2000xl add ons?

Hi,

I have the standard 2000xl with no upgrades or add ons....I am getting well fed up of making a beat and having to save it on to 2 floppy discs...its a pain in the anus....

I am thinking of buying an external drive to save and load from....is this my best option? I have read a few helpful bits of info on this topic on this site and on the www.mpc2000xl.com site, but I am wondering if anyone has any specific recommendations or any advice on what is best to buy....floppys are doing my nut...

Bless,

LB

First off... increase your sample time and get the 32 Mb (total) memory sticks. I'd also get a Zip drive and replace the floppy drive. I put a Zip 250 in my 2KXL 2 years ago and I'm glad I did.

I think it is best to leave whatever the factory-fitted internal drive is in place, unless it doesn't work. Get an external zip. Do all your saving with that, but if anything goes wrong with it you can still go back to the internal floppy while you locate a replacement.

Cheers for the replies...

Do these zip drives have to be made by Akai or can I just get any one? I notice you are both from the UK, where is a good place to buy these from? Also how would I upgrade the memory sticks? is it difficult? and do they have to be specific memory sticks or can I just go to any computer shop?


much appreciation for the replies,

bless,

LB

The internal Zip 250 I use is from IOMEGA.

Keep reading www.mpc2000xl.com. He has a bunch of info on replacing the memory http://www.mpc2000xl.com/memory.htm.

JUKE 179r wrote:First off... increase your sample time and get the 32 Mb (total) memory sticks. I'd also get a Zip drive and replace the floppy drive. I put a Zip 250 in my 2KXL 2 years ago and I'm glad I did.

I would suggest the same as Juke. I took out my floppy and got a internal 250 zip. I still got the floppy in the closet though just in case. I also got a scsi hd and cdrom. Loading/saving to/from floppies suck for realz. get the max memory FIRST then do the internal or SCSI zip. You won't be sorry.

Zips are made by Iomega, but for external SCSI ones you need to check eBay or Computer Exchange shops etc. as those aren't in production anymore. For RAM you should stick to authorised Akai dealers to make sure you are getting the proper ones. Don't trust a computer shop as there are a lot of RAM sticks that look right & fit perfectly but won't work.

Most of the big music tech dealers that advertise in the UK music tech magazines can supply the correct RAM.

"if anything goes wrong with it you can still go back to the internal floppy while you locate a replacement"

So what good does that do if all your work is on a bunch of Zips? Just spend the extra $15 and two Zips instead of one. If I was actually using Zips, I would keep about 4 of those horribly unreliable mass-produced consumer devices around.

External ZIP (SCSI) is faster than internal ZIP (ATAPI).

Bought my MPC second hand and it already had an internal 100meg zip drive. I found this extremely unreliable, so I bought a second hand Orb Drive (made by Castlewood) off E-Bay for about 20 quid. It's the Don! It's like a hard drive, but it does actually have removeable 2.2GB disks (which you can pick up for around 8 quid if you look around). It's cheap, fast and very reliable. Highly recommended.