Solid-State Hard Drive Mod:How-To

Get to 64GB and it already works out cheaper anyway, only the 32Gb doesn't. A 233x 64GB CF card costs $290 from the only seller on Ebay (the only 64GB card I could see) while the SSD drive is $205. 128GB isn't even a possibility with CF cards. So yeah 32GB may not be worth, especially as the interface probably wont utilise full speed, but for 64 or 128GB it does become cheaper and worthwhile. But it is a stupid amount more than a mechanical hard disk (but then you run into worry of head crashes and physical damage, especially if you are lugging your machine around the whole time.)

Would be good to know what speed the IDE interface actually works at.

brilliant!!

This seems to be pretty cool, but what about recording to the hdd, does it work or it will give you some kind of lag?

If you mean "Is there lag when recording samples?"

the answer is negatory.

There are different speeds of CF cards though and I have only tried a few (Some aData ones which are notoriously slow and they worked fine)

aData Sucks though, 2 of the 3 cards I purchased for MPC/
Digital Cam/iPod fix have all died.

I have been using this one in my MPC as the HDD however for many many months with no issues:

I just received my MPC1000 in the mail today (it's the brand new black one) and I already downloaded the JJ OS Version 3.08 onto it. I was considering getting a solid-state hard drive because it would be more suitable than just switching cards and placing stress on the pins. However, I've seen that you've used a 32GB card on the tutorial; wondering what is the MAX amount of space you can put on these since you're already modifying it???

I think with the way the card is formatted (as was said in an earlier post) is 31gb on a 32gb card. I know it's tempting to try to find one with larger storage, but 32gb is HUGE if you think about it.
Unless you're loading tons and tons of full albums on it, it'll take forever to fill up with one hits, drum samples, and loops.

Great job on this! I plan on buying an HD kit soon so I can give this a go!

FredFrank wrote:I'm just trying to see the point when the 1000 already has a cf card slot, if you don't want to use the hard drive
inside the machine then why not just use the regular cf card slot that it already has on the front instead of doing the mod?
is there some advantage to the mod cf card over the front cf slot?

Not trying to be a hardhead here I know i'm missing something.

I remember reading the front slot can read up to 2gb cards- haven't tried to go over than that though. The largest card I have is 2gb! That will change soon

GhostofJohnToad wrote:I am getting ready to try this and I just noticed there is a version of this adapter that supports 2 CF cards in the same foot print. I wonder if this would work? Do you think the MPC can see two "drives" like this? Seeing how it is set up as a master/slave setup?

http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad44midecf.asp

GoJT, have you given this a shot yet? It would be pretty nice to have TWO 32gb drives in there! But one would be enough...that's just my greedy side talking

Is the reason for installing the CF as a drive because the MPC1000 CF reader doesn't recognize that capacity? Does anyone know if the CF reader is compatible with a 32GB CF?

read up 2 posts silly goose ^^^

That's the recommended notion from Akai, it seemed pretty well established in the RAM/CF recommendations thread that higher capacity CFs will work. 4GB and 8GB cards seem to work fine but the highest capacity CF readable by MPC1000 was never confirmed

So who all has tried this in their 1000? Raise your hand....

jbraudio wrote:So who all has tried this in their 1000? Raise your hand....

uhh *raises Hand*

there is even picture evidence :/

lol It works, the adapter just makes the MPC think the CF card is a hard drive, as long as the adapter doesn't require drivers there is no reason why this shouldn't work.

PS: It's very simple. be bold like BBQ sauce.

Well, I know YOU have done it, Mekishiko!

I was hoping some other people would chime in and tell us where they got their cards and for how much!

I just ordered my adaptor last week and am looking for the Pretec CF card at a reasonable price...so far no luck...

GhostofJohnToad wrote:
I am getting ready to try this and I just noticed there is a version of this adapter that supports 2 CF cards in the same foot print. I wonder if this would work? Do you think the MPC can see two "drives" like this? Seeing how it is set up as a master/slave setup?

http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_ ... midecf.asp

I just read the info on the Dual CF card adapter, The verdict: I don't think it will work.

Here it is, notice the parts I put in bold:

This family of unique CF-IDE Hard Drive Adapters is designed to enable one or two Compact Flash (CFI/II) media to be used as direct replacement for the 2.5" IDE hard drive. As a result, any equipment, such as Notebook computer, that uses a 2.5" IDE hard drive can be easily converted to use the low power and shock resistant CF media. Once installed, the CF appears as an ordinary hard drive to any OS and can be configured as a boot device. The Dual CF-IDE Hard Drive Adapter contains a second CF slot for the slave position of the IDE channel, allowing increased storage capacity with the same low power consumption and solid state benefits of the CF card.

I think internally the Hard Drive tray and the outside CF card slot are using both channels of the IDE bus, so installing this may disable the CF drive on the front.

and even if it didn't disable it, it clearly doesn't state that the adapter makes a RAID of the 2 CF cards (which would fool the machine into thinking both cards are one, and could work if that were the case) and the MPC interface in both official/JJOS doesn't allow you to specify multiple Hard Drives with the saving/loading/formatting functions.