Anyone had any luck with embedded KX systems?

TheKezReturns · Nov 19, 2007, 11:12 PM

My brain was so badly traumatized by windows and all it's pitfalls and endless tweaking that I made the move to a macbook pro some time ago for my live rig.
Now my life is so much sweeter with the mac but I really miss the KX DSP and synth.

I've yet to find a suitable replacement for my rhodes soundfont and all the FX I had running in the DSP.

There was an old thread that touched on the topic of emu10Kx card on an embedded system but it seemed a bit out of reached back then with talk of custom built OS's and the like.

But now things are looking a bit more feasible. I'm dreaming of the tiniest board available with a PCI slot and a CPU fast enough to handle the KX drivers. Ideally a 4 or 8G flash drive and enough ram for the soundfont, and a usb port for the midi interface.
It could run a bare-bones XP and KX and midi driver, nothing more. In normal operation it would not be connected to a mouse, keyboard or monitor, and would boot superfast and load my KX setup ready to go. It could be connected to the mac via a LAN cable and could be accessed via remote desktop running in paralells (this works great) if something needed to be changed.

Hopefully all this would be small enough to mount in a half rack sized case (with the PCI to rightangle converter) , 1/4 ' neutrik jacks (4 ins 2 outs) and midi ports mounted on the face.

Anyone made a headstart and this kind of thing lately?

JGSF · Nov 20, 2007, 06:41 AM

Check this out:

Intel ITX (17x17 cm)

TheKezReturns · Nov 20, 2007, 11:33 PM

A couple of those sure look affordable. And they seem like they'd be easy to work with too. But they're still rather bulky, especially in height with those heatsinks. I was hoping to find one with no actual ports on the pcb, just the headers for usb and ethernet so I could mount them on the face. I sure as hell don't need things like paralell, com and ps2 ports taking up precious space.

MOPS-PM - SAMPLES AVAILABLE NOW!

These look perfect (90 x 96mm) but no doubt expensive and tedious to work with. Also, I can't see a pci module anyway although it states it integrates the pci bus.

Perhaps the ZS notebook is worth investigating.

Nov 19, 2007, 11:12 PM	#1
TheKezReturns HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Gold Coast Australia Posts: 118 Rep Power: 0	Anyone had any luck with embedded KX systems? My brain was so badly traumatized by windows and all it's pitfalls and endless tweaking that I made the move to a macbook pro some time ago for my live rig. Now my life is so much sweeter with the mac but I really miss the KX DSP and synth. I've yet to find a suitable replacement for my rhodes soundfont and all the FX I had running in the DSP. There was an old thread that touched on the topic of emu10Kx card on an embedded system but it seemed a bit out of reached back then with talk of custom built OS's and the like. But now things are looking a bit more feasible. I'm dreaming of the tiniest board available with a PCI slot and a CPU fast enough to handle the KX drivers. Ideally a 4 or 8G flash drive and enough ram for the soundfont, and a usb port for the midi interface. It could run a bare-bones XP and KX and midi driver, nothing more. In normal operation it would not be connected to a mouse, keyboard or monitor, and would boot superfast and load my KX setup ready to go. It could be connected to the mac via a LAN cable and could be accessed via remote desktop running in paralells (this works great) if something needed to be changed. Hopefully all this would be small enough to mount in a half rack sized case (with the PCI to rightangle converter) , 1/4 ' neutrik jacks (4 ins 2 outs) and midi ports mounted on the face. Anyone made a headstart and this kind of thing lately?

Nov 20, 2007, 06:41 AM	#2
JGSF HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 452 Rep Power: 0	Check this out: Intel ITX (17x17 cm)

Nov 20, 2007, 11:33 PM	Thread Starter #3
TheKezReturns HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Gold Coast Australia Posts: 118 Rep Power: 0	A couple of those sure look affordable. And they seem like they'd be easy to work with too. But they're still rather bulky, especially in height with those heatsinks. I was hoping to find one with no actual ports on the pcb, just the headers for usb and ethernet so I could mount them on the face. I sure as hell don't need things like paralell, com and ps2 ports taking up precious space. MOPS-PM - SAMPLES AVAILABLE NOW! These look perfect (90 x 96mm) but no doubt expensive and tedious to work with. Also, I can't see a pci module anyway although it states it integrates the pci bus. Perhaps the ZS notebook is worth investigating.