Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
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By DUNE Sat Jul 09, 2011 7:33 pm
UPDATE!!

I tried out the VirtualBox Windows EMulator and the software is very nice to say the least ,although i couldnt get a full screen view? I did like it with the exception of that. So upon attempting on Vista Home Prem. on my Imac i found that the card was unable to be read,it was recognized at the bottom of VB status bar,but it was not seeing it properly at the device manager,even when i updated the drivers and what not. So no luck there...Went to my roomies pc and tried again with similar troubles and unable to reformat the Cf Card when trying on this actual PC not emulated. So i noticed there was a built in CF Card reader on the front panel of his tower and i plugged right into it. The card was read and formatted just fine. I then dropped a sample from my Imacs Ex HD onto the CF Card using our shared networking, haha but while still on the PC! I ejected the card and went to the MPC, the file name was not jumbled(although) now i was following the Dos rule. The file loaded and BAda Bing Bada BOOM BOOM Bm Bm Boom! The problem was a horrible CF Card Reader i bought on Ebay from Hong Kong...Haha! No BS, CHinese get down on some main cuisine but CF Card Reader manufacturing is not one of theyre strong points..Lol! I will now celebrate by eating some chinese food at The CHinese Kitchen,mongolian beef ,egg drop soup, Iced Tea, HERE I COME!! Thanks for all the help you all gave me, we were like a small panel of detectives trying to solve this one ;)
Last edited by DUNE on Mon Jul 11, 2011 1:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
By JVC Sat Jul 09, 2011 8:51 pm
Glad you managed to sort it out. But, I'd be surprised if you find a card reader that is NOT made in China. Even MPC-2000XL was made in China. (MPC-60 and MPC-3000 were manufactured in Japan though.)
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By nogginj Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:28 pm
Congrats. Card readers are cheap...try another one on your iMac I have had nothing but good results with VirtualBox.

Enjoy your General Tsao's Chicken.
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By DUNE Sat Jul 09, 2011 11:31 pm
Thanks guys! Ended up going with some egg drop soup and then chowmein with a side of sweet n sour pork! ,The food was great with an iced tea all for 8 bux! After a nice refuel and a toke a magi smok i was on the hunt agin for a new CF CARD READER. Found one and bought it,it works great with all our machines...but now I am having a trouble with Virtual Box ... ;( I can still use the roomies pc with built in CF Card reader but i just bought another card reader and it would be nice to do it all from my room on my Imac...Heres the issue



I have an App called Virtual Box on my Mac that emulates a windows Os environment. I use Vista Home Premium. I am not able to see my Sandisk CF Card w/Usb CF Card Reader while in the Windows Environment. It shows up on the bottom at the Usb Logo and shows it as check marked for connection. But when i go into "Computer" after clicking on the Vista Start button at the bottom left corner, it does not show the CF Card..? My Imac sees the card and shows its folders and what not. I am not able to use the CF Card with my Imac to transfer samples onto the CF Card reader on my MPC due to the hidden files Mac creates that is why i am using an emulated Windows Vista Os. When i check the "Device Manager" in Vista it shows some "Exclamation" marks under Universal mass storage,i look further into it and the device cannot be updated for drivers for some weird reason..? I noticed there was updates that did not install properly when i started up Virtual Box a second time,it opened after reverting updates...? I wonder if this could have anything to do with it...?
Can anyone lend some help..? Thanks



Image
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By nogginj Sun Jul 10, 2011 2:38 pm
yo man that 320x200 px image is pretty much worthless, fyi.

i just tried with a usb memory stick and it is indeed slightly tricky how you get it to work.
I was able to pick up a USB device in Windows XP running in VirtualBox (VB) on an iMac.

Code: Select all0a) if windows is running in VB, then shut it down - Machine -> ACPI SHutdown
0b) Make sure your usb device (card reader) is plugged into the iMac.
1) In the VB window, select the virtual machine you want (vm) to run, and click the 'details' tab.
2) Scroll down to where it says "USB" and click on it.
3) Check "Enable USB Controller", and then also check "Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller".
4) Now we have to tell the VM which usb device we are going to use. Click the little usb with a plus (+) sign on it. You should see your device in here...it might have a strange name, but you should be able to narrow it down (my 2gb memory stick with 'Ativa' written on it was called 'Ativa 2gb').
5) Select your device and hit "OK".
6) Start your VM.
7) Let it sit for a minute and it should start to notice there is a USB controller hooked up to it now. It should go through the routine of installing a USB controller in windows.
8) make sure none of the programs on your mac are accessing the card reader, and unplug it from the usb port.
9) plug your card reader back into the usb port.


Hopefully, Windows will detect it now and begin installing it normally.

One side note, if for some reason you have a problem, you can try uninstalling the driver for the messed up USB device in device manager, then try the above steps again. Save that for last, let's just hope it works the first time like it did for me.

VirtualBox is really great. It's also funny that what sold me on the mac was ability to use windows...because of these stupid mac issues like this hidden file crap.
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By DUNE Mon Jul 11, 2011 1:00 am
Ive done all the steps you gave me,even uninstalled the drivers. It restarts ,starts backup after installing updates, vista home screen comes up and it finds new drivers then i get this screen...

http://i1227.photobucket.com/albums/ee4 ... stapic.jpg

The problem with that is that it never finds the drivers...My card reader box says it doesnt need a disc,its preloaded....OMG!!!


nogginj wrote:yo man that 320x200 px image is pretty much worthless, fyi.

i just tried with a usb memory stick and it is indeed slightly tricky how you get it to work.
I was able to pick up a USB device in Windows XP running in VirtualBox (VB) on an iMac.

Code: Select all0a) if windows is running in VB, then shut it down - Machine -> ACPI SHutdown
0b) Make sure your usb device (card reader) is plugged into the iMac.
1) In the VB window, select the virtual machine you want (vm) to run, and click the 'details' tab.
2) Scroll down to where it says "USB" and click on it.
3) Check "Enable USB Controller", and then also check "Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller".
4) Now we have to tell the VM which usb device we are going to use. Click the little usb with a plus (+) sign on it. You should see your device in here...it might have a strange name, but you should be able to narrow it down (my 2gb memory stick with 'Ativa' written on it was called 'Ativa 2gb').
5) Select your device and hit "OK".
6) Start your VM.
7) Let it sit for a minute and it should start to notice there is a USB controller hooked up to it now. It should go through the routine of installing a USB controller in windows.
8) make sure none of the programs on your mac are accessing the card reader, and unplug it from the usb port.
9) plug your card reader back into the usb port.


Hopefully, Windows will detect it now and begin installing it normally.

One side note, if for some reason you have a problem, you can try uninstalling the driver for the messed up USB device in device manager, then try the above steps again. Save that for last, let's just hope it works the first time like it did for me.

VirtualBox is really great. It's also funny that what sold me on the mac was ability to use windows...because of these stupid mac issues like this hidden file ****.
By JVC Mon Jul 11, 2011 1:29 am
Umm, I am not sure whether you really have to mess with virtual PC software, just for exchanging data between your MPC and Mac.

I sometimes copy WAV files using Mac only, use Clean Up SMB Mess app to unmount the CF card, and it works fine. I use SanDisk 2GB CF card (probably the smallest capacity CF card SanDisk is selling now) and works fine.
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By DUNE Mon Jul 11, 2011 1:43 am
I appreciate your input

The app did not produce different results, i posted this in earlier post of this thread,that was the whole reason behind VB

Im hoping somebody can help...


JVC wrote:Umm, I am not sure whether you really have to mess with virtual PC software, just for exchanging data between your MPC and Mac.

I sometimes copy WAV files using Mac only, use Clean Up SMB Mess app to unmount the CF card, and it works fine. I use SanDisk 2GB CF card (probably the smallest capacity CF card SanDisk is selling now) and works fine.
Last edited by DUNE on Mon Jul 11, 2011 5:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
By JVC Mon Jul 11, 2011 2:08 am
I've just read the whole thread, and I didn't know that you have a hot-swappable card reader installed on your MPC. I thought you have a non-swappable one installed on your MPC (there is big difference how those two work on MPC.)
I think the fact that the card became unaccessible after formatting your CF card on your MPC poses a serious issue. That is not even PC / Mac compatibility issue.
Bottom line is that you should be able to format CF card with MPC, and the card should be ready to use with MPC.
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By DUNE Mon Jul 11, 2011 2:20 am
I definitely can use the card on an actual pc my roomate has with built in CF Card reader.it works fine like that with the Mpc The card is fine until i plug it into my mac thats in my room....this is really bogus since i have to go back and forth xfering samples from my card thru his Pc ...thanks for the help anyways broda.
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By DUNE Mon Jul 11, 2011 2:49 am
Thats what i was thinking....DOUBLE FARTS!
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By nogginj Mon Jul 11, 2011 1:24 pm
maybe step your google game up a bit and start looking for a virtualbox forum where someone is trying to get a usb device working on vista in osx. i admit, when i found the first bit of useful info it was because i searched for xp specifically :\.

please keep us posted.

ps. a little background on what is happening:
when you 'enable usb' in vb, the next time you boot up virtual windows, it detects the new usb controller then installs that.
after that, it will detect whenever you plug in a usb device.

im thinking it's part 1 where vista is failing, it just doesn't understand the virtualbox usb controller.
do correct me if i'm wrong.

and JVC, that is very interesting about the hotswap/atapi vs scsi success. I have an atapi hotswap drive as well, and SMB Mess doesn't work for me. So are you saying it works for scsi drives and not atapi/hotswap ones?! That is crazy.
I did notice that 'cleanup smb mess' did NOT remove all files...just most of them.
By JVC Mon Jul 11, 2011 2:31 pm
nogginj wrote:JVC, that is very interesting about the hotswap/atapi vs scsi success. I have an atapi hotswap drive as well, and SMB Mess doesn't work for me. So are you saying it works for scsi drives and not atapi/hotswap ones?! That is crazy.
I did notice that 'cleanup smb mess' did NOT remove all files...just most of them.


Yes, I did notice that 'cleanup smb mess' does not remove all hidden files, (which really sucks) but it still works for me.

Regarding ATAPI drive. The CF reader I have installed on my 2000XL is Addonics IDE NON-hot swappable reader.
I've just realized that you guys are using swappable CF reader on your XL (is it Akai brand that you guys are using?) I am not talking about SCSI CF reader.
Let me be clear on the terms. hot-swappable IDE CF reader is truly ATAPI device, but non-hot swappable CF reader is NOT ATAPI device (although it show as ATAPI device on XL), it is a ATA device, rather.
(Both ATAPI and ATA are devices that use IDE port.)

Why does it matter? With non-hot swappable CF reader (ATA, the one I use), CF card and XL communicates directly. XL sees CF card as IDE hard drive.

Now, hot-swappable CF reader (ATAPI device), XL would communicate CF card indirectly, instead, XL would communicate to the hot-swappable CF reader. See, there is one more layer of data exchange between your Sandisk CF card to your XL.

So... Now, my guess is that, hot-swappabe CF reader REALLY don't like hidden files that OS X leaves. On my non-swappable Addonics CF reader, hidden files are not really big issue, it is more of annoyances (XL can read CF card anyway, and XL would list hidden files, so I can manually delete on XL.)

So, I guess you DO need a way to have exchange data without leaving hidden files! (I didn't know that hot-swappable CF reader has such drawback.)

I've been using VMware Fusion, and it's been great. I use USB card reader with VMware Fusion, never had problems.

Not really related, but other very useful app is file renaming apps. I use those two, depending the tasks:
R-name: simple file renamer. I use this very often. Free!
A better Finder Rename: it has more options.
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By nogginj Mon Jul 11, 2011 4:38 pm
Thanks for the clarification, that is pretty interesting.

TL;DR -
Atapi Hotswap drives - Clean up SMB Mess does not help...leaves some files which cause problems
Atapi NON-Hotswap drives - Clean Up SMB Mess works fine.

unrelated, while on the topic of file renaming, here is a shell script I wrote that really has helped me out batch naming a bunch of files very quickly. You do this via terminal.

You would need to copy paste this into a file and call it, for example, 'jrename.sh'.
Then you'd type:
sudo cp jrename.sh /usr/bin/. - to move it to your bin folder.
Then you'd type:
sudo chmod 775 /usr/bin/jrename.sh - to allow you to run it from wherever.
Then you'd' use it like:
jrename.sh "pattern1" "pattern2" - which will replace all instances of "pattern1" with "pattern2" in filenames in a directory.
Yea it's a bit complicated to get going, but it has saved my ass a lot of times, so figured I'd share.
Code: Select allFILES=$(pwd)/*
echo "Working in $FILES"

REPLACE=$1
REPLACEWITH=$2
echo "Replacing \"$REPLACE\" with \"$REPLACEWITH\" ..."

##for f in $FILES
for f in `ls`
do
   REP=${f/$1/$2}
   ##REP=$f
   mv $f $REP
   echo $REP
done