CF card doesn't format?

sorry - total MPC noob here... reading along with the tutor and trying to format a CF card on the 2000XL. it goes thru the motions and says: Formating.............. but then when i go back into LOAD under Type= it still says PC, not MPC 2000XL


.... and in the FORMAT screen i don't see any of the partition stuff either sorry for the noobing....

Which os is your MPC running - 1.14 or 1.2? If it is 1.2, then the partitioning capability was removed by Akai. When you format, there will be a single 1GB storage space with no partitions.

As for the format type, that should be fine. Have you tried to save or load anything?

the cat i got it from had some stuff on this CF card already, and i can load and assign those sounds to pads ok. how do i tell what os its running?

Well, if everything is working okay, the os doesn't much matter. I'm sure it is 1.2 (or the mysterious 1.14c) but you can check it by SHIFT 8, then F3.

word. looks like im running 1.2 here. any idea how i can determine if this CF drive is hot-swappable? is there a risk to the machine hotswapping cf cards or just to data on the cards?

Try pulling out the CF card and putting in a different one - just doing it once or twice won't hurt anything. The test is if you can press SHIFT 3, then Load and see the new card information. If it still shows the files from the original CF card, then your drive is not hot swappable. Power down and start over again in this case.

ok so it looks like i got a hotswappable drive in this beotch. dope.

will the SD card slot on the drive work with the MPC too? i havent really seen anyone writing about using one.

so with a CF drive and a SCSI drive will there ever be any reason for me to even use the SCSI? seems like you could just rock CF cards, right?

**** this machine is so tight... i'm pissed i didn't get one 10 years ago. i'm an idiot for sleepin... this shit gives a whole new life to digging.

i have a multi-card hotswappable reader which might be the same/similar to yours. i use the sd card all the time, its a great option. and really great to have both cards in at once...the CF card takes precedence, but if i want to use the sd i just eject the cf a bit and now the sd works.
so i use the sd like a static samples drive, and the cf card is my working drive, where i save and load from most of the time.

word. is there a gig threshold that the MPC can deal with as far as card size goes or can i just get the biggest SD and CF cards i can find and then pretty much forget about bothering with the SCSI in the future?

No, you are limited to using 1GB CF and SD cards in your ATAPI card reader. That is the main difference between SCSI drives and an ATAPI drive like the one you have - SCSI gives you the ability to use larger capacity cards. With our SCSI drive, you can use CF cards up to 16GB in capacity. However, since your drive is hot swappable, that feature more than makes up for the capacity advantage of a SCSI drive - just buy a lot of 1GB cards and swap them as needed.

1 gig goes a long way when you're dealing in MAX 32mb chunks.

just sayin. people get too hung up on the hot swap thing.

nogginj wrote:people get too hung up on the hot swap thing.

In my experience, it seems that people want hot swap capability because it makes it easier to move samples back and forth between computer and MPC.

yea thats what ive been doing so far with like the pete rock drum kit and sheet from off the tutorials, just going back and forth from a card reader in the macbook.

not nearly as sick as when i cut my first sample on the mpc of a Paul Simon record while listening thru it... **** with it for a minute and then realized, hang on a second, i've heard this loop.. what the fk is that??? go out to the truck with the ipod in it and it was a Saigon track that Just Blaze produced haha

anyways, this mpc also came to me with a SCSI CD Rom drive - dude told me always make sure its on before you turn on the mpc - and it came with a bunch of samples and sounds and sheet... but damn this thing is antiquated... i dont really see myself using it much if i dont have to... i can probably throw those CDs in the macbook pro and rip whatever files i need right onto CF and SD cards, right?

so it seems like this 2000xl i got is pretty upgraded from stock - its has the 8outs installed too... how do i know if it has the effects card? is that the only other upgrade i should look for?

thanks homies