directory).

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