SCSI2SD for Akai Mpc-2000

Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
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Re: SCSI2SD for Akai Mpc-2000

By Plasticlegs Wed Jan 16, 2019 11:26 pm
richie wrote:@Plasticlegs well there are a couple of cases that could explain what lead you to believe the 600mb thing.

Most Akai S series rack samplers are only cable format a bit over 500mb, regardless of the drive size. The 2000XL is limited to 1gb when running OS 1.2 as it uses FAT but 1.14 using a SCSI card reader can utilize the full 9gb. Maybe some of that information got cross mingled with the issue you're having?

The S-900/950 is easier for me to work with once I set up my keygroups. After that it was a matter of me sampling my stuff and truncating accordingly. I'm still a novice with doing more intensive functions.

On the MPC 2000, I don't chop on it at all. I work with my samplers by sampling pieces at a time I want to use and truncating, so I never got the hang of zone chopping, etc.

Have a look into this 600mb thing though, I know that it isn't happening to people with other samplers. You're sort of an anomaly as no one before you have really talked about successfully using the scsi2sd on the MPC 2000 at all man.


You are right. This MPC-2000 recognizes the whole drive amounts I designated. I see where I got confused too. When I click to Format the drive, it shows the size as 1073MB and shows the Partition is 536MB. That partition size is probably a user editable field. I must have looked at that and assumed that's all it recognized. I'll just reformat on the MPC and bump that to 1000MB per drive.

I made a Keygroup dummy disk for my S950 also. Makes it a little less tedious. I have more fun using EMAX so I sold my S950. There's software called AkaiSEX designed to up/down convert S950 through S3200 samples. Get your favorite S950 samples over to your MPC-2000XL. But it's for Atari ST. Not sure if there's a stable Atari emulator for newer computers.

Anyway, thanks for bringing me to speed on the size restrictions. I've got much more space than I thought I had! This is really cool!
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Re: SCSI2SD for Akai Mpc-2000

By richie Thu Jan 17, 2019 12:56 am
Keep in mind that the MPC 2000 will format it based on the Akai partition format, so depending on the size of drive you're formatting you can have up to 26 partitions (A to Z) I forget the maximum format-table size that each partition is capable of handling. One thing I hate about the MPC 2000 is the sh*t file organization. I'm too lazy to rename samples, so all my sh*t shows up at SOUND001 etc.

I can rationalize why you'd sell your S950 for an Emax because I actually like how the Emax sounds better in my opinion. The only thing I like about the S950 is the time stretch. Also you can send samples over to the S950 over MIDI so it would be at 9600 Baud, good enough for drums but would take longer for bigger samples.

There is a great Atari ST alternative right now, google Mister FPGA DE-10 nano. It's an FPGA platform that has many awesome cores and ported cpu platforms readily available. It isn't emulation, I guess you could consider it 'simulation' but the cores are cpu cycle accurate so it's basically the same thing. You can buy the FPGA for about $130-150 usd .. It also runs other platforms like Amiga and several console ones. I mainly use mine for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis right now.

Re: SCSI2SD for Akai Mpc-2000

By Plasticlegs Sat Jan 19, 2019 7:25 pm
richie wrote:Keep in mind that the MPC 2000 will format it based on the Akai partition format, so depending on the size of drive you're formatting you can have up to 26 partitions (A to Z) I forget the maximum format-table size that each partition is capable of handling. One thing I hate about the MPC 2000 is the sh*t file organization. I'm too lazy to rename samples, so all my sh*t shows up at SOUND001 etc.

I can rationalize why you'd sell your S950 for an Emax because I actually like how the Emax sounds better in my opinion. The only thing I like about the S950 is the time stretch. Also you can send samples over to the S950 over MIDI so it would be at 9600 Baud, good enough for drums but would take longer for bigger samples.

There is a great Atari ST alternative right now, google Mister FPGA DE-10 nano. It's an FPGA platform that has many awesome cores and ported cpu platforms readily available. It isn't emulation, I guess you could consider it 'simulation' but the cores are cpu cycle accurate so it's basically the same thing. You can buy the FPGA for about $130-150 usd .. It also runs other platforms like Amiga and several console ones. I mainly use mine for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis right now.


It looks like the MPC-2000 doesn't have the apparent size limit I thought it did. Thanks for getting that corrected information out there. It will partition the drive into two parts (A-B) or dice it up into many segments through A-Z. I didn't see a single partition so essentially I've got a gig divided into 2 500MB sections.

I've been reading all the advantages of the MPC-2000XL over the Classic. File management is huge. I kind of like the idea of replacing the floppy with a 100MB Zip Drive myself. Still, I'm loving the MPC-2000 and it's quirks right now. If it had 4 midi outs, I'd swap it with my ASQ-10.

Off topic. I have my old Sega Dreamcast I'll hook up to the TV for a nostalgic trip now and then. I journey back to that pixilated world of Jet Grind Radio or all the THPS's through my speakers on the big screen.
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Re: SCSI2SD for Akai Mpc-2000

By tapedeck Mon Jan 21, 2019 5:06 pm
Plasticlegs wrote:I kind of like the idea of replacing the floppy with a 100MB Zip Drive myself.

:WTF:
you'd be way better off installing your scsi2sd in place of the floppy drive. google 'zip click of death' if you want some background, but basically zip is the most unreliable media and will fail on you unrecoverably sooner than later.

Re: SCSI2SD for Akai Mpc-2000

By jesseowenastin Tue Jun 04, 2019 7:23 pm
Hey there, MPC2000 Classic user here. Recently bought a SCSI2SC drive and installed using a kit that included a ribbon connecter that slips under the casing from the back and into the unit. It's working fine. I've managed to format it using the SCSI2SD utility and the mpc boots up and I can load sounds fine, however, I'm not sure I understand exactly how the partitions are structured, as it will only allow me to add about 40mb of sounds onto a 8GB card. I use Mac OSX and im just looking for some guidance on how to get the sounds from my mac over to the card and use more of the memory on the cards. I know I probably sound like a noob, but just looking for some guidance as I've never used anything other than floppies on this unit in the past. Any advice or links that could steer me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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Re: SCSI2SD for Akai Mpc-2000

By Nate Kush Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:11 pm
Nate Kush wrote:Figured it out so that I can have a partition of the SD card for the MPC2K (SCSI ID 1) & Triton (SCSI ID 2) with an additional extra partition (SCSI ID 3). SCSI ID 0 is reserved for the GUID Partition Table so that all of the SD card can be seen on OSX.

Format the SD Card as GUID Partition Table.

sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 SDCARD GPTFormat /dev/disk4

Partition the SD card in Disk Utility:

900MB (the max for MPC2K) as MPC-2000 (MS DOS FAT)
4GB (the max for Triton) as TRITON (MS DOS FAT)
Remainder as EXTRA (Mac OS Journaled)

Figure out what the disk id of the SD card is in Terminal:

diskutil list

Output:

/dev/disk4 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *7.9 GB disk4
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk4s1
2: Microsoft Basic Data MPC-2000 898.6 MB disk4s6
3: Microsoft Basic Data TRITON 4.0 GB disk4s5
4: Apple_HFS EXTRA 2.6 GB disk4s4

in my case it's disk4. the # corresponds to which GPT partition it is in the next section.

Read the sector starts and sizes of the partitions in Terminal:

sudo gpt -r show disk4

Output:

start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
409640 2008
411648 1755136 2 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
2166784 2048
2168832 7811072 3 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
9979904 262704
10242608 5019048 4 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
15261656 262151
15523807 32 Sec GPT table
15523839 1 Sec GPT header


SCSI2SD UTILITY SETTINGS:

Maintaining the first sector to the EFI on the SD so that the Partition scheme remains the same means setting SCSI ID 0 start sector to 0 and the sector count to 409640.

the 2nd GPT part (MPC-2000) represents SCSI ID 1, and starts at 411648 and has a sector count of 1755136.

the 3rd GPT part (TRITON) represents SCSI ID 2, and starts at 2168832 with a sector count of 7811072.

the 4th GPT part (EXTRA) represents SCSI ID 3, and starts at 10242608 with a sector count of 5019048.

I put these all into the SCSI2SD utility, every ID's device type is set as Removable.

Flash the settings to the SCSI2SD card, then plug it into the MPC2K, plug in the SD card and the power, turn on the MPC and load up the SCSI ID 1 on the Format section in the MPC. Format it as just one (A) partition, making sure not to format SCSI ID 0 or the other ones. Copy the Operating system from the floppy to SCSI ID 1 Partition A, and take that back to the computer. Load the OS 1.72 and all my MPC programs / files and sounds and everything works beautifully.

I think in this manner you can use one SD card to hold files for multiple samplers. not at the same time but possibly with that bigger box that they're selling in places. will try this out with the Triton soon as I haven't hooked it up to the back of that yet but works great for the MPC and having access to the rest of the SD card.
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