The AWE VBank Sysex Interface v1.0
by Mathias Hjelt / Murexware

Installation & MIDI implementation


Quick and dirty installation
----------------------------

An easy but fake way of installing the Sysex Interface driver is putting in a
MIDIx=AWEVSYSX.DRV line under the [drivers] header in SYSTEM.INI. The "x"
should be replaced with a number, one higher than that of the highest already
available MIDIx= line. So if your [drivers] looks like this, for example..

  midi=sbawe32.drv
  midi1=sb16snd.drv

you should add this:

  midi2=awevsysx.drv

Make sure AWEVSYSX.DRV is available in the System directory, and restart
Windows.


Normal installation procedure (Win95)
-------------------------------------

The fake way of installing the driver works fine under Win3.1, but Win95 has
got a new driver handling system which works in a slightly different way
(MMSYSTEM saves the multimedia driver setup in its own registry file). Doing
the SYSTEM.INI modification will work, but this may be a better procedure:

Open "Add new hardware" in the Control Panel. When the Wizard asks if Windows
should look for new hardware, choose No. It'll then prompt for the type of
hardware to add - select "Sound, video and game controllers". In the next
screen, click "Have disk", and when it prompts for the disk to install drivers
from, browse or type in the path to the place where AWEVBANK and all its files
including the driver are located (OEMSETUP.INF should be visible). Finish the
installation, and restart Windows.

Under Win3.1 you can of course use the Drivers applet in the Control Panel
to add a driver, but editing SYSTEM.INI directly gives exactly the same
result.


MIDI implementation & theory of operation
-----------------------------------------

The AWE VBank Sysex Interface is a simple driver for MIDI output (MIDI input
will be supported in future versions, allowing even more automated dumps).
Only one application can use the driver at a time - if you think that's a big
limitation, yell out, and it'll be fixed in future versions. The driver
requires AWEVBANK.EXE to be running for full functionality, and AWEVHELP.DLL
must be available in your Windows or System directory. 

The driver recognizes four types messages, all sysex:

 - Reverb type set (GS compatible)
 - Chorus type set (GS compatible)
 - Virtual Bank load
 - Virtual Bank request


Virtual Bank load
-----------------

The main purpose of the Vbank Sysex Interface is to allow automated loading of
Virtual Bank files through sysex messages. The format of the Virtual Bank load
message is this:

  F0 41 57 45 ..filename.. F7 

Filename should be the complete path, for example C:\WINDOWS\MUSIC\TEST.AWB.
The current version limits the maximum length of the message to 256 bytes, but
if you think that's too short for your gigantic Win95-style directory and file
names, it can be changed.

When the driver receives this kind of a message, the specified Virtual Bank
file is loaded into the AWEVbank program which uploads it to the AWE if you
have automatic upload enabled. The AWEVbank window is not popped up or
anything, it all happens in the background. If the file can't be found,
AWEVbank complains.


Virtual Bank request
--------------------

This function is still a bit limited in the current version, it's only
semi-automatic. The point is that you perhaps don't always want to zoom up
AWEVbank, load the wanted Virtual Bank, and use the "Copy to Clipboard" pop-up
menu function when taking a stored Virtual Bank into use in a new song.
Instead of doing that, you can send a request message to the Sysex Interface:

  F0 41 57 45 52 45 51 F7 

When this message is received, an Open File dialog is popped up (no special
Win95 support yet). When you've picked an .AWB file, a string containing a
complete Virtual Bak Load sysex message pointing to this file is copied to
the Clipboard, and the file in question is loaded through AWEVbank. Paste the
clipboard contents into your sysex editor, and that's it. (Future versions
will send the string to the sequencer via MIDI.)

In the SYSEX subdir of the AWEVBANK dir, there's a file called VBANKREQ.SYX
containing this message, for those who are too lazy to type it in themselves.


Reverb & Chorus
---------------

You may wonder why it supports effects changing, as the regular AWE driver
already does that. The catch is that after sending an effects change sysex to
the regular AWE driver, you can't change the effects from the AWE Control Panel
or AWEVbank anymore, because of a bug somewhere in the driver. If you send the
sysex message through the VBank Sysex Interface instead, AWEVbank will set the
effects using a safe method, which won't cause any of these problems. So if
you want to avoid troble, send all effects changes to this driver instead.

The sysex messages are GS compatible and look like this:

 Reverb:  F0 41 10 42 12 40 01 30 xx 00 F7 
 Chorus:  F0 41 10 42 12 40 01 38 xx 00 F7 

xx is a number from 0 to 7, indicating the wanted effects type. Included is
this package is a bunch of sysex messages, one for each effect, which saves you
the job of typing them all in. Just load the desired one and send it to the
Vbank Sysex Interface.


Comments
--------

The driver has been tested briefly under Win3.1 and thoroughly under Win95, but
bugs may still exist. Bug reports, comments, suggestions etc, are welcome. To
mail me, first try the topmost address, if it doesn't work, try the next one,
etc:

mhjelt@iki.fi
mhjelt@spider.compart.fi
mhjelt@freenet.hut.fi

This driver doesn't have any shareware limitations as such but you'll of course
have the most use of it if you register AWEVbank. The AWE VBank Sysex Interface
driver is copyrighted by the author (Mathias C. Hjelt / Murexware).

PS. Check out the AWE Pages of Naked Truth at HTTP://www.compart.fi/~mhjelt/

 --Mathias C. Hjelt / Murexware
