Strand 500 series OLE

[wilberforce]

Okay so I downloaded the OLE from bobby's website, but can only 1 screen up, no keys or anything. How do I get the second screen and the keypad up?

[obsoperator]

I don't really mind who hosts it, and where they host it, I had given permission to Strand when they emailed me to host it on their site, although it seems that they never got arround to adding it. Glad someone had a copy lying arround as my copies were lost in the great server crash of '06.

 

Thanks for your original efforts and generosity. I shouldn't speak for him, but Bobby Harrell and Strand/successor company are [holding fingers parallel and touching] "like that". His posting is virtually a "Strand" hosting.

 

Mac, I'm confused about your description. Did you mean to say, your Windows "98" version? Bobby's file is not an ISO image of a bootable CD-ROM, and I don't know that anything else will run Strand OLE on Windows XP or later. That's because an XP hard drive is certainly NTFS, and the XP won't give OLE enough access rights (even if it could read the hard drive!) after XP has booted up.

 

An entirely separate issue is that I had hoped to use your ISO project as a basis for a CD-ROM to run ETC Obsession I Off-Line (a DOS program) on XP machines. But I don't know enough about building ISO images, or about FreeDOS.

[GRisdale]

Okay so I downloaded the OLE from bobby's website, but can only 1 screen up, no keys or anything. How do I get the second screen and the keypad up?

The off line editor is just that - an offline version of the software (ie. you don't get a control 'surface' like you do on the Pearl demo). To control it you need to use the standard keyboard keys listed in the back of the (down-loadable) strand manual.

To start you off: "Esc" cycles through the different screens. "G" is X1 GO. "Shift + R" is record. Call up channels using the number keys and the "@" key as.... @. "Enter" is predictably "Enter" (or *).

 

Many thanks to Mike and Bobby for allowing me to arrive at this point (I am writing this post in XP with the OLE minimised in the task bar - without any messing around with boot disks and QEMU malarky!)

 

 

Gareth.

[mac.calder]

Mac, I'm confused about your description. Did you mean to say, your Windows "98" version? Bobby's file is not an ISO image of a bootable CD-ROM, and I don't know that anything else will run Strand OLE on Windows XP or later. That's because an XP hard drive is certainly NTFS, and the XP won't give OLE enough access rights (even if it could read the hard drive!) after XP has booted up.

 

No. What it is, is an emulator which runs freedos (which is as the name suggests, a free version of dos) which can run the OLE, and it runs it all within a single window on whatever operating system you use. qEmu, which is the emulator can be downloaded for pretty much any mainstream operating system (the windows version is included in the package). I never made an ISO image - an ISO image usually means it is a bootable CD, which means you have to reboot the PC to boot into a new operating system - the qEmu image on the other hand does not reqire rebooting, just running of the batch file I included in the package.

[peternewman]

:** laughs out loud **:

[geek]Fancy the Strand OLE on your PC, mobile phone, set-top box, possibly even your refrigerator? Someone has created a Java based PC emulator, so you could run the Strand OLE practically anywhere, including perhaps your new Palette, more details here.[/geek]

[Bobby Harrell]

Fair enough! At some point I really must find the time to give it a try. At the moment, we have a machine in the workshop that dual-boots into W98, so any OLE work that we need to do tends to get done on that. Would be useful to have something that would run on other machines, though ...

 

It is Mac's. I talked to him about getting permission to put it on Strand's website but the web guys haven't gotten around to it so I put it on my site. You're right. I do need to give him appropriate credit. It was just easiest to put it there as I have had several folks ask for it and that seemed to be the simplest way to deal with it. Certainly not trying to take credit for Mac's work.

 

Ah, I see. So it creates a bootable CD image, then? Or runs within XP? Or ....?

 

Aside from that, just as a minor point, if this website is distributing MacCalder's work, I'd have thought it would be nice if they credited him on the site ... in fact, if I was MacCalder I'd insist upon it ...

 

Credit has now been given...

[t97810090]

Hey everyone

 

I'm aware this thread is a little out of date but hoping someone out there has some info on Mac Calder's awesome QEMU Strand OLE that can help.

 

Firstly, does anyone have a link to the instructions file? The original link is now no longer... I've been tinkering a bit but would love to see the how-to's

 

Secondly, is there anyway to run this as a remote or is it purely the original strand OLE?

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

 

Tom

[neothermic]

Don't meant to commit thread necrophilia, but this seemed like a good place to briefly ask - is there any way to run the strand OLE as a standalone control system? I'm pretty sure the answer is no but wanted to check in case anyone's found a way!

 

I've got various bits of hardware for the DMX conversion, but am I right in thinking the OLE is totally disabled from outputting?

[IRW]

Don't meant to commit thread necrophilia, but this seemed like a good place to briefly ask - is there any way to run the strand OLE as a standalone control system? I'm pretty sure the answer is no but wanted to check in case anyone's found a way!

 

I've got various bits of hardware for the DMX conversion, but am I right in thinking the OLE is totally disabled from outputting?

 

You are correct in thinking the offline editor cannot be used as a standalone control system, unless you have a strand dongle which essentially turns it into a console running on a PC.

 

By the way, for anyone who does have a dongle, to save having to have a dedicated DOS computer, VMWare Player is your friend for running the console software under Windows! (and then IngeniusPro becomes very useful...!)

 

Seeing as this thread has popped up anyway, I'll quickly mention that I have been working on a way of getting IngeniusPro to talk to the Strand OLE when it is running in QEMU. Stay tuned to the IngeniusPro thread for further information!

[neothermic]

 

 

You are correct in thinking the offline editor cannot be used as a standalone control system, unless you have a strand dongle which essentially turns it into a console running on a PC.

 

 

 

Is there a specific dongle required? Know where I could find one? Various searches dont bring up anything particularly specific. Also, lets say hypothetically I have a 300 series control surface with a dead brain, has anybody had any success resurrecting the control surface by replacing the processor unit with a PC running network enabled OLE?

 

 

 

[spotblaster]

The dongles Strand used were made by a firm called Softlok and are basically a 25 pin D-type plug and socket with a small pcb between. They sit on the parallel port of a console or PC. They can be programmed to function with the GeniusPro software by anyone who has access to the Strand console password program which I think is called "PCpas". Of course you would have to pay for this!

 

As IRW says VMware player is your friend and combined with his IngeniousPro the possibility of a Strand Hardware free console running GeniusPro is a reality.

 

 

Spotblaster

[Grahame]

Ahhhh..... thread necrophilia is strangely satisfying.

 

I find myself having to deal with a Strand 500 series next week so I've been porting a show into the OLE in preparation.

 

First, the good news. Mac Calder's OLE runs just fine on Windows 10. The bad news is that I can't for the life of me find where it's saving the show.

 

I've installed the OLE in a directory as c:\StrandOLE. When I run the .bat file I select D, then type c:\StrandOLE as the virtual disk (I then get the 'select save location' dialogue again, which seems a tad suspicious), press enter and it all starts up nicely. But where is it saving? It's not in c:\StrandOLE\ or c:\StrandOLE\shows - I even tried creating a c:\shows directory but no joy.

 

Am I missing something or is Windows 10 just messing with me?

[DrV]

Quick and dirty solution - save the show with a thoroughly unique name then just kick off a search for that name across the whole computer. Had to do that the first time I used MagicQ.

Dave

[IRW]

Quick and dirty solution - save the show with a thoroughly unique name then just kick off a search for that name across the whole computer. Had to do that the first time I used MagicQ.

Dave

 

It's been a while, but don't you need to 'map' the a: drive in the OLE to somewhere on the computer?

[Grahame]

Quick and dirty solution - save the show with a thoroughly unique name then just kick off a search for that name across the whole computer. Had to do that the first time I used MagicQ.

Dave

Tried that. Still can't find it, even using the 'Everything' search tool. That usually finds... well, everything!

It's been a while, but don't you need to 'map' the a: drive in the OLE to somewhere on the computer?

Did that - that's the 'D' option when it boots up. I've tried mapping it as c:\shows, c:\StrandOLE (my installation folder), even c:\Users\....\AppData\ yadahyadah.