My 1st MPC 2000XL but I can't update to 1.20! Please help...

Two electric shocks, three IDE CD ROM drives, eight burned discs, two CF cards, three SD cards, and a floppy drive later and I'm ready to admit defeat. I bought this MPC 2000 XL with it already having the SD card mod done to it. However, it's on a very old OS (1.12). It isn't until OS 1.20 where you can put in a card that a Windows PC will recognize (on the OS I am on, the MPC will demand the card be formatted before use. When it formats it, it's unreadable on a PC). You can see why this is a big catch 22.

So I can't just put the firmware update on the SD card because the 2000XL will demand it be formatted. So I dug out an old floppy drive and plugged it into the MPC's floppy port and it kept saying no floppy drive installed even though I verified that the floppy drive works just fine (as well as several floppy disks). Then I burned the update to a CD-R and that too did nothing. The MPC will not detect the CD-ROM attached to the IDE port (it keeps saying no floppy device installed). I am so desperate that I even bought a CF to IDE adapter and put the update on the CF card and that didn't work either. The MPC detects the SD card reader just fine.

Anyway, how am I supposed to update the firmware on this? Do I have to find a genuine MPC floppy drive for this thing? I was under the impression that it's a generic floppy drive considering it has a normal floppy port and a normal floppy power connector. I even looked up SCSI CD-ROM drives but their ports looked nothing like the port on the back of my 2000XL.

Anyway if anyone knows how I could update this OS I would greatly appreciate it. I've done a bunch of Googling too and have gotten nowhere. Thanks in advance!

Yeah. Go with OS1.14.
I updated my XL to 1.2, didn’t like it with my card reader and files so I went back to 1.14.

Thank you for all of the replies. I would happily update to 1.14, but I can't as per my original post. My MPC doesn't detect ANYTHING other than the SD card reader.

Lampdog wrote:I’ve NEVER gotten 1.20 to work with any card I’ve tried.
I just keep my partitions at 512mb.

I just loaded OS1.14 from ATAPI Cf drive onto 2kxl so I know your able to install OS files from ATAPI/IDE

Whenever I connect my ATAPI CF drive the 2kxl says "floppy drive not found".

I've given up and ordered a floppy drive from eBay that is supposedly compatible (I can't believe the brand of floppy drive matters!) as well as a floppy with 1.14 already on it. Just out of curiosity, is there a reason to use 1.14 over 1.20?

I had problems with OS1.2 because I was installing an internal 9GB HDD in my XL and had problems with partitioning the drive along with my Microtech PCD-47B SCSI card reader. OS1.14 cured all of that so I stuck with it.

What card reader do you have in the 2000XL? Some IDE/ATAPI card readers only work with OS1.2. Specifically, Addonics & StarTech CF card readers are the main brands that require OS1.2 to be installed FIRST! on the MPC2000XL before those specific card readers are installed and are able to work.

JUKE 179r wrote:I had problems with OS1.2 because I was installing an internal 9GB HDD in my XL and had problems with partitioning the drive along with my Microtech PCD-47B SCSI card reader. OS1.14 cured all of that so I stuck with it.

What card reader do you have in the 2000XL? Some IDE/ATAPI card readers only work with OS1.2. Specifically, Addonics & StarTech CF card readers are the main brands that require OS1.2 to be installed FIRST! on the MPC2000XL before those specific card readers are installed and are able to work.

I don't even see the brand on the SD card reader haha. Regardless I am having zero issues with it. My only issue is I want to update to 1.14 at the very least and I can't.

Lampdog wrote:Can you load samples with your current setup? Cause you load an OS the EXACT same way as you load a sample.

With my SD card inserted yes I can record a sample just fine and play it back. I am not sure if this is what you mean by loading.

However, due to the fact that OS versions before 1.14 CANNOT be read in Windows, it is not possible for me to put the 1.14 update or 1.20 update on the SD card and load it.

I just received in the mail the official MPC floppy drive, and a 1.14 update floppy. This time, the MPC will detect the floppy drive, but any time I try to load the OS update it says "DISK READ ERROR".

I have no idea what else to do here. Please don't tell me I need to buy an SCSI CD-ROM drive just to update this thing. I paid $500 for it which was all I could afford, now with this floppy drive and update disk I am out another $60. $40 more and I could have just bought this thing on eBay for full price! Is there any other way I can update this thing? I have no idea why it's giving me so many problems with reading the update from the floppy.

Lampdog wrote:Load os file same as you load a sample from card/floppy.

Thanks but I am doing that. No matter what it gives me a "floppy disk read error" even though the floppy drive, cable, and disk all work just fine in my PC

at this point maybe i'd guess that your ribbon cable is bad.