MPC2000XL Compact Flash Card Readers - NEW, NOW ON EBAY

scsiforsamplers.com wrote:

eibou wrote:

eibou wrote:Yo, I found a 1gb card that works - Delkin Devices DDCFFLS2-1GB.

I just made the drive hot-swap with this card. When u take the card out, mp won't go nuts and when u put it back, just go to load screen and change the device to f-rom and then back to atapi. That's it. I'm very pleased. Tried this with another 1gb cf-card - didn't work. So all the cards that are compatible, can't be hot-swapped.

Did you swap to a different CF card? Cause that would be the real test - to see if the MPC loaded the new card's FAT table and saw the files on it and everything. I don't think swapping back to the same card is a test of its swappabilty. If you did, my apologies - it wasn't clear to me from your post.

Good call, might be right,

Question is:

Can you remove the card, scroll to FROM or SCSI, Scroll back to ATAPI, it shouldn't be there cause the card is missing, re-insert the card (Try this both with the load on ATAPI/FLOPPY, whatever it shows, and with load on FROM or SCSI) then see if it shows back up, or scroll back off and back on again, see what it does.

If you were to scroll off and back on and the card is gone and it shows no drive/disk, and then it loads it back up after re-insrtion, I'd say it would see another card as well, cause if it was blank before it just read it again

But if other cards won't hot insert it's gonna be tough to test another card, you'd have to test another delkin

Eibou, you weren't able to do this with other cards were you?

SMC wrote:Ok, I have some cards from Delkin on the way.

They MANUFACTURE cards, sothey're not a reseller.

I'll say this for the Ump-Teenth time.....
Think of it like this. My card readers are a 'bridge' for mating the card to the MPC.
It's a lot more detailed than that in how it works, and the way the PCB actually makes this possible,
But the real detailed stuff takes place in the card itself. That's why some work and some don't,
and why some in 'compatible' spec work, and some don't
Because the card itself has an interface in it.
The card itself converts solid state flash storage into 'compact flash' which is really just like the type of connection/interface
So, the way the card handles the connection/interface between the flash storage, and the actual connection itself, is important

Being that they manufacture the cards, they are able to implement specifications.

I appreciate the explanation but what I'm trying to find out is what unique component is inside the Delkin card which makes it different. Delkin manufactures the cards and I understand they have control over its design (and in this case I assume under your guidance unless they're playing with 10 year old samplers in their laboratory) - but what is it about the Delkin card that makes it unique?

One thing I noticed is that it operates in True-IDE mode.

That's probably the ticket.

It is compact flash Type I, 55x speed:

Spec's & Info

Product Type CompactFlash (CF) Card

Technical Information
Storage Capacity 1 GB
Platform Support PC

Power Description
Input Voltage 3.3 V DC or 5 V DC
Power Consumption 25mA Typical @ 3.3v ± 5%
45mA Typical @ 5v ± 10%

Environmental Conditions
Temperature 0 °C (32 °F) to 70 °C (158 °F) Operating
-20 °C (-4 °F) to 85 °C (185 °F) Non-operating

CompactFlash Type I

Additional Information
Virtually indestructible
Operating Modes: Memory, I/O and True-IDE

System Requirements
Interface: 50-pin

Compatibility
Compatible Slots: 1 x CompactFlash Card

Certifications & Standards
Compact Flash Association approved
EN55022 Class B
EN55024:1998
EN6100-3-2
EN6100-3-3
EN6100-4-4 to EN6100-4-6
EN6100-4-8
EN6100-4-11
MK-STD-202F
MK-STD-810E

Sorry for not being around in a while - I had the university exams for sociology. I gotta go to sleep now(I'm so tired due to the exams that I had today and yesterday) cos' I'm starting a new job tomorrow.

But don't worry, I'll post the things u asked for after a little research

Ok, here's the deal how it works.

When u power up the mp, u gotta have the card inserted in the reader. If u power up the mp and don't have a card inserted, mp won't recognize no atapi after that. So u power up the mp with the card inserted - as usual - and load some sounds from the Delkin card.

IMPORTANT: When u take the card off, KEEP ATAPI AS DEVICE IN THE DEVICE FIELD! If u take the card off, change the device to f-rom or whatever and then insert the card again, the reader won't recognize the card and the mp freezes to a state where u can do nothing. Meaning that if u want to continue using the machine after this freezing, u gotta boot up the machine.

Here's what I did succesfully with the Delkin card:

I powered up the mp with the cf-card inserted. I loaded some sounds into mp's internal memory, took the card off the reader after loading the sounds (doesn't matter in which screen u're in when taking the card off), inserted the card into my computer's card reader, added some sounds into the card's memory and then inserted the card back into mp's reader.

U don't even have to swap the device if u use the files that were in the cf-card's memory already when powering up the mp - just insert the card and scroll through files and folders like nothing hadn't even happened while the card wasn't inserted. WHEN U WANT TO USE THE SOUNDS THAT U ADDED INTO CF-CARD'S MEMORY VIA COMPUTER/WHATEVER, U GOTTA FIRST INSERT THE CF-CARD INTO MP, THEN CHANGE THE DEVICE TO WHATEVER ELSE THAN ATAPI(f-rom for example), CHANGE THE DEVICE BACK TO ATAPI AND THEN U CAN SEE, SELECT AND LOAD THE NEW SOUNDS/FOLDERS THAT U ADDED INTO CF-CARD'S MEMORY. And go out bang some dope-ass beats!

It works like that. No problems.

I guess the key of this hot-swap function is the TrueIDE-card and the 55x speed. I dknew nothing about the TrueIDE function before u mentioned it - didn't even know something like that exists - but the package of the Delkin card stated the speed of 55x so of that I was aware. I don't know what type of cable I'm using - I used the ribbon u sent to me with the reader and the power cord of the old floppy drive.

I'm happy if u can make ur business running better with this info I don't know where I got the idea from trying to hot-swap the card but haha, this means that trying things out can make ur life better

Interesting. Have you tried this with other cards (Non-delkin)??

I just followed the instructions w/my 64mb sandisk, but it just stayed on the wait screen.

Fail.

jonestown massacre wrote:I just followed the instructions w/my 64mb sandisk, but it just stayed on the wait screen.

Fail.

Haaaaaaaaaaaa....

Ooooh.. wait.... sorry....

Heh heh.... Yeah, I seem to remember spending like 2 weeks with a slew of cards n readers n cables n such testing the crap outta the thing back when.

Something slick about the Delkin.... really leanin toward the True IDE mode..... Gonna be doing a LOT of research for a while.... Guess my guy aint gettin my 2KXL back for a while..... heh heh

You know... I installed 1.14 while testing SCSI's SCSI drive and now I can't get it to see a floppy to I can get 1.2 back on to mess with the card reader...... anybody using 2HD floppies? I don't imagine that's it, but those are all I have

Durnit.....

Ooooooooooh! Gotta go! ....

eibou wrote:Ok, here's the deal how it works.


U don't even have to swap the device if u use the files that were in the cf-card's memory already when powering up the mp - just insert the card and scroll through files and folders like nothing hadn't even happened while the card wasn't inserted.

Okay, do that and then save some more files back onto the card from the MPC and then cry ... cause you just destroyed the FAT (File Allocation Table) on the CF card and rendered it useless (without a full reformat). The FAT info that is stored in the MPC's memory is no longer accurate because you added files onto the CF card and that changed the FAT. So when you save at all to the card, chances are very, very good that you will write over those new files you added from the computer. What you are doing here is having two masters "own" the CF card and you cannot do that.

eibou wrote:WHEN U WANT TO USE THE SOUNDS THAT U ADDED INTO CF-CARD'S MEMORY VIA COMPUTER/WHATEVER, U GOTTA FIRST INSERT THE CF-CARD INTO MP, THEN CHANGE THE DEVICE TO WHATEVER ELSE THAN ATAPI(f-rom for example), CHANGE THE DEVICE BACK TO ATAPI AND THEN U CAN SEE, SELECT AND LOAD THE NEW SOUNDS/FOLDERS THAT U ADDED INTO CF-CARD'S MEMORY. And go out bang some dope-ass beats!

This must be done EVERY TIME you change the CF card's data externally, so that the MPC refreshes the FAT info in its memory properly. I would assume the MPC sees a device change and is smart enough to say "hey, the device changed, so I'd better reread the FAT into memory".

I hate to be a killjoy but doing this sort of thing is playing with fire. You will forget to do a step and then wipe the CF card and all the data on it sooner or later.

^you're right about the sampling after loading sounds from computer - mpc freezes up. No files were broken nor the card went blank. You just can't do that - mpc tells you disk error.

But this is what u CAN do(what I did):

I powered up the mp with card inserted, sampled a record(didn't save yet), took the card off the reader, inserted into the computer's reader, loaded some sounds from my laptop, inserted the card to mp, loaded the sound to mp that I loaded earlier from computer, made a sequence, saved it to a new folder(saved all sequences&songs and all programs&sounds), shut the mp down and powered it up and loaded the whole thing up.

It works like that. But if u take the card out of mp, go load some sounds from computer, insert the card back to mp after loading sounds and sample more after that, it won't be a success.

But what this option makes possible, is that u can use ur computer's DAW or sound editor as a sample editor if u wanna sample after u've taken the card once out of the mp(get ur samples there, edit em like u want) and swap the card between the mp and the computer. As many times as you want. As long as you don't sample with the mp's sampler after once taking the card off the mp, everything should work.


And yea, Sandisk's 1gb won't do a single "hot-swap" that Delkin does.

Yeah, well, this is why I'm sticking to not qualifying this as Hot-Swap

I'll do some extensive testing and modding if possible with the batch I'm getting from Delkin and see what's what, but I'm not expecting a miracle

thanx for your work Eibou

Well ain't nothing to it, gangsta rap made me do it

That gangsta rap ... is there anything it can't do?

scsiforsamplers.com wrote:That gansta rap ... is there anything it can't do?

I think not. Shoot, it started it's whole own language and everything!

And it allows me to say things like 'Lay Day' rather than 'Lady' in order to rhyme gooder
Or say things like 'ev-er-e-thing' instead of 'everything' in order to rhythm rhythmier

LOL

I'm sorry to disappoint you but the "hot-swap" function that I found was not that big success. The result was exactly what scsiforsamplers said.

I started making a beat and sampled a record. I got bored and decided to save the samples in a folder for a later use. So I went to save the samples but mp told me a "disk write error". The problem was that when I tried to hot-swap the cf from mpc to computer, computer destroyed the file allocation table aka FAT. So I had to format the cf card to make it work again with the 2kxl.

So no hot-swapping