Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
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By JUKE 179r Tue Jan 26, 2016 3:06 pm
I've had the SCSI2SD card for a couple of months now and just recently I finally got to mess with it.
Updating the firmware is a breeze on a Win7 PC when connected via USB and using the utility program. From the utility you can make it a fixed drive or removable drive, assign the max SD card size in GB, assign 4 different SCSI ID numbers and other options.
I haven't hooked it up to my MPC2000XL yet but it does work damn good on a PC via 50-pin SCSI (bus-powered) without the 5V power supply. I saved and loaded to and from a 2GB and 8GB SD card without any problems.
I'm going to try a 512GB SD card tonight and also try it on a Mac.
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By JUKE 179r Fri Feb 19, 2016 11:37 pm
The SCSI2SD with a 512GB MicroSD card got formatted to 500GB ExFAT and works great as a fixed drive on both my PC and Mac.
I already know I won't be able to use all 500GB on a 2000XL since I'll need to format to a restricted 4GB with FAT. I'll try my 8GB MicroSD card and see if the MPC will partiton it or keep it at 8GB as a fixed drive.
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By JUKE 179r Tue Feb 23, 2016 1:53 pm
SCSI2SD works in an MPC2000XL with OS1.14c to partition the SD card.
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By beadydedbeat Mon Mar 28, 2016 10:43 am
JUKE 179r wrote:SCSI2SD works in an MPC2000XL with OS1.14c to partition the SD card.
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hi, thats great! have you connected to internal or external scsi? is it hotswappable?

i have the ide card reader in the internal slot of my mpc2000xl but its not hotswappable. i am wondering if this would be hotswappable for me? or mabey i keep my ide reader and mount the scsi2sd externally. thanks
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By JUKE 179r Mon Mar 28, 2016 6:43 pm
You can Hot swap with the SCSI2SD as long as it has firmware version 4.0 or above. version 4.6 is out now.
I have the SCSI2SD mounted inside the 2000XL as an internal 8GB partitioned harddrive to store my samples and songs along with a card reader on the front of it.
By beadydedbeat Mon Mar 28, 2016 7:53 pm
okay, i guess your ide reader up front is hot swap as well? thats prob the best configuration then. so you can load up samples over the ide and save the seq, programs and sounds to the 8gb internal.

mabey i should mount my ide cf (StarTech reader) with its 1 gb as internal storage and get a scsi2sd to put in the drive bay somehow. i know 1 gb seems low but its still about 30 full 32mb programs (1024mb/32mb=32). you think would be the best approach?

is this the scsi2sd you got?
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/cat ... ts_id=1264

thanks for your help!
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By dinosaur Tue Apr 26, 2016 2:32 am
Just chiming in to vouch for the scsi2sd reader. Very easy to set up over usb. I set it up to work as four separate drives on a 16gb card and am plugging it as an external drive on the rear scsi port through the 50 to 25 pin adaptor that's also available on the itead site.

I partitioned each of the four drives just fine on my mpc. The only thing I'm having a hard time with right now is loading files straight from my laptop to the card: my macbook recognizes the card, but it doesn't see neither the four "separate drives" on it nor the partitions. The files I load on it are read just fine on the mpc though: they appear on partition A of the first drive. Anyone know a workaround for this? Or am I stuck with being able to only load to this fraction of the card straight from my computer?
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By richie Tue Apr 26, 2016 4:49 am
@dinosaur are any of the partitions FAT ?
By beadydedbeat Tue Apr 26, 2016 8:38 am
dinosaur wrote:Just chiming in to vouch for the scsi2sd reader. Very easy to set up over usb. I set it up to work as four separate drives on a 16gb card and am plugging it as an external drive on the rear scsi port through the 50 to 25 pin adaptor that's also available on the itead site.

I partitioned each of the four drives just fine on my mpc. The only thing I'm having a hard time with right now is loading files straight from my laptop to the card: my macbook recognizes the card, but it doesn't see neither the four "separate drives" on it nor the partitions. The files I load on it are read just fine on the mpc though: they appear on partition A of the first drive. Anyone know a workaround for this? Or am I stuck with being able to only load to this fraction of the card straight from my computer?


Do you have a link to the adapter you used?
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By dinosaur Tue Apr 26, 2016 3:48 pm
richie wrote:@dinosaur are any of the partitions FAT ?


I'm not familiar with format names, but from what I understand I'm guessing they should be. I formatted the drive on the MPC 2000xl, which has OS 1.14 installed. Would a different partition format change anything?

beadydedbeat wrote:Do you have a link to the adapter you used?


There you go: https://www.itead.cc/scsi2-50pin-to-scs ... apter.html

with this adaptor you can use a 25 pin to 50 pin compact cable to plug the drive into the rear scsi port. I just used the cable I was using with my zip disk reader.
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By richie Tue Apr 26, 2016 8:05 pm
@dinosaur a different partition format may resolve your issue. From what I remember, 1.14 utilizes a different formatting scheme, where it creates multiple partitions based on the disk size used and formats them to "Akai format" where as 1.2 formats everything to PC FAT format which is readable in pretty much every operating system.

The only issue being with FAT is that regardless of disk size, it'll only format the device to a maximum of 1gb - BUT at least that partition will be able to be read on your workstation. So what could be done from there is, anything you want to back up to your workstation should be saved to the FAT partition first before connecting it back to backup.
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By dinosaur Tue Apr 26, 2016 9:23 pm
richie wrote:@dinosaur a different partition format may resolve your issue. From what I remember, 1.14 utilizes a different formatting scheme, where it creates multiple partitions based on the disk size used and formats them to "Akai format" where as 1.2 formats everything to PC FAT format which is readable in pretty much every operating system.

The only issue being with FAT is that regardless of disk size, it'll only format the device to a maximum of 1gb - BUT at least that partition will be able to be read on your workstation. So what could be done from there is, anything you want to back up to your workstation should be saved to the FAT partition first before connecting it back to backup.


thanks for the info man! the partition i'm able to read right now is 850 mb big so I might just leave it like that.

I'm thinking I could load my staple samples from the computer to the sd card on that partition and then save vinyl samples / programs / sequences on the other parts/disks as I go. I got almost a gb so I should be able to stuff quite a few drums and stuff on there.
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By richie Wed Apr 27, 2016 3:28 am
@dinosaur, for sure - so were you able to make a partition that could be read on your computer yet?
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By dinosaur Wed Apr 27, 2016 4:06 am
richie wrote:@dinosaur, for sure - so were you able to make a partition that could be read on your computer yet?


yeah, i actually was able to do that from the get go! just re-read my post and realized what i had wrote wasn't super clear: my macbook reads the card just fine, but doesn't see the four separate drives or the partitions of those drives. not such a big deal after all.

so, to summarize, right now with scsi2sd i have a 16 gb external hot-swappable sd card drive. the drive is divided into 4 drives on my mpc, and each is partitioned. everything is working super well up until now, saves and loads super fast. i'm stoked!

big up to Juke 179r and to richie for the pointers