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QXGEdit 0.0.1 - Ten Years After

Ten years after, nothing to do with Alvin Lee's but one by-product of this über-procrastinator of yours truly :) here goes one more strike to the Linux Audio ecosystem. Rather an almost forgotten niche nowadays, I cannot let this rot in my hard disk. There it is, a XG Editor for the masses, at least the ones who love gems like the Yamaha DB50XG, a precious old piece of hardware that I do strive and joy (pun intended).

If, by this time you don't have the slightest idea of what I'm talking about, move on, there's nothing to see here. This is strictly pure nineties memorabilia but one of the finest pieces of junk you could rig into a PC and turn it on a full-fledged rave machine. Do you remember the days? Awe my 8)

Now that you're following in tune (probably you already googled around) you may reckon that XGEdit95 and XG-Gold are two fine examples of the same subject. More than fine, both do excel in their purpose. There were the high times of shareware (I've told you before, this is memorabilia:) ... yeah right.

Enter QXGEdit. While both of the former may drink the young wine just fine, it has been my prerogative doing things my own way. Linux straight. How could it be any other way? Truth is, this bastard has been slugging on my attic far too long, but this late summer it has revived to a new life. Time to bring it down and share. Provided theres still enough interest on the scene ;)

Website:

http://qxgedit.sourceforge.net

Project page:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qxgedit

Downloads:

Weblog (upstream support):

http://www.rncbc.org

License:

QXGEdit is free, open-source software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.

Documentation:

Yamaha DB50XG Owner's Manual

Comments

Hey, do you remember Final Fantasy VII for the PC (gosh I lost track of all the discs back then and I didn't put it back in the case before it gets scratched)?

Anyway, nice XG Editor!

Seriously, if there's an XG softsynth for Linux that I can play with and use QXGEdit for that, I'd be golden. But nah... I don't have the hardware XG synth. Even if I were to get a DB50XG daughterboard and find a compatible sound card for that, there's no way I can expand the polyphony up to 128 notes from 32. :(

Oh, and by the way, there are some discontinued Yamaha devices I'd wish I have one of those, even though I couldn't afford it:
MU128 (holy grail of XG sound module), along with non-XG devices such as FS1R (Formant Synthesis), CS6R, EX5R, and RM1x. These are the devices that I'll have a lot of trouble getting those names off my memory as I'm trying to stick with the times for today and tomorrow -- even in the future. Those are the discontinued devices that I'd love to add to my collection.

rncbc's picture

As said on the announcement, the DB50XG daughter board it's a rare piece of junk these days. You can only find it on Ebay as any soundcard providing a waveblaster connector that you sure need to plug it in.

Most if not all of my boxes have one of these, usually piggy-backed on a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz PCI sound card. It works perfect. But I do also have a pair of those stand-alone, for the laptops, in good ol'solder-iron-DIY-way from an Elektor magazine PCB design (ca. July 97 IIRC).

BTW, there's a German company, I guess located in Karlsruhe (geist-electronic.de), that sells all parts, PCB and custom metal casing for you to revive this precious nineties project, if you wish power back on your soldering iron. I'll post here the URL as soon as I bring it down from the dusty attic. It's a German-only bargain but, as they used to say, Google is your friend.

[UPDATE:] There it is: http://server4.gs-shop.de/200/cgi-bin/shop.dll?AnbieterID=9187&Seite=frameset.htm, only you have to do is search for "db50xg" (in Suche / Suchbegriff(e):)

Cheers

Amazing

Okay. As a retired engineer - I'm nostalgic. Heck, I still have my original Amiga system. I go in and drool over it from time to time. Neither it, not QXG has any relevance today, but it is nice to see that somebody remembers the old days. Thanks for sharing!

Where can I get a fully functional (not Shareware) copy of "XG-Gold"? The developer 'hans joachim stulgies' has completely disappeared and no source offers the version that also allows to export parts etc, or to load more than '2 Element Voices'. It's a nugget -- XG-Gold, so I guess I have to keep digging. Or anyone can help out?

Hello, I have the same problem. Digging for a fully functional version oft xggold. Wege you successful meanwhile?

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