[64studio-devel] saving to floppy - why save and unmount to physically save?

[Daniel James]

Hi Pete,

> re: saving to floppy - why save and unmount to physically save?

It's not necessary to unmount in order to save. To explain the 
difference, imagine that there was an automatic lock on the door of the 
floppy drive, to stop you ejecting the disc during the write of data. 
(In actual fact, only CD-ROM drives have this feature).

When you mount the floppy, you are closing the lock. After you've 
finished with the floppy, you therefore have to unlock the disc before 
you can safely eject it. Most OS's handle this mounting and unmounting 
transparently, so you don't notice.

> Still a great distribution though, by installing the KDE and KDE 
> multimedia package I can play CD's, midi files, midi and cdg karaoke 
> files, record in through mic or line input to audacity, and rosegarden 
> 1.4 works a treat with external XG midi keyboards .

If you are running the KDE desktop you should install kfloppy instead of 
gfloppy:

http://packages.debian.org/testing/utils/kfloppy

This will give you better integration with your desktop of choice.

 > Using Ardour etc. is
> still a bit baffling

Ardour is designed for people who are familiar with digital mixing desks 
(using automation) and DAWs like ProTools or Nuendo. If your users need 
these kinds of features, it's well worth investigating. For slower 
computers, Audacity works better, because the effects aren't applied in 
real time.

Mail me offlist with details of your school, and I'll see what we can do 
to help.

Cheers!

Daniel