Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
By HellsWindStaff Fri May 17, 2019 11:36 am
Hello,

I'm having some trouble with loading floppy discs on to my MPC. I bought these floppys loaded with samples from Ebay but it seems like my mpc doesn't recognize the floppy discs. The 'file' part of the screens just remains empty and I can't scroll. At the 'type' part there just are a bunch of question marks - as you can see in the picture below.
On other threads people suggest to either try the lock on the floppy disk or refer to the 'Loading an Updated Operating System' part in the manual. But neither of those work. The latter because I can't even scroll through the 'file' part as it remains empty.
I'm thinking, maybe my Akai is broken? It makes a lot of noise (like a clicking noise) when you insert the floppy disc - though I've read it might be normal.

Anyone knows what's wrong?

Image
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By tapedeck Fri May 17, 2019 2:59 pm
it looks like those disks might not be formatted correctly for an mpc? i'm guessing here. can you sacrifice a disk, or do you have an extra disk you can use as a blank to test things out?
try formatting it fresh, in the mpc, and saving and loading that way. since it sounds like you are new, what i mean is:
turn on the mpc
plug something into the record inputs
go to the sample page and try to get sound coming into the mpc (this is actually not that important, you could just record a sample of silence for this test)
hit record and make a new sample
now go to the disk page and put a disk in
choose format
format (erase) the disk
now hit save
try to save the sound to the disk
turn the mpc off, then back on
go back to the disk menu and try to load the same sound

if you can do that, then your mpc is fine, and those disks are the wrong format. if that doesn't work, then yes it could be a problem with the mpc or disks.
By HellsWindStaff Fri May 17, 2019 10:49 pm
tapedeck wrote:it looks like those disks might not be formatted correctly for an mpc? i'm guessing here. can you sacrifice a disk, or do you have an extra disk you can use as a blank to test things out?
try formatting it fresh, in the mpc, and saving and loading that way. since it sounds like you are new, what i mean is:
turn on the mpc
plug something into the record inputs
go to the sample page and try to get sound coming into the mpc (this is actually not that important, you could just record a sample of silence for this test)
hit record and make a new sample
now go to the disk page and put a disk in
choose format
format (erase) the disk
now hit save
try to save the sound to the disk
turn the mpc off, then back on
go back to the disk menu and try to load the same sound

if you can do that, then your mpc is fine, and those disks are the wrong format. if that doesn't work, then yes it could be a problem with the mpc or disks.
Thanks both of you! I tried doing this with one of the floppys. After the formatting is says 'disk write error'. At the formatting screen it does recognize it as an 2HD disk. So I guess something is wrong with the machine itself?
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By Lampdog Mon May 20, 2019 4:30 pm
Do you have this problem with any floppies you have previously formatted on that same mpc?
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By tapedeck Mon May 20, 2019 4:55 pm
are they actually hd or dd disks?
it could just be your floppy drive. if thats the case great - put a card reader in instead.
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By Lampdog Tue May 21, 2019 4:04 pm
Wal Martian wrote:Yeah show a picture of the disks you bought.

Aww man, my brain is broken this morning. I read that as

"show me a picture of the dicks".