Chapter 13: Installing In The Macintosh, And Using The Bundled Xgeditor - Yamaha SW1000XG Advanced Manualbook

Chapter 13
Installing in the Macintosh, and using the bundled Yamaha
XGEditor.
The SW1000XG had enjoyed huge success on the PC platform, but it was always Yamaha's intention to release
Macintosh drivers and support software for the card. This finally came to light in mid 1999 with our first ASIO & OMS
compatible driver release coupled with our XGEditor software for Macintosh.
Before reading this chapter, please make sure you have read all of the chapters, which cover the specifications, and
details of the SW1000XG. It will not harm also to check out some of the PC specific chapters (especially if you use
Cubase or Logic on your Mac) as some of the points covered in these sections are just as relevant to the Mac as
they are to the PC.
For most Macintosh users, who are used to soundcards that only did hard disk recording, the SW1000XG was a
revelation. Never before had a card offered synthesis, hard-disk recording, effects processing and digital mixing all in
one. However due to the fact that this had never been done before, certain initial 'teething' problems arose. Hopefully
this chapter will aim to cover the setup and configuration of the SW1000XG on the Macintosh platform, and also bring
to light a few problems associated with the Macintosh, especially some of the early incarnations of the new B&W G3
models.
Installation of the SW1000XG with the Apple Macintosh.
Compared to the installation of SW1000XG on the PC, (which is an easy install) this is a breeze. First and foremost
you should make sure that your Macintosh is running OS 8.1 at least. At the time of writing Apple had just released
system 8.6, which offered even greater stability (and was a requirement for the B&W machines). You should also try
and make sure that your machine has a decent amount of RAM (For applications like Cubase VST or Logic Audio on
the Macintosh, Yamaha recommend at least 128megs...with RAM so cheap, you owe it to yourself!).
Now Macintosh users who may have read the PC related chapters would no doubt be rubbing their hands together
will glee at the thought of not having to mess about with those awful IRQ things. But would not be overly happy when
then open up their new blue and white pride, to discover that they only have a couple of PCI slots left.
A lot of Macintosh machines of the B&W variety only come with 1 or perhaps 2 free PCI slots. This is due to the SCSI
interface, beloved by all music makers not being present as standard on new Macs (damn!). Also you will usually find
that a slot has a rather big video card manufactured by ATI living in it (again something all Macs previously had
embedded on their main-boards). So there are potentially 2 PCI your slots gone before you even begin. If you then
want to plug in a DS2416 as well, you may find that if you ever need another free slot, you could be stumped. The
USB interface is too slow for the kind of complex operations and multi-channel audio the SW1000XG is capable of,
so bear this in mind when choosing your cards. At least with the SW1000XG you have pretty much everything on 1
card in the first place.
So you open up your computer, and put the SW1000XG in a free PCI slot, what next?
Well, now its time to restart you machine, and install the software & drivers which are available from the CD-ROM
(SW1000XG's shipped after May 1999) or from our Xgfactory website (always a good place to start to get the latest
versions).
To install the drivers, you must first have OMS installed. OMS (Opcode Music System) is a set of extensions and
programs that help to bridge the gap between MIDI software and hardware on the Mac. It is pretty much now
accepted as a universal standard for Macintosh MIDI applications. It handles patch management, all information
relating to your setup/MIDI studio, and handles your MIDI timing. If you don't have the latest version of OMS, then a
www.opcode.com
quick visit to the Opcode website at will get you going. OMS is free to download, and as we
have said, essential to the SW1000XG.
Opcode also provide a very comprehensive guidebook in PDF format to OMS, which is also free from their website.
This chapter will not cover all of the subtleties of OMS, as the Opcode guidebook goes into great detail on certain
options and set-up configurations, which would be beyond the scope of this guide. Needless to say that if you are not
familiar with OMS, now is the time to go and get that OMS guidebook.
Once OMS is installed, you can proceed with running the SW1000XG installer.
On your CD-ROM (or downloaded driver set) you will find an SW1000 Installer folder, within this you should find the
Install SWDriver icon. Double click "Install SWDriver" icon and your Mac will begin to install the following files in the
locations as listed.
System Folder: Extensions: SWXGDriver
System Folder: OMS Folder: SW1000XG OMS Driver
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