Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
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By hok-2 Sun Mar 22, 2015 10:36 pm
I recently bought a 50 pin Compaq 1.05GB SCSI Hard
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I took it out that plastic enclosure and into this external caddy I have.
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Unfortunately I haven't been able to get the Mpc to recognize or format the hard drive so far.

I've never used any Scsi devices before So I'm just looking for any help or advice anyone might have.

When I switch the device field from floppy to HD the Mpc says "Waite...." and doesn't seem to find the HD.
But if I switch the scsci ID selector on the back of the caddy to 6 (which I believe is the Mpc's own Scsi ID) it go's to the next screen where you can select the scsi ID on the Mpc.
But the name of the HD or any information is not displayed and non of my attempts so far have got me anywhere.

I think it may be that I don't have a Scsi terminator block.
Without the terminator block do they just act as a 'through' type thing?
The other message I get is "Scsi not ready"

Anyway, any advise would be much appreciated.
By LADiego Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:44 am
assuming the hard drive is compatible with the mpc2000 and you jumper to a specific scsi id (not scsi id 6 to avoid conflict with mpc) on the hard drive unit itself (do not bother connecting the caddy's scsi id selector wiring to the hard drive pins . . . keep it simple), the hard drive must be recognized at jumpered scsi id. hard drive must be spinning when powered on (and sampler also powered on).

i am wondering if the hard drive is even compatible with the mpc2000. i once tried a compaq hard drive and it just did not work for me. it was not recognized.

but check your jumpers for scsi id, termination, enable auto spinning (if there is one), and see if you can get it to work.

peace
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By hok-2 Mon Mar 23, 2015 3:19 am
The hard drive doesn't spin when I turn both HD and Mpc on, which isn't a great sign.
It doe's get a bit warm and switching the ID to 6 resets the "Waite.." message, so some sort of information seems to be passing through it.

I am also wondering if it is not compatible too.
Would a terminator make any difference?
I suppose I'll have to get one and hope for the best.

My S3000i has the ability to fit a hard drive inside it, so maybe it will work on that, but I don't have a internal 50 pin connector for it and my scsi cable is a 50 to 25 pin. :roll:
It'd be nice to have 1.05 of a juicy Giga byte storage on the mpc :nod:
By LADiego Mon Mar 23, 2015 3:53 am
I gave up using noisy hard drives sometime ago and opted for one of those external scsi flash-based 16gb hard drives from the same folks I bought scsi card readers from and they work nicely. The flash-based drives are super-quiet and give me plenty of storage.

Try the terminator and see if it resolves anything but honestly I think the drive is not compatible.

Peace
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By hok-2 Mon Mar 23, 2015 6:52 am
From what I've read it seems a terminator is essential "I'll be back"
But whether or not it will work ...who knows... I hope so.

Do I need a active or passive one?
Or will they both work?

I'm thinking of getting this one
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SCSI-Terminat ... 2c98cc339e


Thanks for the help guys.
The Hard drive was only £10 including postage, so it won't be too bad if nothing comes of it, just a slight disappointment.
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By pieuvre Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:00 am
Check the jumpers on the hard drive itself, i had the same problem, the drive should have a jumper setting for the drive to spin at power .
By rhythm-x Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:07 pm
I confirm you do need a SCSI terminator.
The one you found on eBay should work.

Also, like somebody already said, try to work with SCSI ID #5, not #6.
In fact, NEVER use ID #6. This may cause internal conflict.
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By hok-2 Mon Mar 23, 2015 3:09 pm
Waaahay!
Well I got it to fire up and spin!
It didn't come with any jumper blocks but I found some on a old floppy drive and after a few attempts it made a lovely old-school jet engine noise :lol:
Actually it's not that bad, once I put the case on the caddy it's not too loud.

It even displays the product name and information, so it's recognizing it, but then it displays this error message "Div. Error at 0000:41"

Hopefully that has something to do with the lack of termination, so I'm ordering myself a Terminator block and I'll hope that resolves the problem.

I appreciate you all taking the time to help me out, I'd started to despair a bit with the whole thing and I wouldn't have made this progress without the advice.
So Big Ups.
All the web information I was finding was a bit too confusing.

I'll have to wait and see if the Terminator makes it work and unlocks the gargantuan storage capacity of a whole 1 Gigabyte !

I've got a USB virtual floppy drive emulator in the place of the Mpc's original Floppy drive, but I haven't really got into it, it's ok for saving sequences and songs but most my programs tend to be over the 1.40 mb mark and saving it all is a bit convoluted because the emulator doesn't let you continue on a new virtual disk.

It'd be nice to build myself a big bank of already sampled and edited sounds and programs that I can access and to be able to save my projects easier.
So I hope it works out.
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By pieuvre Wed Mar 25, 2015 9:54 am
Have you try formatting it with the MPC ? By the way don't forget to partition it ( i have 39 MO parts on mine )
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By hok-2 Tue Apr 28, 2015 1:57 am
I got the Scsci drive working.
It needed the Scsi Terminator like you man said.

Nice one.

9.20 mb.
The scsi terminator made it all work
So thanks for the knowledge and advise people.

I've made 6 partitions
1- operating system
Then the other 5 are about 250 mb's

It's made shit a lot easier.
They are noisy though
I stick it under my bed with a some cloth on top and it cancels out.

Maximum respect for everyone's help.
Bless Up.
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By richie Tue Apr 28, 2015 6:42 am
I hope that drive isn't too loud. The older the hard drive, the more of a jet engine it sounds like.

I just received a some scsi drives and enclosures today that I'll be assembling. Any extras I do not need will be made available to everyone here if interested.
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By hok-2 Wed Apr 29, 2015 11:30 pm
It's not too noisy
I reckon it probably makes about the same amount of noise as my Pc
I've been stocking up drum kits and sounds on it
So nice to have the freedom of more than 1.44mb at a time

I know cats like Damu the Fudgemonk can fit it on Floppy's and that guy's Ish is doper than mine
But I can't make floppys work on my Mpc
They allway work on my S3000
But I reckon I havent had my Mpc 200o long enough to understand it corectly

But yeah One Whole Meg
Boom
I can just save 32mbs at time
I'm in heaven with it

I've gone mental and sampled 16 10 second string samples
No room for even drums
Ha Jokes.

There was some dude on here who posted 'The Breaks'
Just all the correct parts of every single break beat categorized into tempo and everything.

I've been rinsing that.
Nice one.

The whatnots are my favourite drums.
Much love and Peace.
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By richie Thu Apr 30, 2015 3:05 am
It's good that your drive isn't noisy. I have about 20+ drives and some of them are too loud for me, I guess its a matter of preference.

You can do things like sample at a higher pitch and then pitch down on the mp, that saves sample time thus making the data size smaller.