Section 14 — Storage
ASR-10 Musician’s Manual
2
Disk Storage
• MACROS — The file structure of the ASR-10 is set up so that each directory can hold up to 38
files. If any additional files are needed within the directory, a sub-directory must be created to
hold those extra files. When working with a directory/file structure that is several layers
deep, it is convenient to have a quick way to get to a sub-directory that is down deep in the
structure. MACROS allow you to do that by using direct-dialing in much the same way that
direct-dialing is used to access commands and parameters. The SAVE MACRO FILE
command (on the Command/System•MIDI page) allows you to save your macros to disk.
• O.S. — The computer program that controls the ASR-10 (the Operating System, or O.S.) is contained
on a disk and is loaded into RAM upon booting. The O.S. also contains the global parameter
settings that are saved with the Command/System•MIDI SAVE GLOBAL PARAMETERS
command. The disk that came with your ASR-10 contains the current O.S. Operating System
upgrades will be available from your Authorized ENSONIQ Dealer as they are released. The
COPY O.S. TO DISK command (on the Command/System•MIDI page) allows you to copy the
O.S. to a different disk.
Disk Capacity — Bytes, Blocks, and Files
The instruments, banks, songs, and sequences that the ASR-10 plays are stored on 3.5” micro-
floppy disks. The ASR-10 has a high-density (HD) drive, allowing you to use both Double-Sided
High-Density and Double-Sided Double-Density disks:
• Double-Density disks — can store 800 kilobytes of data, which translates into about 1600
Blocks.
• High-Density disks — can store 1600 kilobytes of data, which translates into about 3200
Blocks.
A Block is a handy unit which the ASR-10 uses to measure internal and disk memory — 1
Block=512 bytes=256 sample words; 2 Blocks=1k bytes; 4 Blocks=1k sample words.
ASR-10 disk files vary in size — how many will fit on a disk depends on the type of disk, the type
of formatting, the number of files, and the size of the files.
There are two types of formatting that can be used to format a floppy disk:
• ENSONIQ — this format offers the largest amount of free blocks.
• COMPUTER — this format has fewer free blocks, because it allows Macintosh™ and IBM™
computers running the appropriate translation software to read the disks.
Disk Type
High -Density
High-Density
Double-Density
Double-Density
Format
(Sector Offset)
ENSONIQ
(offset 0)
COMPUTER
(offset 1)
ENSONIQ
(offset 0)
COMPUTER
(offset 1)
Kilobytes
1600
1440
800
720
Sample Words
800k
720k
400k
360k
Blocks
3176
2863
1585
1426
There are limits to the number of files on a disk:
• Each disk can hold a maximum of 156 files.
• A disk can hold up to 60 files of any one file type, but no more than the total of 156 files of all
types will fit on a single disk.
