Exchange tips and tricks for the Akai MPC4000
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By Fanu Wed Nov 30, 2016 3:16 pm
I bought a MPC 4K for a nice price: 500 EUR (fortunately, only paid about half so far).

The seller said the USB front panel connection is a bit wonky; TBH it's almost completely dead and it's pain to establish connection even for just 20 seconds, as it's always gone in a few seconds.

If I could access the HD with my El Capitan Mac and throw a bunch of samples in there, that'd be grand. But afaik, I can't. Seems aksys cannot be loaded with a modern Mac (I did googling on this topic).
Installing Windows on my Mac is completely out of the question, so let's skip that.

Two questions:

1) Is there any way to access the internal HD of the 4K via the back panel USB? If I could just get my samples there, that'd be something. I recall MPC 2500 lets you access it directly, but I'm not sure if 4K does (without aksys).
2) Does anyone have any clue regarding fixing the USB port / replacement part? I'm quite OK at soldering and have fixed plenty of old samplers etc when I just know what to replace etc.
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By TheUnfuckwithable Wed Nov 30, 2016 6:50 pm
Fanu wrote:Is there any way to access the internal HD of the 4K via the back panel USB?


Only via aksys.

EDIT: Lampdog beat me to it, goddammit!

EDIT2: This is the part you are looking for:

Image

MPCstuff has it, but they are charging A LOT for shipping. I guess you can find the part on mouser if you do your research...
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By TheUnfuckwithable Wed Nov 30, 2016 8:09 pm
Fanu wrote:
One thing I can say for sure and it's that I won't be installing Win on my Mac.


Like Lamp said, you only need to install Windows INSIDE the VirtualBox app. That´s a whole different story than installing Windows directly onto your boot drive.

Fanu wrote:(I opened it up, tried cleaning the USB part, no luck.


Did you check the solder joints too? Also check the contacts inside the socket.
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By Fanu Wed Nov 30, 2016 9:11 pm
**** wrote:
Fanu wrote:
One thing I can say for sure and it's that I won't be installing Win on my Mac.


Like Lamp said, you only need to install Windows INSIDE the VirtualBox app. That´s a whole different story than installing Windows directly onto your boot drive.

Fanu wrote:(I opened it up, tried cleaning the USB part, no luck.


Did you check the solder joints too? Also check the contacts inside the socket.


Yep, I did. Had a pretty thorough look and cleaned the contact surfaces.
Found out you have to be pushing the USB stick downwards at all times if you want the contact to happen; the moment you let it go, the USB is "ejected".
I think I'll just send the thing back for a full refund and take a look at a fully functioning one elsewhere.
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By Lampdog Wed Nov 30, 2016 10:39 pm
Virtual box is easy. I know and fully understand you don't want Windows touching your Mac, I get it.

Virtual OS's don't touch your main MAC os at all if you don't want it to. And when you want to do away with Win XP it's usually just one big file or folder to delete and your right back pre-win xp where you started, like it never existed on your Mac.

I do this on my Win10. I've used VirtualBox and VMWare (my fave) and have had several different Linux OS's in there. Win XP in there specifically for AkSys and my MPC4k it works perfectly.

Don't discount it as it's just another avenue to get you where you wanna go.
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By Fanu Thu Dec 01, 2016 2:40 am
Lampdog wrote:Virtual box is easy. I know and fully understand you don't want Windows touching your Mac, I get it.

Virtual OS's don't touch your main MAC os at all if you don't want it to. And when you want to do away with Win XP it's usually just one big file or folder to delete and your right back pre-win xp where you started, like it never existed on your Mac.

I do this on my Win10. I've used VirtualBox and VMWare (my fave) and have had several different Linux OS's in there. Win XP in there specifically for AkSys and my MPC4k it works perfectly.

Don't discount it as it's just another avenue to get you where you wanna go.


Thanks Lamp, I appreciate it! :)

This got me thinking...I do have another Mac laptop where I could probably install OS x 10.6.7 using Parallels/VMWare and use AKSys that way.
I gotta think of this for a moment actually :)
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By Lampdog Thu Dec 01, 2016 4:23 am
Installing to a virtual space NEVER touches your real mac registry.

I experimented with and learned ubuntu using virtual box this way on my Win7 pc a while back.
I deleted the ubuntu machine fom virtual box and it was like it never happened at all. I think it is
a real answer to this problem until you can get front usb in working condition.
User avatar
By richie Thu Dec 01, 2016 2:03 pm
@Lampdog there is no reason logical reason why a VM would interfere with the core OS. Some people will convince themselves of something bad will happen either way.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the 4000 formatted the drives to FAT32.

I would've requested a partial refund and then spend 5 dollars to replace the female USB port, although I do understand this may be difficult for some depending on your familiarity with soldering.
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By Fanu Thu Dec 01, 2016 2:30 pm
So how it went down!

I actually made it work, as I had Snow Leopard DVD in storage. So installed it, made ak.sys work...and it worked quite OK with the 4000 (I did get some dropouts with USB when transfering bigger batches of data a few times, but that may be because of virtualbox, and i may have tried an alternative).
However, the seller had already promised to sell it to a friend of his as I did kind of say it's not looking good and I'd probably send it back.
So, tried taking the price down a little bit and make an offer but it was too late. Had to send it back so his friend could get it.

Ah well, at least I learned something and didn't lose anything.

So...I'll be lookout for a good 4K, so holler if you see one in Europe!

And thanks to everybody for help. I hope this thread may help someone :)
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By Fanu Thu Dec 01, 2016 7:49 pm
richie wrote:@Fanu that sucks, talk about a damn time waster!


Well yeah, I know, but I suppose I was that to an extent, too.
Earlier I said I'll send it back as the USB connection looked real crap (I only found out later that you gotta push the memory stick down and actually hold it there for it to come alive) and googling about aksys I found out I can't run it. So I said I'll send it back to you tomorrow as it'll be useless to me.
So later last night as I wasn't feeling tired and I needed stuff to do, I started looking into the apps that Lamp was suggesting and also found out that USB would work if you just pushed it down (would've been ok for saving things at least), but then as I contacted the seller, he said he had already arranged a deal with a friend for a really good price. I tried asking for a little discount as I would've had to fix the USB sooner or later in some way, and some of the buttons would've needed new tact switches, but I suppose that's a crap offer when you have a buyer for a decent price who isn't asking for discounts even when there's flaws.

So yeah...something to learn here? Maybe give it some time and don't make decisions that soon.
I know I'll be copping one if I come across a well-working one. Felt good working on that beast even for a short while and playing some older 4K projects of mine (I used to have one).
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By Lampdog Thu Dec 01, 2016 8:42 pm
richie wrote:@Lampdog there is no reason logical reason why a VM would interfere with the core OS. Some people will convince themselves of something bad will happen either way.

It wouldn't. I work with VM's almost everyday.