SCSI External Drive Questions

Hi, as you can tell by my post count and join date im new. I literally have owned an mpc for about 2 days. I did a couple of searches but couldn't find specific answers to my q's.

Anyways... i recently bought a used 2000xl with a zip drive already installed. Unfortunatley my PC does not have a zip drive. I already know that an mpc requires a SCSI but does my computer also need SCSI or does any external zip drive work?

Also ive seen 250mb and 100mb drives. The dude i bought the mpc off of sent me a bunch of 100mb disks. Does it matter what size drive i should buy?

Any info is appreciated and I apologize in advance if any questions are stupid

panama_R3D wrote:Hi, as you can tell by my post count and join date im new.

No sh°t

Welcome...

panama_R3D wrote:I already know that an mpc requires a SCSI but does my computer also need SCSI or does any external zip drive work?

Nah, you can get a usb zip drive for your pc.

panama_R3D wrote:The dude i bought the mpc off of sent me a bunch of 100mb disks. Does it matter what size drive i should buy?

Some drives can only handle up to 100MB disks...You probably got one of those. I got a card reader in my mpc so don't have much experience with zip drives...

2 kinds of zip drives, zip100 and zip250. Get the disks for whatever drive it is you have. If he gave you zip100 disks, then it's a safe bet you have a zip100 drive, but that doesnt HAVE to be the case. the zip250 drives can still read zip100 disks.

I use a zip100 scsi drive on one of my mpcs and to match it have a usb zip100 on one of my pcs that holds my samples and sound library.

Thanks for the info, and yea i definitly have to email that guy to find out what exactly he installed. Instead of makin another thread i have another question.

Well i have everything hooked up, which im sure its proper from websites and threads i read... i have the turntable (numark ttusb) hooked to the Record Ins and i have rca cables connecting the mpc to the monitors by way of the Stereo Outs. Problem is when i sample the level meters are extremely low and they never pick up the signal (i know one answer might be to buy an amp, but doesnt the ttusb comew with a preamp?). Also how can you reconfigure this so i can hear the turntable through my speakers, with this set up i can barley hear it through the turntable.

Not really familiar with the ttusb, but I know enough that it's a turntable with a built in audio interface - that being USB.

However, from the Numark website:

"Packaged with all the necessary cables to connect with a computer or stereo playback system, along with software to remove clicks, pops, and other undesirable characteristics of vinyl, the TTUSB is a comprehensive package that breathes new life into older recordings."

Key sentence there being "connect with a computer or stereo playback system" because I would interpret that to mean it has a standard stereo output available, which is what you would connect to the record ins of the MPC.

Assuming you have the record gain turned up, I guess I'd need some more detail to determine the issue there with it being so low.

panama_R3D wrote:Thanks for the info, and yea i definitly have to email that guy to find out what exactly he installed.

You should usually see on the front of the drive if it's 100 or 250.

What is not commonly known is that the Iomega 250MB drives write very slowly onto 100MB disks...probably because they wanted to force you to buy the more expensive 250MB disks. So keep that in mind if you want to buy one for your PC. You can also get internal ones (IDE) by the way.

_Stilo_ wrote:

panama_R3D wrote:Thanks for the info, and yea i definitly have to email that guy to find out what exactly he installed.

You should usually see on the front of the drive if it's 100 or 250.

What is not commonly known is that the Iomega 250MB drives write very slowly onto 100MB disks...probably because they wanted to force you to buy the more expensive 250MB disks. So keep that in mind if you want to buy one for your PC. You can also get internal ones (IDE) by the way.

It doesn't write very slow, it just writes a bit slower than 100 drives, and they didn't do that because they wanted to force you to buy 250 disks -- it's all about the magnetic tape used in the 100s. On top of that, 250 drives read 100 discs a lot faster than 100 drives -- 5MB of samples loads (via external SCSI) in about 2-3 seconds; with Zip 250 disks, almost no time at all. Blink of an eye. One other thing. If you're using a 100 disk on a 250 drive and the disk has been formatted in a way that the MPC can't read it, you can't simply use the FAT16 formatter built into windows, you need to download IomegaWare from their site -- it's free. 250 drives can't do a thorough format of a 100 disk.

I appreciate everyones info. I found out that my drive was infact a 250mb... so guess ill pick up a 250 usb zip drive from the bay since i just went to every electronice store around my area without luck...

But as far as my connection problems... it all came down to my turntable. I managed to connect my ipod through the Record Ins and it worked great.

Anyone here with a Numark TTUSB know whats going on? My Gain is turned all the way up and the switch is set to RCA phono.

Alistar wrote:It doesn't write very slow, it just writes a bit slower than 100 drives, and they didn't do that because they wanted to force you to buy 250 disks -- it's all about the magnetic tape used in the 100s. On top of that, 250 drives read 100 discs a lot faster than 100 drives -- 5MB of samples loads (via external SCSI) in about 2-3 seconds; with Zip 250 disks, almost no time at all. Blink of an eye.

From the Iomega support site: https://iomega-na-en.custhelp.com/cgi-b ... 14432#zip2

ZIP 250 Data transfer rate:
Sustained transfer rate: 2.4 MB/sec with 250MB disk (With 100MB disks: 1.4MB/sec read, 0.25MB/sec write)

ZIP 100 Data transfer rate:
Maximum sustained transfer rate: 1.40 MB/sec

That's for the ATAPI models. I assume it's similar for the SCSI models, though they give no info for those. From my experience they are actually that slow.

Yeah I know that technically it is "very slow," but think -- say you have 32 drum samples in a program... for me that's usually just over 1MB, that loading off of a 100 disk in a 250 drive is instantaneous. Writing a completely sampled song (10-15 sec. of mono samples, then 4-7 drum sounds) to a 100 disk from a 250 drive would take about 30 seconds. Sounds good to me, not to mention NOT having to split it up onto 2-3 floppies.

Yea...in the orders of the MPCs memory it doesn't matter too much. Just wanted to put this straight.

For example I just copied an almost 100MB of samples onto a ZIP100 on my PCs ZIP250 drive, for use in the MPC. Took about a couple of minutes. So it can be a pain, and I don't really see a technical reason for it. But maybe there is one...