Generalmusic was an Italian musical instrument manufacturing company focusing on digital and acoustic pianos, synthesizers and music workstations. The company produced three lines: a musical instrument series called GEM, a various studio equipment series called LEM and electric organs/synthesizers called ELKA. It was founded in 1987 and ceased business in 2009 before becoming bankrupt in 2011.
Gem Ws1 Keyboard Workstation Manual
Generalmusic's first arranger workstation models were their WS series, released in 1990. Featuring a 5-track sequencer, 32 built-in arranger styles, and 32 user-programmable styles, they predated the General MIDI standard. This limited easy interoperability with other devices. The WX series (released in 1993) did implement General MIDI, offered a large blue LCD display, a user-friendly interface and some vintage synth sound presets like Oberheim, ARP 2600, Prophet or Elka Synthex. Although designed as arranger workstations, WX series had some professional synthesizer capabilities like filter and cutoff (resonance) editing with an integrated powerful 16-track sequencer. The company also offered more sophisticated versions of the WX series as S series synthesizers. The S2 was similar to a Kurzweil K2000 for its functionalities such as optional sampling, and layout and patch manipulation.
Italian company Generalmusic (also called GEM) was known forproducing home organs and semi-professional accompaniment keyboards. Butthey also made a few attempts at producing professional musicworkstations. The first of them was the S-Series, introduced in 1992.GEM called it the "Music Processor" because of its many advancedfunctions, including a powerful sequencer, the ability to read and editsamples, excellent real-time controllers, and many others.
There were two original models, with only one difference betweenthem: S2 and S3. The S2 has a 61-note keyboard and the S3 has a 76-notekeyboard. Both keyboard models have excellent semi-weighted keys withtouch/release velocity, polyphonic aftertouch and metal contacts. On thefront panel, there are also seven programmable sliders, sevenprogrammable buttons and Pitch and Modulation wheels. All functions arelogically and clearly displayed on a large graphical LCD with light blueneon back-lighting. Thanks to the excellent hardware and also thanks totwo MIDI I/O's, the S2/S3 is an ideal master keyboard for the homestudio.
The S-Series instruments are always inPerformance mode. The Performance can be made from up to 16 Sounds orPatches (yes, you can control all 16 MIDI tracks from the keyboard!) andthe effects section settings. In the ROM of the instrument, there are100 patches for Performances (Turbo models only) and they areautomatically loaded when the instrument is powered-up. The Turboversions shipped preloaded with 100 excellent performances including alot of textures, pads and leads.
Overall, the S-Series is very reliable and of a solid build. Thekeyboard feel and real-time control are excellent, as well as thedisplay and control panel layout. They also have great connectivity: TwoMIDI interfaces, two main and four auxiliary outputs, headphones output,two programmable foot-switch inputs and one programmable pedal input.This all make it ideal for use as a master keyboard in the home studio,but the sounds are also very interesting. GEM also released a hugelibrary of sample, sound and song disks for this series.
The succeeding generation of GEM's workstations, named Equinox(1998), got huge improvements: 64 voice polyphony, arpeggiators, RAMexpansion up to 32 MB, etc. But it lost the excellent semi-weightedkeyboard, the polyphonic aftertouch, and that nice display was replacedby dull, half-sized LCD. The Equinox was discontinued around 2004. GEMcontinued making home and semi-professional keyboards and one high-endaccompaniment workstation called Genesys (which used many features fromthe S-Series workstations) until the Generalmusic brand disappeared fromthe market in 2008.
To enter a folder or choose a file, simply click on the entry in the main box of the dialog. To navigate in the file list, you can use the scrollbar on the right with mouse, use mousewheel, keyboard up + down arrow (with Alt), or page up + down keys.
Check the "Auto insert B" option if you want Hatari to be smart andinsert the second disk of a two disk game automatically.Some games then use the second drive automatically.In the case that a game is not able to find the disk in the second drive,you have to insert the second disk in drive A: manually when prompted.NOTE: This option only works properly if the file name of thefirst disks ends with an 'a' before the extension and the second disk nameends with a 'b'.
"Symbolic" tries to map the symbolic values of your PC keys to the ST keys. It should be working pretty good on all systems as long as your keyboard layout looks close to the standard English keyboard layout. However, you might experience some problems with special keys like brackets etc.
"Scancode" uses the scancode values of your PC keys for keyboard mapping. If it works on your system, this often gives better results than the symbolic mapping. Note that you also need a TOS version with the right language (e.g. use a French TOS if you are using a French keyboard).
You can also load a custom keyboard mapping file here if you wish. Please note that the custom keyboard mapping will use the "symbolic" mapping for all keys that are not defined by your map file. Have a look at the supplied example mapfile (keymap-sample.txt) to see how to create your own keyboard mapping.
The "Shortcuts" section can be used to configure the keyboard shortcuts that can be activated while the emulation is running. Hatari supports two sets of keyboard shortcuts: The first type is activated by pressing a modifier key (AltGr / right Alt by default, Cmd key on macOS) together with the key, and the second type is directly activated by pressing a single key, without additional modifier key. Use the arrow buttons to select the shortcut that you want to change, then press one of the Define buttons to change the key for the shortcut. You'll be prompted to press the key that should be used. If you reconsider and don't want to change the key, you can press the left mouse button instead. By pressing the right mouse button during the prompt, you can also erase the current shortcut setting.
You can select to record a piece of sound here. Use the Browse button to choose a file. The file name extension that you use (.WAV or .YM) determines in which format the sound is recorded in. The Record sound button is a toggle so you will need to return to the GUI to switch sound recording off again (or to use the keyboard shortcut for that).
If joystick emulation via keyboard is enabled, by default cursor keysare used for the directions and right CTRL keyas the fire button. Otherwise they act as corresponding keys of the emulatedAtari ST.
NOTE: Problems with simultaneous keypresses most likely aren't anissue in Hatari as many modern keyboards report/support only threesimultaneous key presses (or even just two depending on which keysare in question). Expensive gaming keyboards support more.
NOTE: you need to be careful when mounting device files. Depending onthe system setup (e.g. udev settings) partitions on memory cards etc.can be mounted automatically. When Hatari is started and uses a devicefile with partitions that are already mounted, data can be destroyed(when several programs independently write to the same device).Disable your desktop automount, or remember to manually unmountdevices before giving them to Hatari.
Hatari has also a facility to measure FPS i.e. Frames Per Second.Enable frame skipping with--fast-forward yes option(or use the corresponding keyboard shortcut) and set--log-level info.Then after a while, press the "Pause" key. Whenever Hatari emulationis paused, Hatari will output on console info on how many VBLs itcould show per second, along with some other numbers. 2ff7e9595c
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