http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... -fast.html
The sequencer the chap is using is called Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold v4.10, I think.
Turtle Beach made it free with no support, but recently they seem to have stopped doing that although I have heard nothing official about it not being available anymore.
You can find it here:
http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?tit ... _Plus_Gold
Also you can get the massive manual and some tutorials there too.
The knowledge base for it is still up at Turtle Beach:
http://support.turtlebeach.com/1133/
It says it is for 4.0, but there can't be that much difference I suppose. I haven't compared the nearly 100MB .pdf manual with the info here:
http://support.turtlebeach.com/entry/830517176/
Ok, so that is the download. Once you have your grubby mits on it, what do you do with it? Well, you need to run it in DOS. This is from nearly a quarter of a century ago now, remember. People were running this on 286 computers with MS-DOS 3.3.
http://www.oldcomputermuseum.com/os/msdos_3.3.html
This was a rock solid OS with timing comparable to hardware. This is why some of us are still interested in getting this running. Apart from its speed when you get familiar with it, it really is super tight. Two great reasons to go to all the trouble.
As for DOS:
You will run into limitations on hard disk availablity with this particular OS though, that is if you can find it in the first place. You are probably better off trying to find MS-DOS 6.22, the final proper working version, which is freely available around the place. VSP will run fine on this. It is what most people use afaict. I believe that DOS 6.22 can use bigger hard disks than 3.3.
http://philipstorr.id.au/pcbook/book4/hdlimit.htm
==========================
DOS versions up to and including DOS 3.3 imposed very restrictive limits on Hard Disk Drive Interfaces. The worst limit involved Hard Disk Drives larger than 32 MByte. A Drive larger than 32 MByte had to be split into sections and no section could be larger than 32 MByte. This limitation was overcome in later DOS versions and DOS 6.22 can theoretically address a Hard Disk Drive of up to two tera-bytes (two trillion bytes). The only problem is the 16 bit FAT used by DOS and older Windows Operating Systems, lowers this limit to 2.1 GByte.
==============================
More Info:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/118335
http://www.osfiles.com/os_dos/ospg_dos_msdos.htm
http://www.oldcomputermuseum.com/os.html
http://www.oldcomputermuseum.com/os/msdos_6.22.html
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/159631- ... mitations/
A final word on DOS 3.3 by the Sisters Of Mercy:
http://www.the-sisters-of-mercy.com/tech/seqsdaw.htm
========================================
Sequencer Plus (Voyetra Technologies)
Sequencer Plus was the first heavy-duty DOS sequencer. It came out in the mid-eighties, which is when we started using it. Andrew has managed to crash the program exactly twice in almost fifteen years. That's one reason we're still using it. The other reason is its balance of faculties, simplicity and user-friendliness. Andrew is very fast on it (on the occasions when he knows where he's going before he gets there).
We prefer to run it under DOS 3.3, which is a rock solid operating system for midi, as long as your software doesn't ask for anything more contemporary. Andrew has the quaint notion that a sequencer doesn't actually need a huge GUI like Windows to make it work. Most of them are now built for it anyway; they figure you need the pretty pictures and that you'll put up with latency problems and any overall instability. We had a few problems getting and configuring new Doktor hardware to run with such an old operating system; we seem to have sorted those problems out.
The first versions of Sequencer Plus had a one-port interface and FSK sync. A four-port interface and SMPTE sync arrived in due course. Voyetra discontinued the interface a few years ago, which is a shame. If you've got a V24S, we'd be very interested in buying it off you. There was a special version of the program to go with the Yamaha C1 laptop.
==============================================
The Sisters Of Mercy recorded the seminal Floodland album on it, with the help of a bit of Jim Steinman thrown in.
So, not many people running DOS these days with a computer old enough and working well enough to use it on. This is the ideal. If you have an old 286 or 386 or 486 or one of the first Pentiums - say a 200MHz or 300MHz or more machine - ideal. And if you have a Soundblaster card, even better! So what do the rest of us do that do not have 20 year old bits of kit hanging around? Virtualisation.
Now, it has been fairly well documented that VSP works OK in Dosbox. See here:
http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=Bobby_Prince
and his page here on setting it up:
http://bobbyprincemusic.blogspot.co.uk/ ... again.html
Lots of very good info here and Bobby seems quite happy. I have some other links to other people very happy using Dosbox, but on the whole the performance is sub par - most people can't get it to work and those that do just go 'meh'.
Here is an excellent resource for learning how to set up DOS 6.22 in Virtualbox. I pretty much got it working by myself, but this page holds your hand and gives you a step by step setup. Setting up DOS is a bit different to your common or garden Windows or Linux stuff. And if you are new to Virtual Machines or Virtualbox, this is a very good primer on how it all works.
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To- ... irtualBox/
But unfortunately, apart from virtualisation with something like Virtualbox, you aren't left with many options.
Ah, Virtualbox...
I have spent a couple of days getting a working Virtual Machine of DOS 6.22, AND I even have VSP running on it. You can check it out, play about and see how it works. You won't be able to do anything with it however for two reasons:
1: Midi - it can't connect to the outside world apart from virtually.
2: SB16 support (Soundblaster audio card) is notoriously crap and non-working with Vbox.
Virtualbox only provides three options for Audio interfacing. They are the Old Soundblaster 16, the newer AC97 and Intel HD iirc. The only one that has a chance of working is the SB16. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, it will run, but it will not work, that is, it will not give you sounds to play with or a working midi connection to interface with your real keyboards or vsts. Shame. So near, so far.
But you can still get VSP to work perfectly - it just won't be able to talk to the outside world:
You also need to make an .img of the three disks that VSP comes on. This is time consuming and very technical (for me at least), but it goes a little something like this in LINUX:
----------------
MAKE FLOPPY DISK IMAGE
mint@mint ~ $ dd bs=512 count=2880 if=/dev/zero of=imagefile2.img
mint@mint ~ $ mkfs.msdos imagefile2.img
mkfs.msdos 3.0.12 (29 Oct 2011)
MAKE DIRECTORY AND MOUNT IT
mint@mint ~ $ sudo mkdir /media/floppy2/
mint@mint ~ $ sudo mount -o loop floppy.img /media/floppy2/
YOU NOW HAVE A VIRTUAL FLOPPY DISK UNDER MEDIA ALONG WITH YOUR OTHER DISK DRIVES THAT IS READY TO WRITE TO
NOW COPY YOUR FILES THAT YOU WANT ON THERE, ONTO IT
UNMOUNT IT
mint@mint ~ $ sudo umount /media/floppy2/
-------------------------
Don't quote me on that. I get it wrong every time I try it, but it is doable. I spent about 6 hours learning how to do this and implementing it. In the end I got three virtual .img files that can be loaded into the Vbox system to be mounted as virtual floppies when working in DOS 6.22. Remember, it has no USB support and the internal extensions won't work that Vbox provides. The only way is to set up the internet and do it from within - good luck with that. It's easier to spend the six hours figuring it out in linux. You can probably do this in windows too, but this was how I figured it out. If you like, seeing as I already have the working images for Vbox, if you PM me, I'll be happy to provide them to you on a personal basis.
The actual installation is not too bad and pretty decent infact, but don't let me lead you any further down this garden path. This is just for DEMO purposes only. You won't even be able to use the basic crappy (or not so crappy some say) inbuilt FM SOUNDS from the Soundblaster. VBox just isn't that bothered about getting this to work as paying customers don't have any need for it. Lots of old DOS gamers complain, but they end up using Dosbox. Still, you can get a good feel for the program and get it running to learn the commands.
DISCLAIMER:
If I am talking out of my arse here, let me know. I have spent days and days trying to get this to work, and there just does not seem to be a way in VBox. I have sourced every driver known to man and tried every combination, only to find that there isn't really any proper support for this card, apart from it being represented in the virtualisation to get the whole system to work as a whole. You can't get any sound out of it. PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG. I won't bore you with my research and links, but this does seem to be a non-starter. Still, you can install the program easily enough and play about.
So that leaves us with 3 options:
1: Other forms of emulation on windows - Dosbox.
2: Other forms of emulation on Linux - DOSemu.
3: Using real OLD hardware.
As for number one, well, as I said. quite a few people are using VSP in Dosbox and it works pretty good for them. Here is teh Dosbox download:
http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1
As for number two, well, I tried getting DOSemu to work. Well over my head even once I got it installed. Just be aware it is a possibility and some people have done it and report good results. I spent nearly two hours just to get it running. Then again, I'm not very good with Linux, if you are:
http://linuxgazette.net/issue18/dosemu.html
==========================
I installed version 0.66.1 because I read that it supported MIDI, and I was curious to find whether I would be able to run my favorite DOS MIDI sequencer, Sequencer Plus Gold from Voyetra.
=============================
http://porky.linuxjournal.com:8080/LJ/109/6320.html
==============================
The testing hardware included a generic machine with an 800MHz AMD Duron CPU, 512MB RAM and a 15GB IDE hard disk. The audio hardware consisted of two sound cards, a SoundBlaster SBLive Value and a SoundBlaster PCI128; a Casio CZ101 synthesizer was used for external MIDI keyboard input. I used Steve Ratcliff's pmidi MIDI file player, and I also employed a second computer running Voyetra's Sequencer Plus Gold under MS-DOS.
===============================
So, that leaves us with number three.
In fact, apart from curiousity, if you are serious about using this sequencer, you are going to have to find an old and functional computer to work on.
The chap in the Gearslutz article iirc, says he has hoarded four or five, just in case!
I just spent another 6 hours today trying to get an old 233MHz working with a locked BIOS. Boy am I just SOOL these days. I'll get it working or throw it in the bin, and buy another one.
Oh well.
You should be able to find one of these computers that will work though, for next to nothing - 50 bucks at most. but finding one is the hard part, and getting a physical midi interface to run your physical synths is the harder part. Of course, it is possible to hook it up so that one computer is just physically acting as the sequencer and it is trigerring another computer with all your VSTs on.
A few people do that too. I'm buggered if I know how that works. But it is possible.
I wish I hadn't got rid of my old AWE 64 Gold, now.
Some vidz:
Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold - Still usable!
Voyetra sequencer plus gold - a little introduction
Ventolin - Totem. Video by The Rodina. Official
And of course, even if you do have an old computer that works, you will need to install DOS on it from scratch as your main OS.
This is boutique stuff I guess, with rich rewards. But only for those with the savvy to connect this all up to another computer to run VSTs, or someone that has an old midi keyboard lying around to use multi-timbrally.
If nothing else, it makes me realise how far we have come in the DAW field; what amazing riches we all have right now. And on the other hand, just how crap ALL the major DAWs of today are when it comes to utilizing system resources.
But eye candy wins the day. Marketing too. We are being ripped off really. It would be possible to build a DAW on certain architecture that would fly and be like true hardware. But god it was painful enough waiting for Bitwig. It took me nearly four hours to install on Linux. And it was stable, I must admit. But then I asked myself: Why? Just why? It's just another DAW. I won't be buying it any time soon.
I'm rambling again. This is always a good time to stop.
