Exchange tips and tricks for the Akai MPC4000
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By charlieocali Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:34 pm
This comes after extreme frustraion.... but now there is a much faster ay to transfer sounds... I do this with a usb 2.0 drive formatted on the mpc 4000.





First, find the drive and partition with the command

ls /dev/disk*

(or "df -k", make these commands before and after you plug in the drive) Another option is to select the partition with the disk utility and run "verify" under the first aid tab. In my case, I get:

Verifying disk "Untitled 1".
**/dev/disk1s1
Verify Completed.

Now that you know the partition name, create a directory in root to mount, ie:

mkdir /msdosdisk

Then:

sudo mount_msdos /dev/disk1s1 /msdosdisk

(give the root password, replace "disk1s1" with the name you get in your case)

Now, in the Finder select "Go to folder" from the menu and type:

/msdosdisk

The drive magically appears on the desktop!!! and you are ready to go.

To unmount the disk, drag the disk to the trash, but you need to also unmount it from Unix with:

sudo umount -f /msdosdisk
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By charlieocali Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:25 am
Theres a new problem with this method now... just discvered...


Once the data iscopied to the drive... half the names of the prm file have been changed with the prefix of "._ fatsynth" wich the mpc will not read.. calls it a bad format.

Anybody have any ideas?

By misterv Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:47 pm
I think the MPC4000 can't read file names that are longer than 12 letters (or something around 12)

you probably need to rename your files so that they won t have such long names

I m not 100% sure but that might be the solution

let us know
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By charlieocali Fri Mar 04, 2005 8:48 pm
I will Try today. I wich there was a program hat could fix the file names for me!
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By charlieocali Fri Mar 04, 2005 10:22 pm
Well heres is the update:



After further research, what the mpc file system does after loadind the drive on the mpc is it makes duplicates of all the sounds and prgrams, so for instance if you have a sound called bass that you tranfered this way it would come up like this: bass, ._bass. all you have to do is copy all the sounds you want onto the drive and then delete all the files that start with ._ This you must do with aksys., becuase this is the only way to see them I think, unless the are invisible, in wich case you can turn there visisblity on on your mac and delete. :D

Im transfering mine over firewire right now! This is a much faster way to do backups!