Disk 6•1
• 6 Disk & Hard disk
• Hard disk: handles a 2,5” IDE or E-IDE unit
- a more complex device. Installation requires
the Generalmusic HDisk installation kit which
also expands the System-RAM. A Hard disk
has faster access times and a capacity of 500
Mb (max.). Clearly, a Hard disk is more con-
venient than floppies. If you have purchased
your instrument with a factory installed Hard
disk, you’ll find that it is write-protected to
avoid accidental cancellation of the files it
contains. You can remove the protection by
deactivating the Hard Disk Protection option
in the Disk Utility page.
All the operations described in this chapter
make reference to the Floppy disk - Hard disk
operations are identical in every respect.
FLOPPY DISK FORMATS
WK4 recognizes the following formats: WK4 ex-
panded format (1.6 Mb) or standard MS-DOS
(1.44Mb), the Atari ST/Falcon format (720 Kb).
WK4 is able to initialize disks for every format. It
is also possible to load Ram-Sounds, Styles and
Songs from WK4, WX and SX Series disks.
Song disks of other formats, such as the WK3
and PS1500 Series, are recognized if the data
conforms to the GMX format, a General MIDI
eXtended format by Generalmusic which renders
the first three banks of WK4 fully compatible.
WK4 cannot read Song, Style and Sound data
disks originating from non-Generalmusic in-
struments. Song exchanges with other instru-
ments requires that the Song be saved as a MIDI
file on MS-DOS formatted disks (1.44 Mb or 720
Kb formats).
Working with disks provides you with a means of
building a library of Performances, Styles, Sounds
and Songs that you can load into the WK4 RAM
memory at any time. As you become more fa-
miliar with your WK4, you’ll discover the practi-
cal uses of working with disks, because of the
flexibility and power that they offer.
This chapter introduces you to the concepts of
Files, Disks and RAM memory, explains the prin-
cipal Disk functions by showing you how to load
and save Songs, Styles, Performances and MIDI
Files.
Other useful Disk functions (Erase, Copy, Move,
Utility) are discussed in the Edit Disk chapter.
For first time Disk users
Those who are using floppy disks for the first time
are recommended to read through all the pre-
liminaries, right up to page 8, and refer also to
the pages at the end of this chapter which dis-
cuss disk handling precautions, how to insert and
extract disks and other general information.
To skip the preliminaries
If you want to skip the preliminary information,
go straight to page 8 which starts with details
about how to load files into RAM.
FLOPPY DISKS AND THE HARD DISK
The WK4 can handle floppy disks and hard disks.
• Floppy disks: handles 3.5" high density
(HD) and double density (DD type for MIDI
files only).
