[PlanetCCRMA] Sysex utility?

[Jason Balicki]

Hello,

A local music store had their annual "Garage Sale" over the weekend
where they get rid of their old rental equipment and trade-ins and
whatnot.  I got an excellent deal on an old Roland D-20.  I found
some patches on the Internet and I want to transfer them to the
keyboard, but I'm having some trouble.

Any other time I've needed to transfer sysex data to a device I've just
done a "cat file.syx > /dev/sequencer" and the device takes it (I've
upgraded the firmware on my Vetta amp this way) with no trouble,
but for whatever reason this D-20 just will *not* accept data
transferred in this fashion.  I put the device in "bulk transfer"
mode and the display says "waiting", I send the data down the wire
with "cat" and then -- nothing.  It just sits there "waiting" at me.
I can do a transfer the other direction and capture the factory banks,
but it takes a very long time.  Because of the length of the transfer
*from* the device, I suspect that the data is just going too fast *to*
the D-20 for it to handle.

I've attempted to use several "slowcat" utilities I've found on the
Internet (a couple of perl scripts and an actual c program) but for
whatever reason I can't get them to actually send the data down the
wire.  For example, I can do a "slowcat.pl file.syx" and see the data
being displayed slowly, but if I try to do "slowcat.pl file.sys >
/dev/sequencer" nothing goes down the wire (the midi out light
stays dark on my interface -- if I just use cat I can see the light
blink briefly.)

So, I guess I'm asking if anyone has any other ideas I can try.

I'd really appreciate any information at all.

Thanks,

--J(K)