NEW M.O. Drive

Ron-Jay wrote:Maybe some of this flew over my head. But the MO drive/diskettes are more reliable than the zips? Are the standard 3 1/2 floppies more reliable than zips? What do I have to do to get more storage without worrying about losing my data?

MO discs are far more reliable than Zip discs.
The Zip discs are unpredictable because they can fail at any moment. When the infamous "Click of Death" occurs, there goes all your work.
I haven't had it happen yet. But I'd rather play it safe.

Floppies fail unexpectedly as well and only hold 1.44 MB. So if you have long loops, you wouldn't be able to save them.

The MO discs are good for 10,000,000 rewrites. That's a long time.
The other advantage is that I can use 128MB and 230MB MO discs with this drive.
I can get 22 partitions out of a 230MB MO discs when I format it.
The 22 partitions are used to compensate for the fact that the MPC2000's OS does not have any folder structure. So a disc of this capacity serves it's purpose, rather than a hard drive that may be too large to have ideal partition sizes.

The MO drive is in it's case after slight modifications.
I had to remove all the cables from the back and cut the back out, so the cables can sit properly. I still have to design a new back plate at another time.

^^ hey an old EZ drive case I understand the issue with the space. I had this drive too and the space in this case is not very friendly.






@Ron-Jay:
The material of a ZIP discs is a thin flexible disc inside a hardplastic case. Write and read is a magnetic process. Its like a big brother of the 3.5 floppy disc. The read/write head goes right INTO the disc thru a (usual covered) hole on one side of the disc.

The cover on a floppy disc open on the top and the bottom so the head just need to "fly above it". The material of a floppy is similar to the ZIP


The disc inside a magneto optical disc is not a flexible thin but a kind of CD like material. The data is written on the disc with a magnetical working writehead BUT. The metrial need to be heat up to write on it so a laser heats up the material while the write head puts data on it (change the optical properties of the material).
When the material is cool down no data can be changed on the disc cause it is "frozen" into the material. The read process is done by the laser and 100% optical (Kerr Effect)


My experience with the formats:

I use floppy disks since the 80s (Commodore64) and sometimes I had corrupted discs but most of the time they worked well. The downsides are a: read/write speed is slow, b: capacity is very limited. The drives and discs are relative robust but they dont like speakers, direct driven turntables and other magnetic fields. They also dont like cola and other drinks with sugar (or alc)
Most of my old 80s floppy discs worked when I tried them the last time I setup my C64 to play some games (ca 1 year ago).

The MO disc is a format I use since the late 90s with an Emu E64 sampler and they never let me down, period. Relative fast read and write, perfect capacity for samples (If ever one gets broken or corrupted, "only" 128MB, 230MB or less is gone. I also had 2 crashed HDs inside the Emu sampler. 500 MB each. that hurts), relative cheap.


My used 2000 came with a ZIP drive. I have heard of problems with this before but thought fuggit I'll try. I setup the MPC with the drive, looked good first but out of sudden....click..........click...........click..........**** that.

So to be honest, yes I'm biased when it comes to ZIP.
I've read about the issues before and my frist try with it was the worst case that can happen.
Many other people didn't have problems and the format is used often with samplers. But since I know how it is to loose data (I STILL think about some of the old tracks I made with the Emu and I will never be able to recreate them) I want something that is saver than a ZIP.
I would prefer floppy before ZIP.


peace

Thanks for all the info Peter. I feel much safer with an MO drive.
The only thing that I'm concerned with is leaving the disk in the drive while not in use, since the drive spins constantly and does't go in to sleep mode like Zip discs do. So to preserve the life of the drive and the disks, I eject it when I'm not using it. That's not a problem. This project was definitely worth it.

If anyone else is interested in this project, there's still New Old Stock Fujitsu M2512A drives from my ebay seller. The instructions are included, which explains the jumper settings for the SCSI ID. It's set to 0 as default, which was perfect for me.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/321315140718?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

distortedtekno wrote:Thanks for all the info Peter. I feel much safer with an MO drive.
The only thing that I'm concerned with is leaving the disk in the drive while not in use, since the drive spins constantly and does't go in to sleep mode like Zip discs do. So to preserve the life of the drive and the disks, I eject it when I'm not using it. That's not a problem. This project was definitely worth it.

Exactly what I do.

peace

So it turns out that this drive does go in to sleep mode. It seems to take longer than the Zip drive. But I'll time it and post the results.

Sleep mode kicks in at 33 minutes with this drive. So it takes a while longer. But still a good thing. I shouldn't have a problem leaving the disk in the drive.

Great mod, would you ever want to put that into the MPC's internal and reverse the scsi port to the inside?

John-E G wrote:Great mod, would you ever want to put that into the MPC's internal and reverse the scsi port to the inside?

I give credit to peterpiper for suggesting this project and supplying the info needed in order for me to go ahead and try it out myself.
While I was waiting for the external drive bay to arrive, I thought about the internal SCSI mod. But what made me decide not to do it was that the mounting instructions to this drive allow for safe functionality when the drive is either mounted right side up and level, or sideways. I had my MPC angled on a stand, so I didn't want to shorten the life expectancy.

I also like having the option of floppies incase I ever need to use them. I have a collection of classic drum machines saved on floppies. So I find that it's easier for that purpose due to how little drive space they use. Larger kits would be more beneficial on MO discs. Having 3 different disc types would also make it easier if anyone I know wanted to come over and work on a project. So having the floppy, Zip, and MO covers all bases.

ok so i want that. but to be clear, do i need the 3.5 to 5.25 converter as well. did you just use the converter to fit the drive into the casing that you have it in? so if i order the drive, i can plug it in and use it just fine, but it will just look like some frankenstein stuff on my desk, right? but if i wanted to i could get some casing for it.

I used a Syquest drive case, which is 3.5". So I didn't need the adaptor. All I had to do after mounting the drive was to remove everything from the back and cut the metal, so that I could rearrange the cables to sit where they line up with the back of the MO drive. Some electric tape for the power jack connectors will prevent shorting to the metal chassis. I don't know how much trouble I would have to go through if I used another drive bay. But if I find a better one, I'll update this post with what I find.

I decided not to polish a turd by trying to modify the Syquest case any further. Since everything else is new, I may as well buy a new enclosure that doesn't need any modifications at all. I got my eye on one in particular, and I'll post all the details if all goes well.

keep the syquest case for a hard drive or something

^ Yeah, I'll keep it in the spare PC parts box. Not sure about buying a hard drive. But I know I'll buy more MO discs soon.