Share your knowledge on these two classic MPCs
By skylab001 Tue Jan 21, 2014 4:51 am
I was going to do a one off clone for myself of the marion SCSI board, that was the plan at least. I know there is the Stratos SCSI board which is a very nice board, but for me, just as the Marion SCSI board, the price was a bit steep IHMO for my MPC60. I've come up against a couple stumbling blocks, I have minimum qty orders that are needed for the obsolete control chip(which are in limited supply) and the PCB's. I've already laid out the pcb board very similar to the Marion SCSI board and am almost ready to move forward with it. My estimates so far look like I could get these out the door for $179, My question is would these be of interest to anybody? If I move forward with these, I am only going to be making a handful of them as I don't have the time nor money to constantly build them, so if you would be interested let me know.
By skylab001 Fri Jan 24, 2014 6:01 pm
I've answered all PM's, if you sent me a question or posted here please check your inbox. I've done quite a bit of work to update the SCSI board design. It is no longer just a copy of the marion board. You can now mount and attach an internal CF drive(and power it) without any conversion cables or you can connect an external as usual.
By skylab001 Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:35 pm
So the boards are complete! Thanks to everybody who bought one for making this happen. They are awesome, I can't believe what a step up SCSI is on the MPC60. Under 25 seconds to load the equivalent of a 700K floppy drive from a zip. That beats waiting 3+ minutes on my old floppy. Another plus is being able to fill the entire expanded memory without having to split data onto multiple floppies. Internal SCSI drives seem to work just fine, I plugged in my old 2G 3.5" ORB drive and it worked, no internal 25p to 50p converters needed. I do think a CF would be better for internal storage though. I think I've found new love for my MPC.

If your interested and want one, I do have one last scsi board available. PM me.

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By mr_debauch Thu Feb 27, 2014 9:46 am
im curious how you set up the partitions and stuff.. and how many songs you can store before running out of them etc... or what do you do if you do run out? (not asking in general.. I meant personally what is your technique)
By skylab001 Fri Feb 28, 2014 3:57 am
mr_debauch wrote:im curious how you set up the partitions and stuff.. and how many songs you can store before running out of them etc... or what do you do if you do run out? (not asking in general.. I meant personally what is your technique)


I haven't had too much use yet. I've been burning in and testing these boards since finishing them. But I'm sure you can find all sorts of info on SCSI. So far It seems that you create partitions up to 30MB(I did 4 25MB partitions on one Zip disk), I have taken 20 of my floppies and loaded them into them MPC and then saved them as complete program and samples onto one partition on the SCSI drive, this way I can grab one file and load it into memory, I can load kits quickly and max the memory with this technique. I will probably also save individual sequences, samples, etc to a separate partition. Now I've only had this SCSI board done for about 4 days, in time I will probably come up with a better way of doing things. With 20 discs saved on one partition I think I still have almost 10MB left, I'd have to double check that though. My current collection of discs is about 80 floppies, so I don't imagine running out of space anytime soon. I also plan at some point on attaching an Aztec Monster CF drive as an internal HD, as this board was designed to allow this, so we'll see. The best thing so far.... maxing the onboard expanded ram and being able to save the sample file to disk without spanning multiple floppies.
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By mr_debauch Fri Feb 28, 2014 8:22 am
ah cool... so do you usually write down on a paper what programs are what? I guess if the APS files are dedicated to the songs they are used in though so I suppose that wouldn't be too hard... I was just thinking from the context of no folders, so you wind up needing to store contents of several songs in the same spot... In my case I write the sample info on the floppy labels so I don't forget and can grab a drum I know I used in a previous song if needed.

cool that you were able to make that though... well done!
By skylab001 Fri Feb 28, 2014 3:53 pm
So far I haven't written anything down, I'm guessing a majority of my floppies will fit on one zip for now, and eventually on a full internal CF so It'll be just like a computer, browse for what you want and hit load. I usually name my kits after songs, and if I use it on multiple songs I might just copy and rename, I've got pretty much unlimited space now that I don't have to worry about floppies.
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By SimonInAustralia Fri Feb 28, 2014 6:23 pm
Nice work, looks great!

The Stratos Technology CF AztecMonster might make a good totally internal CF reader...

http://www.stratos-technology.com/cgi/S ... TileViewer

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...it is not hotswap, and not a good size for replacing a floppy drive, but would go OK internally, I think. (although, you are probably thinking of replacing the floppy drive, when you say 'internal')

Incorporates the SCSI-IDE bridge (same IC as Acard bridges) and the CF reader onto a single PCB.
Last edited by SimonInAustralia on Fri Feb 28, 2014 8:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.