Accessing the /samples/ partition, etc.
Started by Ryan Steinbruner




14 posts in this topic
hansehv

168 posts 17 threads Joined: Dec 2020
19-02-21, 21:49 -
#11
Hi,
Windows only recognizes only the first partition on SD devices, so your action will not give the result you want.
And worse, as the the sample partition is loaded unconditionally at boot as ext4 while its FAT, startup will give alarming error messages and refuse to mount the /samples. In short: don't do that.
If you want convenient access to samples from windows, you have to use a thumb-drive and if you want to use the internal space, you'll either have to use a non-windows machine to mount the SD or sftp to samplerbox.
As this is not a forum for complaining about windows, we have to silently accept that as a fact  Sad

Regarding the test and missing sound:
I assume that you ran the speaker test after the crippled startup as described above.
If you didn't stop samplerbox, this holds you device busy. So this being busy is OK.
If you used above startup without the samples, samplerbox cannot play anything. Nothing wrong here.

What you absolutely should do when debugging samplerbox: stop the automatic started box and restart manually so you can see & report console messages. Having no sound can have so much causes - the only thing I can reply to such a statement is: "I have sound, so something is possibly wrong at your side"; very unsatisfying.
....and in the log you would have seen that no sample could be loaded or other lead...
hdoa

12 posts 5 threads Joined: Feb 2021
19-02-21, 22:57 -
#12
Windows recognized both partitions, BOOT and samples, as separate drives.

I was able to add samples to it from Windows, but like you said, SamplerBox refused to mount the FAT32 samples partition.  I personally think that's a huge flaw.

Nevertheless, I'm grateful that SamplerBox exists and I hope I can still find use with it. 

I'm going to just concede and just use a smaller SD to boot from, and use a thumbdrive for my samples.

*Sigh* Confused
hansehv

168 posts 17 threads Joined: Dec 2020
19-02-21, 23:11 -
#13
Hi Ryan,
Hm, that's pretty new. Windows used to "see" it in disk management and such, but refused to assign a drive letter.
I'd liked to have enabled the access you require, but since access from windows was impossible when I was addressing that, I reverted to ext4 as that's a safer / more robust file system (so at that point in time it was not a flaw).
But the advantage of access from windows is obvious, so I could change that in next release.
To be sure I'm making a right decision (= create a user friendly solution): you could put samples on it - was this via the normal drive-letter way?
hansehv

168 posts 17 threads Joined: Dec 2020
20-02-21, 01:20 -
#14
Performed some new tests and bingo, looks good now.
However I'll go for NTFS.
  • Also accessible from windows
  • More robust/safer than FAT (similar preference as for ext4)
  • Can be resized non destructively - FAT requires reformat.
If you require it straight away, please send me a PM - I want to avoid filling the forum with info which will obsoleted within a month or so because this is a last minute change of the new release.
Thanks for pointing out this possibility.
hdoa

12 posts 5 threads Joined: Feb 2021
21-02-21, 02:14 -
#15
I flashed SamplerBox to a fresh SD card and was able to get my AUDIO+ hifi board working given the instructions you sent.

I've given up trying to store samples on the SD  card itself, and am now using a thumb drive for samples. 

However, I am having a hard time figuring out how to switch samples.  The + and - buttons on my MIDI keyboard don't do anything, though the pitch knob works. 

There are plenty of extra buttons and knobs on my keyboard, so surely one of these could be assigned this role?  I have having a hard time understanding the documentation on the matter.