Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
By hausa buga Mon Apr 30, 2018 9:56 am
Hey all,
I can confirm that the SCSI to sd reader is hot swappable so all good there.

I can also confirm that I dropped the OS file on to a new micro sd in my mac and it works perfectly in the reader too

Just like on my 2KXL :)

HB
By Gemfire Tue Jul 24, 2018 8:00 pm
I recently got a SCSI2SD v5 to go with my internal SCSI mod and it's not working. Sometimes it shows as a 'codesrc' device at startup but then freezes but most of the time the MPC won't even recognize it. I'll stick to MO for some more and then probably get a RaizinMonster. As for the SCSI2SD I'll put it in my S3000XL, hopefully they are compatible.
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By JUKE 179r Tue Jul 24, 2018 8:46 pm
Gemfire wrote:I recently got a SCSI2SD v5 to go with my internal SCSI mod and it's not working. Sometimes it shows as a 'codesrc' device at startup but then freezes but most of the time the MPC won't even recognize it. I'll stick to MO for some more and then probably get a RaizinMonster. As for the SCSI2SD I'll put it in my S3000XL, hopefully they are compatible.

Did you use a 5VDC power connector on the SCSI2SD? if so, try removing it from the SCSI2SD. The 50-pin SCSI connection can power the SCSI2SD.
Or if you don't have the 5VDC power connection, try adding it to see if that works.
User avatar
By JUKE 179r Wed Jul 25, 2018 6:25 pm
Damn.
By Dan Jose Thu Aug 16, 2018 2:14 pm
I don't understand how this is preferable to the usb emulator? I thought the main issue was the 2000 operating system only being able to read 1.44mb partitions? so even if you got a 4gigcf card and card reader yo would still have to partition that card and save across multiple folders as the CF card still has to be formatted to MAC32?
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By distortedtekno Sat Aug 18, 2018 1:29 am
Dan Jose wrote:I don't understand how this is preferable to the usb emulator? I thought the main issue was the 2000 operating system only being able to read 1.44mb partitions? so even if you got a 4gigcf card and card reader yo would still have to partition that card and save across multiple folders as the CF card still has to be formatted to MAC32?


It’s not preferable at all. Nobody can even get the damn thing to work with the 2000 Classic. The USB emulator is no good either because there’s no way to save across multiple partitions. So if your project is larger than. 1.44mb, you’re shit out of luck. Better off with real floppies. But they’ll shit the bed on you too at some point.

As far as CF readers are concerned, they’re SCSI, so you CAN save all the data that’s loaded in your RAM. CF cards or any other SCSI disks need to be formatted to FAT 16, not MAC 32. I’m sure you’re new to all of this, which is why you’re confused about everything.

Now I’m gonna say what I always say and make it clear to everyone...

Floppies - No good. They’re slow and unreliable. When you have a project that’s larger than 1.44mb, you’ll need several disks to save all your data. If you have a project that’s nearly 32mb, you’re gonna need a shitload of floppies in order to save that project, AND it’s gonna take forever to do that. Same goes for loading that same project. Now if just ONE of those disks fails on you, you’re shit out of luck. Kiss all your hard work goodbye. You’re gonna have to rework the whole damn thing and take even more time to do it. Also, the 2000 has a tendency to either not save or load a project with multiple floppies properly. So even if you have brand new floppies and brand new floppy drive, the risk of losing your work and the time consumption involved makes it not worth it to use floppies. So as we say here in NY, fuhgeddaboutit!

Zip disks - The WORST thing to ever come out of the ‘90s. Even if you find New Old Stock drives, they WILL fail when you least expect it. As soon as you start hearing a clicking noise known as The Click Of Death, the drive is as good as gone. The disks themselves are prone to corrupt data which you’ll never be able to recover. It’s just a big floppy disk. Similar material used. So if you have anything stored on Zip disks, back it all up to more reliable media before it’s too late.

SyQuest (and other similar shit) - See above - Same shit, different toilet.

Jaz - an improvement to Zip. Very expensive back in the ‘90s. More reliable than Zip. How reliable? Not sure. The only people I’ve seen in these forums have used them with the 2000XL. You’d need a different cable or an adapter to connect with the 2000 Classic since it’s a different SCSI type. So I’m not sure about compatibility issues with the 2000 Classic in particular. My rule of thumb is to avoid mixing different SCSI types, especially since the 2000 Classic tends to be a bit flaky with just about any SCSI device, even using the same type. So why complicate things? Also, the smallest Jaz disk capacity is 1gb. So if you’re creating 32mb partitions, you better have a pen and a pad ready to recall which partitions you saved certain projects on. Otherwise you’re gonna spend a lot of time finding a particular project and/or samples to load after so many partitions have been used. One word comes to mind... ****!

Hard Drive - They’re noisy and they run hot. So not only will you be dealing with hard drive noise. But you’ll be dealing with fan noise as you’ll need a fan installedThe larger or risk imminent disk failure. You don’t want a large capacity drive either, or you’ll have to deal with the **** issue described above. The larger capacity drives are also a different SCSI type. So as I also mentioned above, it’s not a good idea to use different SCSI types and adapters.
WARNING: If you wanna experiment, be my guest. But don’t ever recommend anything without spending several months of extentensive testing. Otherwise you’re gonna royally piss someone off if they try the same thing, only to waste their time and money. Same goes for any other drives. I see too much of that shit going on here where people blindly suggest things because it sounds good on paper. This is the 2000 Classic we’re dealing with here. It’s more temperamental than if you were to recommend it for some old PC.

Keep in mind that older and smaller hard drives are gonna be even more noisy and will have more of a tendency to fail quicker. My advice is to not waste your time or money on hard drives for the 2000. I can’t think of any good reason to experiment with them myself.

CF and SD drives - Ideal for people who have a lot of samples stored on their computers. Raizinmonster (CF) and Fuzinmonster (SD) have been recommended in the past. But you’re gonna pay a premium at $120 and upwards. I’ve given them a lot of thought in the past. But the trouble I’ve had in making any decision is the fact that I’ve read about both of those drives suddenly failing on some people here. None of them have been able to resolve those issues. So the risk of spending all that money on a potential dud just doesn’t sit well with me.

SCSI2SD - I’ve had people tell me I should try it without any proof that it works. I’ve also seen someone post pics online with screenshots of it being recognized on the 2000. But that’s where it ends. No other info has been provided upon my inquiries. Seems a bit shady. If you’re gonna recommended a product, you better be prepared to answer questions about it, especially if you plan on selling an MPC with one installed. If you can’t, you definitely got something to hide. Aside from that individual with bold claims and no details, the manufacturer’s website doesn’t list the 2000 Classic as being compatible with it. So until that happens, I’ll suggest not wasting $70.

M.O. (Magneto Optical) - Yeah I know I come up here recommending it like I’m a shill and I own stock in the technology. But neither of that is true. This is ‘90s technology at it’s BEST! The disks have been reported to last 50 years, millions of rewrites, and they’re very affordable. I find drives for $30 on ebay all the time, and I also find disks for an average price of $5 for128mb and 230mb. Those are very ideal capacities for the 2000 since the OS doesn’t read or write folders. So with 4 32mb partitions on a 128mb disc and 7 or 8 on a 230mb disc, you won’t have to deal with the **** that I mentioned about larger disks. I’m going on 5 years without any real issues other than the 2000 being finicky with certain brands of disks. As long as they’re well known brands like Maxell, Sony, Fujitsu, TDK, and Phillips, your MPC will be cool with it. I don’t have a huge sample library on my computer and I rarely download samples. So I’m not concerned about transferring or backup. The disks are reliable enough that I don’t feel the need to back anything up. But I still have my old PC with a SCSI adapter installed if I ever wanted to do that. I’m not the only one using MO here. There’s a small handful of others that have been using them before and after me. Nobody has had any regrets about it. So for the 2000, this is the way to go, and I’ll still stand behind that for years to come.
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By hok-2 Tue Feb 05, 2019 1:26 pm
I'm am going to try this with the Scsi2sd V.5.
I have seen a Mpc2000 for sale on ebay with one installed, and the video in this thread so, that's two examples of it working with a 2000.

It usualy takes quite a bit of trial and error to get any type of scsi drive working with 2000's, messing about with jumper blocks and stuff.
Hopefully I will get it to work and will report back with my findings.
May the force be with meeee!
By Dan Jose Wed Feb 13, 2019 4:50 pm
Just to clarify. You can save your tracks across multiple partitions with the gotek/hytek usb emulator. The only thing you have to keep an eye on is sample size. If you have a sample that is larger than 1.44 that sample will not save across multiple partitions and if you are doing a, "save all programs and sounds" this can **** things up as the samples after the un-saveable 1.44mb file will not be saved as well.

If you keep your samples under 1.44mb you can keep saving across all your partitions until everything is happily saved.

What I do now with bigger samples is zone edit them down. I keep all the parts i'm using, trim all the excesses, when i have all the parts i want I delete the master sample.

Just keep an eye on those sample sizes. The usb is also fresh cause you can load sample packs onto them as long as they are 16 bit !

Dan Jose

distortedtekno wrote:
Dan Jose wrote:I don't understand how this is preferable to the usb emulator? I thought the main issue was the 2000 operating system only being able to read 1.44mb partitions? so even if you got a 4gigcf card and card reader yo would still have to partition that card and save across multiple folders as the CF card still has to be formatted to MAC32?


It’s not preferable at all. Nobody can even get the damn thing to work with the 2000 Classic. The USB emulator is no good either because there’s no way to save across multiple partitions. So if your project is larger than. 1.44mb, you’re **** out of luck. Better off with real floppies. But they’ll **** the bed on you too at some point.

As far as CF readers are concerned, they’re SCSI, so you CAN save all the data that’s loaded in your RAM. CF cards or any other SCSI disks need to be formatted to FAT 16, not MAC 32. I’m sure you’re new to all of this, which is why you’re confused about everything.

Now I’m gonna say what I always say and make it clear to everyone...

Floppies - No good. They’re slow and unreliable. When you have a project that’s larger than 1.44mb, you’ll need several disks to save all your data. If you have a project that’s nearly 32mb, you’re gonna need a **** of floppies in order to save that project, AND it’s gonna take forever to do that. Same goes for loading that same project. Now if just ONE of those disks fails on you, you’re **** out of luck. Kiss all your hard work goodbye. You’re gonna have to rework the whole damn thing and take even more time to do it. Also, the 2000 has a tendency to either not save or load a project with multiple floppies properly. So even if you have brand new floppies and brand new floppy drive, the risk of losing your work and the time consumption involved makes it not worth it to use floppies. So as we say here in NY, fuhgeddaboutit!

Zip disks - The WORST thing to ever come out of the ‘90s. Even if you find New Old Stock drives, they WILL fail when you least expect it. As soon as you start hearing a clicking noise known as The Click Of Death, the drive is as good as gone. The disks themselves are prone to corrupt data which you’ll never be able to recover. It’s just a big floppy disk. Similar material used. So if you have anything stored on Zip disks, back it all up to more reliable media before it’s too late.

SyQuest (and other similar ****) - See above - Same ****, different toilet.

Jaz - an improvement to Zip. Very expensive back in the ‘90s. More reliable than Zip. How reliable? Not sure. The only people I’ve seen in these forums have used them with the 2000XL. You’d need a different cable or an adapter to connect with the 2000 Classic since it’s a different SCSI type. So I’m not sure about compatibility issues with the 2000 Classic in particular. My rule of thumb is to avoid mixing different SCSI types, especially since the 2000 Classic tends to be a bit flaky with just about any SCSI device, even using the same type. So why complicate things? Also, the smallest Jaz disk capacity is 1gb. So if you’re creating 32mb partitions, you better have a pen and a pad ready to recall which partitions you saved certain projects on. Otherwise you’re gonna spend a lot of time finding a particular project and/or samples to load after so many partitions have been used. One word comes to mind... ****!

Hard Drive - They’re noisy and they run hot. So not only will you be dealing with hard drive noise. But you’ll be dealing with fan noise as you’ll need a fan installedThe larger or risk imminent disk failure. You don’t want a large capacity drive either, or you’ll have to deal with the **** issue described above. The larger capacity drives are also a different SCSI type. So as I also mentioned above, it’s not a good idea to use different SCSI types and adapters.
WARNING: If you wanna experiment, be my guest. But don’t ever recommend anything without spending several months of extentensive testing. Otherwise you’re gonna royally piss someone off if they try the same thing, only to waste their time and money. Same goes for any other drives. I see too much of that **** going on here where people blindly suggest things because it sounds good on paper. This is the 2000 Classic we’re dealing with here. It’s more temperamental than if you were to recommend it for some old PC.

Keep in mind that older and smaller hard drives are gonna be even more noisy and will have more of a tendency to fail quicker. My advice is to not waste your time or money on hard drives for the 2000. I can’t think of any good reason to experiment with them myself.

CF and SD drives - Ideal for people who have a lot of samples stored on their computers. Raizinmonster (CF) and Fuzinmonster (SD) have been recommended in the past. But you’re gonna pay a premium at $120 and upwards. I’ve given them a lot of thought in the past. But the trouble I’ve had in making any decision is the fact that I’ve read about both of those drives suddenly failing on some people here. None of them have been able to resolve those issues. So the risk of spending all that money on a potential dud just doesn’t sit well with me.

SCSI2SD - I’ve had people tell me I should try it without any proof that it works. I’ve also seen someone post pics online with screenshots of it being recognized on the 2000. But that’s where it ends. No other info has been provided upon my inquiries. Seems a bit shady. If you’re gonna recommended a product, you better be prepared to answer questions about it, especially if you plan on selling an MPC with one installed. If you can’t, you definitely got something to hide. Aside from that individual with bold claims and no details, the manufacturer’s website doesn’t list the 2000 Classic as being compatible with it. So until that happens, I’ll suggest not wasting $70.

M.O. (Magneto Optical) - Yeah I know I come up here recommending it like I’m a shill and I own stock in the technology. But neither of that is true. This is ‘90s technology at it’s BEST! The disks have been reported to last 50 years, millions of rewrites, and they’re very affordable. I find drives for $30 on ebay all the time, and I also find disks for an average price of $5 for128mb and 230mb. Those are very ideal capacities for the 2000 since the OS doesn’t read or write folders. So with 4 32mb partitions on a 128mb disc and 7 or 8 on a 230mb disc, you won’t have to deal with the **** that I mentioned about larger disks. I’m going on 5 years without any real issues other than the 2000 being finicky with certain brands of disks. As long as they’re well known brands like Maxell, Sony, Fujitsu, TDK, and Phillips, your MPC will be cool with it. I don’t have a huge sample library on my computer and I rarely download samples. So I’m not concerned about transferring or backup. The disks are reliable enough that I don’t feel the need to back anything up. But I still have my old PC with a SCSI adapter installed if I ever wanted to do that. I’m not the only one using MO here. There’s a small handful of others that have been using them before and after me. Nobody has had any regrets about it. So for the 2000, this is the way to go, and I’ll still stand behind that for years to come.
By Dan Jose Thu Feb 14, 2019 12:48 pm
distortedtekno wrote:Cool. Glad you got some good methods worked out. Seems useful given the workarounds.


Thanks dude. I feel like there is a lot of misinformation about these usb floppy readers. They are weird and take a longer time to learn to use than I thought. That is mostly because It took a long time to really understand how basic the saving function is on the akai OS, but I think the floppy emulators are probably the best option for modernizing the 2000. You can save all the "floppies" in a folder on your desktop and just drop them on your usb stick whenever you want to reload your old mpc project files. It's pretty handy. You can also create disks and load your samples on them from the computer to use on your mpc providing the file disk / file names don't have more than 8 letters and the name and they are 16 bit.

The problems are always going to be the 1.44 partitioning. If someone could make a digital zip drive much like the usb floppy emulator than we would be laughing. Making and saving across multiple disks is just slow as hell on a 20 year old computer.

Dan Jose
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By hok-2 Mon Feb 18, 2019 8:50 pm
Just to let people know I got a Scsi2sd V5.1 board to work with my mpc2000.
This is the one I bought -
http://amigakit.amiga.store/product_inf ... ts_id=1264
Mine is in a exsternal scsi enclosure and I had to unplug the scsi block at the back of the enclosure.
I used a 1gb Sandisk SD card.
The settings in Scsi2Sd Utility I used are:
Scsi Termination - Ticked
Enable Scsi2 mode - Ticked

Device 1 - device size changed to 1gb
Then I formatted the disk in the mpc disk menu.

I put the mpc 2000 O.S on the Sd card and it boots from that.
I only did this today but, so far it saves and loads programs, sequences, sounds etc without any problems.
It has changed the sd card size to 482mb for some reason but, that is plenty to me.
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