Experiment - SSD in mpc 2000xl

Maybe I'm not the biggest 'vintage head' ever but I only ever really saw my move from the 2000xl (used from about 2002 to 2007) to the 2500 (bought a couple of year ago) as an upgrade.

groovemonger wrote:Maybe I'm not the biggest 'vintage head' ever but I only ever really saw my move from the 2000xl (used from about 2002 to 2007) to the 2500 (bought a couple of year ago) as an upgrade.

I do like my vintage stuff, run mostly analogue studio & synths, why the mpc is so important to me. It's the center of everything, computer is just a tape machine. The 2500 got my attention due to the hdd access, jjos & kind of looked like an improved 2k but heard many bad sides too. Plus why not get as much out of my 2k while I can.

Right scsi to ide arrived! After some swearing & I managed to get it to get the dip switch settings right for scsi id, termination etc. with no manual this was just trial & error

20gb ide 2.5" hard drive is recognised & full 20gb is available!!! Result.

1gb cf card is recognised & working good

Ssd via sata to ide then ide to scsi does not work need to do more testing before saying it's a no go completely.

So the 9gb limit on internal drive does not exist in this case, which is great news. Opens the way for big cf cards. Although I think this could be due to the scsi to ide adapter, it's an akai ib-id2sc which is meant for s5000 samplers & can handle 33gb drives but people have used 130gb. I have an 80gb drive somewhere, I'll test it but want to go down flash route, no moving parts. Found some info below which suggests even bigger drives will work.



Full thread here

http://krosh.tehnologia.info/forum/view ... iew=unread

Is the largest partition size, on the 20GB IDE drive, 1GB per partition?

If so, then 26 partitions (A-Z) would give you a maximum formatted capacity of 26GB.

Not sure if formatting it in a PC would allow larger partitions, which would work in the MPC and allow a larger capacity.

Hey Neko... Can you take a picture of your Dip switch settings and post it it on here? That was a problem I had trying to get the correct SCSI ID and HD size.
Thanks.

Largest partition is 950 mb. Its got 21 partitions A-U. so yep looks like 25GB might be the limit. The 80GB I have will NOT format at all, recognised go to format, do it then get an error at0000:d197. could be the hard drive on its way out.

Computer is only reading 1st partition on the 20GB on Mac & windows XP. transfers files fast

The Hard drive seems to be just as fast at loading as CF card, also very quiet can't hear if its on or not.

Mounting it all inside will be a pain though, the SCSI2IDE board is large. currently have it sitting atop of the zip drive with Hard drive in effects slot held in with one screw. will do for now but need properly drilling for mounting hard drive or CF card.

JUKE 179r wrote:Hey Neko... Can you take a picture of your Dip switch settings and post it it on here? That was a problem I had trying to get the correct SCSI ID and HD size.
Thanks.

Hey no probs, will post full pics of the whole thing later.

This sets it to SCSI-0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c4iltn6pihobl ... 7%2001.jpg

Neko Neko wrote:Computer is only reading 1st partition on the 20GB on Mac & windows XP. transfers files fast

have you tried booting from knoppix or some other live linux distro to see how many partitions you can see?

beat around the bush wrote:

Neko Neko wrote:Computer is only reading 1st partition on the 20GB on Mac & windows XP. transfers files fast

have you tried booting from knoppix or some other live linux distro to see how many partitions you can see?

Nope not yet but will give it a go, have limited linux knowledge though. Gona try windows 98 & 95 too.

Thing is that i really want access to the Hard drive outside the mpc for getting all the files over in the first place & incase the scsi2Ide dies or something goes wrong I can access everything with a computer.

At the moment just going through all the zips i have renaming over 8 characters samples - what a ball ache!

Neko Neko wrote:Imagine though a 2k with 16 or 32 gb of flash based internal space, would completely make buying a 2500 redundent, well at least for me for a good while.

The 2500 is a huge upgrade on the XL, but you're obviously a man on a mission so good luck!

I tried to prolong the life of my XL by fitting a CF drive, but it got depressing real quick having to mash the F keys to load every sound to audition them. So whether you can store 1GB or 128GB, it's sort of moot because the OS doesn't allow for instant auditioning of sounds.

If you sample everything in fresh it doesn't matter, but if you want to roll with a drive full of sounds, that's where the 2500 kills it.

Coz wrote:

Neko Neko wrote:Imagine though a 2k with 16 or 32 gb of flash based internal space, would completely make buying a 2500 redundent, well at least for me for a good while.

The 2500 is a huge upgrade on the XL, but you're obviously a man on a mission so good luck!

I tried to prolong the life of my XL by fitting a CF drive, but it got depressing real quick having to mash the F keys to load every sound to audition them. So whether you can store 1GB or 128GB, it's sort of moot because the OS doesn't allow for instant auditioning of sounds.

If you sample everything in fresh it doesn't matter, but if you want to roll with a drive full of sounds, that's where the 2500 kills it.

I have a feeling your right i will ultimately have to get a 2500 as 2k just isn't designed to be used like this. However Man on a mission is exactly whats going on here & i'm too far in to quit now! Must see this plan through to the end even if i don't keep the xl. hopefully others will benefit from it too.

SUCCESS

I have got the mpc to see & use the SSD & Sata Hard drives!

Now comes the complicated bit. The SSD is recognised but I get the error when I try to format it. Search for the error & seems may be an combatabilty issue.

So looking for ways to get the SSD formatted outside of the MPC. I made an image of the working hard drive I had been using & them restored this back using WIN32disk. Success the MPC recognised the SSD & could save load etc, formatting still doesn't work though. I then used Chicken systems translator to format it 26 partitions 1GB each, didn't work, 26 partitions 950mb works though, MPC sees all the partitions & reads & writes etc.

So it seems the MPC must hold some info about if the drive is compatible in the partition table, restoring images of compatible hard drives to others makes them work. I wonder if this will work for CF cards that don't show up.

So now I have MPC seeing SSD, formatted correctly & writing reading working, the next challenge is getting all my samples from computer to SSD with loading them via the MPC. I really want this bit to work as then you backup MPC properly! Chicken systems translator can apparently do this but I'm struggling to get it working, I have version 2.9 on windows xp. It says you can create a "virtual" MPC hard drive partitioned correctly on computer, then add samples & write this to the MPC Hard drive. I can't get this to work, dragging files to the actual mounted MPC SSD just turns them in random letters when viewed on the MPC, The virtual drive bit seems to not work ether, sounds don't show up on the drive.

Anyone have experience with translator? or a newer version they can test this on?

I'll post a proof video later showing the SSD working. UPDATE Done below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywj470mH_Mg