Internal SCSI HD in Akai S3000/S3200

Anyone familiar with this subject?
Can't find info anywhere. Nothing in the manual.
I bought a S3200 off ebay and the guys sent me a 250MB scsi harddrive (branded Apple Mac) and a cable (looks like a data cable - so nothing to power the HD.

Am I safe to try putting this in the S3200?
How do I power it?

(I'm baffled - he's not getting back to me now - that's what you get for buying crusty old (nice) gear off ebay. In the listing there was nothing about the fact that the hd wasn't already in the machine)

I replaced the internal floppy in my S3000XL with an SCSI ZIP drive. I had to modify the power chord for the floppy to fit the ZIP. Well, actually to be long enough to reach the connector...

Generally it should be safe to hook the drive up, if the SCSI cable you have fits. The worst that can happen is the sampler doesn't recognize the drive. You would have to give it an ID (reference should be printed on the drive) and terminate it with a jumper (also look on drive).

For the power connector, I don't know if there's a possibility to power both the floppy and the HD. I didn't want to split the floppy connector to power both, but you can probably do it. With a few parts from Radio Shack and a soldering iron anybody should be able to do it.

You might find more info here:
http://akaiscsifaq.digidude.net/
http://www.mpc2000xl.com/zip_install.htm (for the MPC, but quite similar)

You might even think about only replacing the floppy with a ZIP...they're cheap, and capacity is comparable to those old SCSI harddrives.


Cheers,
Stilo.

Thanks Stilo,
what kind of Zip would i get?
does it need to be scsi? or just a standards internal pc zip drive?

Sorry, almost forgot about the thread...

It has to be an internal SCSI. Can be found pretty cheap on eBay.

The SCSI connector in my S3000XL is underneath the 8 out board, I don't know how the 3200 internals look however. It's most probably a 50-pin internal connector like the one shown here (2nd pic). I guess the cable you got will fit it, the SCSI ZIP will have the same connector.

If you put a cheap SCSI adapter in your PC like the Adaptec AHA-2940U you can hook it up to that as well and program the sampler with Akai's MESA software. Can also be used to load and save samples to the internal ZIP drive, but only works on Windows98...

Hello,

I recently purchased an AKAI S3000XL. I managed to figure out how to use it quite well but so far I've been saving/loading all my samples onto floppy disks. So I'd like to upgrade to a bigger and more reliable form of storage. I was originally planning on using a CF card adapter but SCSI-for-Samplers has apparently discontinued them and after trying to look for the parts myself without much luck I decided to opt for the much cheaper zip-drive option. So I was quite glad to stumble upon this post. Do you have any particular recommendations? I know the power cable needs to be extended but it shouldn't be much of a problem (right?). I'm quite familiar with a soldering iron it that's even needed.

Would something like this work?
http://cgi.ebay.com/Iomega-Z100Si-Zip-100-Internal-SCSI-Drive-100MB-Disk-/300509923309?pt=PCC_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item45f7c987ed

Thanks!!!

mogazi wrote:Hello,

I recently purchased an AKAI S3000XL. I managed to figure out how to use it quite well but so far I've been saving/loading all my samples onto floppy disks. So I'd like to upgrade to a bigger and more reliable form of storage. I was originally planning on using a CF card adapter but SCSI-for-Samplers has apparently discontinued them and after trying to look for the parts myself without much luck I decided to opt for the much cheaper zip-drive option. So I was quite glad to stumble upon this post. Do you have any particular recommendations? I know the power cable needs to be extended but it shouldn't be much of a problem (right?). I'm quite familiar with a soldering iron it that's even needed.

Would something like this work?
http://cgi.ebay.com/Iomega-Z100Si-Zip-100-Internal-SCSI-Drive-100MB-Disk-/300509923309?pt=PCC_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item45f7c987ed

Thanks!!!

I recommend this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/FUJITSU-MCF3064SS-6 ... 0190384017

and these disks

http://cgi.ebay.com/BRANDNEW-VERBATIM-2 ... 0360287026

I bet the disks can be found cheaper. I dont know if 640MB disks work with this sampler you can try that too.

MO drives/disks are much more stable than Zip drives/disks

peace

Hey Peter,

thank you very much for the fast reply. Just out of curiosity, what is the difference between MO drives and Zip drives? I've mostly heard of Zip drives being used for AKAI samplers but then again I'm very new to all this.
I think the maximum HD size for the AKAI S3000XL is 512Mb.

Have you done this on your MPC? Is there any particular modification that needs to be done to make it work?

Thanks and happy new year!!!

Here is the inside of a S-3200XL


I personally wouldn't bother with any internal storage options on the 3200, hard drives are noisy, annoying, prone to failure especially if the sampler is moved and bashed about in the rack and limited to 512MB due to the software in the Akai.
Stick to ZIP disks unless you can afford a CF reader, why? Cheap, readily available and easy to archive.

Thanks for the pic VJ (learned a lot from your vids on youtube btw). The reason why I wanted an internal drive was simply to avoid having to carry around yet another piece of equipment. But we're using the AKAI live for keyboard & drum samples so, yes, it would definitely be moved around a lot and a HD failure before a gig would be a major disaster.
Do you have any recommendations for an external HD?

Thanks!

mogazi wrote:Thanks for the pic VJ (learned a lot from your vids on youtube btw). The reason why I wanted an internal drive was simply to avoid having to carry around yet another piece of equipment. But we're using the AKAI live for keyboard & drum samples so, yes, it would definitely be moved around a lot and a HD failure before a gig would be a major disaster.
Do you have any recommendations for an external HD?

Thanks!

Thanks, I guess you could try and get a internal SCSI ZIP drive. I would of done that but at the time they were either too expensive or none about, that's the only reason mine is external...I agree about having extra stuff to carry about is not that great which is why my zip drive is internal on my MPC-2000XL but that one is no fuss as it's IDE and cost me like 5 quid.

Sorry don't really know a lot about external SCSI HD's for these...or SCSI for that, I hate that side of it...once I sorted it all out I put it at the back of my head and forgot it all lol I also had the 3200XL hooked up to a computer + Zip drive for a bit..

mogazi wrote:Hey Peter,

thank you very much for the fast reply. Just out of curiosity, what is the difference between MO drives and Zip drives? I've mostly heard of Zip drives being used for AKAI samplers but then again I'm very new to all this.
I think the maximum HD size for the AKAI S3000XL is 512Mb.

Have you done this on your MPC? Is there any particular modification that needs to be done to make it work?

Thanks and happy new year!!!

Yes I have one of these connected to my MPC2000 (classic) but I use it in an external case (there is no internal SCSI on the 2000). The difference between MO disks and Zip disks is the way they storage is done. The disks use different materials inside. The Zip disk is just like a floppy disk with more storage space. The write and read is a magnetic process. The material of a MO disk is more like a CD and although the procress of writing is also magnetic it also use heat to store the data in the material (the material can only be overwritten while its heated up). The read process is optical then. Sorry, I cant explain it really (english isn't my motherlanguage).
But wikipedia will help I guess..

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _Zip_drive
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ical_drive

To cut is short: I wouldn't put a zipdisk on a speaker (will be destroyed from the magnetic field) but I would have no problem to do this with MO disks. MO drives are also more reliable than Zip drives (search for "click of death")



peace

Ok, I think I'm gonna go for the internal MO drive for now.

Do you know if I need to get any particular cables to connect it to the board on the AKAI? If it's SCSI it should be a normal 50pin to 50pin right? Are there 2 SCSI connectors inside the AKAI or would that mean that I would lose the ability to use the external AKAI port?

Thanks for all the help so far!

I installed a 1gb scsi drive in my s3000xl about 2 years ago, no troubles. I have a photo set showing the steps.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbl/sets/72157613325005649/

Bought an external scsi drive at a thrift store for $6 and that provided all the parts I needed, also allows for easy transfer/backup with my PC via recycle.

I don't know if anyone is still bothered about this thread but I have just installed a Fujitsu MCF3064SS Magneto Optical Drive in my S3000xl and thought I'd add some details if anyone else wants to try. I can confirm it does work.

I think this is a great way to go as the disks are reliable and removable so you never run out of space. It's like having an internal ZIP drive but you can get up to 510Mb onto a disk and I believe the MO disks are more reliable than ZIP but I'm not certain.

I bought the MO drive on Ebay (second hand from Israel) for £15.

I removed the floppy drive and put the MO drive in it's place. Remember, you need the operating system on a chip if you are going to do this as I don't believe you can boot up from the MO drive. I got a V2.0 one for £13 off Ebay.

The MO drive runs off a 5v power supply so I just used the floppy power connection (which is also 5v and you dont need it cos you're taking it out). This is pretty obvious when you remove the floppy drive - there is a red (+ve) and a grey (-ve) cable connected to the floppy drive. The MO drive has a different power connector (like a 'normal' PC power supply with 4 pins - you only need to connect 2 of these though.) so you need to replace the molex plug with one of these. You just need to cut and solder 2 wires.

Next is the SCSI connector. You need a 50 pin scsi ribbon (£3 of ebay) which goes from the back of the MO drive to the scsi connector on the bottom board towards the back of the sampler case. It's fiddly to fit this but I managed without having to take the top board off.

Once it's in you power it up and it treats the MO drive just the same as a hard disk. You need to format a disk and off you go.

If you want the S3000xl to find the MO drive on start up you need to set the jumper swicthes on the drive to SCSI ID '5'. I didn't know what mine was set at when I first installed it but by trial and error I found it was set to '1'. You can go into the Load-> SCSI screen and increment the SCSI ID one at a time til it works.

I'm a drummer and just want to trigger live sound effects and percussion sounds using the sampler. I wanted one of these when they came out but £1800 was way out my price range. I got the S3000xl for £20 - unbelievable for what you get. It's old school and I love it - I work in IT and I would never take a PC on stage. Hardware Roolz!!

Hello! Thanks for the post. I am still interested in this.

I'm just about to buy an s3200. I understand u need a chip with the os 2.0 for the sampler to boot if you replace the floppy drive with an MO.

Does that mean if u keep the floppy drive only you always need a disk with the os into the floppy drive so the akai can boot the os? Or how does it work?

How easy is it to install the os chip inside?

Thanks