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Subject: Re: [LCtalk] Saving on a LCX by midi
From: Fokko van Duin
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 16:36:53 +0100

At 12:42 +0100 12-12-2004, Michael Lohrengel wrote: 
Hi Fokko,

I used to controll scenes of my LC with a peavye 1600 and store them with the cuescenewrite command. This does not seem work with the LCX. Is there a need for the commonsaveall command ( similar to "save Lanbox data" on the laptop ?) and if so - what is the command? I cant seem to find it, it will only say "sysex" in the command chart.

In chart v1.1a2 it states that "CommonSaveAll" is a sysex and the command is A9 hex or 169 decimal. This is a new command in order to save all data from working memory into FLASH. Let me explain:

In the old LanBox-LC we have working memory with built-in lithium batteries backup, while the (small) FLASH holds the firmware. Due to the backup RAM, there is no need to save data.

The LanBox-LCX, LCM and LCE have very high speed working RAM which consumes too much power to have battery backup, so we use a big FLASH as sort of disk to save all data which must be restored after power down.

As FLASH is relative slow and has a limited number of writes, it is necessary to let the user decide when he wants to write to FLASH (Save All LanBox Data), as only the user knows when it is convenient to do this slow operation.


Second question: I'm still somehow surprised about the amount of storing commands that is needed in comparison to earlier days. Maybe I miss something. But it now looks like changing a patch has first to be stored in the patchwindow and than again with the "save Lanbox data" funktion and on top of that, while "save Lanbox data" is executed, lights will contemporarly go dark - again: do I miss something?

In LCedit+ the "Store" button of the script editor transports the data from LCedit to the RAM of the box, while the "Save All LanBox Data" burns it permanent into FLASH (which is a time consuming operation, in which near nothing else can be done).

I agree that ideally you did not needed to do these handling, but the current technic gives only choice between batteries (which are always empty when you need them), a hard disk (which crashes), and FLASH (which is still limited in the number of writes and is much slower then RAM).

For industrial applications FLASH is just the best choice.

--
Fokko van Duin,                     Creators of the LanBox-LC
CDS advanced technology bv,         DMX lighting controller.
http://www.cds.nl/                  http://www.lanbox.com/

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