1.0 Introduction CZL230 is an Instrument Librarian for the CZ-230S synthesizer from Casio. It was built based on CZL (v1.0) which is used with most of the other CZ keyboards. It was customized for the CZ-230S based on information (and requests) from CZ-230S owners. Since I don't have a CZ-230S, I hope that all that information was correct. If you find a problem with CZL230, *PLEASE* let me know so I can correct it. If you have never seen CZL (versions 1.0 or 0.8), you may want to get the full set of documents, which should be in another ARC file where you got this one. However, this document should be enough to get you started without requiring the full up docs, which are long and specific for the non-CZ230 version of CZL. CZL230 is SHAREWARE. Some of you CZ-230 owner's have managed to get some use out of CZL already and have sent me a contribution. If you have contributed then thanks, and consider CZL230 as my gift to you. If you haven't contributed, try out this customized version of CZL. If you use it beyond that test drive, I ask that you send me 10 dollars (is that going to break anyone?). If you don't like CZL230 (enough that you won't use it), drop me a note and make suggestions for improvements. CZL230 has come a long way since its first release, and with more encouragement I will probably make more improvements. Send your contribution or suggestions to: Steve Anderson 3913 W. 184th Street Torrance, CA 90504 2.0 Compatibility With Other Versions From a Librarian standpoint, CZL230 is completely compatible with the other versions of CZL. That is, all instrument data files that you find on the PLink, CIS, GEnie, or your local BBS that work with CZL will work with CZL230. There are getting to be alot of those instruments around, and I would suggest you download some of them. 3.0 CZL and the CZ-230S The CZ-230S has a total of 100 instruments. These are addressed across the MIDI as voices 0 through 99. Of these 100 instruments, the first 96 are read-only, and cannot be modified. These can be selected across the MIDI, but you can't load new instrument data into them. The last four voices (96-99) are read/write, so that they can be modified. Unfortunately for most CZ-230 owners, Casio didn't provide a way on the keyboard to make such changes. The good news is that you can load these voices across the MIDI, in the same format used by the other CZ keyboards. Enter CZL230. CZL230 is a full-featured librarian that allows you to maintain and edit instrument data files for voices 96-99 on your CZ-230S. It also provides a useful graphical interface to select (all 100), name, load, save, delete, and edit instrument data on the CZ-230S. CZL230 has been designed with an effort to make the interface between the Amiga and the CZ transparent, in that everything you do with the program has immediate effect on the keyboard. 3.0 Files There are four types of files used by CZL230. The four file types, their functions, and how they are different from earlier versions are described in the following paragraphs: o Defaults File - CZL must find this file in order to operate. Some key things to keep in mind about the defaults file are: (1) It would normally be named "CZ.defaults" but can be named anything and specified on the CLI command line (e.g. typing "CZL230 myCZ230.config" at the CLI prompt would load the file "myCZ230.cofig" as the defaults file). If no command line argument is provided, CZL will try to open the file CZL:CZ.defaults, in which case you will need to have done an "assign" of CZL: to the correct path where you keep the file; (2) The first entry in the defaults file is path and name of the current environment file (to be described later) which also is necessary for CZL to run. (3) The remaining lines of the defaults file specify the default path names where you want CZL230 to normally look for instruments, environments, and banks, respectively (these are all specific file types, descriptions to follow). The entries must be in that order, start in the first column, and no blank lines are allowed. (4) Comment fields are now allowed - CZL will read each line until a "white space" (space, tab, etc.) then ignore the rest. This means that you can't have imbedded spaces in any of your entries, else the part after the space will be ignored as a comment. This all probably makes more sense with an example. Here is what a defaults file might look like (remeber, the comments are OK): CZL:current.env <- My current environment file CZL:env <- My default path for environments CZL:inst <- My default instrument path CZL:banks <- My default path for bank files o Environment files - These files are just text files that tell CZL230 the names and paths of instrument data files that you use together. Each environment file will contain four instrument names, one per line. A special version of environment file, the current environment file, is used by CZL230 to remeber what voices (instruments) you have in the CZ between sessions. When you load one of the writable voices on your CZ-230S, the keyboard will retain it until you change it again, even though you turn off the power. CZL230 retains the names of the instruments you have in your CZ in the current environment file, so that each time you start up CZL230 it remebers what instruments you have. If you do a "Save Env" or "Open Env" only the names are read from / written to the environment file; the actual instrument data is not manipulated. o Instrument Files - These files contain the binary data for individual instruments. The files are 128-byte packed voice data from the CZ, one voice per file. o Bank Files - These files are binary files containing the instrument data for all four writable instruments. They are simply sets of multiple 128-byte voice blocks. The important thing to remember is that Bank files don't have instrument names in them, so that when you load a bank file you don't get an updated display on the instrument window. This is dangerous because suddenly the voice names shown on the screen may have nothing to do with the data you just loaded. Doing a "Save All Instruments" would be disastrous, writing over the correctly-named instrument files with the just-loaded data. If the right order of things are done, this can be avoided. The intent here is that you would load an environment file (containing only names), then after verifying that it is the set of voices you want, load the corresponding bank for those instruments. To help in doing this, when you load an environment file, CZL copies the environment file name into the default bank file name. Thus if you load an environment then go to load a bank file, you could load the corresponding bank file. Anyway, 'til I come up with a good fail-safe, just *BE CAREFUL*. 4.0 Operation CZL230 is relatively self-explanatory in operation, so that rather than give a lengthy explanation I would encourage you to simply take it for a test drive. There are two windows, the Instrument Window and the Edit Window. The Instrument Window is the main window where you can do instrument selection (go ahead, click on a name!), and all of the Librarian functions. The Edit window is only available when you have selected one of the writable voices (96, 97, 98, or 99), and is opened when you select "Modify..." from the Edit menu. It allows you to create new instruments (even random ones), modify existing ones, or enter data from one of the Casio CZ Pro-Tone books.