Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
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By distortedtekno Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:24 am
Psychedelic Schizophrenic wrote:Sorry for the long hiatus on the progress of the M.O. drive that I purchased but to cut a long story short I ended up copping a non hot-swappable CF reader for next to nothing (20 pound plus shipping) on eBay at the end of August. The seller listed it as parts as it wasn't work apparently but it turned out just to be loose power cable and ribbon cable inside.

Hopefully got a project lined up with a friend so the non hot-swapable CF reader won't be ideal to use in the studio, so the M.O. drive would be a better option for loading up multiple beats for this project. This evening I decided to fire up the 3.5 inch 1.3GB Fujitsu MCE3130SS drive that I purchased and I can confirm that it works perfectly with the 2000 :-D

Had to dismantle the CF reader as my original enclosure I purchased for the M.O. Drive as was to big for the drive.

Here's some photos

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Looking forward to getting to setup fully soon :smoker:



Good to see you got it working. Is that a 640mb disk you're using? I'm a bit surprised to see that since 3.5" MO disks of a capacity of 640mb and up are 1024 bytes per sector. The MPC2000 manual states that it's only compatible with MO disks that contain 512 bytes per sector, which would limit you to using 128mb, 230mb, and 540mb disks. I've never tried 640mb disks because of what I read in the manual. However, when I first started using MO disks, I overlooked that and bought a 2.3gb disk. That one definitely didn't work with my MPC, which is a shame since those disks run for $20 a pop. Let me know what you're using. If that is indeed a 640mb disk and you're not experiencing any errors, then I really wanna buy one and test it out.
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By Psychedelic Schizophrenic Mon Apr 09, 2018 9:35 pm
tapedeck wrote:I can tell you in practice this is almost never a problem. i have a hotswap, but i rarely use it like that, i just leave mine in all the time.
if you get even a 1gb card, divided over 32mb a piece max for memory of the mpc, that's a ton of material to work with on one disk. thats like 30 full-mpc memory capacities on one disk.

if you get like 2gb or 4, 8, 16gb - you've really got a lot of room to work with.

as long as your not going back and forth between your computer - just dump all the files on it first, and then dont put it back into the computer til you need to.

i think you've done a good thing - good job.

Thanks Tapedeck it sounds like a ideal solution to my problem, thanks for the help and information :worthy:

distortedtekno wrote:Good to see you got it working. Is that a 640mb disk you're using? I'm a bit surprised to see that since 3.5" MO disks of a capacity of 640mb and up are 1024 bytes per sector. The MPC2000 manual states that it's only compatible with MO disks that contain 512 bytes per sector, which would limit you to using 128mb, 230mb, and 540mb disks. I've never tried 640mb disks because of what I read in the manual. However, when I first started using MO disks, I overlooked that and bought a 2.3gb disk. That one definitely didn't work with my MPC, which is a shame since those disks run for $20 a pop. Let me know what you're using. If that is indeed a 640mb disk and you're not experiencing any errors, then I really wanna buy one and test it out.


Thanks man, It worked well with the Maxell 230MB disks I purchased, I then popped in the MO disk that was shipped inside with unit just out of curiosity (It's a Sony F640 2048 byte per sector disk) I was surprised that it showed up (My bad in all the excitement of it working I forgot to mention it in my original post :Sigh: ) It formatted with no issues, I didn't do any testing after that like saving or loading any projects or files with the Sony F640 disk but I have a couple of days of work in the middle of this week, so I will put it through its paces and report back with my findings.
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By distortedtekno Mon Apr 09, 2018 9:43 pm
Cool, let me know what happens. It might actually read and write, if I remember correctly. But all the data was corrupt when I tested with the 2.3gb disk.
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By Psychedelic Schizophrenic Thu Apr 12, 2018 8:46 pm
So I re-rigged the M.O. Drive back up this evening and can confirm that the 640mb disk actually worked like a treat. Was able to reformat the whole disk into partitions A to S which were 33MB partitions (Or 32.3MB if you want to be accurate). Was able to load/save/delete and resave over stuff with no issues :smoker:

Here a photo of the Sony F640 2048 byte per sector disk I got shipped with the drive


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By Gemfire Sun Apr 22, 2018 8:48 pm
I have a 2.3 Gb MO Disk and it works but the read/write speed is noticeably slower than 230MB Disks. Plus it pits out some weird noises when in the drive. But otherwise it works.
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By mr_debauch Tue May 01, 2018 6:14 pm
super dope this thread is still getting some new traction.
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By distortedtekno Wed May 02, 2018 12:49 am
mr_debauch wrote:super dope this thread is still getting some new traction.

Yeah, there's a good amount of 2Ks out there and it's good to see some people are looking in the right place for a better storage solution. It's crazy to pay close to the same amount of money as the 2K for a CF drive, and investing in Zip drives and disks is like throwing money out the window. Floppy emulators still can't save on multiple disks or partitions and SCSI2SD is still not a sure shot for many people who have tried. I recently saw a video with one working. But details and other info haven't been revealed. So I'm not going down that road when everything is still good with the $29 MO drive I bought a few years back. The same seller on eBay still has those drives. That's why I always recommend them. It leaves you plenty of money to buy disks with... and I still see nice deals averaging $4-$5 per disk for 128mb and 230mb. I'm sure I've mentioned it here before. But 128mb and 230mb are very ideal disk capacities for the 2K since the OS don't support folders. anything larger would be more of a hassle since having too many partitions can get confusing. That's why I wouldn't wanna deal with CF, SD cards, or hard drives. Those are all better suited for the 2KXL.
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By mr_debauch Wed May 02, 2018 3:19 am
hell yeah. I still rock my minty 2000 classic... still got the 60 going good.. nice seeing the forum still at work sharing the info about the different stuff they tried on their machines.

Off topic, but apparently the MCD drive from the blue 2000xl allows CF cards to work properly in the roland SP-808...
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By richie Wed May 02, 2018 6:25 am
mr_debauch wrote:Off topic, but apparently the MCD drive from the blue 2000xl allows CF cards to work properly in the roland SP-808...


Yeah, the SP-808 takes IDE card readers. I believe you can use a regular Startech one as well.
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By JUKE 179r Wed May 02, 2018 12:48 pm
richie wrote:
mr_debauch wrote:Off topic, but apparently the MCD drive from the blue 2000xl allows CF cards to work properly in the roland SP-808...


Yeah, the SP-808 takes IDE card readers. I believe you can use a regular Startech one as well.

I could never get a StarTech to work in my SP-808 so I installed a Zip750 drive instead.
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By richie Wed May 02, 2018 1:03 pm
JUKE 179r wrote:
I could never get a StarTech to work in my SP-808 so I installed a Zip750 drive instead.


I see, that is interesting to know thanks.

There is something that I need to look into in relation to that. What I've found that certain cards simply will not be recognized due to not having the bootable flag on the cards partition table enabled. You know, how some cards you can install windows on and boot off of in a pc where as others simply won't be recognized, same difference.
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By mr_debauch Wed May 02, 2018 5:47 pm
I also didn't know that the EX and OG were the same... you can install the latest EX firmware on the OG and you get i think more effects and that
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By distortedtekno Wed May 02, 2018 10:14 pm
mr_debauch wrote:hell yeah. I still rock my minty 2000 classic... still got the 60 going good.. nice seeing the forum still at work sharing the info about the different stuff they tried on their machines.

Off topic, but apparently the MCD drive from the blue 2000xl allows CF cards to work properly in the roland SP-808...


That's cool that you're still rockin' the 2K and the 60. I'm getting ready to replace all the smaller tact switches on my 2K as soon as I remember to buy a new desoldering tool. But that project is gonna get put on the back burner since I'm still trying to catch up with other repairs and mods. But I'm hoping to get it all done in the next few weeks.
Good to see you got an MCD drive working in the SP-808. I still never used one. But I'll have to get my hands on one for cheap and fix it up.