External Floppy?

Hey, all. I use an XL and have a CF reader installed in my machine. I also have an external zip drive, but I have old beats on floppy disks that I would like to pull off and put on CF cards.

Should I purchase a USB external floppy, drag all the files/sequences off the floppy onto my laptop, connect my external card reader to my laptop and transfer the files?

Is there a simpler solution in which I can connect an external floppy drive directly to the MPC (via the SCSI port perhaps?)?

Finally, if I was to use the laptop transfer method, would I need to use the RS-16X program to make sure the programs load correctly?

Any insight is appreciated.

IndianaCornikova wrote:Hey, all. I use an XL and have a CF reader installed in my machine. I also have an external zip drive, but I have old beats on floppy disks that I would like to pull off and put on CF cards.

Should I purchase a USB external floppy, drag all the files/sequences off the floppy onto my laptop, connect my external card reader to my laptop and transfer the files?

Is there a simpler solution in which I can connect an external floppy drive directly to the MPC (via the SCSI port perhaps?)?

Finally, if I was to use the laptop transfer method, would I need to use the RS-16X program to make sure the programs load correctly?

Any insight is appreciated.

I'm no expert, but I think the laptop solution is your best bet. Sourcing a SCSI external floppy would be a pain. I don't believe RS-16X would be necessary, as you're just shuttling data that the XL can already read.

yeah you can simply pop in the CF card, and pop in the floppy (usb floppy drive) and drag the data across.

One warning though... be careful of your sound's file names...

two things to consider:

-In the mpc it is possible to have "SOUND1" as well as "sound1" where as on the computer it wont be... so as soon as you pop the floppy disk in it either will or may try to fix the issue by renaming one of the files to something like "SOUND1(2)"

-Make sure you look at the characters in the names of your files... you need to make sure that the first 8 characters of any sound name is not the same as the first 8 characters of another sound's name.. for example "longkick1" and "longkick2" .. yes both names are different, but the computer will look only at the first 8 characters' uniqueness before making a change without you knowing...

basically... this will not ruin projects supposing sound names get changed. You will only run into an issue when loading the program the next time. it will not be able to find some of the sounds because the computer made a change to the name... it's simple though to fix, just go through and load each sound one by one manually and put them on to the correct pad and you are golden... delete the program (all programs and sounds) file once you loaded everything in the mpc and re-save it again.

mr_debauch wrote:-In the mpc it is possible to have "SOUND1" as well as "sound1" where as on the computer it wont be... so as soon as you pop the floppy disk in it either will or may try to fix the issue by renaming one of the files to something like "SOUND1(2)".....
basically... this will not ruin projects supposing sound names get changed. You will only run into an issue when loading the program the next time. it will not be able to find some of the sounds because the computer made a change to the name... it's simple though to fix, just go through and load each sound one by one manually and put them on to the correct pad and you are golden... delete the program (all programs and sounds) file once you loaded everything in the mpc and re-save it again.

actually it's not that nice - windows will NOT try to rename the files like that, it will simply OVERWRITE/DELETE/REMOVE/HIDE one of the files. you will only be left with one file called 'sound1'. it's an absolute killer, but it's happened to me.

having said all that, doesn't the disk have to be formatted as fat16 to be read by windows? if the disk was formatted in the mpc, will it still work?

IndianaCornikova wrote:Hey, all. I use an XL and have a CF reader installed in my machine. I also have an external zip drive, but I have old beats on floppy disks that I would like to pull off and put on CF cards.
Should I purchase a USB external floppy, drag all the files/sequences off the floppy onto my laptop, connect my external card reader to my laptop and transfer the files?
....
Any insight is appreciated.

If you still have a floppy drive, you should install it back to XL again. Load all the floppys to 2000XL, check the each file names, it must NOT be longer than 8 chars, before file extension, then save it to your SCSI zip disk.
It sounds convoluted, but if there are file names that are longer than 8 chars, you'll lose data, if you try to copy the data using PCs. By using XL, you can copy all the files safely.

If you are absoltely sure that you didn't use the infamous long names, then you can use USB floppy drive to copy data.

After all copy is done, install CF reader back to XL, copy the files on ZIP disk to CF reader.

tapedeck wrote:

mr_debauch wrote:-In the mpc it is possible to have "SOUND1" as well as "sound1" where as on the computer it wont be... so as soon as you pop the floppy disk in it either will or may try to fix the issue by renaming one of the files to something like "SOUND1(2)".....
basically... this will not ruin projects supposing sound names get changed. You will only run into an issue when loading the program the next time. it will not be able to find some of the sounds because the computer made a change to the name... it's simple though to fix, just go through and load each sound one by one manually and put them on to the correct pad and you are golden... delete the program (all programs and sounds) file once you loaded everything in the mpc and re-save it again.

actually it's not that nice - windows will NOT try to rename the files like that, it will simply OVERWRITE/DELETE/REMOVE/HIDE one of the files. you will only be left with one file called 'sound1'. it's an absolute killer, but it's happened to me.

having said all that, doesn't the disk have to be formatted as fat16 to be read by windows? if the disk was formatted in the mpc, will it still work?

it didn't delete or remove a single thing in my case (about a dozen or so songs) when I copied the contents of the floppies over to a folder on the desktop (or in the case of the OP, it would be onto a cf card) I could choose to not copy, copy but replace the first file of the same name, or keep both with a renaming of the file ( "longkick1(2)" ) ... but either way it made a change on the floppy as well because windows will not allow more then one file of the same name.

I was using windows vista.

Also, floppies are formatted to fat 12 (also known as just plain FAT), not fat 16.

edit: the mpc formats the floppies to fat as well... in the case of the 2000/xl using HD floppies.

mr_debauch wrote:it didn't delete or remove a single thing in my case (about a dozen or so songs) when I copied the contents of the floppies over to a folder on the desktop (or in the case of the OP, it would be onto a cf card) I could choose to not copy, copy but replace the first file of the same name, or keep both with a renaming of the file ( "longkick1(2)" ) ... but either way it made a change on the floppy as well because windows will not allow more then one file of the same name.

I was using windows vista.

Also, floppies are formatted to fat 12 (also known as just plain FAT), not fat 16.

edit: the mpc formats the floppies to fat as well... in the case of the 2000/xl using HD floppies.

Windows XP (I don't know about Vista and 7, but I think they'd behave the same way as XP for this regard) would see "longkick1.snd" and "longkick2.snd" as just "longkick.snd", but you will see the two files with exactly same names listed on XP. This Akai's file name scheme is odd, only MPC-2000 would recognize the intended file names, if the file name is longer than 8 chars.
So, if you have "longkick1.snd" and "longkick2.snd" in the same folder, and you try to copy the those files, you WILL end up having just one file, because Windows cannot access to the both files.
(I've lost data already because I used long names on my data files, I lost a lot of data. Don't let that happen to you!)

Also, from my experience, it seems that it somehow corrupt data integrity on CF card. Since I stopped using long name on my XL, I haven't had any issues with my CF reader.

thanks for the clarifications guys.

and yes, debauch, i was on XP so it behaved as JVC and i described. i've lost samples too, and have only been able to reconstruct some of them on one very long night going through old samples, re-splitting to mono, renaming the files, and rebuilding the progs.

but wtf are you doing on vista?! ;]
having less problems with your mpc i guess ;].

i didn't know about fat12 i thought fat16 = fat. thanks.

nah, vista works great for me... I am one of the few people I guess that has not had issues what so ever with it.. except for that the USB connection with the mpd16 does not work because akai did not create a driver that works as they instead opted to making the mpd18... so making a driver for the old 16 which the current akai did not manufacture would hurt the sales of the new model i'm guessing. But that was countered by simply using the midi out port on the mpd when I felt like using it on the computer which is not actually what I bought it for..

other then that, I have a few machines running vista and there are no issues... I also have an older XP machine, and that machine runs okay as well I guess. Hey, if it works... it works, right? I use mpcs because it's fun and I like switching it up every now and then... sometimes different workflow suits the moment or the mood... I have an MV too, and a few other samplers besides the few mpcs I work on every now and then. A gardener has more then one shovel, a coffee drinker has more then one mug... etc.

Yeah I also find it odd how the mpc itself doesn't seem to have the types of file naming issues windows has.

I am really glad nothing got erased from the floppies, but at least we know why and what causes the issue and it can be prevented with a bit of extra work with the renaming... lately I have been trying to get in the habit of naming all samples, sequences, and even naming the tracks.

mr_debauch wrote:Yeah I also find it odd how the mpc itself doesn't seem to have the types of file naming issues windows has.

The long name scheme MPC uses is totally different from MS Windows Long File Name scheme. It was created (or made up) by Akai. Any of FAT file systems do not support longer than 8 char names anyway. It is completely Akai's fault to even introduce the function. (can't blame to the dead company, but still...) It just do harm than good. I really wish that there were option to use only DOS compatible file names on MPC-2000XL. Each time, I count number of strings of file name when I save sound file on MPC!

mr_debauch wrote:I am really glad nothing got erased from the floppies, but at least we know why and what causes the issue and it can be prevented with a bit of extra work with the renaming... lately I have been trying to get in the habit of naming all samples, sequences, and even naming the tracks.

As long as you are just reading from MPC floppy disk with your PC, I don't think it will delete content of floppies. Just making back up would be nightmare, if you are using long names on MPC.