Scope Installer could use an overhaul

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dante
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Scope Installer could use an overhaul

Post by dante »

Having recently set up a dual boot to Windows 10, installing Scope 7 fresh and getting 'timeout waiting for acknowledge from dsp 6 (communication not stalled)' error on Scope 7 startup, I found a workaround.

That is, I copied the SCOPE folder from my Win8 partition, which was Scope 5. with Scope7 installed over the top - to my Win 10 partition. It worked - got rid of the error, but I lost the device menu on the RoutingWindow. I then ran the Scope 7 installer again and now the device menu is re-instated. All works well now, Scope 7 x64 on Win 10. Great.

Seems to me that one area of focus could be the installer, where this could eliminate a LOT of support issues if done good. Heres what I'm thinking the attributes of a new installer would be:

. Base scope components would be separated from 3rd party products. This way, it would be possible for the installer to blow away and re-install a fresh base Scope and stock devices, without touching the 3rd party stuff. And 3rd party stuff should be able to use the installer just to install their own devices (also without touching the base Scope structure)..
. The 'menu constructor' part of the installer should be able to be run anytime independent of a full install. The menu constructor would create a single combined menu consisting of S|C devices and 3rd party devices - even though third party stuff would be a separate subfolder.
. The menu structure and a manifest of all devices would be stored in an XML file.
. 3rd party's should include an XML manifest of all files for that given device (.dev, .dll, .dsp etc) which would be merged in with the main XML manifest.
. 3rd party device manifest XML's could be written any time - eg by support or anyone here.
. A scanner could scan the current installation to rebuild the manifest.

Im thinking some of these (somewhat rough) ideas could be improved or evolved and emliminate some of the setup issues that come from having to manually merge or reinstall 3rd party devices after a fresh install of Scope. There seems to be no real formalised way of doing this at the moment.

Thoughts ?
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yayajohn
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Re: Scope Installer could use an overhaul

Post by yayajohn »

Hi dante;

I have been keeping up with most of the threads here on PZ. From my perspective the installer worked perfectly. No errors. What I did was just back up my existing Scope folders to a different area and just run the installers as is to the existing folder. Everything seems to work just fine.
Computer 1 Xite-1 on Win7 64bit
Computer 2 Scope PCI with 3 cards Win10 32bit

Those seem like good improvement ideas (way over my head though)
but after the dust settles I think we should take the time to investigate just exactly the conditions that lead up to these errors.
Just my opinion but it seems to me that moving things around and copying things back and reinstalling just opens up a big can of worms. You also have a non-standard setup having the Xite and PCI cards in the same system and that has already been stated by others here that there is a risk of system problems doing that. Not saying that was the cause just that it could have been a factor.

I did have a scare the other day with the dNa Effects rack. Everytime I loaded it, it would cause a system crash or a Scope crash. Initially I couldn't figure what the cause was because I was using it the day before no problem and didn't load any new devices or change the config. Then I remembered that I saved a new preset file. Went and moved all the Effects Rack presets and it loaded up perfectly. One of the presets had become corrupt!
Just one example of how things can get screwy that was not related at all to the new upgrade.
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dante
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Re: Scope Installer could use an overhaul

Post by dante »

yayajohn wrote: What I did was just back up my existing Scope folders to a different area and just run the installers as is to the existing folder. Everything seems to work just fine.
I agree. That worked. What didnt work is installing a fresh Scope 7 on Win 10 on a freshly formatted drive. It worked on Win 8. Irrespective of having PCI cards on same system or not, that to me is an installer issue, along with many other issues encountered in these threads.

The manual system of combining S|C installed and 3rd party installed just isnt good practice IMHO. Whatsmore, installers for other products seem way more advanced (Reason, Cubase, VST's like Kontakt, Toontracks, etc) many of which have client based control centers that communicate with central server plus the ability to work offline.
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yayajohn
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Re: Scope Installer could use an overhaul

Post by yayajohn »

ok I see. yes I agree that should work on a clean system w/o any problems. What do you think about Ocean Swift and spacef with their installers? They seem to work very well, at first I wasn't to keen on them because I like to customize my folders but I complied with their setups and am very happy with them.

btw I just saw on another thread that someone else with an Xite1D had the popup for DSP #6.
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dante
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Re: Scope Installer could use an overhaul

Post by dante »

Havent used the SpaceF and OS installers. They sound good. Can you show me the other thread ?
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yayajohn
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Re: Scope Installer could use an overhaul

Post by yayajohn »

Sorry dante been tied up all day.
Here is the thread I think that is related to your experience.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35259
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dante
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Re: Scope Installer could use an overhaul

Post by dante »

Great thanks - I updated that post
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